Understanding the Dynamics and Consumption Patterns of Twitter

1 X 2500 word Research Proposal (100%)

This assignment assesses students on their understanding of how to design a piece of research. Students will demonstrate:

• they have identified a researchable topic and formulated an appropriate research question.
• familiarity with the academic literature on their subject from which they have developed a rationale for their research.
• understanding of how to match their proposed methodology and data collection methods with the question.  
• they have applied their understanding from their learning across this module, drawing on a range of sessions and bibliography as appropriate.

Please note that you are not asked to actually collect the data or do the analyses for this assessment.

The research proposal should consist of:

• Title of the research project

• Introduction (approx. 250 - 400 words) should:

• capture the interest of the reader. There are many ways to achieve this. For example, you may draw on the normative importance of your research topic. You could discuss a debate in current scholarship or a puzzle that we do not yet understand.
• state your research question clearly.
• explain why we should care about the answer to your research question and the potential benefits of the research (e.g., policy and normative implications).

• Literature Review (approx. 800 - 1000 words) should:

• demonstrate detailed knowledge of relevant literature.
• focus on issues directly relevant to your research project and not be a list of summaries of individual books and articles.
• cite at least 10 and at most 20 academic books or articles that are relevant to your research
• analyse and synthesize critically relevant literature.
• situate your research project in relevant literature and argue why the research question is of importance and interest.
• include a critical and analytical rationale for why you will research this topic, based on reviewing the literature relevant to your topic.

• Research Question (approx. 50 - 200 words) should:

• identify and state clearly the research question that your research seeks to answer (Do not propose more than one research question).
• state hypotheses (if there are any) and brief rationales behind them (i.e. why do you expect the hypothesized relationships?)

• Research Design (approx. 800 - 1000 words) should:

• outline the proposed methodological approach. It is recommended that you avoid “mixed methods” as the time and effort involved are far greater than a single method.
• discuss why the proposed methodology is the most appropriate for answering your research question. Choose two other methods from the module that could be used to address your research question and then explain why you chose your proposed method instead of the others.
• identify and discuss any limitations of your proposed method in relation to your research. 
• discuss and justify in detail the data collection methods to be used. For example, if you propose content analysis or documentary analysis, you may discuss which texts, speeches or images to analyse. For interviews or a survey, include a list of key questions, information about sampling, etc. If you propose an experiment, include information about the setup of the experiment and a list of key questions. If you propose comparative method, you should discuss which cases to compare and why. 
• discuss how you plan to analyse the data to answer your research question and how that will allow you to answer your research question.
• discuss how you plan to address ethical concerns of the research (where appropriate if you are planning research involving human participants, personal data or adverse environmental impact).
• cite at least 2 and at most 5 books, chapters or journal articles in this section to describe and justify your research design

• References (not included in word count) should:
  • list all the sources (academic books, journal articles, and policy papers) that you have cited in your proposal. Please use the University of Leeds Harvard style.[1] You are allowed to use sources in foreign languages, but you are required to include English translations of their titles.