A critical study of a particular event, usually expressed by one particular culture (ethnos). The researcher looks at the entire context (time/place/people) and then researches the people groups involved. The focus is upon understanding the people and how the event is the outcome of some cultural conflict or tension.
One book dealing with Ethnographic Research:
Researching current events is an odd task academically. In college you are typically required to research using "peer reviewed articles" and research books. But in current event research, those items haven't been written yet. Some resources for current event research include: interviews, recorded footage, news reports (TV, online, and newspapers), blogs, Wikipedia and social media. It is amazing how fast event Facebook pages are created. It is easier to find the Facebook page/s for an event than Twitter feeds. Twitter tends to have so many tags for the same event that it becomes too difficult to try and monitor them all. Facebook pages will often come from perspectives; not uncommon to find two or three pages about one event, but some of them from the perspective of "support for the victim" and also, "it's a setup"/conspiracy theory, and "let's all get along".
One thing that will help you in your research is if you can find voices from the group you are studying. As you comb through Facebook pages, look for those that are from the ethnos in question. Look for local newspapers/blogs that may come from that perspective. For events in the US it is actually a good idea to get foreign takes on our events. The BBC and even Al Jazeera will have perspectives on our events that may be more objective or completely biased. But, it will be current research and that is the point.
One simple way to search news is to use Google. Search for the name of the place or a name of a person involved. On the results page, click on "news" to read news or click on "videos" to see footage of the event. You can help narrow down results by adding the date of the even, or limit to last 7 days, etc.
For cultural research it is important to use good resources. The following are websites and references from some of our Credo Digital reference works. We have eBooks that you can search for in the catalog. It is best to know the "subject heading" for the ethnic group, but you can probably find the group through keyword searching.
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