Module Idea: Irish Identity.

     My initial proposed thesis topic was The Portrayal of the IRA in Film but I have since changed this topic as we do not really cover film to a great extent in this course as well as this topic having already a lot wrote on it and thus it would be hard to bring something new and original to it. I have decided now to consider whether the Irish Language is an integral part of Irish Identity or not. I will be considering RTEs commitment to the Irish Language throughout the years, TG4 and Radio na Gaeltachta as well as looking at West Limerick 102FM, which is my local radio station at home.
    
     As Irish Identity is obviously very important to the Irish people I think a seminar class on it would be good as students could do dissertations on an aspect of Irish Identity which they feel best defines what it means to be Irish. Having gained Independence the Irish felt a need to define their Identity and so grasped to the idea of an Irish Language revival in particular in the hope of reviving Irish tradition and culture which had been for so long oppressed. As the Irish Language is only one area of Irish Identity a seminar incorporating several aspects of Irish Identity would be better and would offer students more choice when choosing their areas of research for their dissertation.

HI3200 History Seminar

Credit Weighting: 10.

Teaching Period: Teaching Periods 1 and 2.

Number of Students: Min. 5, Max. 20.

Pre-requisite(s): None.

Co-requisite(s): None.

Teaching Methods: 24 Seminars: 24hr(s) Directed Study.

Module Co-ordinator: Nicola Murphy.

Lecturer(s): Nicola Murphy.

Module Objective: To explore the different aspects of Irish Identity from Independence to the present day.

Module Content: Irish Language Revival, Anti-English/Buy Irish View, GAA, Irish Music and Dance, Pub Culture, The significance of St. Patrick's Day, Travelling Community, Catholic Church, Celtic Literature, Nationalism (IRA and Rebel songs), Traditional Irish; Names, Clothes, Jewellery, Appearance, Country life, How we are viewed abroad.

Learning Outcomes: On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a familiarisation with the many aspects of Irish Identity.
• Acknowledge that since gaining Independence Ireland has changed over the years and therefore so has its Identity.
• Students should have an insight into the newly Independent Ireland grasping to old traditions so to have a unique and different Identity and Culture to the British in particular.
• Should know how Ireland is viewed from abroad, to question whether it is an accurate view or otherwise.
• Demonstrate an ability to carry out independent research.
• Write an extended dissertation to the appropriate standard.
• Acquire and demonstrate the necessary skills associated with the delivery of an oral presentation related to his/her dissertation.

Assessment: Total Marks 200: Continuous Assessment 200 marks (Seminar Participation/Presentation of archival field work: 40 marks, completion of oral presentation is a prerequisite for acceptance of critique; Newspaper article debating Irish Identity 10 marks; 1 x 8,000 word dissertation to be submitted on a date specified by the Department: 150 marks).

Compulsory Elements: Continuous Assessment and 90% attendance.

Penalties (for late submission of Course/Project work etc): Work which is submitted late shall be assigned a mark of zero (or a Fail Judgement in the case of Pass/Fail modules).

Pass Standard and any Special Requirements for passing Module: 40%.

End of Year Written Examination Profile: No End of Year Written Examination.

Requirements for Supplemental Examination: Marks in passed element(s) of Continuous Assessment are carried forward, Failed elements of Continuous Assessment must be repeated.

My Personal Learning Environment!

     This week we looked at PLE (Personal Learning Environment). Our task was then to consider our own individual personal learning environment. A PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) example by Urs Frei best suits my own PLE. Frei considers the following steps; retrieving, evaluating, organizing, analyzing, composing, presenting, publishing and dialog. When I have an assignment to do firstly I retrieve all the information I can find in concern to the topic of the assignment. I first do this by going to the library to get books or read things from Special Collections such as a thesis. I then check the Internet and check Jstor and search on Google. I was not aware of Google Scholar until this week in class! With all this information I then evaluate its importance and relevance to my assignment and organize the information into sections which would form my paragraphs. I then analyze the information in relation to the question I was set. I consider the information and my own view on the subject. I then compose a first draft of my assignment in the shape of an introduction, main body and conclusion. I then present the final draft and await the feedback from the lecturer which may then help me improve in my next assignment as I could learn where I could do better in different areas.

