Recently a number of students from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology
(UOIT) took part in the Sixth Annual Student Research Showcase. This showcase allows students to present and discuss the research projects they have been working on with faculty supervisors.“Conducting leading-edge research relevant to the needs of society is a core enterprise of UOIT. The student research showcase, held regularly near the end of each summer, is intended to recognize and inspire our graduate and undergraduate students who have dedicated themselves intensely to research over the past year,” says Dr. John Perz, assistant provost, Research at UOIT. Below is another student’s research showcase project.
By Katie Strachan
The Oshawa Express
It is something that has been proven in past studies but Criminology and Justice Studies
student Jennifer Foden set out to prove it again. Foden studied a series of episodes from a popular television law show and found a number
of conclusions backing up the fact that television can contaminate what a person remembers, and it can place false memories in people’s minds.”I wanted to look at how media, television in particular, shapes a person’s mind with a criminal aspect,” says Foden of her undergraduate honours thesis. She chose the popular television series because of its advertising, which stated that most if not all episodes, are based on true stories and because it is one of the only law shows that focuses on the victims perception, not just the offenders. This is something that was very important to her, she says.“It was a lot more (glorified) than I expected,” she explains.
Foden watched, studied and charted nine episodes of the show and then researched the
real-life cases they were based on.“It had to be stated somewhere on paper that it is based on that true story. I didn’t just guess,” she says of the real-life cases she compared each episode to. Foden says in her opinion, the show often changes the race or sexual orientation of characters, which feeds stereotypes, she says.“There’s lots of research that shows that people who watch television more, that their abuse often mimics it,” says Foden.“They’re (the show) obviously doing it for entertainment value but they need to be conscious of trends.”
For example, a real-life case making headlines was about a woman who had suffered unexpected cardio-respiratory failure. Her husband felt she would not want to be kept on life support but her family did. The television show profiled this. In the end, the husband won the court battle and the young woman died. The television show portrayed the husband as a greedy man who just wanted to claim the life insurance, she says.
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