Proposal

Working title

The working title of my critical investigation is "To what extent can it be argued that contemporary hip hop music is a negative influence on its target audience?" I chose to research about this question as I am interested within the topic of the music industry and it allows me to show my passion for it; it is a different question as it targets many key factors of the media world such as race, gender, age.. etc. 

Angle

Has a both positive and negative impact upon the audience. Positive: if a song in particular talks about ending gun violence and to be peaceful, more people might be influenced not to use guns. Negatives: artists e.g. influence people to use guns for example phrases such as 'bang bang' are used to make people be influenced into using guns leading to increased violence.
Is this simply a moral panic of the 21st century or is further regulation required?
A moral panic is an intense feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order.^[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic
This issue can be seen as a moral panic as my question consists words such as 'negative' connoting the fact that this could be a threat towards society within the 21st century, I know that it is fairly recent due to the word 'contemporary' which means that there would be a lot of research for new hip hop music that I would have to carry out for my work. 

Hypothesis

Music is influencing would influence people to be more negative as in the current generation, references to sex, drugs and violence are made opposed to things such as peace or love as much. Artists such as Chief Keef, Lil Wayne, Kanye West influence violence within their songs such as 'No Church in Wild', 'I Don't Like' etc. And due to this, as the target audience of the young generation aged from 16-25 (http://tsmithchs.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/rbhip-hop-music-magazine-target-audience/) and as they may look up to some of these artists as to being their role models, people may try to be more like them and therefore be more violence, for example, or whatever more their artists talk about within their songs.

Linked production piece

http://musicmagic.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/music-in-society/ article showing how music has an impact upon society. 


MIGRAIN

Apply the Key Concepts to your texts/topic by using the questions from the Summer Research Project to help you. (Include at least five bullet point/key concept). Include as many media keywords as you can.

Media Representations: 


SHEP

Apply the Wider Contexts to your text/topic, including at least three bullet points on each one.

Issues/Debates

Select at least five and say how each relates to your study, using the Media A-Z to help you think about this:

• Representation and stereotyping - how black people influence violence, how white people are represented not to rap as much as black people, how women are portrayed in a lower way than men showing a sense of how men are more dominant.
• Media effects
• Reality TV - The lives of artists within the music industry e.g. chief keef at such a young age to achieve what he did or Eminem who started from nothing and ended up becoming one of the world's top selling artists.
• News Values - Paparazzi and how they feed off the artists' lives and what they do.
• Ownership and control...
• Regulation and censorship...
• Media technology and the digital revolution – changing technologies in the 21st century - Changing technology influences people to stream more videos on their iPads or their android phones  etc.
• The effect of globalisation on the media - How the US music industry has taken over the world compared to the UK who have made it big, but not as big as the artists who are located within the US.

Theories

Select at least five and say how each relates to your study, using keywords/specific theorists' names from the Media A-Z:

• Semiotics
• Structuralism and post-structuralism
• Postmodernism and its critiques
• Gender and ethnicity - Race e.g. black people vs white people, representation in music videos
• Marxism and hegemony
• Liberal Pluralism
• Colonialism and Post-colonialism -
• Audience theories - Different audiences for different genres e.g. classical = older generation vs Rap = younger, ghetto generation.
• Genre theories - Rap vs Pop
• Contemporary Media Landscape

Explain how your study fits into this.

Research plan (media texts, academic texts and websites)

Media texts
What your main focus will be, E.g.:
Hip-Hop vs Pop
Artists such as Chief Keef, Eminem, A$ap Rocky, Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, Beyonce.

Other media texts
(at least five related examples) such as the older generation artists, places the music is listened in e.g. the US vs the UK, Grime vs US rap, instituitions
TV documentaries
Research videos online, e.g.:
BBC One - Panorama, Addicted to Games? http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wlmj0

Academic texts/books
(a minimum of five, including author/full title/year, e.g.:)
Nancy Signorielli: Violence in the media: a reference handbook (2005)


Internet Links
www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog
http://www.theguardian.com/music/video/2013/oct/13/jay-z-london-underground-tube-o2-arena-video
http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/oct/11/wiley-statue
http://www.capitalfm.com/artists/girls-aloud/news/nadine-coyle-jason-bell-father/
http://www.capitalfm.com/artists/rihanna/news/new-tattoo-chris-brown/


Newspaper articles
http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=KiHcllqdzl4C&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=how+does+music+influence+society%3F+&ots=C3Pp0ZGK-U&sig=OXAyltG1dgve4fkdpy6U8isphck#v=onepage&q=how%20does%20music%20influence%20society%3F&f=false
http://thepoint.gm/africa/gambia/article/black-african-music-and-society