Introduction for Autoethnography

This project is based on the autoethnographic approach that I have learned throughout this semester. Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2011) defined autoethnography as an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyse personal experience in order to understand cultural experience. 

So what I aim for in this subject is:

• Gaining the skill of autoethnography
• Using the skills
• Analysing my topic by using the skills 

Introduction for DA

This project is aiming for understanding what crime dramas and its purpose as well as both positive and negative opinions. To complete those purposes, the autoethnographic approach is used. The DA is constructed by the blog series which has four posts, and has these contents:

• About what crime dramas are
  • the definition
  • reasons why people want to watch them 
  • types of crime dramas
  • what I discuss through the blog series
• Field site of crime dramas – this will be described in the methodology part
  • SNS
  • Word of mouth
• Positive and negative opinions – this section will be described in the methodology part
• My final argument

Methodology: Field Site

Building the field site of crime dramas leads to a better understanding of how people access that, which also will be meaningful keys for analysing that. While there are many components on the field site, SNS and Word of the mouth are picked up in this project due to their features.

• SNS – the most effective key that people can access, share, and post their own opinions
  • YouTube – a kind of new platform that crime dramas fans upload their recommendation to the audience and share their opinions
  • Twitter – where people post their own thoughts and people get the latest information by official accounts. There are some interesting points that official accounts can get many reactions from the audience but there are few comments that talk about other dramas.         
• Word of mouth – can involve SNS to spread the sources
  • Most important information to see what people think about crime dramas
  • Can be reliable if that information is delivered by the viewers not companies

Methodology: Observational Research

The observational research is for knowing what people think about crime dramas but the research is not set up as an “interview”. This research is a summary of what I heard from the people and what I see on the Internet. There are both positive and negative opinions as to the results of this research.

• Positive opinions
  • Being able to learn about what happened in the past in your country by watching crime dramas that are based on actual cases
  • Reported globally is one of the benefits, which introduced in the blog
  • Learning about the legal system by watching dramas that are related to law, politics, and other crime things
• Negative opinions
  • Do not show the truth and showing wrong information such as overexpressed and hiding serious issues that are happened in reality
  • Possible to stimulate the people to break the law due to the scene of crimes

Conclusion

I never decide whether crime dramas are acceptable or not but I have some opinions for both positive and negative opinions.

• For positive opinions

I can agree with those positive opinions because I am the one who experienced that learning about the historical cases and the legal system.

• For negative opinions

They are the first time to make me think about the negative sides of crime dramas but I understand what they mean to the audience.

What I would like to say about crime dramas is important to understand what they are. If we could avoid misunderstanding crime dramas, the negative opinions would be decreased. 

Reference:

• Ahjussi jungsaha apologist 2020, BLACK starring Go A-ra & Song Seung-heon is now available on Netflix!!, viewed 7 November 2020, <https://twitter.com/FLYDRAG0NS/status/1324352630169067521?s=20>
• Airoldi, M 2018, ‘Ethnography and the digital fields of social media’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, vo. 21, viewed 13 August 2020, <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13645579.2018.1465622>
• Cambridge Dictionary 2020, Word of mouth, Cambridge Dictionary, viewed 27 October, <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/word-of-mouth>
• CineVue 2020, The enduring popularity of TV crime dramas, CineVue, viewed 23 October 2020, <https://cine-vue.com/2020/06/the-enduring-popularity-of-tv-crime-dramas.html>

• Council on Foreign Relations 2012,Lessons Learned: Tokyo Sarin Gas Attack, online video, 21 March, viewed 2 November 2020, <https://youtu.be/73gLkuXywAw>

• Ellis, C, Adams, T.E, and Bochner, A.P 2011, ‘Autoethnography: An Overview’, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, no. 1, viewed 6 August 2020, <https://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1589/3095>

• Evely, K 2020, ‘How TV crime shows erase racism and normalize police misconduct’, The Guardian, 25 January, viewed 2 November 2020, <https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/25/law-and-disorder-how-shows-cloud-the-public-view-of-criminal-justice>

• GCSE MEDIA STUDIES 2015, TELEVISION CRIME DRAMA‘, GCSE MEDIA STUDIES, viewed 23 October 2020, <http://thebicesterschool.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/TV-Crime-Drama-Revision-Booklet-2014-Exam-Topic.pdf>

• NCIS2020,Facts are facts., viewed 27 October 2020, <https://twitter.com/NCIS_CBS/status/1316063517980520450?s=20>
• Patterson, A 2013, ‘9 Examples Of Sub-Genres In Crime Fiction’, writers write, weblog post, 2 November, viewed 23 October 2020, <https://www.writerswrite.co.za/nine-examples-of-sub-genres-in-crime-fiction/>

• Rhineberger-dunn, G, Briggs, S & Rader, N 2016, ‘The CSI Effect, DNA Discourse, and Popular Crime Dramas*’, Special Issue: Gun Politics, vo. 98, viewed 20 August 2020, <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ssqu.12289>
• Sachs, J n.d., ‘Aristotle: Poetics’,Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, viewed 28 August 2020, <https://iep.utm.edu/aris-poe/>

• Takayuki, F & Arisa, F 2018, ‘Prototype of Word-of-Mouth Video SNS to Support Reliable and Accurate Information’, International Congress on Advanced Applied Informations, viewed 27 October 2020, <https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8693274/authors#authors>

• Tuzo Anime 2019, Top 25 Japanese Detective Dramas 2019, online video, 10 March, Tuzo Anime, viewed 27 October 2020, <https://youtu.be/NLse6Lqjv_k>

In this blog post which is the final post of the series, I am going to summarise what crime dramas are.

