Media and Aggression

Media Effects: Can we learn aggression from aggressive media? This film looks at experimental, longitudinal and case study research evidence and how social learning, script theory and susceptibility approaches such as hostile attribution bias can help understand and explain this evidence.

Unmasking: The End of Debate?

Sociological Theory: Unmasking is an extreme form of criticism that is becoming increasingly prevalent in social science and everyday discourse where individuals are accused of being fraudulent and ideas are exposed as illusions, making debate and argument irrelevant. In this film we look at Professor Peter Baehr’s analysis of unmasking, provide some key examples, and […]

Making Friends with Research Methods

Research Methods: Understanding research methods isn’t easy for many students and, strange-to-say, a lot of them also find it boring. This film uses different techniques to make research methods more interesting, accessible and easier to understand. It looks at three key questions: Why do students have to study research methods? What are research methods? And […]

Introducing Triangulation

Research Methods: All research strategies, practices and methods have their limitations and the most common way of trying to offset these limitations is by using a technique called triangulation. This film uses real life research studies to illustrate the four key types of triangulation: data researcher theoretical and methodological.   Triangulation is not only a […]

Case Studies

Research Methods: If you go and see your doctor or a therapist, you’ll become a ‘case’ to them. They’ll want to know a lot more about you. Similarly, sociological case studies involve putting a social group, an event or a place ‘under the microscope’. This film looks at a classic sociological study, The Kendal Project: […]

Participant Observation

Research Methods: Some research questions can only really be studied by sociologists getting out of their offices and interacting directly with the people they want to study. Starting with the famous Chicago School of sociology, this film uses a range of classic and contemporary studies to illustrate: why participation observation is used in sociology its […]

Self-Report Methods: Interviews and Questionnaires

Research Methods: How do school students negotiate the pressures to perform well academically alongside the pressure to be popular and cool? Carolyn Jackson combined questionnaires and interviews to research this question and this film uses her study, Lads and Ladettes, to illustrate: why these methods are chosen their respective strengths and limitations and how the […]

Secularisation: The Decline of Religion?

Religion and Beliefs: With contributions from leading experts on the study of religion, this film gives students a new take on secularisation theory. While secularisation theory assumes that in pre-modernity religion was everywhere whereas in modernity it’s almost nowhere, more recent research suggests that rather than disappearing, religion is undergoing a process of diversification, with […]

New Religions, Alternative Spiritualities

Religion and Beliefs: Sometimes practised far away from the world and sometimes in the full glare of hostile media, there are thousands of new religions. With examples, such as the Moonies, Scientology, the Missionary Church of Kopimism, Paganism and the doomsday cult Heaven’s Gate, this film identifies some of the characteristics of these new religious […]

Religion: what it is and what it does

Religion and Beliefs: Ask a hundred people what they think religion is and you’ll probably get a hundred different answers. However, to study religion we have to bring together more general ideas about what religion is and what it does. This film, featuring Professor Eileen Barker of the London School of Economics, explains and illustrates […]