     'how do they improve their practice, learn from each other, and continue to improve on overwhelmingly complex tasks?..We didn't hire smart people so we could tell them what to do; we hired them to tell us what to do.' This is an important point made in a piece written by Yasmin Fodil. It basically states the benefits of learning from each other. I can first consider what I know from experience. I can reflect upon my past experiences which allows me to build on each assignment, learn from each one and improve. I can consider what everyone around me knows and then join these together, it is said after all that two minds are better then one. A definition offered for Knowledge Management is 'better application of collective knowledge to the individual problem. So we need to develop some systems and do a little more work to share collective knowledge and make us smarter.' This is important to note as the more minds that discuss a problem give a better insight to it as we can learn from each other.

     'One of the great benefits of using social media as a KM tool is that you are creating and capturing the knowledge at the same time. However, in order for this to truly work people have to be willing to collaborate in the open throughout the project lifecycle...If you share what you know and what you don't know in the middle of a project, you give people an opportunity to share specific knowledge that can help you in the moment.' I think this is very important. I did not realise the benefits of using social media as a tool until doing this course. I was not even aware of all the resources which are out there for people to avail of. 'Sometimes learning in public is a difficult process, but the feedback, support, and resultant improvements are worth it.' I think this is true, starting out in this can prove to be a difficult process but overtime one would reap the awards of it. Before making this blog I did not have a blog, therefore it was new to me. I now realise that by following peoples blogs one can learn from other people and pick up useful bits of information as well as perhaps discovering links to other places of interest.

     'In a nutshell: Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.' Wenger stated this circa 2007. Our own small class in Digital History can be described like this as a community of practice where by we share a common interest in history in general, and a majority interest in Irish media history and journalism. Thus by working together we could learn from each other. Vygotsky shares a similar view. 'Social interactions plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition...Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals...the idea that the potential for cognitive development depends upon the "zone of proximal development" (ZPP)...The range of skill that can be developed with adult guidance or peer collaboration exceeds what can be attained alone.'

     The point he concludes on here is what is most important that by collaborating we can achieve more than by working alone. Having done this course and this task in particular in future I shall use more social tools as sources of learning. I will do so as I am now aware of what is actually available to me and that they are actually quite easy to access if the tools are used properly and to their best affect.   

http://www.govloop.com/profiles/blogs/how-do-rocket-scientists-learn
http://www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm
http://tip.psychology.org/vygotsky.html

Playing with words!

     This week we explored two interesting tools on the Internet; Tapor and Wordle.  'TAPoR is a gateway to tools for sophisticated analysis and retrieval, along with representative texts for experimentation.' 'Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like.'

     Tapor I found to be very useful when I eventually got it to work! There are many different options available on the site. I have included some below. I found a piece written on the Internet http://www.irishlanguage.net/irishdialects.asp in concern of the Irish language which I have changed my thesis topic to. I then copied and pasted the URL into the different tools available and some of the results can be seen below. You can find a brief summary of the piece or get the most frequently used words and a word count of each word by using these such tools. When considering pieces to read for my topic this site could be useful as it offers a way of scanning through documents to see what they contain more quickly than having to read the whole piece. I could just search the most used words and know if it is useful to my topic without having to go through it all.

 Here are some of my results of using Tapor:

Summary: There are 371 unique words other than those in the stop list, there are 613 words other than those in the stop list. There are 1062 words in total including the stop words.

Words	Distribution	Counts
irish		54
dialects		21
dialect		12
munster		11
ulster		11
connacht		9
language		9
connemara		9
spoken		5
used		4
speakers		4
scottish		4
gaelic		4
features		4
ní		3
home		3
good		3

Summary

General Statistics
Text Source: http://www.irishlanguage.net/irish/dialects.asp
First non-empty paragraph:

Irish Dialects

Second non-empty paragraph:

Irish dialects. Moreover, you will find other useful resources about Irish like words, schools, Irish literature and more

Total words: 1062
Unique words: 474
Words that occur once: 331
Words that occur twice: 73
Highest word frequency: 54
Average words frequency: 2.24

List top 10 words not in the stop word list

Words	Counts
irish	54
dialects	21
dialect	12
munster	11
ulster	11
connacht	9
language	9
connemara	9
spoken	5
=	4

     Here is the link to my very colourful word cloud I made on Wordle. I used the same piece as I did in Tapor.

