An easy and useful research topic relating to the challenges celebrities face (in China)?

May 7, 2007 7:02 AM

An easy and useful research topic relating to the challenges celebrities face (in China)?

Help me come up with a research topic relating to the challenges celebrities face in China. The hypothesis needs to be specific and the data accessible - I want to be able to use data gathered mostly through either interviews or surveys of common/accessible people.

For example, I would like to do something like "The film industry's working conditions in China are exploitative" or "Chinese theatre performers enjoy a relatively easy life", they are specific, but collecting data would be difficult as I would have to find specific people and go to specific locations and I am unable to do that. Any ideas???

Not sure if this makes a difference but I intend to use the results of this project for my next research project, which would also be about Chinese celebrity and stardom and by then I will be able to do more travelling around. Btw, I live in Hangzhou and my Chinese skills aren't very good.

posted by gttommy to media & arts (5 comments total)

What about structured focused comparison of celebrities who function in both the US and China? Zhang Ziyi, Yao Ming, etc. They have a number of English-language and Chinese-language interviews done in both countries you could use as source material.
posted by B-squared at 7:21 AM on May 7, 2007

Reusing interviews as source material, interesting!

As for the structured focused comparison of celebrities, that would involve reading bios and other texts right? I believe I can't do it since I have to gather my 'own' data as opposed to using secondary data.
posted by gttommy at 7:33 AM on May 7, 2007

Well, couldn't you do some sort of analysis of the existing texts? Word frequency, etc., would that count as your 'own' data, or do they expect you to go and interview these people yourself?
posted by signal at 7:38 AM on May 7, 2007

Well there's a list of methodologies I can choose from. An analysis of texts would probably fall in the "Literature review" category. It would involve more than a referencing more than few texts which would be difficult since I there isn't a big English library nearby, and I don't think relying only on web articles is sufficient.

It could also fall in "Media analysis". I think it would involve reading the Chinese media, but my Chinese is not good. I chose interview or survey because they seem easiest. If will however keep these ideas in mind, in case I can't come up with a topic for interview or survey.
posted by gttommy at 7:56 AM on May 7, 2007

who owns their paychecks? i'm not a sinologist, but i suspect that the answer is different for celebs in china than it is for our own freedom-loving celebs. i read somewhere that yao ming needed chinese army permission to go to houston, and i doubt that this permission came gratis.
posted by bruce at 8:23 AM on May 7, 2007