Digging Deeper

So far, I have not taken many steps to researching for my podcast… if I’m being honest. The only research I have done was for my initial pitch transcript. I did have days set for when I wanted research complete, however after looking at my marks from my first two assignments, I have had to try and rearrange the direction of my podcast. This has resulted in shifting my focus back to my topic yet again, which I was not anticipating.
When I was looking before, the only scholarly resource I found was in Social Sciences Abstracts. The invention of Google Glasses is still very new, and I feel as though I put all the research techniques we learnt about in class to good use, it’s just that there are no studies being done the glasses specifically yet. Or if they are, they have not yet been published and released. The article I did find was from a sociologist point of view, looking at the total effects of technological distractions on society and their daily activities. I do plan on finding at least one or two more scholarly sources to back up my research, as opposed to only using website articles. However, some of the best information is coming out of these techy websites. These techy websites, have allowed me to definitely find more than enough information for my popular sources. I have been looking for information that has to do with the features, capabilities and release information on Google Glasses. 

I hope that by the next time I have to write a blog I won’t be as upset and will have all of my podcast troubles sorted out. 

Oh, the Joy Digging and Information Landslides

So. Today was my originally hoped-for date to finish the bulk of my research by.

Actual outcome: not so much. As it turns out, what I'd hoped was my narrowed topic was actually still too broad, and resulted in a lot of overflow of possible research avenues and informational black holes from which there would likely be no return (*cue danger music*). Long story short... back to the drawing board.

For today's post though, here's what I can safely say I've got so far:

In the area of scholarly sources, I haven't yet pinned down the sources I'll be drawing from. But what I'm hoping for is a mix of published theoretical research in the area of android development projects (to get a feel for what's theoretically possible in the area of blending human characteristics, even independent thoughts and emotions and personalities, with a mechanized body), and published experiment/prototype results in the area of mechanized/artificially engineered human limb and organ transplants (to gauge the potential progress from what's currently being achieved to what's theorized as achievable).

For popular sources, so far I have a variety of website articles and youtube videos I'm considering using in some way, some of the most promising of which are found at the following links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hGXnIu_A7yg (a video on the human-interfacing bionic man named Rex)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1G1evlXfKE&list=PL6131F72B3C33A8A9 (a video on the first artificial body part transplant, performed two years ago)
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-20084885-76/researchers-build-dna-neural-network-that-thinks/ (an article about artificially built neural network)
http://redicecreations.com/article.php?id=19690 (a two-year old article about the US military's plans for bionic medical implants in soldiers, designed to combat infections and resist bio/chemical warfare)
http://redicecreations.com/article.php?id=21602 (article discussing the growing possibility of engineered/bionic "upgrades" becoming fashionable, regardless of the lack of actual need for them)

Within my popular sources, I'm hoping especially to highlight where bionics currently stand in the public eye, both in popularity as well as in actual use. What I think I'll end up doing (and writing up, for my revised research plan) is cutting down sci-fi comparisons to the briefest of references in order to dedicate more time in the podcast to exploring current and future realities.

Week 6

In conducting the preliminary research for our topic, my partner and I have agreed to begin first by researching broad, general subtopics, in order to move more swiftly through our topic’s more detailed, specific components. I’ve begun to view our research strategy, all of this tedious digging, as an opportunity to become an expert on our research topic, which I think will translate positively into our final product.

We are flooded with scholarly sources and popular sources that all, somehow, involve linguistics. However, my partner and I have yet to find any single scholarly source that touches upon phonaesthetics, euphony, and cacophony. We continue to search for this golden ticket. Our popular sources so far include expanded dictionaries and an article in Forbes regarding influential words. We’re continuing to look for magazine and journal articles on linguistics and linguistics and advertisements. It’s a lot of work, but I can dig it (sorry).

vi. digging deeper.

Now that I have a refined topic and research question to pursue, I have not taken many steps to begin my research process--at least not anything additional to the research I already conducted in the past. I am still reading one of the books that I plan to reference heavily--Chinua Achebe's There Was A Country--but other than that, I have not taken much action in terms of research for my podcast episode.