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2774590/Digital_wordle

I included the link here as I found it difficult to get the image of the wordle into my blog as I was unable to for some reason!

     Overall I found these two tools to be useful in particular Tapor as it has many options to chose from which could be very helpful. Wordle I think would also be a colourful way to demonstrate a point as a colourful word cloud can stand out on a page. For example if in my thesis I look at a survey of television viewership ratings of several channels both English language channels and Irish language channels a word cloud like this would emphasise the point that Irish language channels in this country do not get the high viewing ratings that the English language channels do. This point could be seen by having the frequently watched channels standing out like the most used words that stand out in my above link.

http://portal.tapor.ca/portal/portal
http://www.wordle.net/

The Press as a Source of Socio-Historical Data: Issues in the Methodology of Data Collection from Newspapers_Roberto Franzosi

     This week we looked at Roberto Franzosi's piece on using newspapers as historical sources. I found this very interesting as one could easily and often forget that newspapers are not always accurate. When using newspapers as historical sources it is important to remember this, that while they are useful their validity and reliability can be questionable. Measurement problems that go hand in hand with primary data collection from newspapers are only 'received token if any consideration' which results with a neglecting of the ways in which the measurement process may affect the results of statistical analyses as well as our theoretical conclusions. The paper discusses issues of measurement errors as well as selecting which newspapers to select to use as sources and offers solutions to problems associated with the inaccuracy of newspapers. The writer explains that the main recommendations of the paper is that more emphasis should be placed on problems of validity rather than reliability.
    
     Validity: 'an instrument which measures exactly what it is supposed to measure and nothing else'. Empirical component: 'operationalizing and giving empirical representation to abstract concepts'. Reliability: 'concerns the degree of respectability and consistency of empirical measurements'. Such terms are discussed by Franzosi as vital to consider when using the informal sources of historical data that is newspapers. He informs us that newspapers have been most relied on as sources of data for the study of collective actions and political violence. When using them for this purpose there is always the problem of the source being questionable whether it is valid or not. He states that due to this we are left with the thought of wheater 'we are analyzing patterns of historical events or patterns of news reporting' as newspapers are often biased and selective. For example I read recently about the media coverage and in particular newspaper coverage of the 1916 Rising. James Connolly's death was reported to have happened on four different dates at four different places!! This shows how newspapers are often unreliable.

     Though they are limited sometimes they are the only source available to historians to research a particular part of history as there may not be any other surviving or available source to interpret. He importantly notes that of course newspapers are not the only sources with error as many sources are rarely without some kind of error, different papers too vary as some facts will be in all reports but descriptions and other points of information could be varied. He also interestingly notes that the bias is more of silence and emphasis rather than false information. There are several things to remember when using newspapers in respect to the possibility of them being biased, such as geographical bias as well as the papers ideological stance and of course the journalist own personal opinions and views on things. Solutions are offered in how to avoid problems, such a helpful solution which is suggested is; to compare papers with other papers, as much as possible from different geographical locations and different ideological stances. By doing so similarities will show up which can thus then be taken as accurate. While dates and precise times are often very important in historical research newspapers rarely offer an exact date and time of events.

     'Are newspapers data valid? My answer is, generally no'. They are likely he says to suffer from stematic error and are so not valid. 'data collection from newspapers are reliable. My answer is, generally yes'. Therefore Franzosi comes to the conclusion that papers may be reliable but may not be valid, therefore it is important to keep this in mind as they can be often the only source available for research, which shows their importance yet can only be used effectively by remembering the limitations they behold. 'Validation of data through alternative and independent measures should be an integral part of any research design involving data collection from newspapers'. This final quote sums up Franzosi's view in this paper and the message perhaps he was aiming to put across. It is a very valid one which I believe would be useful for people using newspapers as sources for their thesis topic in particular because it is important to try and get the most reliable information available obviously, to document the historical area one is interested in.      

