Detailed Proposal

1. Topic Area
TV Drama

2. Proposed title, question, hypothesis
How does a teenage audience respond to the representation of drugs in TV dramas?

3. Teacher approval granted, in principal?
Yes

4. Principle texts (if text based study)
'Skins' season 1
'The OC' season 2 or 3
'90210' season 1, episode 7
'Gossip Girl' season 1
'The Inbetweeners' season 1

5. Reason for choice
I enjoy watching TV dramas, especially those on my list above, and will be able to learn more about the dramas as I research. They all also have very different representations of teenage issues which will be interesting to compare.

6. Academic context for this study (similar research, relevant theory, named theorists)
Jonathan Bignell
Stephen Lacey
Realism
Representation

7. Institutional context for this study (industry focus, other texts for comparison, named practitioners, relevant theory, issues, questions)
Which issues are shown in the dramas? Does this reflect the society they're made in/aimed at?
Which issues are avoided? What does this say about a culture?
Does the representation reflect the audience?

8. Identify the audience context for this study (audience profile, access to audience, potential sample)
The audeince I will be looking at for this is ages between 16 to 19 years old, both male and female. This is quite a small range, but I believe this is the most accessible group for me to use in my research and are most likely to watch the TV shows and have opinions on the representation of teenage issues

9. How will the 4 key concepts be relevant to your study (audience, institution, forms and conventions, representation)?
Audience - I will look at why the audience watches the two dramas and how they feel about the representation with a focus on the uses and gratifications that the dramas provide.

Institution - I will research who makes the shows and how far they are regulated whilst factoring in cultural differences and how this may have affected the production process (eg. budget, profit etc.)

Forms & Conventions - I will look to find any innovative uses of conventions, or indeed any breaking of conventions and how this forms the representations within the dramas.

Representation - I will look closely at how issues are represented and discuss the representation with the audience. I will also look at the ideology of the maker/creator to draw conclusions about why things were chosen, what their effect is and how they are used.

10 Potential research sources (secondary): secondary academic books and websites, secondary industry books and websites, secondary popular criticism. Please identify specific examples you have come across.
'Popular Televison Drama: Critical Perspectives' - Jonathan Bignell & Stephen Lacey
'Television Audiences & Cultural Studies' - David Morely
'Teaching Popular Television' - Mike Clarke
Newspaper articles (posted in separate posts)
Skins website - http://www.e4.com/skins/
Skins at IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0840196/
The OC website - http://www.the-oc.com/
The OC at IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362359/
'Teaching TV Drama' - Jeremy Points

11. Potential research sources (primary): audience reception research, your own content/textual analysis etc
Fan forums
Questionnaire
Analysis of chosen texts
Focus group

12. Modifications agreed with your lead teacher
After talking to Ms Dymioti, I'm going to focus on the use of drugs as a teenage issue in the dramas as these are represented (or obviously not represented) in my chosen texts in a different way to the press.

13. Potential limits/obstacles/problems?
Organising focus groups might be hard as episodes are almost 1 hour long and an issue usually spreads across an entire episode. However, I could organise a weekend session.
There is also the risk that I might start writing as more of a fan of the shows...

14. Teacher concerns
TBC

15. Teacher approval
TBC