Research - Week Commencing 30th June

This week I started to make tables to plan and keep my research neat and easy to find. This first table I made was to say what I wanted to achieve each week, how I was going to do the research and what I achieved by the end of the week.

Week Commencing	Task	Resources	Achieved/Articles found
30th June 2014	Internet research for articles	Google Scholar - "Gender Roles In Friends Chandler Bing"	Four detailed articles.

At the start of each week I will write in the first 2 or 3 columns and at the end I will write in the last column and make a blog post on what I have found.

I then made another table for a more in-depth look at the information I found, pros and cons and key quotes.

Article Title	Original Source	Pros/limitations	Key Quotes
Friends & Masculinity	Erin Todd           Communication Arts & Sciences                 DePauw University               Greencastle, IN 46135	-       Includes real evidence/an investigation -       Clearly shows how successful Friends was -       Focuses on the portrayal of the male characters and how this differs from previous representations	“A fresh portrayal of men.” “When the series concluded ten years later, it was a pop culture event.”
Research on Adolescence	L. Monique Ward, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan. Kimberly Friedman is an undergraduate at the University of Michigan.	-       Only four mention of Friends -       One mention is about how Rachel was used as an example of an easily identifiable character -        Another is about the popularity of Friends	“Viewer identification. To assess students' level of identification with TV characters, we provided a list of 11 popular female characters (e.g., Rachel on Friends)”. “Although the effects produced by this one exposure are likely to be short lived, they are also likely to be repeated because the stimuli that produced them were drawn from programming that is popular among young viewers (e.g., Friends, Seinfeld).”
Gender Differences in Mix-Sex Conversations – A Study of Interruptions	Youqing Xu Kristianstad University	-       Friends was used to back up this gender based study -       Interesting results and uses key sections/quotes from the show -       Specifically related to gender -       Detailed, but short, description of each character
"I'll Be There For You" If You Are Just Like Me: An Analysis Of Hegemonic Social Structures In "Friends"	Lisa Marie Marshall, Bowling Green State University	-       Gender roles in Friends are one of the 4 topics the dissertation explores in relation to Friends. -       Detailed analysis in the way the characters developed individually and within the program as a whole. -       Includes an episode guide.	“This chapter compares and contrasts masculine and feminine characterizations in society, discusses the connections between gender and comedy and gender and friendship, and outlines gender-specific character representations from television’s history.”

If any of the links are not working, click here and find the title of the article you are trying to find on this search list.