Right now, I'm exploring three potential topics for my final paper. The first is examining media coverage on intellectual property rights cases, focusing on music downloading lawsuits. In the 90s it was Napster and now it's Limewire and Kazaa that are the primary foci of many downloading cases. Illegal downloading is extremely popular these days (in this economy) and is almost commonplace at many colleges. However, this isn't merely a college phenomenon; even older adults have been caught with illegally downloading music and are being forced to pay up.
The second potential topic is on how gender inequality is portrayed in America and in other countries by the American media. Over the summer, I read a New York Times op-ed on Italian women and inequality in that country and what I found really interesting were the comments left at the bottom of the article online. The article places partial blame on a bad influence from up top; this isn't the first time Italy's Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has come under fire for his attitudes and behavior towards women.
Many Americans were criticizing the condition of gender inequality in Italy, while others were criticizing Americans for criticizing other country's gender issues while America itself suffers similar problems. I'm not exactly sure how I will explore the topic more, whether I will examine portrayals of different countries or different issues (career issues, expected roles, appearance), but I'm excited to explore this topic more. Is America more "lenient" with the progress we've made in the gender issue than with other countries? America is far from perfect regarding this issue as well. Do we deserve to be critical of other nations when we ourselves are still trying to combat sexism and gender inequality?
My third topic choice is examining the American media portrayal of China. The country recently celebrated its 60th anniversary after becoming a Communist nation and I know that the New York Times had a special series on China online. What I want to investigate within this topic is this: what topics are Americans concerned with in regards to China? I remember when I studied abroad in the summer of 2008 on the Princeton in Beijing program that our teachers would often ask us questions about our government and its views on China. I definitely think that Communist countries like China and Cuba are represented differently by the media due to political reasons. One incident that stands out to me is the “CNN picture cropping” that occurred in 2008.
While I was studying abroad in China, one of our lessons discussed media and objectivity. This incident was brought up to show the American media as being somewhat biased, especially in the China-Tibet conflict. CNN has even become a slang term in the Chinese language; if someone in China says that something is “too CNN,” it implies that the story is not complete, a lie, and that there are clear biases involved. I wanted to investigate this further by comparing other nations’ media reportage of diplomatic relations in China compared with American media reportage. The main question I will want to answer is: What’s in it for the American media? What political gains are there to be had with presenting China in the way it currently is presented in the media?
I'm really open to all three of these ideas, but there is still no clear favorite I would like to write a research paper on. I'm hoping that maybe some more current events will get my juices flowing and lead me in one particular direction.
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