The types of scholarly sources I am looking for are ones that speak to Nigeria during the civil war. I need sources that will give me an idea of what the climate of the country was like before the war, and will give me perspective on the national and ethnic identities of Nigeria's three main ethnic groups--the Hausas, Yorubas, and Igbos--before, during, and immediately after the war. To tie my ideas down to particular fields of study, three keywords come immediately to mind: African Studies, History, and British Colonialism. 

Scholarly sources I have found already are mainly the books I will be referencing: Half Of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie, which uses fictional characters to explore the grim details of the Biafran War (from its onset, to the war itself, and the climate after the war); There Was A Country by Achebe, which is his personal history of the war. I will definitely also be buying Biafra Story by Frederick Forsyth and read that in preparation for my podcast episode. I found a couple of lengthy sources that give a lot of insight on the cold facts of the war--that is, background knowledge on the general milieu in the country, key events that took place, the actions of those in political power, the coups, and so on. These sources are academically written, and are consulted often by people trying to gain more knowledge on the civil war. I am not sure about whether or not they are peer-reviewed, but this could spark a conversation on my part about the distribution of knowledge, on who makes the decisions about what knowledge is significant, and what knowledge is being excluded through this process. There are many people in Nigeria who carry a lot more knowledge about their history than peer-reviewed articles in this part of the world do. I am still yet to meet with my professor for advice, direction, and/or suggestions for scholarly sources to visit, but this will happen shortly as I need to begin work on my draft podcast transcript very soon.

As for popular sources, Wikipedia was my immediate go-to. It helped me refresh my memory on Nigeria, its geography, its anthropology, and so on. I also visited some blogs that aim to educate readers about Nigeria, which helped me focus my research ideas. Another popular source I found is an article by The Guardian that speaks about Chinua Achebe and things he has said about Baifra's legacy on Nigeria today. Right now, I think I will only need popular sources for tips and ideas on how I will set up my  actual podcast episode. I'll keep listening to Stuff You Missed In History Class for inspiration, of course, and YouTube does not seem like a bad idea as a popular source either. I will visit it for podcast structure ideas, and anything I can find on the Biafran War. 

Digging Deeper

I   recently  got  the  feedback  for  my  podcast  pitch  and  realized  that  I  have  to  do  some  more  work  on  my  topic.  I  will  need  to  take  some  extra  time  to  further  refine  my  topic  before  I  can  settle  on  any  sources.

So  far,  I  have  found  many  popular  sources  and  very  few  scholarly  sources  that  deal  with  the  issue  of  DUI  reports  in  the  media.  One  popular  source  I  found  is  an  online  show  called  The  Young  Turks.  The  network  usually  focuses  on  political  issues  and  is  very  interesting  to  watch,  on  the  other  hand,  the  reporting  is  very  opinionated  and  depicts  a  very  obvious  bias  towards  liberal  views.  I  might  not  be  able  to  use  this  source  after  all,  unfortunately.

The  popular  sources  I  am  looking  for  would  have  to  be  mainly  magazine  articles  and  news  reports.  I  will  have  to  put  in  some  extra  time  and  a  lot  of  work  this  reading  week  in  order  to  make  a  podcast  show  that  I  can  be  proud  of,  and  one  that  will  also  get  me  a  good  grade. 

Camellia, W14, Digging Deeper

Well, I decided to begin my research on the eResources and the articles/databases section on York’s Library website.  At first, I was unsure about how many scholarly sources I would find on homophone misuse, but JSTOR ended up being a very helpful database thus far. 

Some scholarly sources I plan to use are:

- “Mnemonics Relieves Homophone Misuse” article by Carol A. Edwards (from the Journal of Reading book)

- Txtng: The Gr8 Db8 by David Crystal (publisher: Oxford University Press)

Hopefully, I will be able to find more scholarly sources as I continue to research.  I’m also interested in searching under the ‘psycholinguistic’ field of study because this will allow me to further understand ‘why’ people are misusing these homophones – is homophone misuse related to our psyche?  So far, in the databases, I have only researched under the ‘professional writing’ field of study.