Before going to the details, let me recap what autoethnography is. Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2011) defined autoethnography as an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience.

So I am going to write my experiences about what I found/thought through this project to follow their definitions. As I mentioned in the #1 blog post, writing my experiences and opinions does not mean that I conclude whether people’s opinions are right as well as crime dramas. What I am going to write is based on academic sources that I used and facts that I found by observational research as well as information that is on the Internet. 

For positive opinions

Basically, I agree with the positive opinions that I wrote in the previous blog post because learning and knowing what happened in Japan in the past gives me time to think about how those incidents happened and why people did wrong things. Actually, I sometimes feel really scared and feel sad but I do not say having those feelings is worthless. This thought is similar to what Sachs said. In addition, the opinion that it is possible to learn the legal system by crime/legal dramas can make sense to me because it was easy to understand the legal system due to the fact that I have watched and read crime/legal dramas. Thanks to those experiences, I can say I have learned general culture as the person who I am living in this world.

For negative opinions

I understand the negative opinions which were mentioned in the previous blog post. When I found the fact that crime dramas do not show the issues that there is racism and normalise police misconduct, I imagined how the people who are troubled feel anger. While I understand TV dramas do not show those illegal facts, it is necessary to see. For the opinion that crime dramas can stimulate people to break laws, it is difficult to say I can agree with that because we should know what is right and what is wrong. However, I know humans are easy to be influenced so I can assume that there are risks that there are people who are influenced easily. Also, I wonder if there were no crime/legal dramas in this world, the number of crimes might be smaller. 

My final Argument

What I would leave my comment through this project is understanding what TV dramas are. Even though there are crime dramas that are based on actual cases, those dramas are remade to tell the incident to the audience. So we have to acknowledge not all the entire contents may be true and some information might be created to make the audience understand the details.In addition, it is important to feel sadness and anger by watching those dramas, and imagine what happens if people break laws, not gaining the ways how to break laws. If we avoid misunderstanding these points, the risks of people who are influenced by crime dramas can be decreased.

In this third blog post, I am going to focus on what people think about crime dramas using an autoethnographic approach. 

As I stated in the old blog post, the purpose of crime drama is for providing entertainment, rather than to educate, research suggests that people learn about crime from watching television, which was described by Rhineberger-dunn, Briggs & Rader in 2016. To support these arguments, I would like to quote this “our feelings of pity and fear make us recognize what we care for and cherish, and It is not so strange that we learn the worth of something by losing it”. This is from Aristotle: Poetics and it can give a sense of the purpose of crime dramas.

However, what I found through observational research differs from them.

Positive Opinions

What I have gotten positive opinions for crime dramas is basically the same as the reasons why people watch crime dramas that I mentioned in the #1 blog series. Especially for the people who are my parents’ generations think watching crime dramas is important. For example, my mother and my uncle often watch particularly non-fictional crime dramas and they said getting information about what happened in your country in the past is important because those historical cases create our current country. They told me their opinion when I was 12 years old and I paid attention to watch non-fictional crime dramas/ documentaries to learn about that. Also, I found the biggest miserable case that happened in Japan has been reported globally, and I could see what others think/feel about that, which is another positive side.

In addition to those points, being able to learn about the legal system is another big opinion that I saw. Not all crime dramas can make sense in real life, but they are enough to study especially police investigations, journal contexts, and any other systems. Those opinions are from Twitter and there are some websites that recommend some crime/legal dramas to study the legal system. This is one of those websites and it introduces some legal dramas for those people who want to be a lawyer. (Unfortunately, this site is written in Japanese)

Negative Opinions

On the other hand, negative opinions that people have for crime dramas are related to ethical and educational reasons. One opinion that is from my relatives who is a policeman in Japan is that crime dramas can make the audience misunderstand because there are some scenes that are overexpressed compared to real. This opinion is similar to what I mentioned in the old blog post that reports one result of a survey that was conducted by Weaver, Salamonson, Koch & Porter. However, I found this article that reported TV dramas do not reveal serious issues such as racism and normalise police misconduct. This is the total opposite side with the opinion from my relative even though it is the same as the aspects of crime dramas show the wrong facts.Also, there is another opinion that is from my friend who studies psychology at university. She said there are many potential risks that stimulate people to break the law such as pretending the person has a mental illness to get away with the crime. This opinion reminded me of arguments that are about whether crime dramas/anime have negative effects on people.  Although this website is written in Japanese, this article talks about what Japanese people think about anime that have violent scenes. It is possible to see both positive and negative opinions about the topic.

