Hats1278

Thanks for the detailed response! I was looking at some more stuff since I posted: I found a couple of papers which look at media portrayals of tent city-type settlements in Vancouver, using Goffman's framing theory. I thought that I could try to replicate those studies by analyzing media coverage of tent cities in my own city (a bunch of popped up in the last 5 years, particularly during the pandemic). And I thought I could expand the theoretical framework a little bit, perhaps to include Goffman's theory of stigma (maybe I'll ask my supervisor about that too). At this point I thought that I would use news articles, thought I found a lot of personal video type stuff on twitter and other social media. Thanks for pointing that out about causal arguments - I'm meeting with my supervisor next week and I will make sure to clarify that with him.

Hi Folks, I am enrolled in the Honours program at my school this semester, and I have been working on narrowing down the topic for my thesis. I was hoping for some feedback from others about my tentative focus. My initial idea was rooted in homelessness and social isolation/disaffiliation. My initial research took me in the direction of stigma as a (partial) explanation for social disaffiliation in this community. After my meeting with my supervisor, he encouraged me to simplify things a little bit. At this point, I am very interested in stigma. I was reading a paper about Woodsquat, and the author noted "sympathetic" portrayals of the movement were still emphasizing dominant, hegemonic viewpoints on the social issues of poverty and homelessness. From that point, I was considering looking at local, "sympathetic" media portrayals of the issue of homelessness (particularly during/after the pandemic there has been a ton of coverage of transitional housing, i.e., motels), and looking at how that contributes to stigma and reinforces dominant views. As a theoretical framework I was considering using Goffman and Foucault. Overall I am just very unsure of myself, and any feedback from others would be welcome. I wonder: is this type of project is covering ground that has been tread too often? Is there something you would change? Thank you very much.