A surprising number. When we first heard the term "sexting," for instance, a student wanted to investigate that. There were newspaper articles about it, and a lot of discussion on the web, but it hadn't been around long enough for anything to have hit the peer-reviewed journals. Cyberbullying was another one of those topics. When students first heard about it and wanted to investigate it, there was either little or nothing in the peer-reviewed journals (I don't remember which now; it's been a while since that topic first came up). But there were discussions in reputable newspapers and current examples on the web. Another topic is a mixed bag: net neutrality. While there is information in peer-reviewed journals on net neutrality now, there was none at the time students first wanted to learn more about it. In that case, they can pull from the peer-reviewed journals now, but what we all really want to know is exactly where we are in the arguments about net neutrality right now. They can't find that in a peer-reviewed journal. Another question is what the best information is. Their final projects are multimedia presentations, and the best basic description of net neutrality I've seen is on Tim Berners-Lee's video blog. I do consider that a reputable source, though, which I tell them. So I guess that's the overall problem. Even for topics where they can find information in peer-reviewed journals, what they -- and I -- want to know is what's happening *now* in that particular area in this fast-moving new media environment. For that, they have to turn to sources that haven't had time to go through the peer-review process, even if they're headed that way, which they often are not. Tery On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 8:06 PM, Margaret Borschke < Margaret.Borschke@unsw.edu.au> wrote:
I'm curious: what are the topics that are so new that the peer-reviewed literature is dated?
Message: 4 Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 10:57:16 -0400 From: Tery G <teryg93@gmail.com> To: Air-L@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] acceptable sources for undergraduate research in new media fields Message-ID: <AANLkTinFiLJYCF8oL4jOCoRjSd-N9xASdF-Hz89=VC4z@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Hi all,
I teach a freshman level class called Digital Media Literacy. It's an introduction to concepts and tools related to digital media. Each student does a final project, which, of course, requires them to do research. I spend a lot of time with them -- read articles, give examples, do some hands-on work, etc. -- covering why Google in particular and websites in general are not the sources they should be using (or trusting). They know how to use the library databases, but the topics they're examining are so new that anything in peer-reviewed journals about those topics is dated.
Does anyone have suggestions about what might be acceptable resources in this situation? I let them use articles from *The New York Times* and the *Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication*, but I have difficulty justifying their not using some other sources I really would prefer they not use when they can't find new enough information in the peer-reviewed journals.
TIA, Tery Griffin
Associate Professor of Media Arts Wesley College Dover DE 19901 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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