Two Questions

Research Project:

I've come up with two possible questions for my research project:

1. How have the development of social media platforms changed social documentaries over the last ten years.

I want to try to make my research project around the area of documentary, and I have a keen interest in social documentaries, and believe that the internet has opened up new pathways for it to be filmed and viewed. I thought there would be a few interesting ideas to explore, like how low-budget documentaries hosted on vimeo can differ in style/content/subject from documentaries produced for somewhere like channel four, and why that is so.

2. How well has 3D cinema coped at integrating itself with mainstream cinema

This is probably very poorly worded, but I basically want to look at how well 3D cinema has made the transition from novelty to legitimacy. I'd question the public's current opinion on it to find out weather or not 3D cinema is actually viewed as a novelty or as legitimate cinema.

After receiving some feedback I'm going to begin exploring the first question, mainly because I think I'll be able to include one of my heroes Noam Chomsky in my research. He has spoken critically of the mainstream media for a long time, and the effect of big money on choice of coverage has been long established, and I believe recently the emergence of Vimeo and Youtube has changed this. It's so much easier to choose the content you watch, so the audience is no longer as much constrained in what they watch by major media outlets. From my own experience I believe this has led to more controversial subjects being covered that would have otherwise gone ignored. There are a plethura of anti-establishment, anarchic, utopian, religious or anti-religious documentaries that, ten years ago, may not have been made were there not such a fantastic way of getting your content out there, cheaply.

http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499

Here is one of Chomsky's most famous books that has an absolutely fantastic amount of information about the main stream media and their coverage [or lack there]of various controversial subjects (i.e Indonesia's invasion of East-Timor, Vietname War, COINTEL PRO)

Danny asked for some artefacts I'd do about this question, and how. From what I know, our artefacts are supposed to evolve from one another, so I need to come up with one I'd like to start with, so I basically have to ask myself "what do you want to know". I was thinking perhaps a questionnaire, so I can find out exactly what type of person watches social documentary presently, and how they do it. One fact I need to take into account is that, ten years ago, anyone under the age of 25 is going to have been, at most, 15 years old. So whereas I don't want to discount them, I will take it into account when assessing the data. This is obviously research, and not an experiment, but I think it would still be useful to do.

I am working on artefacts.

I'd like to know first of all