Working out what you need to know about your key product
Research Questions
Institutional factors: For your chosen texts: What was the budget? What profit was returned? Which institutions were involved? How would the institutions have impacted on the facts and texts?
In what ways is the institution using new technology to reach out to its target audience? What barriers does the institution face in distributing this product? What news headlines has the institution been making? What kind of institution makes this product?
Forms: what techniques are used to tell stories? In what ways is the product innovative? What genre conventions are used? How does this product subvert the genre it comes from?
Representations: what positive representations of groups does this product make? What absent representations? What negative representations?
Audience: who are they? Have they changed? What are their needs? How have texts reacted to those needs? How have audiences reacted to texts? In what ways do the audience contribute to the production of this texts?
Critics / reviewers: Were the reviews generally favourable? What in particular did people like? Did different audience segments react differently?
Comparisons: Are there texts with notable similarities? Did older texts influence your main texts?
Contexts of research: What historical, political or social events or movements might affect the study?
Contexts of production: What historical, political or social events or movements might have influenced the audience’s reading of the focus of your research study?
reception
Media Issues debates What debates would apply to your chosen study? Are there various opposing debates? What issues does the study raise?
Media Theories What theories can be usefully applied to the way the text constructs meaning?Who developed these theories? When? Where?