A popular source I found is:

- “No LOL matter: Tween texting may lead to poor grammar skills” (from the Penn State News website)

My next plan is to look through magazine articles in terms of popular sources.  Perhaps, these popular sources will provide me with recent information that will allow me to dig deeper on homophone misuse within social media. 

Good Luck researching, everyone!

Here we come a-diggin'

So the research is begun. My partner and I have learned that what is necessary in researching this topic is not to learn about specific components, such as Coca-Cola’s use of phonaesthetic principles in advertising or detailed lists of euphonic and cacophonic words, but rather to inquire about more general subtopics, like thoroughly learning the meanings of phonaesthetics, euphony, and cacophony. Though this may seem counterintuitive, it is a necessary process in order for us to advance our research beyond the margins of mere definition. Put simply, we believe that thorough research of the broad will allow for a more inspired navigation of the specific.

Of course, any such topics as relating to linguistics provide myriad scholarly and popular sources, and so burden us with an overwhelming amount of potential paths. As for scholarly sources, we haven’t found any cohesive works (in most of these, phonaesthetics only is a sub-subtopic), though we have found specific people. JRR Tolkien is a recurring name in this field. He seems to have contributed a significant amount of research to modern phonaesthetics, and has set out simple principles to distinguish between euphonic and cacophonic words. We are looking to form full definitions, with appropriate examples, of our central terms: phonaesthetics, euphony, and cacophony. Informative popular sources include a Forbes article on influential words, and various online expanded dictionaries. See? We really are starting broadly.

Digging Deeper

Hello

            My research steps have been tentatively taken and I’m still learning how to walk. I’m currently gathering information still and the research looks promising. As of currently I have not found any scholarly sources that I am aware of but I have found some significant information from popular sources like National Geographic. I am however still looking for a documentary I remember seeing about a year ago that outlined a good amount of the information on wind that I’m seeking.

            I’m continuingly looking for other information, but as I narrow down my search to the effects wind has on the polar vortex I believe my resources will change to news-oriented articles.

 

            Thanks for reading

Christopher

What's Next?: Looking Into the Research Process

So far in the research process, I have found a lot of useful articles in the scholarly databases PsycInfo, (American Psychological Association), The Australian Psychological Society, Ammons Scientific, Taylor Francis Online and Springer Link. These articles include:

·         Option or obligation to smile: The effects of power and gender on facial expression,

·         Effects of Laughing, Smiling, and Howling on Mood,

·         The effect of Embarrassed Reactions Upon Others,

·         Social and Emotional Messages of Smiling: An Ethological Approach, 

  ·    Look at me, I'm smiling: Visual search for threatening and nonthreatening facial expressions,

·         All Smiles are Not Created Equal: Morphology and Timing of Smiles Perceived as Amused, Polite, and Embarrassed/Nervous and

·         The world smiles at me: Self-referential positivity bias when interpreting direction of attention

                I have been searching for scholarly articles/research that focus on human psychology in social environments. I have yet to search for popular sources but I think that blogs, and even videos of YouTube commentators, describing personal experiences of being told to smile by strangers will be the most helpful in narrowing down why it bothers people and what the implications of such a request are. Even though I have chosen not to focus on a particular gender in this situation because of the limited time that I have, I am aware that feminists are very vocal about this subject and thus feminist magazines and websites may also provide me with some useful popular sources for my podcast.

Week 5: Digging Deeper [Paige Gunning, W14]

My partner and I are in the middle of researching for our podcast. We have been primarily focusing on the scholarly sources because we believed that it would be more difficult to find relevant, scholarly articles on a topic which is very recent.

We have focused on two search tools to help us find the scholarly information we needed, namely Mendeley and Google Scholar. We particularly wanted to find scholarly sources which gave us an idea of just how many people use YouTube as well as YouTube's reach on our society's culture right now.

