My research experience

When I first started my research, I was a little worried that there wouldn’t be very much information available considering the first time that I searched on Ohio Link, my search produced very few results. However, the next time that I searched on Ohio Link, there were several articles on internet censorship in Iran. My historical experiences with Ohio Link have not been good and usually result in my frustration. However, I was able to find, what I thought, were good articles and I was really glad to find that there were actual PDF files available to read, because quite often there isn’t. Needless to say, the majority of my articles came from Ohio Link and the others from google. I noticed that you commented that preferred a more concrete sentence, but I’m not exactly sure what you meant by that and the key words in my original sentence provided concrete results. I didn’t end up trying google scholar because it’s a foreign search engine for me, and I tend to stick with what I know because I have enough trouble with technology and the internet as it is. I know that I need to do a better job branching out and trying new things, and I’m glad that you introduced me to it. I will be sure to try using it in the future.
I really enjoyed what I learned from my research. At first, when I didn’t get very many results, I thought that there wasn’t much going on with my topic, but then learned that internet censorship is a very hot topic in Iran. A lot of people have very strong feelings about it, and you especially hear from former Iranian citizens that now live in other countries. Blogging is huge among this community and before the recent clampdown as a result of going from a reformist to an ultra conservative president, the general population used to be very involved in blogging and the cyber world in general. It saddens me because the internet used to be one of the only methods of expression for the population. With the tight censorship, what I’ve gathered from the research, is that the people have essentially lost their voice. People are arrested for expressing any negativity against the government or even anything that is non-Islamic. I also learned through the research that internet users are required to agree in writing that they will not attempt to access non Islamic sites.
I enjoyed my research and was able to find good information with little difficulty. I found the information to be very interesting and engaging and was glad that I picked the topic that I did.

Research Topic

I plan to research Internet Cencership in Iran.