As we began Unit 2, and started down the path of this research project, J.K. Rowling\u2019s Twitter feed was in the news again. As I thought about what she tweeted and the subsequent response, an idea began to form. I wanted to explore \u201ccancel culture\u201d. At least, I thought I did. However, after our first assignment, it became clear that wasn\u2019t quite right for our purposes.<\/p>\n
Then it dawned on me. What is \u201ccancel culture\u201d really, but a form of consumer activism? It is the market voicing their collective displeasure directly to the source. That type of protest has taken many forms over the years, and I was certain I\u2019d be able to find good resources to help in forming my arguments.<\/p>\n
My first bit of research involved Google. Doing a search on \u201cconsumer activism\u201d I quickly found my first solid source, Caroline Heldman\u2019s Protest Politics in the Marketplace<\/u>. Our second note-taking exercise spurred a number of questions in my mind:<\/p>\n Google also helped me find R. Henry Weaver\u2019s paper, \u201cIs Consumer Activism Economic Democracy?<\/em>\u201d, but it wasn\u2019t until the \u201cComplicating Research\u201d assignment, that things really started to take shape. \u00a0The first tool that caught my eye was \u201cWeb of Knowledge\u201d. I found that it and SAGE were both relatively simple to navigate. I loved the option to copy citations to my clipboard, although the citation from SAGE did not include the URL, so I added it manually. My experiments with Backlink Checker were not quite as successful. I tried the URL from the citation for \u201cPolitical Consumerism as a Neoliberal Response to Youth Political Disengagement\u201d<\/em> by Georgios Kyroglou and Matt Henn, but that provided me with 2,174,123 total backlinks from 13,328 domains. As a control, I tried backlinking a random article from the Guardian\u2019s website and ended up with similar results! I was somewhat overwhelmed as I navigated through SAGE and Web of Knowledge. The sheer number of options and directions I could take my research was staggering and got me thinking about all sorts of possibilities.<\/p>\n It was the \u201cRounding Out the Conversation\u201d exercise that helped nail down my sources. After I finished, I realized that I had only cited five, so I went back through everything I had downloaded and found my sixth, which I just added today.<\/p>\n I appreciate how the tools introduced in each assignment have been building on the previous week\u2019s work. At the same time, they\u2019ve gotten me to think differently about the sources I\u2019ve collected and the work I\u2019m trying produce. What started out as a reaction to a news story has developed into a intellectually stimulating exercise. I doubt that I could have predicted that I\u2019d land on the subject of consumer activism, but being able to tie in both the personal and the global is something I\u2019ve really enjoyed, and look forward to completing.<\/p>\n Protest Politics in the Marketplace<\/a><\/p>\n Shopping for Change<\/a><\/p>\n Packaged Facts<\/a><\/p>\n Political Consumerism<\/a><\/p>\n Corporate Environmentalism<\/a><\/p>\n Economic Democracy<\/a><\/p>\n Focusing Flowchart – Mike K<\/a><\/p>\n Complicating Research – Mike K<\/a><\/p>\n\n