The scholarly sources which we have found using Mendeley are YouTube, Critical Pedagogy and Media Activism, YouTube as a Participatory Culture, and YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture. The scholarly sources which we have found using Google Scholar are From Safe Harbour to Choppy Waters: YouTube, the Digital Copyright Act, and a Much Needed Change of Course, and The Cult of the Amateur.

There are many popular posts on line currently about the Nash Grier video, and we are looking currently for posts which are not too biased and offer factual information as to what the response to the video has been from the public, possibly with statistics stating how many women have taken this opportunity to respond to the video and use it as a form of bringing up the egregious standards women are currently held up to.

Digging Deeper - Justyne Yuen-Lee, W14

A lot of research about smoking goes into its negative effects. So, researching for the answer to my question of the ineffectiveness of its advertisements is pretty difficult. To begin my trek, however, I looked up several scholarly articles on JSTOR and found several studies of smoking prevention messages targeted towards adolescents:

1.     Smoking Prevention Messages for Adolescents: How Intensity, Valence, and Recipient of Consequences Affect Attitude toward the Ad and Intent to Smoke – James Reardon and Chip Miller in the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice

2.     Industry sponsored anti-smoking ads and adolescent reactance: test of a boomerang effect by L. Henriksen, A. L. Dauphinee, Y. Wang, and S. P. Fortmann in Tobacco Control

These two scholarly sources are just a preliminary step in my search. I plan to use their sources to find more specific studies in other journals and magazines studying smoking.

I found two popular sources also:

1.     Source of Anti-Smoking Ads Influences Their Effectiveness, Study finds – Join Together Staff on drugfree.org

2.     11 Facts About Smoking on dosomething.org

I plan to use popular sources for more general understanding of what the focus of smoking is for the general public. Also, with articles written on studies, I can find the original study to use as a scholarly source. I’m planning to look for more magazine articles about smoking advertisements.

Digging Deeper: Graeme Scallion, W14

Unfortunately, my research process is off to a rocky start. In choosing an obscure event from the get-go – a very specific alien encounter in a very specific time frame - I ensured that my topic would be refined and specific enough to create an in-depth podcast. A downside to my specificity, however, is that the conversation around my topic is not very widespread, and my various database searches have yielded almost nothing I can use. I went as far as to book an appointment with a York University librarian, and even she was unable to find anything through traditional search engines. As this class is all about research, I was determined to apply the research methods discussed in lecture to my research process, but it’s looking like I will have to think outside the box and search for information in different ways if I’m going to have something substantial to talk about.

The most pressing issue I’ve encountered is that very little scholarly attention has been paid to the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter. I didn’t expect that a lot of experts would focus on this event in particular, so I’ve been searching for scholarship around mankind’s fixation on extraterrestrial life in general, perhaps in the fields of anthropology or world history. My research thus far has produced nothing particularly useful, but I’d like to find a few scholarly articles on the topic. It is becoming more and more clear to me that my podcast will depend primarily on popular sources. While little has been published about alien encounters in scholarly circles, there is a wealth of information to be found in popular publications. I’ve already uncovered a number of articles published in the Kentucky New Era, Kelly/Hopkinsville’s local paper, around the time of the Green Men incident, as well as articles published in the same paper in subsequent years reflecting on the event. I’ve also found a short documentary about the Hopkinsville Goblins and a number of Ufology websites that discuss alien sightings throughout history. I hope to find more articles published in newspapers outside of Kentucky, as well as specific periodicals dedicated to ufology and alien encounters.  

Week 5: Digging Deeper

Now that I have refined my research topic to the knowns and unknowns of the spelling rule ‘i before e except after c’ I have begun to search for both scholarly and popular sources. The scholarly sources I have found are from Google Books, Google Scholars and JSTOR and the popular sources I will use will be news article and reference sources.