In the next blog post, I am going to summarise through this project.

In this blog post, I am going to focus on the field site of crime dramas. 

As I mentioned how to build the field site in my old blog post, I would like to follow Airoldi who summarised research searches as finding documents that you want to get information by searching with related terms/phrases rather than going through specific documents directly. What I created for the initial field site is this one. 

 I would like to highlight “SNS” and “Word of mouth” as key field sites for crime dramas because I have found more related information each since I created that. And those key field sites can lead you to the depth of my project as a result. 

SNS

As you can imagine easily, there is numerous information on the Internet, and people post, share and handle them. I would like to emphasise two SNS that are YouTube and Twitter in this blog series. I found there are many people who share their own favorite crime dramas or discuss those dramas on the Internet, and they are not related to making or releasing crime dramas. This is an example that crime drama fans uploaded videos on YouTube to introduce that.

This YouTube has the information of the title and reputation by the audiences. What I am surprised about is that it is able to watch those recommended crime dramas for foreigners, not only Japanese. Also, other international fans of Japanese crime dramas recommend their own favorite dramas, which can be a new source that other people can get the information.

Twitter is also another way to get information about people’s favorite as well as their discussion. While there are many official accounts that are for crime dramas and those accounts get many replies, people who comment on them just talk about the program and they do not mention other crime dramas due to the feature.

Facts are facts. Season 18 of #NCIS premieres Nov. 17th on @CBS. pic.twitter.com/TEglbe1n78

— NCIS (@NCIS_CBS) October 13, 2020

So I am going to focus on non-official accounts and the audiences’ tweets. There are many tweets and you can see what they talk about by using specific words such as “crime dramas” or ” detective dramas”.

Word of mouth

Word of mouth is the most important thing in this project to understand what people think about crime dramas. Cambridge Dictionary (2020) defines the meaning of word of mouth as “given or done by people talking about something or telling people about something”. So Twitter is part of word of mouth by the audience and it can be reliable because those tweets are written by the viewers, not companies.

Takayuki & Arisa (2018) summarised that if the information that is related to the reputation by companies, it can be false because they try to manipulate to show how they are admired. So it is necessary to consider whether the word of mouth can be reliable. Also, word of mouth is not only on the Internet. When you are talking with your friends, what your friends say can be the one because their opinions can be shared by someone else.

In the next blog post, I am going to discuss the result of my observational research.

I have decided to release the blog series about my media niche which is crime dramas as my DA and the blog series will be four posts that struct:

1. Recap about crime dramas and what I would like to discuss through the blog series
2. Detailed field site that I have collected 
3. Found information by observational research which includes both positive and negative opinions
4. My final argument 

What I would like to note is all of my research is based on autoethnographic approach and I never conclude about crime dramas with my own personal perception.

What is a television crime drama?

GCSE MEDIA STUDIES (2015) defined it as a sub-genre of the television drama genre and usually focuses on the committing and solving of a crime. They are the fictional recreation of real-life stories. However, there are also non-fictional stories that are based on actual cases and remade them to tell the audience. 

Why do people want to watch crime dramas?

As I mentioned this point in the my first blog, there are four main reasons that are introduced by CineVue:

• Audiences can learn about famous historical cases
• They include a creative long-form type of storytelling
• Crime dramas are very informative
• There’s always an interesting mystery or plot twist 

In addition to these reasons, I would like to mention that there are some people who think watching crime dramas can learn about how to build relationships as well as moral between the others.  

Types of crime dramas

As I mentioned above, there are two main differences between crime dramas that are fictional stories and non-fictional stories. However, it is possible to categorise fictional crime dramas in detail. Patterson’s weblog post (2013) introduces 9 different categories and I pick up 5:

• Cosy mystery genre – the scene of violence is not described in detail and set up in a small town.
• Hard-boiled private investigator genre – used violence clearly and the detective follows clues in the dark underbelly of the city.
• The legal thriller – use of the rules and procedures of a legal world. It focuses on what happens after a crime is committed and an arrest is made.
• The general suspense thriller – features a protagonist who is generally thrown into the action in the aftermath of a crime.
• The military thriller – has a protagonist who is often a member of the military,  the CIA, or the FBI. And the criminals are crooked politicians or terrorists. 

What I would like to discuss through my blog series

The first time when I decided to research crime dramas was based on my personal interest in why people want to watch them even though there are many acts of violence, sadness, and other negative feelings. However, the more I researched them, the more my curiosity became clear and I decided to research the psychological feelings or motivation of the people who want to watch them. Furthermore, I decided to research the ethical issues by watching them as well as how they can impact the audience in terms of education. What I mean by “ethical issues” covers two main points:

• The effects for both the victim family and criminals if the crime drama is based on actual case
• The possibility of the risk that the story impacts and make people stimulated by the stories commit a crime

In the next blog post, I am going to focus on the field site of crime dramas.