Proposal for your ethnograpic projects for social change

I will focus on the reasons why governments decide as they do because they are pushed by arm companies. The topic should be interesting for every man or woman who is able to vote because influenced politicians are not able to represent their voters. I want to find a lot of papers and articles about how decisions making in politics works. I hope to answer the question How are the government is influence and are there possibilities to change this influence.

Evaluation of Research Questions

I think the question "how are democratic governments influenced by the in industry?" raises a lot more questions as a result and this topic is really interesting me, but I am undecided between this questions and the apple question but at the moment I ll focus on this one. I can find so much information because a lot of people are interested in this field. The topic will really force me to get into the material and find out more about how politics is working.

Research questions

For our upcoming project I was looking for some topics I am really interested in. In addition there should be a lot of research material. The first topic I am thinking about is the influence of advertisements in our consume behavior. One question therefore is "How influence Apple people to buy there products? And where is the hype for Apple products coming from?"
A second topic I am really interested in is "How is a democratic government influenced by the industry and are there ways to stop the lobbyists?"
The third field is totally different to the two others, because I want to find out "Where does the pressure, that only to be number one in one sport is accepted in the society, come from?"

"Researching one in six million" and "Researching, or How I fell in love with post-it notes"

I learned from the article "Researching one in six million" that when you want to research something in depth, you have to be really interested in the topic. In addition I learned that when you start a research it may will bring you to some point where don't expect to be when you start the research. You can follow different sources and get different information and every information will lead you to another source or may end at some point in a blind alley.

From the article "Researching, or how I fell in love with post-it notes" I learned that it is very important to prepare myself before I start researching. To find a comfortable spot to work is the most important thing for me. After I am prepared for the research I need to read critically, that means not only reading the story that interests me but also poking at the book cover or the magazine in which the story is written. The third important step is to distance from the research for some time. I need some time to recover and to have a small break to be prepared for the next sessions of researching.

Linguistic Landscape project

I would like to work on political graffiti. In my opinion a political graffiti is a good way to criticize politics and your are able to go really deep into the topic. You can choose for example the actual "Wall street" problem or the US politics in the middle east. The genre is normally not really complicated constructed but without many details you can bring a lot of information and opinion. A graffiti could be displayed nearly everywhere, for example in the internet in a newspaper or just on a wall. You can combine graffiti with short messages, so your are writing short texts that are close to your topic and support your critic.

A bullet for your arsenal

In the article "A bullet for your arsenal" Susana Rodriguez is analyzing advertisements and she says that "all part of an ad" have a core function. As example she uses a Apple iPod advertisement, which not only wants the reader feel like he really needs the iPod but it makes him also feel like he is "cool","hip" or "stylish" which is a very important part in nowadays ads.
Every advertisement or movie "wants a viewer to take something away from it".

I learned from the article that images have often more explanatory power than words in advertisements, because every consumer thinks different about the picture and interprets it a little bit like he wants to interpret it. I also learned that any small part of the ad, which color is used or where is a figure placed, is exactly planned by the company to sell even more of their products.

In the first picture the reader can see a graffiti on a wall of a building. You can see two different parts, the first part there is a man wearing a red suit like the prisoners in guantanamo. The second part are just 7 words"occupy land...steal oil...the american dream". The drawer wants to criticizes the US politic because he thinks that america invented in Iraq because of the oil and not to bring the "American Dream" which means wealth and pursuit of happiness to these countries.

In the second picture you can see George Bush sitting in a wheelchair. He has a pistol directed to his head to commit suicide. The word "sorry: is drawn over his head. The author of the graffiti tries to show the people how George Bush should feel about his act when he was the president of the US. Because of his acting the economy is down and an America were losing many soldiers in Iraq. 

Both graffitis are very critical with the US government, specially the Bush administration.