Google Books will be used to locate dated spelling books or manuals of English spelling online that make reference to this spelling rule to understand when it was primarily introduced and to identify who created the rule and Google Scholars and JSTOR will be used to find journal articles about the rule’s use in history as well as modern day English education and also to retrieve scholars’ opinions on this rule’s use in teaching. In JSTOR I have narrowed my search to The English Journal, English Education and The Journal of Educational Research to retrieve journals that are specific to the discipline that will be relevant to English, spelling and grammar. Also, I previously cited in my research plan that I was going to use the database called Literature Online but I have found that the search result that I received were not as helpful as I had thought they would be so I have chosen not to use it and I will be looking for another database instead. In terms of texts I also expect to find books as source aside from eBooks that are mainly spelling books and manuals that include explanation of the spelling rule or citations of its originator.

The news articles I plan to use are reports on the concern of the rule’s use in academia, similar to the article I have retrieved called “Schools to Rethink ‘i before e’” which is from BBC News. It discusses the issue of England considering removing the ‘i before e except after c’ spelling rule in teaching. I hope to find alternate articles like this from newspapers and literature or education magazines and news clips. I hope these popular sources will add depth and will contrast the expositional aspect of the podcast. The references sources I have already made us of are dictionary definitions from the online dictionary called Dictionary.com and the Oxford Canadian Dictionary 2nd ed. to define terms that I will explain. I also plan to use the online encyclopedia on Britannica.com to retrieve information on concepts of the spelling rule that I will explain in the podcast episode.

I am sure there will be other scholarly and popular sources that I will come across in the research process that I haven’t listed, but here are the sources that I have considered using for the final podcast.

References

 

BBC News. (20 June 2009). Schools to Rethink ‘i before e’. BBC News. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8110573.stm

Reed, Alonzo (1884). Word lessons: A complete speller adapted for use in the higher primary, intermediate, and grammar grades. Clark & Maynard.  

 

Sever, Franklin Pierce. (1892) The Progressive Speller: A Complete Spelling Book. D.C. Heath & Company.

Tallant, Anne (1834). The practice book; containing lessons in dictating, with questions, intended to remove difficulties in English instruction, and to communicate interesting historical and natural facts (2nd ed.). London: J. Hatchard & Son. 

Digging Deeper

For this collaborative, 30 minute podcast episode, my partner and I have estimated that we would need perhaps 10 scholarly sources as a foundation to ask and investigate our research question. This is an over-estimate (at least I hope) accounting for the articles and scholarly research that won't end up being useful to our episode. 

So far we have several scholarly pieces we are sifting through, including: 

Amy Becker, The Impact of Exposure to Political Comedy and Cable News on Factual Recall and Anticipated Political Expression

John Marshall McKenzie, Televised Political Satire: The New Media of Political Humour and Implications for Presidential Elections

Seth Lewis, Where Young Adults Intend to Get News in Five Years

James Trier, “The Daily Show” as an experiment in journalism

We are looking for studies on source informants of current events to a specific audience. Studies in the varying ethical journalism between satirical news programming, and formal news broadcasting is of particular interest. This focus of research has largely been focused on in the communications field, as well as studies in new media. Thus far Jstor has been an excellent database, in providing articles that are available to York. Pro quest searches have provided what seem to be perfectly topical articles, but they seemed to be unavailable to our library. 

The study of your podcast focuses on the facts and journalism of varying news sources, so the majority of our research is dependent on news reports-both the formal and the satirical. So far we have found all of our satirical news sources: 

Rick Mercer Report, Rob Ford Rant, November 19, 2013 (http://m.youtube.com/watch?

v=sfdoLedAWWg)

Jon Stewart The Daily Show, Toronto Crack Mayor Rob Ford, November 5, 2013 (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WpBOCa0-mTs)

Jon Stewart The Daily Show, Obama and Mayor Rob Ford, November 14, 2013 (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aHGMtmLVcZg)

Saturday Night Live, Rob Ford, November 17, 2013 (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf7jK90IIG8)

Now we are in the stages of compiling the formal news reports and clips that we will be using for the episode. Kenya and I have chosen to focus our news research on specific outlets, specifically CBC, USA Today, CNN, CP 24 and the Toronto Star. 

