By watching this episode, I realized why it's important to provide more than one perspective on a topic when doing research. Also, I learned that providing too much personal opinion, especially early in a paper can be very destructive towards the quality of the paper, because it will end up being very biased. Instead of automatically assuming something is true about a topic, approach it from a more neutral standpoint.
Out of the three articles I've read so far relating to rap music and its portrayal, there has been information that looked at rap from a positive, negative, and neutral standpoint. This is perfect for writing my research paper, because as I explained above a variety of perspectives is needed to write a good research paper. I am surprised to have as much positive information as I do, considering I expected most scholarly articles to be neutral or negative.
My first article, " Rap Music and Its Violent Progeny: America's Culture of Violence in Context" had a very positive outlook of rap music. It took the perspective of relating to the true meaning within rap songs and understanding what the artist's lives are like, before making conclusions about rap. A source like this has both positive and negative effects on a paper. Being a very persuasive article, it presents a lot of bias toward the topic, so the reader only learns about that side, however this can be made up for by reading opposite-viewed articles to contradict. An article like this provides a break a personal standpoint, which can be very effective when used in sequence with facts.
The second and third articles, "Who's Afraid of Rap: Differential Reactions to Music Lyrics" and "Tupac Shakur: Understanding the Identity Formation of Hyper-Masculinity of a Popular Hip-Hop Artist," both had negative and positive viewpoints within, but also incorporated a lot of facts and used mostly a neutral standpoint. Facts are always needed in a research paper, otherwise it wouldn't be a research paper, so obviously these articles are very important and should probably be the most numerously used type of articles. Examples of factual information that was used is informational studies, surveys, and an in-depth analysis of Tupac and his music in the third article.
As I explained in the past three paragraphs, many perspectives and disciplines should be used when writing a research paper. The ones I hope to incorporate are:
- Positive outlook on rap
- Negative outlook
- Neutral standpoint
- Facts
- Personal opinion
- Specific biographies
My work and research so far has went well. I am very interested in the rap portrayal topic and hopefully it will be easy for me to write about. Originally, I was worried about the quality of information I could find, however I no longer think that will be a problem after finding good articles rather quickly.
Nice job, Tyler! I don;t think that biographies are particularly helpful for your question. But, I think you could also consider media outlets and how rappers/hip hop is portrayed in the news, in magazines, and on the internet. What do they show? Why?
ReplyDeleteI bet you could also find critics of hip hop from various communities. What might the critiques be?
Finally, I think it would be beneficial to look into the history of hip-hop and where/why/how it originated, if only because this will allow you to compare your findings with its origins.
Do African-Americans tend to have a different perspective on hip-hop than others? Could race play a role in how hip-hop is perceived?