This week I'm going to talk about a documentary called King Corn and Chapter 4 in the Wadsworth Guide to Research.
King Corn is a documentary about two friends Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis who are trying to figure out why they have corn in their hair. From Boston to their hometown in Iowa, they set out on a journey to grow corn and track it.
They asked a few questions throughout the film. How does corn get in their hair from 1,000 miles away? Where does corn go? These broad questions but the answers they found were astounding. Corn is the most produced crop in the country and it goes everywhere but always manages to find it's way in the processed, unhealthy food that Americans are eating.
What strikes me about the film is how little I knew about the production of corn and how this generation is going to be the first to possibly live shorter lives than their parents. I didn't know that corn is basically in every food we eat besides vegetables and fruit. We are practically made up of it.The part of the movie that disengaged me was their process of growing corn on their one acre of land. It was very boring to watch and it didn't give much information about corn that I didn't already know.
When it came to their research, they had really strong primary sources.They mainly spoke to locals in Iowa while they were growing their acre of corn. Since these people have lived in the town their entire lives, they had a lot of information on corn, making them credible. Others would be scientists and doctors who are researching health risks of corn in the human body, environment, and animals. Speaking to people who worked or owned animal farms and factories with corn were also credible sources for research.
The focus of their research was to answer the question how did corn get in their hair from 1,000 miles away? To answer this question, the two friends moved to Iowa and grew an acre of corn and tracked the places it went, which was all over the country. They researched by talking to different groups of people on the effect of corn in the economy. In the end, the two responded to their discovery of how unhealthy corn was by growing grass instead of corn on an acre of land.
They used ethos, pathos, and logos throughout the film. Ethos and logos were used hand in hand throughout when credible sources, as previously discussed, shared facts about corn to the two men. Ian and Curtis also had graphs and showed visuals of where the corn went, which also showed logos. They used pathos by showing passion to go back to their roots to answer their research question. There were scenes in the movie where the would pause from their research, talk to distant relatives, and enjoy the view of the town their ancestors grew up in.
Turning to The Wadsworth Guide to Research, chapter 4 discusses how to find research through secondary research. The authors open up by asking a few questions. Where should you start looking for information? What search terms should you use to locate resources? Should you gather information from other people and conduct field research? Etc.When conducting research, the authors say it's best to avoid going to Google for information and instead figure out what you know about the topic, decide what information you need, narrow research results using search terms, and plan where to look for information.
The types of resource are important for the writer to be aware of. The first type is called a static source, meaning, they do not change and are usually published once. Examples of this would be books, websites, and audio/video files.The second is a syndicated source. This source changes over time under the same general title. Periodicals, podcasts, and blogs are all examples of syndicated sources. Finally, there's the dynamic source; the ever changing one. These sources would be email lists, social networks, online communities, wikis, and broadcasts. All these texts undergo either editing, peer review, and self-publishing.
In the end, it all comes down to your research plan. The writer needs to find a specific research question and collect information to answer that question specifically. Three key questions to answer before you begin researching are what data do you need to collect? In what way will you collect that data? On what timeline will you collect that data?
I found reading this chapter helpful because I am currently researching to answer the question how does being vegetarian affect me physically, emotionally, and mentally? At first, it was difficult because I didn't know where to start because their are millions of articles, books, and websites relating to vegetarian diets. Chapter 4 had tons of information on different platforms to use when researching. One big thing was using specific search terms. The authors recommended that the writer find words in their question to put into the search engine or database to get minimal results that relate to the topic. When I did this myself, I came across exact articles and journals that had the information I needed. Although I already knew majority of the topics discussed in the chapter, it was a nice refresher to help get my mind moving and collect my thoughts to make a research plan.
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