Week 3 | Jwhiteual132024

Week 3: 19th-23rd Feb

Monday

On Monday morning, I decided to return to Facebook to see if I had any responses from my requests. To my surprise, I had 5 out of 6 responses which was great news. The groups I had responses for were:

Misophonia: Coping and Solutions - 14.6k members

Misophonia Treatment and Management – 9.8k members

Misophonia Help Group/Support – 1.0k members

Misophonia International Support Group – 1.8k members

Misophonia Support Group – 2.8k members

With a total of 30 thousand members to ask questions to, I am in a great position where I have a huge group of people across the globe that all have their own personal viewpoints and opinions on the subject matter I am looking into. I can ensure that this research is genuine because of the fact that the group is private, and only those accepted by administrators are allowed to be included. Furthermore, the rules of the groups are all quite strict which helps to create a safe environment.

Now that I had access to the misophonia groups, I then went on to produce a draft post that I would send to all of the groups. The draft post can be seen below:

I am a 17 year old media student producing a misophonia documentary for my second year college production.

Since being at college, my younger brother has developed clinically severe misophonia and I have realised how much of an effect it can have on those with it, and family/friends around them.

I have come here to ask what you would like to see in the documentary. I am aware of the lack of representative media online so would like to produce something that represents those with it appropriately.

When creating this draft post I tried to keep it as concise as possible but also give a little background information as to why I am asking them to give me their feedback and opinions. I think it’s important to give that bit of feedback as it makes me seem ore honest and open to the situation I am in. Furthermore, I also hope that the fact I also have a personal experience with misophonia will help to make me feel more connected and a part of the group.

After producing this draft post, I then thought about how the members might want to respond to me. As it would be a facebook post, they can comment in the comment section, but I think it may also be worth creating a google forms that gives them specific questions to answer if they find it hard to give general feedback. The google forms questions I came up with can be seen below:

After posting the facebook post, I then thought about what other places I could get results from. The more results I get, the more accurate representativity I can portray in the documentary. I decided upon using reddit, a forum platorm that essentially has the same concept as the facebook groups. The screenshot below shows me posting the message:

Another reason as to why I decided to post on Reddit is that the audience demographic on this site is much younger than those on Facebook. Businessnewsdaily.com states that ‘Many marketers say Facebook is the most valuable platform for reaching an older demographic’, where as oberlo.com states that ‘Reddit is the most popular among users aged 18 to 29’. The reason I want my survey to reach as many people as I can is because I want to see what different ages have to think about misophonia. If I am to represent those with misophonia appropriately, I have to represent both the young and old.

Havard References

Lin, Y. (2020). 10 Reddit Statistics You Should Know in 2020 [Infographic]. [online] www.oberlo.com. Available at: https://www.oberlo.com/blog/reddit-statistics.

‌Morrison, S. (2023). How to Target Older Demographics Using Social Media. [online] Business News Daily. Available at: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10146-target-older-demographics-social-media.html.

Tuesday

To begin the day, having had just send out my posts online across the Facebook groups and on Reddit too, I decided to have a quick look and see if I had any responses. I was overwhelmed by the amount of response I got, as within less than 24 hours I’ve got 23 results and several comments too. I didn’t want to look into the comments too much as I was going to leave this stage until next week but after having a brief review of them, I am happy with the quality of the answers and cannot wait to interpret the results. The reason I am deciding to leave it until next week is because this gives more time for people to respond to the survey and, most importantly, this is what I stated on my action plan. If I stick to the action plan, the more planned my time is and I will know that what I am doing will result in me finishing to deadline.

After this, I decided to continue the content research page that I had started last night. I had looked into the 6 styles of documentaries last night so I thought that the best choice for progressing in this area of research would be to make a decision on what style I should use. The reason being that understanding what style I am progressing with means I can look into and understand the common conventions I should be following in the content of my piece.

Wednesday

I received a message from a lady called Erin Mather on Instagram. She opened the conversation up saying that she had found my account through the story that I was able to get from @misophoniapodcast on Instagram. Her message can be seen below...

It was nice to hear that she also had misophonia and that she would be more than happy to answer any questions I have. Seeing as I am in the research stage, this opportunity feels like something I can’t say no to.

After a short discussion with her, she discussed the topics of diagnosing misophonia and how it is not featured in the diagnostic manual.

On top of the statement she made about the diagnostics manual, she also made reference to ‘comorbidity rates’. From cdc.gov, ‘Comorbidity occurs when a person has more than one disease or condition at the same time. Conditions described as comorbidities are often chronic or long-term conditions’. This is interesting, as my mother has spoke about my brother having signs of autism and adhd too. From my own perspective its both interesting and relieving to see that my brother is not alone; comorbidity is a thing.

After speaking more to her about her personal experiences she has had with misophonia, I kept thinking how great should would be to talk to in the documentary. Out of chance, I asked whether she’d be up for being a part of it. Her response can be seen below.

This was brilliant news because now I was able to get the perspective of someone who has a job and has to deal with misophonia every day. It will be interesting to get to speak to someone who is slightly older than my brother, particularly as this gives more opportunities and areas to speak about in the documentary.

I then sent some basic details of the current situation, and stated that as things progress I would keep her updated.

Harvard References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2022). Arthritis Comorbidities | CDC. [online] www.cdc.gov. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/arthritis/data_statistics/comorbidities.htm#:~:text=Comorbidity%20occurs%20when%20a%20person.

Thursday/Friday

For the following 2 days I dialled in on getting through the content research stage. Throughout this I was constantly reflecting upon what I actually want from the documentary. Understanding the codes and conventions of documentaries as a whole has helped my ideas thrive and develop; I am starting to envision what my piece may look like and how I might do it too.

There were two particular points of interest I would like to discuss from these two days:

1. My mum spoke to the clinical psychologist and stated that before anything could go forward, the psychologist needs to see the consent form and give it to her higher-ups. This is because she is part of the NHS, and there is a lot of confidential work that goes on. She also seemed a little confused on the actual concept of my project, so I explained this to her through the email below…

2. I had a meeting/check up with my tutor. This was very useful as it was good to hear that I was on track with my progression. Through speaking my thoughts and what I was intending on producing, I was able to expand upon my research points that I should be looking into. These research points included: the ethics of filming family members and not telling the audience they are my audience; is the story more specific to my brother or is it more general; would it be appropriate to have me on camera too; how do you make documentaries with people who have disorders; research into what my stylistic look is – preparing for a style sheet in the preproduction stage; how to interview someone who doesn’t want to be on camera; and general research into what makes a good documentary.