Research Question and Project Rationale:
What do you plan to research? How will you research it? & why it is important to research this subject?
I plan to research the phenomenon of the growing lack of nuance in today’s society. It is important to research this as I feel that this is a subject that is often overlooked and not questioned. Often, especially in the media, people are very quick to take sides, seeing their ‘side’ that they’ve picked as 100% right and only ever good, and refuse to see the opposite side as anything other than evil; and wrong.
As the lack of nuance and opportunity for people to see each other’s points of view grows, we have begun to ignore the fact that most often conflicts and problems are often categorized and answered in shades of grey. I will be researching this by looking into where this phenomenon started from, and how it grew into the polarizing binary that we see today. I will be looking into psychological studies and try to find research that both supports my question and denies my points. I will be researching both supporting and rejecting theories as this will help me to have a nuanced view of my work, so as not to be biased, regardless of my viewpoint on the matter.
I hope to be challenged when writing this essay, and to learn more information on what I am researching.
At least 5 keywords
Propaganda, Bias, Misinformation, Binary, Nuance
Situate your proposal in relation to key texts, issues, and debates.
Situate issues and debates in relation to key concepts and/or subject area. Name and explain authors relevance to your project proposal
Issues and debates in relation to my subject area:
- One could say that the only people having these opinions are a small minority – they just happen to shout the loudest.
- The concept of cognitive dissonance – this is the perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it. – the effects of this is psychological stress. – this is why people react the way they do when they’re told they’re wrong.
- A lot of the polarizing and binary reactions can be explained by post traumatic trauma of colonization and generational trauma.
- Bias in the media has always been a thing and therefore is not really a good talking point as correlation does not necessarily equal causation.
- Good versus evil has always been a thing in literature – it can’t just be specific events in history that contributed to it.
- It’s only really been up and coming in the current generation – not the older ones.
- Good and evil don’t really exist – people do recognize the shades of grey in between and saying they don’t is a generalization.
- Research Methodology and Analysis
Include names of case studies, images, material examples like artworks, games, or films.
Case studies can include:
• Stan twitter
• How World War 2 impacted how we as a society see good versus evil, mainly due to American propaganda on the war, including marvel and DC which both originated as forms of war propaganda
• American politics in general, democrats versus republicans, left versus right, man versus woman.
• A case of ego – Psychology, and how people do not like to be proven wrong, and when they are proven wrong, they automatically jump into their ‘child brain’ – resorting to insulting the person offering a differing opinion to theirs, or just saying ‘nuh uh’ or yelling at them.
• Numbering case studies of police forces jumping to conclusions based on ‘race theory’ and unconscious bias – this can relate to ‘good v bad’ and having different treatment for different races.
• Race theory
• Storybooks – we grow up reading these storybooks in which there is one evil and one good character – this went on to showing these cliches in movies and animations – which we show to kids, and yet still expect them to have nuanced opinions in how they see the world.
• ‘The underdog can do nothing wrong’ – each side is considered either completely good or completely bad.
• Israel versus Hamas, America versus Isis, God versus Satan: people ignore the flaws of those they support and watch them with rose colored glasses.