The primary goal of your final paper is to consider how a particular theory has been used in communication research. Ultimately, you will be developing an argument about how your theory has been taken up. You will likely find it necessary to narrow your focus to a specific topic or context – your argument does not need to be comprehensive but can rather attend to one or two specific ways the theory has been used in communication research.As such, prior to beginning this assignment, I recommend you determine how you will narrow your focus (that way, you can use the content you develop for this assignment in your final paper). Then, you will be looking for research that is situated within this topic/context (that is, studies that connect to or speak to each other in some way). For this assignment, you will select one study (published as an academic journal article in a peer-reviewed journal) that you can use for your final paper. You’ll read this article in its entirety, but the more comfortable you become with reading journal articles, the easier it will be to skim for the information you need. Please include the APA citation for the article and in approximately 1.5 – 2 double-spaced pages, respond to the questions below. Please submit this assignment as a Word document (.doc or .docx). At this stage, you should also determine if you are working with a partner or working alone. If working with a partner, you will each submit this assignment, but should coordinate in finding articles and be sure that you aren’t reading the same article as your partner (and, the be sure that you’re on the same page regarding the direction of the paper). Please include the names of both partners on your submission.You might find it productive to search within a communication journal; you can find a fairly comprehensive list here. (Then, you would search for the journal here, and use the “search inside this journal” feature to find articles about your topic published within the journal). For broader results, you might also try using the Communication and Mass Media Complete database. Identify the conceptual areas that are under investigation. In other words, what is this study about?
What is the rationale for this study? What is the gap (that is, what’s missing in past research that this study addresses – what questions hadn’t yet been answered that this study attends to?) How do you know?
What theory(ies) are guiding this study? How is the analysis informed by the theory?
Does the rationale and literature review lead directly into the research question(s)/hypothesis(es)? What language signals this to you?
What is the method or analytic technique(s)? Does this method/analysis make sense to you?
What are the key contributions of this study? To which areas is this study contributing new knowledge? What language signals this to you?
What are the theoretical contributions and pragmatic implications of this study? In other words, what does this study tell us about the theory? What practical knowledge does this study offer?
Finally, at this stage, how do you anticipate this study connecting to others? (Just a few sentences here will suffice). Does it seem like it primarily builds on research that came before it or does it take a new approach? (The author(s) will likely have articulated how they are situating their article in relation to existing research throughout – but primarily in the literature review and discussion sections). You don’t have to fully respond to this question now, but keep in mind that as you read, you’ll be looking for similarities and differences among studies – points of overlap as well as varied approaches (this can be about the topic itself or the way the researcher approached the topic).
