At the beginning of March 2021, I conducted background research into online news articles covering the Rampion 2 expansion project. If Rampion has consent to go ahead with their expansion later this year, construction will start in 2025/2026. The expansion project will entail a maximum of 116 additional wind turbines, which is the same capacity of wind turbines as the original wind farm. Besides this, I conducted some research into Brighton Diver, a boat company based in Brighton, East Sussex, that organises boat tours around the Rampion Wind Farm, allowing you to get up close and personal to the turbines. Its website also provides a photo gallery of the wind farm’s construction. The research I conducted for the Rampion 2 expansion project and Brighton Diver boat tours was vital. I have now gained some newfound information that I can incorporate into my project and my online questionnaire as I was designing it.
On Wednesday, 3rd March, I rang the people at Rampion to get back in touch with them about my project. I spoke with a lady named Theresa, and she asked me to give her my name, address, mobile and email to log my call. I asked her if I could describe my project to provide background information, but she said that would not be possible as her job is logging calls and passing them on to Rampion staff. But she assured me that Rampion staff might get back to me soon via phone or email “within the next 24 hours.” The following day, I got an email from RWE Governance and Stakeholder Manager Jennifer Donn, who asked me what my query was so that she can endeavour to help. I explained to her in a reply email what my project was, my aims and objectives and the information I hoped to obtain for it.
On Wednesday, 10th March, my project supervisor, Iestyn George, said to me that he got in touch with a family relative named Huw, who used to work on the construction of the Rampion Wind Farm. So he may have a few contacts who are still working there. Subsequently, I contacted Huw about my project and asked him to point me in the right direction of the best people at Rampion to speak to about my project. He recommended that I look at the Rampion 2 expansion project and incorporate something about it into my project, which proved to be a helpful pointer.
On Friday 19th March, I signed off my ethical review on BREAM, and my course leader, Ryan, signed it off. A couple of days later, on Sunday, 21st March, I received an email from the School of Media Research Ethics Panel, stating that they were happy to offer a favourable opinion to my ethical review.
On Monday 22nd March, my coursemates and I had a two-hour long tutorial session with Ryan about two pieces of assessment work we must complete for our projects. One of which is an online portfolio showing off our live projects and past media-related work (if necessary), while the other task is a written 5,000-word dissertation that summarises everything I have done as part of my project.
On Tuesday, 30th March, I launched my online questionnaire on my personal Facebook page to gather data for my project. In addition, I shared the questionnaire on numerous WhatsApp group chats I am a part of, including my MII group, where I shared it amongst my fellow coursemates. The next day, I shared my questionnaire on my personal Twitter and Instagram pages. When it came to designing my questionnaire, considerable care and attention to detail was paid into the wording of my questions to make them more quantifiable and to make the data easier to interpret when writing about it in my dissertation.
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