Happy Reading week all! 

Getting to the Nitty Gritty

My partner and I are still in the process of researching; looking through sources and taking notes, but we have come across a few sources that we would like to use.

We haven’t found a lot of scholarly sources yet but we have found one about Social Identity Theory. It describes how a person comes to create their social identity and how people begin to follow a group and how and why they, the followers, want to belong to said group.

With further research and a little luck we hope to find more scholarly sources that outline the psychological effects of following others (being a fan/fanatic) or scholar sources that depict how and why Nazi’s followed Hitler. Perhaps, a history analysis of Hitler's speech or things that Nazi's did and why they did them.

On the other hand, we have find quiet a few popular sources most are about Justin Bieber fans and why they are so obsessed with him. Also, we will be using twitter and the tweets that his fans write to or about him and the trends that his fans make.

For the most part, the popular sources we want to use are magazine articles preferably to do with Justin Bieber and his fans. We also want to use Youtube videos of fans, documentaries of the world war, and of course twitter.

Hopefully, we will hit the gold mine with good sources and be able to create a wonderful podcast about Hitlers fanatics and Justin Bieber fans.

Hi everyone,

The researching has begun! Well continued really after the research plan. To begin this process, I have written out everything that I really need to know about the subject. The whole "knowns and unknowns" is coming in handy. Since my brother is in advertising and marketing, i'm kind of using him to my advantage.

For scholarly sources, I've started to look into the Marketing, Advertising, and Psychology databases in the hopes to find some journals, and on google scholar for some book or article ideas.
So far I have found:
-The Effect of Humour on Advertising Comprehension by Calvin P. Duncan, James E. Nelson, and Nancy T. Frontczak 
-The Impact of Humour on Advertising: A Review by Mark G. Weinberg and Charles S. Gulas
-Consumer Psychology Findings by James Larsen

For popular sources, I'm searching for articles that have to do with marketing or advertising. I may also dip into the some past Under the Influence podcast episodes because many of these episodes are on advertising (ergo how my topic fits with the show). So far I haven't found anything except the other podcast episodes from Under the Influence because I've been focusing on scholarly sources to really capture the psychological side. Looking for some popular sources will be my next step!
I will be looking for some sources in magazine articles and perhaps other podcasts hoping they will touch upon psychology in advertising.

Good luck researching everyone. I'm nervous but let's hope this turns out well!

W:14 Shanice Grocia Digging Deeper

The scholarly sources I am looking for have to do with criminal and or juvenile behavior in individuals with uncommon names. So far, the sources I already have are primary sources that I have already utilized in my pitch:  First Names and Crime: Does Unpopularity Spell Trouble? by David Kalist and Daniel Lee; as well as, The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names by Ronald Fryer and Steven Levitt. These are staple sources that offer the needed foundation information to introduce and begin my topic. They answers the questions; "What is an unpopular name?" and "What are some consequences to ethnic-sounding names?"

Some popular sources I have found in the researching process would be the study, Are Greg and Emily more employable than Lakisha and Jamal?  By Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan; and, Boys named Sue: Disruptive Children and their Peers by David Figlio. These sources are imperative to my podcast, as they discuss the economic standing as well as masculinity issues in a social context.  In continuing this process, I would like to find more sources in the field of social dynamics in order to better compare ‘popular’ and ‘unpopular’ names. In doing this, I can obtain a better understanding of the social implications outside of the workforce.

So far, all of my sources are scholarly studies and journals done by professionals. As I continue to research, I would like to explore magazine articles and news reports that discuss first names. An article in The Star, titled, My name is iPod, but call me Felon gives an interesting account of different people directly affected by their ‘odd names’. A bit more research in this area could make my overall exploration a bit more compelling.

