Reference no: EM133719089

Question: For our research project in this class, you will be examining a contemporary issue in social media & personal relationships. Your goal for this project will be to learn everything you can about the issue from both the popular press & the academic research about the topic. You'll write a paper about what you have learned and then create a piece of media translating what you've learned for a non-academic audience. (Note: You won't be required to share what you create outside our class.)

We will undertake this project in a series of steps throughout the remainder of our course. There will be several checkpoints where you will do things like choose your topic, collect research materials, and outline your thoughts.
"The Role of Social Media in Supporting Mental Health: Exploring Online Communities and Social Support"
The final project for this class will consist of three items. First, you'll write a research paper providing an overview of your communication issue, discussing the relevant research in the area, and making some recommendations (based in the research) that will help others navigating this issue/topic. Secondly, you will create a piece of media that discusses what you have learned & your recommendations. (In other words, the media piece you create is going to be you translating the research into a format that would make your explanations & recommendations more accessible to someone who had not taken this class/did not have a background in communication.) Finally, we'll be sharing the media pieces with the class as a whole & you will be providing responses (much like what we do on the discussion boards) to what others have shared.

It's crucial that we begin this process by thinking about the paper (which is due on April 19th). As noted above, the goal of the paper is to explain the issue/topic, discuss the relevant research, & then make some recommendations. Your paper will have the following sections:

Introduction

In this section, you will gain the reader's attention, establish the thesis of the project overall, & preview the paper.

Explain the Topic/Issue

In this section, you will explain the topic/issue that your paper focuses on. Your goal will be to clarify what you are studying & why it is important.

Literature Review: Peer-Reviewed, Academic

In this section, you will review the relevant research that has been published in the peer-reviewed, academic literature about this topic/issue.

Literature Review: Popular Press

In this section, you will review the relevant research that has been published in the popular press about this topic/issue.
Recommendations

In this section, you will create a set of recommendations regarding this topic/issue that are designed to improve people's communication experiences. (Note: These recommendations cannot be things that you just made up based on what sounds good or on your experience. You need to draw on the research that you discussed in the previous two sections to create evidence-based suggestions & it should be clear how your recommendations connect to that research.)

Conclusion
In this section, you will summarize your findings, review what was discussed in the paper, & seek to address some of the big-picture, "so what" questions.

In each of the "main body" sections of this paper (explain the topic, literature reviews (peer-reviewed & popular press), recommendations), you'll have some subpoints. (Please use the listed section headings when formatting your paper.) Remember here that your are not just regurgitating some facts you read about your topic/issue. Rather, you are creating a series of organized, persuasive arguments about the topic. You'll be citing the research about the topic/issue in each section of this paper.