1911 Census-Lisaphooca

My work this week was to transfer information on one area in Cork called Lisaphooca, from the 1911 Census, onto a spreadsheet. Thankfully I did this before the weekend as it took longer than I expected!! Transferring the information was fine only I had to be careful not to put in the information in the wrong places which I did a couple a times but fixed later! I then found the mean, mode and median. I think I did them right? I am not sure, but I did use a calculator instead of the spreadsheet tool which does that as I kept messing it up somehow! :( I also asked my sister for help she does Maths, but I ended up telling her how to do it! So I hope it is right. :) I got the blank spreadsheet off of blackboard and added in the columns titled "Diff", "1st Child", "Children", and "Intervals". These columns offer the significance of the information as they shine light on the general life of the time in respect to family size, age woman was when giving birth, intervals between having children and the difference in age between husband and wife. These were interesting to look at as differences can obviously be seen when comparing this information to the same areas of life today.

Out of the three married couples there was a ten year age gap in two of the marriages which if compared to today this large age gap is not seen as much as it would have been in 1911. The ages the women were when they gave birth to their first child was quite varied, they were 23,30 and 40. 40 in particular I thought was quite old to have a child I think it would be seen as old today if a woman had a child at 40. At the time of the census though this age may suggest that the women had children earlier but they are dead or have left the family. The ages the women were when giving birth to their other children are not out of the ordinary as they range between 24 and 36. The intervals between having children however I found interesting as there was not much time left between them at all, as they were between one and two years. Today a three year gap between children is favoured by a lot of families. A 53 year old woman who worked as a servant could neither read nor write which I did not find too unusual considering her age and occupation however there was a 30 year old woman also who could neither read nor write which I found odd as I could not imagine not being able to read or write at that age.

It is clear when looking at these examples how Ireland has progressed in the almost one hundred years which have past since the census was taken. More people can now read and write, there are smaller families and in the majority of cases around three years between children. These examples show the progress which has been made in education and family-planning in particular which has been made throughout the years since. People now do not depend upon the farm as much as then also, as practically every occupation in these examples were connected to farming. A different way of life in a sense is on offer in Ireland today in comparison to these examples of 1911!

My Exploration of Cork City and Picture Editing!

I explored the historical places of Cork City and chose to give a historical background on The English Market as I discovered it has a very long history and I really enjoyed my visit there. It is an indoor covered market that is open Monday through to Saturday from early morning to evening. You may find yourself stumbling into this market several times as it has several entrances including Grand Parade, Princes Street and Oliver Plunket Street, so no excuse for missing out then! This market, which is as much an institution as UCC, was born way back in 1788! It has grown and developed ever since, quite the achievement! As is the fact, which their website reminds us of, is that;

It has survived the Famine, revolutions, wars, fire and economic decline.

The markets website is quite helpful in highlighting what the market has to offer, it even has a 'You and Your Baby' section; as well as giving nutritional information, this shows how it caters for everyones needs as it does too for a diverse population. It reminds us of how people used haggle back in the old days and that this can still be seen today by those who are up to the challenge! It informs us that

The quality of produce being sold in the market today is of the highest standards, supported by the long standing Irish tradition of friendly and personal service.

*What Can Be Found Inside? *

There are up to twenty butchers inside but Flynn's Butcher is unique as it is a father-son tradition with their own known meat named 'Kaisler'. Moynahan has all the necessities for the famous Irish breakfast. Chicken Inn offers some of the best deals to be found in the country! Fresh fish from such ports as Donegal can be found at Kay O' Connell's Fish Market. My favourite part of the market is The Chocolate Shop. I have done a lot of shots but I had never done a shot of chocolate until I discovered The English Market where a shot of chocolate can be bought for a euro! Yum yum yum! One is completely spoilt for choice when it comes to bread as there is like forty different kind of loaves available to buy! Which has to suit even the most fussy of bread eaters! Lots of variety can be got at The Olive Stall, as it is commonly known though the sign is in Irish. This stall offers things from Greece, Spain, France and Italy! So your taste buds can have a field day! A European element can be found again at the French style patisserie Heavens Cake. For all the fans of Italian food like me our tasebuds can be satisfied by Iago where Italian style pasta and sauces can be bought. The English Market is beautiful to walk around and if one really wants to soak in the atmosphere go to The Farmgate Cafe which is an upstairs restaurant in the market. You can look down on the market and at certain times can enjoy eating to the sound of piano playing.

An article on a tour advising site summed up the experience of The English Market when it said it;

is a pleasant opportunity to combine shopping, dining, and a cultural experience all in one.

