My Research Topic

My research question is about how the media influences women struggling with anorexia. So far while doing research I have found a lot of vidoe clips about this but not a lot about this subject from databases. I have found two books that i feel will be really helpful during this research project. They talk a lot about body image and what affects this has on women. I have found a lot of journals about body image and i have found that media influences this a lot, therefore young women feel the need to fit this profile. I think i still need to find a good bit more of information. The past few classes have really helped me in finding journal articles that fit my research question. A lot of them are facts and figures, but I would like to find more interviews with victims of this disease. If possible, I would also like to find some statistics about what influences women with this disease and how they feel about the role that the media plays. So far i have not had to narrow or broaden my research topic. I have been extremely fourtunate to find many good sources and articles on my research topic.

Filter Bubbles

I don't feel like filter bubbles are a good thing. I don't think a robot is capable of deciding what a persons likes or dislikes are based on your computer activity or facebook. Limiting information on a persons computer is just crazy! This has to be limiting when doing research. A person may not like their topic, but are still required to do adequate research and find up to par information. How can a robot determine this? It is not fair that this is left of to a robot! I also felt that the information in how to get around this was very helpful. They were some good tips that people with this problem could benefit from.

Things I have learned :)

I feel i have learned many different things so far in this class that may help me in future classes. The one thing that will really help me is learning how to do a good and correct citation. Although i use my Writer's Resource all the time, i now have a much better understanding on how to cite correctly and most efficiently! I also have a much better understanding on how to find all of the information that is needed to cite different sources other than just books. I also think that using APA along with MLA was also very helpful. I have found i like MLA much better! I also think that the criteria for finding a good website or source was very helpful. This is something that will help me in almost every class i take. Finding good sources can make or break a research paper! I also found that learning how to find books on the library catalog and then finding them in the library was very helpful as well. This is also something that will help me find better sources for future research papers. Overall i think this class will help not only me, but the other students out a lot in future classes. Hopefully everyone has found this class as helpful as i have!

I feel using the Ingram Library catalog is a little more difficult to use then my high schools library catalog. I feel this is more difficult for the simple fact that there are so many more books at the Ingram Library than there were at my high schools library. Although the catalog does a great job of having different ways to narrow down your serches and being able to insert keywords there are so many books that may be on the same topic, but are not necessarily what you might be looking for. One thing that suprised me was definitely the amout of books and results that are given when searching for a specific thing. I had trouble when I searched anorexia in the media. All  of my results were movies and video clips on anorexia and were not about how the media influeneced anorexia. No matter how many different ways i worded it the same things kept coming up. So I think i will find more information in articles on Galielio.

I had a lot more success using GIL- Find instead of GIL. I found that there were a lot more ways to narrow down my search on GIL-Find.

I used GIL-Find@WestGa to search for two book relating to my topic Anorexia in the media. One of the books my group was give in class i found to be very helpful for my topic. That book is Fat--A Fate Worse Than Death? : women, weight, and appearance. This book focuses on body image as well as the social aspects of gain weight and the need to be as skinny as you can be. I feel this book would be great to use for my research topic not only because of the social aspect of the book, but because the book as a whole is media.

Another book I found very helpful was Women Afraid to Eat : breaking free in today's weight obsessed world. This book also discusses the social aspects of the disease. I feel this book would be better then the other because it goes more in dept into the  media aspect of the disease. Along with the other book, this book also goes into dept about body image and the need to be skinny.

Another question that came to mind is why would someone write these books in the first place? is it supposed to help people battling this disease? is it supposed to motivate people to get in shape?

I interviewed Jessica Folds about her experience with research papers. Jessica is a senior here and West Georgia and is a Business Management major. I asked her what her favorite research paper was about and she said she hadn't done many, but her favorite was a paper about sexual harassment in the workplace. She told me that this occurs much more than people think. I also asked what types of sources she consulted during her few research papers that she had. She told me her teacher mainly wanted them to use media sources such as newspaper or magazine articles. I was surprised that she had not done many research papers through out her  college career and that they mainly were assigned group projects. 

http://www.slideshare.net/kolbeywinders/libretho1101

During this project I along with my partner looked up the book and found the book together. I also took some of the pictures and was in one of them. We both worked on the power point together.

Based on today's exercise I found that if your not careful many research questions can become too broad or too vague. Many of my research questions were too broad. This lesson really helped me understand how to write a research question.

One of my research questions was, What are some contributing factors associated with anorexia? Some things i could change about this question are to be more specific about what topic I am researching. My new research question is, How does the media influence women struggling with anorexia?

While Anorexia is a broad topic our group has narrowed this topic down to health problems, media influence, psychological issues, and economic status. We feel these four issues will make great research topics.