Discussion: Study of mediated public communication
Discussion: Study of mediated public communication
Research design report to design and pilot-test a study of mediated public communication
Students must use academic referencing and a bibliography in this essay (see the Postgraduate Student Handbook for more information and guidance on Referencing and Academic Honesty).The task for this assignment is to design and pilot-test a study of mediated public communication, and to produce and submit a 2800-word report of the research. While the choice of public communication issue or topic to research is up to you, you must draw your research approaches or methods from those that have been introduced in the module (Including Content Analysis, Framing, CORPUS ANALYSIS, Big Data, Visual Communication Analysis, Focus Group, Critical Discourse Analysis). The research design needs to be for a full-scale hypothetical study, but for this assignment only a small-scale pilot-testing of your design is required in terms of actual data-collection and analysis. A general outline of what is required is given, and full details of the nature of the assignment will be given during the first weeks of the module in the lectures.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.