Originally posted by Jennibeans
I'm having some trouble with the wording of my question. the question i had was
how has the media portrayal of saddam hussein shaped the world's understanding of this controversial figure and what can be learnt from this about the role and reliability of the media in the investigation of history?
but my teacher says and i have discovered that this is way too broad. does anyone have any suggestions for making it more focused? any help much appreciated.
You should be able to narrow this down to specific issues that relate to historiography (and this is the key to the course).
You must remember that your essay relates to the key questions:
Key Questions:
What are the historical debates?
Who are the historians?
What are the aims and purposes of history?
How has history been constructed and recorded over time?
Why have the approaches to history changed over time?
It is always easier to be able to talk about history with the benefit of hindsight, a lot of this related to the Iraq War and media is still panning out (e.g. Lord Hutton's Inquiry into the BBC, the "independent" review and inquiry that the US is going to hold into it and so on). That said, we already have the history of it developing through the critiques and criticisms that are continually being given by everyone ever lol, though we still have no idea how this will shape the future.
Your essay sounds a bit too "English" for me though, especially with the word shape which is generally used in English ad infinitem (and nauseum...).
My EE2 project is sort of loosely related to your question here. I'm doing a webpage on propaganda and it will cover much of the ground you're covering (except I'll need to make it more english with techniques and how it shapes meaning and ideas and all that crap...).
Now: "role and reliability of the media in the investigation of history?"
This is better for History because you will be able to explore the key questions of the course. I don't know how you're going to structure it, personally I would pick one point in time. For example, pick World War One and you can have a field day on the sources from the media (Punch magazine, newspaper articles) and even more so with WWII as you have Hitler and the British propaganda machines (and the BBC was fantastic at this, even Gobbels envied the BBC!).
So you should really narrow down your question based upon the requirements of the course - historiography. On any topic you choose you will have to talk about conflicting viewpoints of Historians, how the viewpoints have changed over time and all that fun stuff...
