It just doesn’t make much sense to me….. research that is. As a journalist usually we are trying to be as anti-academia as possible, yet this year I find myself stuck between a rock and a hard place because there is no avoiding it.
Today Adrian was talking us through different research methodologies and how although our research might not be very specific we all have a different approach to how we do research. While I’m sure that many of the other students have had more experience with actual research than me this point did resonate, albeit only slightly.
Ok, so I understand that everyone researches differently, and I may be an encyclopedic person knowing many different snippets of knowledge but that doesn’t change the fact that research and journalism clash head-on.
All of my university based study up until now has been very practical. Even when there were requirements occasionally in my course to write essays the actual essay content was limited. Now I find myself needing to write over 15,000 words in essays in first semester alone. I just don’t get how all my journalism experience can be used in a research arena. Practically I get it, but I am still struggling to link the practical aspects of my honours project with the whole idea of researching. I don’t understand the purpose of trawling through academic journals… I don’t understand how that helps me in my quest to re-invent journalism.
On the whole I find the research process, as I understand it, to be completely backwards, disruptive, and non-progressive. But I’m a journalist and this year for me is about completing an excellent project not for complaining about the research.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
If research and journalism clash head on does that mean that journalists don’t research what they write about?
hahaha, well I always research my stories… there are some journalists who don’t but I am not one of them. From what I can tell though, they are very different styles. I probably should clarify my comments on research as academic research vs journalistic research. There are some obvious similarities but on the whole they seem to be quite different in terms of how you go about the research, having to get ethics approval to speak to anyone, the style of writing. I may be completely wrong but that’s just my impression coming from a very practically based background to an academic one.
Academic journals: because 95% of what you are about to do has been thought and written about already, though probably not in journalism. There is a mountain of outstanding material on social media, network theory, etc. Where are you going to get the info you need on the long tail, small world networks, etc ? if not from journals?