Sources:Kalist, David E., and Daniel Y. Lee. "First Names and Crime: Does Unpopularity Spell Trouble?" (2008): 1-2. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.
 <http://noah.ship.edu/lee5/Daniel_Lee.pdf>.

Fryer, Ronald G., and Steven D. Levitt. "The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names." The Quaterly Journal of Economics 119.3 (2004): 770. The Becker Friedman Institute. Web. 15 Feb. 2014. <http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/FryerLevitt2004.pdf>.
Menon, Venay. "My Name Is IPod, but Call Me Felon." Thestar.com. Toronto Star, 10 June 2008. Web. 15 Feb. 2014. <http://www.thestar.com/opinion/columnists/2008/06/10/my_name_is_ipod_but_call_me_felon.html>.
Bertrand, Marianne, and Sendhil Mullainathan. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination."The American Economic Review 94.4 (2004). Web. 15 Feb. 2014.
<http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ321/orazem/bertrand_emily.pdf>.

Christine Hawryluk: Digging Deeper

Hi everyone, I hope everyone is enjoying their reading week. Usually people do not want to do anything school related, but this year, at least for me, it happens to be inevitable.

When beginning my research, I found that the term "Holodomor" was a fairly specific term, but then I also thought that "Ukrainian famine" was another option.

I first began my research by heading down to the reference library, since I find that I am usually most successful with books (secondary sources). When I headed down to the library, I found many useful books, but the one that I spent my most time reading was The Holodomor Reader by Bohdan Klid. This book is a sourcebook for many different articles of information including articles, first hand accounts and documents. However, I found myself spending too much time at the library and decided to calls St. Vladimir's Institute in Toronto, which happens to have a library. There I found I was able to take out the above mentioned book, as well as a few others which have been very helpful.

The next thing that I found was a documentary called The Soviet Story which had a small section on the Holodomor, which I found some information that I had not found in my other sources so far. There is another documentary called The Harvest of Despair, which is all about the Holodomor and I have heard from other Ukrainians that it is a very informative documentary.

The final thing that I have done, so far in my research process, is went on to the York University database to see what I could find in the historical databases and I have found absolutely nothing on the York databases that was useful. However, I made an appointment with a librarian at York to assist me on finding sources through York.

However, I decided to look on the Toronto Public Library website and look through their database called the Academic One File, which runs through Ebscohost. I used the Boolean method: Holodomor or Ukrainian famine and removal of grain. I found when I narrowed it down to using this Boolean method, I really narrowed it down and found more useful sources, rather than just using the term Holodomor.

I am finding much success in my research so far and I hope that the rest of this assignment goes this well! Have a great day everyone!

Bernice Afriyie, W14: Digging Deeper

Hello Professor Jennifer Andreae and class,

As I've delved into my research these past days it has been frustrating finding sources related to my topic, even popular ones. However, through some search refinement I was able to fin some great pieces.

Some of the popular sources that I've read provide an intra-music perspective on popular music and advertisements, whereas I'm looking for a sociological and economic perspective on popular music and advertisement. I am trying to find articles in mainstream journals and magazines that challenge the use of popular music in advertisements, beyond the typical: artists sell themselves to companies, but it is hard. 

I found a great entry in a work by Theodore Adorno called "Popular Music," and though it was published in 1976 his observations about the effects of music on the psychology of consumers is accurate. His work with the nostalgia, contradictions, ideologies and marketing of popular is so well written and accurate that he has probably been sourced by his modern peers. I am in the process of finding recent articles that source Adorno so that I can maybe reference his work in relation to an author focussing on the current state of popular music.

My focus, as I stated before, is in a sociological and psychological perspective of popular music and its use in advertisements. I have the Adorno article as well as a peer reviewed article by Hsuan-Yi Chou and Nai-Hwa Lien's article "Advertising effects of songs' nostalgia and lyrics' relevance." My next step is to review these two piecces and find out the credibility of the authors as researchers. If these articles suit my needs and are credible and peer reviewed, I will proceed to find articles that they source and are sourced by them to build a solid research bank.