The purpose of this assignment is to get you going on your final paper and to ensure that there is scholarly research on your topic. This is important. If there aren’t any scholarly sources on your topic, you will need to shift it a bit so that you can draw on the existing research.

Important: You MUST relate your paper topic to the course and new media specifically.

There is a template for this assignment in the Research Project Module. If you are having a hard time visualizing this assignment, download the template and fill it out to complete the assignment.

This assignment must include the following:

1. A clear statement regarding the topic you are interested in researching. I encourage you to think of a topic that’s important to you or an aspect of new media that you think has affected you. Your topic statement needs to be fairly narrow. For example, social media and politics is too broad of a topic area. Social media and political partisanship or social media and activism, on the other hand, are topics that you can write about. Your preliminary topic should be six to eight sentences long and should be in line with the sources you provide below. This means if you want to write a paper about social media and activism, your scholarly sources need to be on this topic rather than social media generally. Be sure to tell me why you are interested in a topic area. This can help me point you to additional sources. 

2. At least seven scholarly sources related to your topic AND their abstracts (or descriptions if it is a book).  I encourage you to find more than seven sources so that you can get better feedback and increase your opportunities to earn all of the points associated with the assignment. If, for example, you submit eight sources and only seven are scholarly, you still have an opportunity to earn all of the points. If you submit seven sources and only three are scholarly, you will not earn all of the points associated with the assignment.  There are resources in the Research Project Module to help you find peer-reviewed sources. For each source, provide the following:

• The complete citation, which includes:
  • The author’s first and last name
  • Year published
  • The name of the article or book
  • The name of the journal the article is published in
  • The volume and issue in which the article appeared
  • The page numbers of the article
• A link to the article online
• A copy of the article’s abstract

If you are not sure what scholarly sources are, see the Resources for the Research Project module. If you still are not clear, send the citation and the link to your mentor for assistance. 

Point breakdown