On Wednesday I blogged about the survey I asked you guys to take to help me finish my research paper, titled The Value of Film Criticism in Comparison to the Decline of Print and the Rise of Online Publishing. I mentioned sharing the research if it was of interest to anyone in the comments section. I was surprised by how many of you said you’d like to read it! It sounds like we have a lot of part-time research analysts in the house!
If you’d like to read my paper, right click on this link to save it to your desktop.
The research data is somewhat skewed because it cultivates the opinions of online respondents only. I acknowledge that in the paper and cite the need to speak with people who are more fond of traditional media to get a true cross-section of opinion.
The paper itself is a brief outline of the problem facing print critics, followed by some research examples gathered from previous paper and concluded with an examination of chunks of data gathered from the survey. Only the more interesting or surprising tidbits. The full survey results have been tacked on to the end of the paper.
I chose the subject as a means to identify the value opinion leaders placed on film criticism with the hope that I could somehow leverage the information to benefit Theater Hopper. In the end, I think I ended up giving comfort to the enemy by identifying the ease with which print critics could bring their talents to an online environment.
I guess if I was going to take away a positive for myself, I appear to be doing things right or at least servicing a need for film fans online. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.
I took the day off from work Tuesday to write this paper. 9 pages and 3,000+ words. I’m surprised I was able to put something like that together on such short notice, but kind of ashamed that I waited until the last minute to do it. Just the same, I’m proud of the paper and I’m happy that there are those of you who are interested in reading it.
Enjoy!
Thank-you for putting your paper here to read. I found it very informative and thorough. That you were able to use your website and online connections to get such a wide response on the survey was incredible. You should be very proud, and expect a very high grade for this paper.
It is ironic that a survey on criticism should have elicited such critical response from your respondents. I also find it ironic that the resulting paper should be waiting for a grade, essentially yet another critical opinion of it. I expect even here you will see many people’s opinions of it, posted for all to see… Yet even more critiques.
It’s like you have entered a swirling vortex of un-ending criticism. It is indeed harder to create than destroy. Whatever your grade, whatever the response you get from your paper. You should be very proud of what you’ve accomplished.
Well done!
But of course, that’s just my opinion.
Kayne, thank you very much for the kind words on my paper.
I hope my professor finds it as thorough as you did! 🙂
I really enjoyed reading your paper. As a fellow grad student, I read a lot of journal articles and things of that ilk, but not much outside my immediate realm of study. I love that you used your readership to do a real piece of nice research. I agree that with some more sophisticated survey techniques and some fine-tuning in questions, you probably could have gotten more definitive answers for some things. However, I truly think that if you pared the paper down to its most interesting results (maybe with some stats?), that this could be publishable–not just a term paper. You’re getting your masters, so odds are you’ve already thought about this. I just wanted to add my two cents. And for the record, in biology, when people want to study human behavior they always use surveys. And the results are inevitably composed mostly of 20-something undergrads looking to make a buck. Your demographics are much more evenly distributed considering.
Anyhow, next time you come up with an interesting piece of scholarship, please post it!~ 🙂