I am sure all would agree with the Markets site when it says;

The atmosphere is reminiscent of bygone times and especially on a wet and windy day its nice to stroll through and remember that as much as things change, they stay the same.

The English Market is a must see historical place in Cork City not only for the hi story it holds but also for the smoothies that can be had there! :) 

Web Logs and Online Discussion as Tools to Promote Reflective Practice_Pedro Hernández-Ramos, Santa Clara University

This article discusses the possibilities and benefits of incorporating blogs and online discussion forums into teaching. The goals of using these tools are outlined as being useful in exposing students to computer-supported communication and collaboration and also as an encouraging tool to promote 'reflective practice and a better understanding of the pedagogical and learning benefits derived from integration in these technologies.' Firstly the challenges which face teachers are described. These include; how to make them realise their role as construtivists 'producers of information and knowledge-and not "just as teachers"-objectivists-who are solely in a transmission role.' It states that teachers need to find their professional voices and a means to be heard and it offers technology as the means to achieve this.

Teachers thus use technology to; 'enhance their productivity and professional practice', 'to engage in ongoing professional development and lifelong learning', 'evaluate and reflect on professional practice to make informed decisions regarding the use of technology in support of student learning' and apply technology to increase productivity as well as a way to communicate and collaborate with peers, parents and the larger community in order to nurture student learning. For a time journals have been encouraged to help students think about their own learning and that by completing journals their learning would be improved. However a problem exists with this approach to learning as students may often 'bias their writing to what they think the instructor wants to see' so the process can to a certain degree become almost pointless. While Nicholson and Bond (2003) said, "electronic discussion boards can play an integral role in the development of preservice teachers...they benefit preservice teachers in terms of time, scheduling, and geographical issues...provide emotional and intellectual support and fast a sense of community...promote growth of reflective discourse.'

Discussion boards have been around longer then blogs, therefore the use of blogs in education are still being explored and developed. Blogs are used to 'encourage writing, but in a public space,...motivates students to spend more effort in the process...as not just instructor or peers seen it but a wider, unknown audience.' Blogs are also useful as a collaboration tool in the classroom. I think that more teachers need to recognise the use of blogs and discussion forums as Levin and Camp (2002) argued that teachers are unlikely to improve their practice without reflecting on their performance which they can do through the use of such tools as blogs. 'the difference between a "public" voice addressing an unknown audience (the blogs) and a more "private" voice where all participants were known to each other', this point I feel is crucial to how the use of blogs can be so beneficial as the writer of the blogs is now writing to a larger audience which can result in the writer gaining comments from the readers of their blogs, thus they can learn more from what they write in comparison to just writing for a smaller audience which offers less feedback.

An important point about blogs is made which is that blogs can be used by everyone of all levels and not just those who are advanced in using technology. The methods used in this article are similar to our class where by they made a blog, sent the link to the teacher and then respond to questions posed by the teacher as well as commenting on others work. The results were interesting reading. Most of the students recognised it as a medium 'for self-expression, access to information, and community building'. Others admit that they had no idea of its potential prior to using them. Two of the goals behind their use of the blogs were; to write to a wider audience and to recognise oneself as a creator of knowledge or at least acknowledging ones views are worth the consideration of others. Interestingly though only 5 out of the 56 students who underwent the use of the computer based tools said they will use blogs when they teach. Others said they were unaware of what technology would be available at their place of employment while some other students failed to recognise the point of using them.

"Reflective journal writing offers instructors a window into each student's mind and assess the degree to which they are making progress toward desired learning goals in a given course or program of studies". Blogs and discussion forum similar to this and are used in the hope of resulting in better learning. This example was "successful in promoting reflective writing". The fact that blogs can allow the teacher a deeper insight into their students minds is essential to the development of teaching and learning as the students are offered an outlet to express themselves instead of opting towards writing solely for the correcter of their work. I believe it is a good idea for such technology tools to be incorporated in the classroom as students need to be aware of the possibilities and benefits of the technology that is available today. Yet obviously a balance should be the set up within the classroom as such technologies are not to everyones liking and what exists at the moment in most schools, which is like the ones I attended the relationship which exists between a teacher and their students is important as the students need to be aware of how they are progressing on a more intimate level then on the Internet where the encouragement or praise that they receive is from an audience which they ultimately cannot see! While within the classroom they can be encouraged amongst their peers. The incorporation of such tools would be beneficial as they could express themselves openly and then perhaps discuss it in class which will allow a better interactiveness within the classroom and would allow teaching and learning to progress steadily.   

