Research Training

I was planning on writing my next blog post on how irritating and what a waste of time generic research training days are.  The problem with this is that I have just recently been through two days of research training, organised by our Graduate Research School and found them (in the most part) to be quite useful and thought provoking! 

I am sure that a large reason for this is that the chap running them is a Philosopher by training, so did not alienate the humanities students in the way that these things tend do, however, I did find that these sessions made my brain work rather than shut down.  The structure of my thesis, the way I have to think about what I am writing, researching, analysing and where this all leads to, the methods and methodology of my work, all began to become a little clearer, which can only be a good thing can't it? 

I had begun to think that I did not have a clear methodology for this work, when suddenly it dawned on me that actually, I was beginning to form one.  I mention all this in the previous blog post, and at the moment this is still in the embryonic stage in my head - once it is clearer I will try and write about it, however, the fact that it exists was a revelation to me. 

I am now trying to make sense of Archive Fever in a way that will allow me to explain clearly how I see the relationship media technology has with regional identity and society has developed and will continue to develop.  

So, this blog post is a little shorter than it was going to be.  All I can really say is whilst some of it was like teaching your grandma to suck eggs (or some such analagy) it was also a useful process to go through and made me think more about my own research than I had done in a few weeks. It helped me to think of myself as a researcher who has the beginnings of a theory and some evidence to help prove it.  I have also resolved to blog once a week, in an attempt to give my life some structure and to help my thought process.  I hope that by blogging, I will generate ideas and questions that will inform my thesis. 

The beginnings of an idea.....

I have been sat in my new office today (just made our big double spare room into a double office - it is really nice) reading some of the literature review that I have been sifting through with a copy of Jacques Derrida 'Archive Fever' in front of me. Maybe it was the book, maybe it was the nice environment I have created, I don't know, but I had a eureka moment, let me run it by you and see what you think.... (who am I writing this to?)
There are several Film and Media commentators out there who have started to probe at the idea that 'television produces culture'. Janet Thumim suggests that television was able not only to 'reflect cultural change in the mid-twentieth century but also to produce it'. I can't help but agree, yet I suspect that there is still more to it than this. I began wondering if television could produce culture (or in my research, regional identity) then what was producing the television? Television does not exist as a separate entity in society, it too is controlled by many forces and it is these forces that interest me. I am beginning to think that these forces, the technology that was available, the political situation, the need for commercialisation of television etc... must play a part in the production of television, which in turn produces culture.
There is more work to be done before I can claim I have any answers, but I think that I may have just hit upon one of the main research questions for this thesis at last - just how much does the production of television produce culture? and more specifically what impact did the sudden explosion of regional television in the North East and East Anglia have on the production of regional identity both internally and externally? I wonder......