Research Essay Portfolio

Research Essay Portfolio
Your essay should explore the social and cultural effects of a technological solution to a problem using academic research by scholars and a case study that you develop. Although the readings for this course are largely focused around media technologies, feel free to choose a research topic from your own field or area of interest. This assignment must be unique to this course: it must not be an assignment from any other course. You should use 3-6 sources for this essay, one of which must be one of the assigned readings from this course.

All assignments should be submitted online through Moodle. Assignments should be formatted as a Microsoft Word Document in 12 pt Times New Roman font, single or double spaced. Filenames must include your first and last name. A mandatory header should indicate your first and last name, student number, and the title of the assignment. Proper formatting is worth 2% of each assignment grade.

This assignment consists of developing (1) a research question, (2) a case study, and (3) identifying 2 scholarly sources that will help provide you with part of the data you need to answer your established research question. This bibliography may not include any readings from the course.

Your (1) research question should be concerned with technology and its social and cultural effects. Some prompts that can help you develop your research question are: What is a problem this technology has solved, and how has it been solved? What were the obvious effects of a technology and what effects are less obvious? How or why has the use of the technology changed or evolved since its invention?

Your (2) case study should be outlined in 2 sentences that summarize the case and indicate its relevance to your research question and sources. A case study is the specific example you are using to examine your question.Your (3) scholarly sources should be annotated. You need to provide 2 sentences briefly summarizing the article and indicating why it is relevant for your proposed research.

Research Question
1. What is the effect of YouTube copyright monitoring on videos made by vloggers and shared on the Internet?
Case Study Discussion:
In this project, I will examine the online presence of popular YouTube vlogger Colleen Ballinger and explore how she addresses questions of intellectual property and homage in her own parody videos and original content. As a YouTube-created celebrity with a similar profile to the vlogger Zoella examined in Jerslev’s study, Ballinger presents a comparative case in order to show how copyright influences vlogger content and interactions on YouTube.

This essay examines the emergence of YouTube in 2005 and the potential challenges to copyright the new platform presented in terms of uploading non-simultaneous images and sharing them instantaneously. Hilderbrand's article presents an important historical perspective for this paper, covering copyright challenges made by YouTube at an early date in the development of the platform.Submit a 600 word working draft of part of an essay in which you will develop your research question. You are free to change your topic or modify your research question. For full marks, this working draft should consist of (1) an introduction that includes a thesis statement, (2) at least one body paragraph, and (3) a correctly formatted bibliography that consistently uses either MLA or APA format. In-text citations in your chosen format should be used to indicate quotations and information from outside sources.