The History of Humanities Computing- ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth

This book traces the history of the relationship between Information technology and the Humanities. The start of this relationship may have been in 1949 when Father Roberto Busa created an 'index verborum' which included 11 million words of medieval latin, 1974 saw the first printed version. His achievement was thus recognised when he became the first recipient of the Busa award to signify his achievement in applying IT to humanastic research. The relationship blossomed with the coming about of COCOA which was modeled on a format developed by Paul Bratley, it proved very influential and other schemes derived from it, according to Hockey, its ability to deal with overlapping structures outstrips that of almost all modern markup schemes, which suggests that it was an important step in the relationship of IT and humanistic research. The most important breakthroughs I believe came about from the 1970s to the present day. These included the Oxford Text Archive founded in 1976 which was to ensure that a text a researcher had finished with was not lost, this could be seen as the beginning of a digital library. During the mid 1980s to the early 1990s the PC and Electronic Mail were discovered. 1985 at a ALLC Conference in Nice email addresses were exchanged which saw the beginning of a new era of immediate communications. The early 1990s saw the era of the Internet, which I find extremely important and useful when it comes to researching for history. Academics were the first to recognise its potential while libraries were soon to follow by putting the content of their collections on the Internet. It also allows for collaborative projects which is useful as the Internet is a huge space which can provide one with a wealth of information.

Chapter 5 declares that a culture war existed pitting the 'new' history, which is that of the Internet and is influenced by social science theory and methodology, against the traditional practices of narrative historians. There are many ways in which historians have made use of computing technologies. The 1940s saw the first phase that of quantitative history which used mathematical techniques. 1960s saw the second phase which was an emerging field of social science history in which statistical techniques were used. The third phase is the PC and the rise of the Internet. Not everyone looked upon these developments so favourably, as a British historian said; 'The declining importance of the so-called grand narratives of national and class histories, and the fragmentation and loss of cultural authority of scholarly history in the face of increasingly diffuse popular and political uses of 'history', cannot be separated from the impact of the new technologies.'

I looked at chapter 26 as my proposed thesis topic involves film. It states that 'cinema was a serious form of expression, an art form involved in the production of thought.' Such expression is one of the reasons I would like to research film as I believe it bears a significant impact on its audience and can thus display portrayals that the filmmakers believe and can in turn influence the audience to believe the same. 'the literary scholar, the historian...can literally bring the work under study into her own text to prove a point, illustrate an argument, and provide the text to prove a point, illustrate an argument, and provide the text and context for analysis. The film scholar cannot.' This problem was solved when 'image overlay hardware that put a moving image from a tape or disc directly into a window on the computer screen.' 'He creates an alternative world of the alternative world that the film itself creates...filmmakers make us see what they want us to see.' It is with this final quotation in mind that I wish to explore the portrayal of the IRA in film as it is to distinguish between the different portrayals in the hope to discover the most accurate portrayal of the IRA in relation to the history I aim to achieve, and not to always see what it is that the filmmakers want me to see.   

Introduction and Thesis Topic

Dia duit! My name is Nicola Murphy, I am 21 and am from the quite scenic area that of Knockaderry which is a small village in West Limerick. I graduated in September from UCC with a BA in History and English. As I love both History and Media I chose to do the MA in History of Irish Media and Journalism, again in UCC as I was not ready to leave my new home! I did my final year dissertation on Irish Comedy and how it reflects Irish Society, this year I decided to change focus to another area which I love.

As I have a great interest in Irish history and in particular Ireland's long fight to achieve its freedom and a United Ireland, I wish to research and present a thesis concerning the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and their portrayal in the media. Initially I hoped to explore their portrayal in film however I am considering looking at the source of documentaries instead or perhaps attempting to localise my research so to achieve an original approach. I am from County Limerick, a county which I am aware possesses a strong Sinn Féin following particularly in the city. With this in mind I wish to consider local media outlets and how they have portrayed the IRA throughout the years perhaps highlighting a change in how the IRA are viewed as the IRA has changed over the years which may prove that a change has come about in how they are viewed by the public.