Assignment Question
For the final project, students prepare and write a 12-page double-spaced(Times New Roman) paper on a topic which we covered in class, but you would like to explore further. Footnotes/endnotes, tables, reference list are not included in the page count. Don’t use the table of content and abstract.
Paper options: A literature review of academic discussions: There is already a vast amount of academic research on the topic you are interested in. For a literature review, find relevant academic articles/book chapters up to 10 and read them carefully. Compare, contrast, make connections and find some themes emerging across them.
RA media text analysis: Collect media text (media reports, images, videos, social media, etc.) and find out how they represent the object/phenomenon you are interested in. Informed by relevant academic literature, you can categorize them and identify some emerging themes. A case study: The third option you can take is to focus on a particular case. Closely follow and describe the trajectories of the particular object/institution/person/service/concept/image/sound, highlighting concrete events, accidents, anecdotes and so on. This is not a simple biography, but a conceptually/theoretically-informed narrative with a focus.
A mini-research paper: The options above are also regarded as research papers, but here a mini-research refers particularly to collecting and analyzing first-hand data (usually through interviews or surveys). The key here is to design interviews or surveys. Refer to interview/survey sections in qualitative/quantitative methods textbook in the field of social science (or communication and media studies). Proposal elements: The following elements are expected to be included in your proposal: working title (you can change it later) Main idea/subject/topic — you need to raise this flag early! State clearly the essence of your research (what you want to do) in the first paragraph.
Purpose of the research: Provide why you want to do this research. What are intellectual reasons? In other words, how can you situate your research in the context of existing knowledge? What is the social background of your research? Additionally, do you have any personal motivations to conduct this research?
Literature review: Identify and refer to existing academic resources which inspire you and constitute the basis of your research up to 5 (in case you are writing a literature review, up to 10). Research methods elements: What is your object to be researched? What are you looking at, specifically? Do you study people (by using surveys or interviews)? Do you want to analyze media such as news reports or video clips? What is your theoretical framework to access this object? What concepts and/or theories do you get informed from the literature? What is your methodology to collect and analyze data? What are other practical plans for you to consider? Potential contribution to knowledge
The list of references: Use 5 academic resources (10 if you are writing a literature review) which are immediately relevant to your research in the final paper. List them as well as other media resources you want to use. At this point, this is your initial reading list and you can add/drop moving forward. You will expand and convert the elements 1-5 into the first part of your final paper (4-5 pages). The elements 1-4 and 6-7 are required for any type of paper, but the sub-elements in 5 may or may not be relevant to your paper. At this point of planning, you don’t have to specify every detail of the above elements, but you need at least to have a rough idea which drives your research and writing. Eventually, you will need to clearly write in detail about these elements in your paper. In the final section of the proposal, please highlight your worries and/or concerns, if any, while planning your research. Reference book and articles: Digital media and self # Miller. (2020). Chapter 7: Digital identity (pp. 201-228) Digital community # Miller. (2020). Chapter 8: Digital communities? Space, networks and relationships (pp. 231-261). # Tolentino, Jia. (2019). Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion. Random House. (Chapter 1: The I in the Internet)
