Progress

Wow well done Heather! You found loads. Got lots to work from now :)

I think the research is all coming along nicely. Having a meeting tomorrow where we are going to show everything we have all researched so far, get some facts together and use these as sort of an opening to what the problem with social network sites is.

Hopefully all planning will be done and we can filming following weekend or at least start filming something!!

Well done on all the research guys!

Social networking/depression link research

Although I've found it easier to find research about general social networking stats, I've managed to find a couple of articles about the link between over use of internet and depression, loneliness and suicide. The sites I found them on are:

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~stellal/Cons.htm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1132788/Why-chatting-long-Facebook-girl-down.html

The first article deals with social depression, loneliness and depression are linked with overuse of online communities and instant messaging. The second article suggests that teenage girls are more suceptable to depression/anxiety because they discuss their problems over and over again on social networking sites/instant messenger when they are not mentally and emotionally mature enough to deal with such repeated focus on their problems.

Research slides

I've found a really good site, which had a slideshow featuring information on Facebook and Myspace's demographic etc. I'll put the slides themselves up as I think they'd be useful as background information as well as giving us an idea of one way we could present certain material.


















These slides are from http://www.slideshare.net/onehalfamazing/social-networking-statistics-and-trends-presentation

Research

I've found some general statistic research in relation to social networking, which I thought we could use as general background info to introduce the film. Here are the sites for those:

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/01/19/a-collection-of-social-network-stats-for-2010/

http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

http://www.socialnetworkingwatch.com/all_social_networking_statistics/

I've also found an article questioning how young is too young to be joining social networking sites at:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/02/kids.social.networks/

Also, I've found an article, which suggests that people that are gamers in their youth become depressed, aggressive and socially isolated as they get older at:

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/gamers-are-sad/

Enjoy!
Heather

Michael Moore

Over the weekend i have watched a couple of Michael Moore documentaries. These are 'Bowling for Columbine' and 'Farenheit 911'. The style and approach in both documenteries is similar. Michael Moore is very involved in them particularly in 'Bowling for Columbine' as he meets students from Columbine and interviews many people who are pro guns in America. In Both documentaries his opinion is very clear and the opinion of the film is also clear. For example 'Farenheit 911' is pinning blame on president Bush for the attack on 911 and looking at his mistakes as a president. It is very anti the American government. There is also hints of this in 'Bowling for Columbine' when Moore looks at how easy guns and bullets can be bought aswell as the system for single mothers to work.

There are elements from this that we will take into our own documentary. For example we will be taking an active role interviewing people and carrying out investigations. However i don't think we will have such a strong opinion leading the documentary.

Michael Moore

The film compares the health care in the US which is mostly profit driven to that of the UK France and Cuba. First of all I’d like to say I enjoyed the film very much. The documentary style of the film defiantly leans more towards that of the cinema verity ecause it incorporates naturalistic techniques such as using handheld camerawork almost all the way through. The film is also edited cinematically and gives it a stylised feel. Towards the end of the film Moore stages and event where he gathers all of the people who couldn’t afford health care in the US and takes them to Cuba to be treated for free.

Films!

So over the weekend I watched a film which I think we can relate to with our documentary film that we want to make. I watched Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock. He looks into why Americans are so fat! He set out to interview experts in 20 different cities in the US including the fattest city in the US - Houston. While at the same time he was doing his own experiment, eating nothing but McDonalds for a month.
The way this film was carried out I think will be quite similar to how we want to do our documentary. We will explain the facts that social network sites have on teens and how it causes mental and physical health issues. We will then be carrying out an experiment, by taking away the use of facebook and ways of socialzing over the internet or by phone. We will be following them and seeing how they handle without their privileges, interviewing them along the way.

Research on social networking.

Hey Everyone I have done a little bit of reasearch for our technology idea - social networking. I found this article about suicide and how it's some peoples only way out.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,298166,00.html


and the second thing I found was does internet addiction lead to depression!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8493149.stm


Pretty interesting I think!!