Then, my wonderful professor replied with other sources that she felt were worth exploring. One of them was Axel Bruns’ critique on filter bubbles called “It’s Not the Technology, Stupid: How the ‘Echo Chamber’ and ‘Filter Bubble’ Metaphors Have Failed Us.” Upon reading this article, I was so intrigued by it and decided to skim through the sources Bruns used. From there, I stumbled upon another source I found interesting and useful for my final paper: Sebastian Meineck’s “Deshalb ist ‘Filterblase’ die blödeste Metapher des Internets“ [roughly translated: “That’s Why the Filter Bubble is the Dumbest Metaphor on the Internet”]. This “source hopping” actually happened quite a lot during my time researching for this paper, wherein one good source led to another good source and I constantly ended up in this spiral of scholarly articles.
However, at one point I decided to stop source hopping as my notes were getting too long and it has already taken quite a lot of my time. I then proceeded to form connections between the different research papers by using different highlighter tools and re-organizing points based on common themes and categories found. This procedure also helped me put scholarly debates into conversation about the filter bubble.
Afterwards, I outlined my draft and thesis statement, and started my actual writing process. When I write, I usually start with the body paragraphs and leave the introduction and conclusion toward the end. I find the introduction and conclusion to be the most difficult part of the process!
After finishing the paper, I waited for a few days before editing and proofreading my paper. I like to call this phase the “fermentation phase.” I do this so that I could have a set of fresh eyes, which makes it easier for me to find loose ends, weak arguments, and awkward sentences in my work.
I then sent my paper to a friend so that she could help me proofread it, and after that, off this paper went to my professor!