Hi all!
This week, as part of e-tivity 5, we were asked to look on the Internet and find an article that could be relevant to our research, which is what we are supposed to start doing soon to prepare our final dissertation. My general idea is to write my final thesis on tourism and Irish identity. As a starting point of my research, I took into consideration the websites our professor recommended to us last week, and I chose to focus on Google Scholar. This tool provides a lot of material from the academic and research fields, material which is then more likely to be authoritative. As a result of my 'investigation', I've come up with an article concerning the relationship between tourism and place identity, with particular reference to Ireland. I picked this article (and bookmarked it on Delicious, of course ;)) because it was one of the most interesting and recent sources I was able to find. Moreover, the article was one of the most relevant to the topic of my dissertation.
This week, as part of e-tivity 5, we were asked to look on the Internet and find an article that could be relevant to our research, which is what we are supposed to start doing soon to prepare our final dissertation. My general idea is to write my final thesis on tourism and Irish identity. As a starting point of my research, I took into consideration the websites our professor recommended to us last week, and I chose to focus on Google Scholar. This tool provides a lot of material from the academic and research fields, material which is then more likely to be authoritative. As a result of my 'investigation', I've come up with an article concerning the relationship between tourism and place identity, with particular reference to Ireland. I picked this article (and bookmarked it on Delicious, of course ;)) because it was one of the most interesting and recent sources I was able to find. Moreover, the article was one of the most relevant to the topic of my dissertation.
The second step in our task was to ask ourselves a series of questions in order to determine whether the source we had chosen was reliable or not. I tried to answer the questions provided by Sarah, but it wasn't always a piece of cake! I found it quite easy to identify the author, which in my case is Moya Kneafsey. She wrote the article as part of her PhD research in the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences at Coventry University. As stated in the abstract, the aim of her paper is to examine the relationship between tourism and place identity in rural Ireland, focusing on the concepts of change and continuity. Her work consists of an introductory, theoretical part, followed by a case study in Foxford, County Mayo. Carried out over a four-month period, the study is qualitative and small scale. Through her research, the author draws the conclusion that the apparently contradictory concepts of change and continuity actually ensure that places keep their own identities in the face of the potential homogenization resulting from the globalization's process. Finally, the author mentions a sort of limitation on her study, when she states that further research would be necessary in order to get more details about the tourist phenomenon in Foxford.
I believe Moya Kneafsey's article is authoritative for different reasons. Firstly, she uses a formal register, technical jargon, and there are no grammar or spelling mistakes. Even though the language is formal, the content is understandable. Secondly, I really like the way in which she structures her essay, making it clear and readable. She begins with an introduction, stating the paper's aim as well as the main points she is going to cover. Additionally, the body of the text contains titles that immediately inform the reader of what the author is going to write about. In this way one can easily go through the article without getting lost! Thirdly, what makes the paper even more authoritative is its bibliography. There are two pages of references at the end of the article. I've found out that the sources the author referred to are recent and reliable; the authors quoted are all experts in the fields related to Kneafsey's study. This is the reason why I'm gonna use these sources for my thesis too!
To sum up, the questions I went through are quite similar to those we came up with in class last week, even though we also focused on the type of audience a source is addressed to, a point that is not mentioned in the list of questions given by our professor.
Serena Zorzi
P.S. Just to make sure not to get in trouble with Moya, I'm going to quote her article!
Kneafsey, M. Tourism and Place Identity: A case-study in rural Ireland.
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