Choose a Research Question Your research question should be relevant to the study of Communication. What interests you about this field? Social media? News and politics? Video games and children? These are all broadly viable areas, but you will have to translate the general topic (e.g., news media or social media) into a question (e.g., “How is the decline of print media affecting American politics?” or “What implications do social media have for American family life?”). You will need to be able to explain why the question you have selected is important. Why does it matter?

Writing Your Literature Review 
To write a successful paper, you must have a thesis to argue. Specifica1ly, you will need to select a particular hypothesis about an effect of the media and systematically examine available evidence about that effect, gleaned from research literature. Below, find a series of steps to follow in generating your thesis, gathering information about it, revising or extending it, and then organizing your research into an effective paper. (NOTE: You should not write your paper using these steps as an outline. See step six below.) 1. Choose a Research Question Your research question should be relevant to the study of Communication. What interests you about this field? Social media? News and politics? Video games and children? These are all broadly viable areas, but you will have to translate the general topic (e.g., news media or social media) into a question (e.g., “How is the decline of print media affecting American politics?” or “What implications do social media have for American family life?”). You will need to be able to explain why the question you have selected is important. Why does it matter? It may be the case that the question you have identified has practical implications for media organizations, broad social implications, or something important to add to our theoretical understanding of mass communication processes. You need to be in a position to identify and explain, in clear and specific terms, why the question is compelling. 2. Provide a Tentative Answer to your Question The next step involves formulating a tentative answer to your research question. This answer encapsulates your planned argument or thesis (e.g., “The decline of print media threatens democracy” or “Social media use furthers the clustering of Americans in smaller social units defined by close family ties”). You can base this initial argument on a “best guess” grounded in experience, on some logical deductions from a few premises you are willing to accept, through a prediction stemming from a particular theory, or from observations gleaned from your prior reading. Whatever the source of your initial answer, you will need to take a stand in response to your research question and explain clearly and specifically why you’ve adopted this particular point of view. 3. Find Sources that Support, or Contain Evidence Contrary to, your Thesis Now that you have narrowed your broad topic down to a specific (albeit tentative) argument, you need to find peer-reviewed sources show you whether your initial thesis is most likely correct, in need of modification, or most likely incorrect. This is the information-gathering phase of your research, and you will be most successful here if you have a clear thesis in mind. Formulating a tentative answer to your question above narrows the range of material you need to seek out and it helps you determine more quickly what sources you locate are useful. Communication 300 Principles of Communication 4 At this stage, try to remain completely open to the possibility that your initial thesis is incorrect; in fact, setting out to prove yourself wrong is often a useful strategy. If you succeed in convincing yourself that another argument is superior, then you will have amassed good evidence for that new thesis. If you remain convinced of your initial thesis, you will have considered careful counter-arguments and can use them to defend your stance. For this paper, you are expected to make use of a minimum of 10-12 peer-reviewed sources of information. Although you may find general interest sources (e.g., Politico, The Atlantic) or trade publications (e.g., Editor & Publisher) to be useful, you should depend mainly on academic publications (though you can include non-academic sources as supplements). There are many useful journals to consult for this purpose, both within the field of communication, (e.g., Journal of Communication, Communication Research, New Media & Society, Political Communication, Public Opinion Quarterly, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media), and in other social sciences (e.g., American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, American Journal of Sociology). Visits with your TA can be of value in giving direction as you search for information sources relevant to your research question and preliminary thesis. My favorite database to search is the Web of Science; you may also find Google Scholar and Oxford Bibliographies Online helpful. I recommend that you use citation-management software such as Zotero to facilitate your research and streamline the attribution process. Using it from the start of your research process will eliminate the most tedious work at the end of writing your paper. 4. Revise and Restate your Thesis After you have completed your reading, you should be able to restate your final thesis in very clear and direct terms. You may, for example, be able to focus on a particular aspect of your thesis that, in your view, has the largest or most interesting implications (e.g., “Though new digital sources of political news offer rich access to national political information, only some members of the public are capable of effectively navigating the digital environment to locate quality information.” or “Social media, by effectively collapsing many communication functions within single platforms, remove a number of currently public activities from the sphere of local community and place them in the private sphere.”). Keep in mind that, if you have changed your thesis, you can now use your own “first hunch” to powerful rhetorical effect (e.g., “Although many would suppose that social media represent the next major phase of privatization in American life, these technologies in fact offer new opportunities for social interaction and community building that may strengthen communities.”) 5. Evaluate the Implications of your Thesis The final and perhaps most important part of your task will be to return to your initial Communication 300 Principles of Communication 5 question, to the reasons you found the question important, and to consider again in light of your research, what can or should be done. That is, what does your thesis suggest about logical next steps: More research? If so, what sorts of studies? Consumer awareness? If so, how? New social policy? If so, of what kind? Consideration of these issues will capture reader interest, help you say something useful, and give your work added relevance. These insights are especially useful at informing the introduction and conclusion sections of your paper. 6. Write a Well-Organized Argumentative Paper Explaining and Defending your Thesis The final step of the process involves the actual writing of your paper. Your paper will not be organized around the five preceding steps: Those are phases of the research process, and the point of your paper is not to rehearse what you went through. Your process is not important to the reader; your product is what counts. Focus on presenting your evidence and conclusions as clearly and persuasively as possible. Three general points are important to keep in mind as you draft the paper. First, be direct and to the point. State your thesis clearly and specifically in your introduction, and signal the general organization of your argument to the reader. Second, arrange supporting arguments in a coherent and structured way. Do not simply review the books and articles you have read in a serial fashion. Instead, if you have many different pieces of research to relate, synthesize them into larger, main lines of argument (e.g., three general points) in the body of your paper. Third, be certain to end your paper with a strong concluding section that wraps up the argument in a forceful way and underlines its significance. Please use the American Psychological Association’s author/date system for in­text citations, as in the following examples. This is very simple to automate with Zotero. “Agenda setting theory received an important boost from an empirical study by McCombs and Shaw (1972).” “Agenda setting research has been a key area of media research for the past quarter-century (e.g., McCombs & Shaw, 1972; Iyengar & Kinder, 1987).” List all of your references at the end of your paper, in alphabetical order, following the general style recommended by the APA, as in the following examples: Iyengar, S., & Kinder, D. R. (1987). News that matters: Television and American opinion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of the media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(1), 176-187.