Study Task 02 - Finding research sources

Finding Research Sources
17 / 10 / 15

Finding specific information for Context of Practice research can be complicated when faced with so many sources. The task set in this seminar has been designed to enable me to find specific information using a number of sources (i.e. books, journals, websites, online PDFs).

The initial task that I had to complete was to find 4 definitions of 'branding' from the web. I had to write down the author/organisation and URL of the website and evaluate the sources in terms of how trustworthy and reliable they are.

•  'A particular identity or image regarded as an asset' - Oxford Dictionaries (#3) - The official Oxford Dictionaries website is a trusted source because they have been making dictionaries for more than 150 years. 'More than 250 language specialists research the language as it changes and develops every day'. This highlights how there definitions are likely to be current and relevant.

•  'A trademark or distinctive name identifying a product or a manufacturer' - Definition.org (#1) - Despite the website has only been running for 2 years, domains ending in '.org' are often very reliable as their content is edited. I would not agree that the source is as reliable as the Oxford Dictionary website; however I think that the definition they have given is representative of the word's meaning.

•  'Branding is convincing that voice in someone's head to be on your side' - The School of Visual Arts (#92 Veronica Parker-Hahn) - This definition was taken from a task completed by SVA Masters in Branding student Sarah Fudin, who was 'inspired to gather 100 definitions of branding from 100 different people in various industries: marketers, designers, strategists, authors and more. These definitions are original and have been acquired through email, phone calls and in-person meetings'. Every definition given is unique in various ways. The website is a reliable source, as it is the School of Visual Arts' official website. They offer a one-year graduate degree program that focuses heavily on branding, therefore I believe that the definitions given on the website are trustworthy as people in the industries wrote them. I also decided to pick one of the 100 definitions from this website because I thought it was an effective way of showing how a word can have personal meanings.

•  'Taking a piece of $hi* and spray painting it' - Urban Dictionary (#2) - I chose this website as an example of an untrustworthy source. Urban dictionary has thousands on definitions on it's site; however the majority of them have been created by random users. This floods their website with definitions that are not necessarily correct or relative to a word. As provocative as this definition is, I do think that it has a sense of accuracy behind it, as a '$hi*', poor quality product can in fact be appealing to a target audience after branding, or 'spray painting' it. 

This task was really challenging as I found it hard to judge whether or not a website is trustworthy. I selected quite an obvious, untrustworthy website, Urban Dictionary, as one of my examples; however, there are some websites that are borderline between being good/useful and trustworthy. I personally believe that words do not have exact definitions, people are open to interpret them differently.