Assignment Details
Research Methods 1 assignment 2 is a summary literature review (1500w total,
excluding a reference list / bibliography that covers all sources cited within the
literature review). This assignment accounts for 60% of your overall mark for
Research Methods 1.
Assignment guidance
The purpose of this assignment is to demonstrate that you understand how to
produce a literature review in relation to ONE of the four Media Management
dissertation models.
A literature review is designed to support and justify a research proposal and
needs to establish the relevant research context for the reader. It needs to work
selectively and precisely through the relevant prior literature, as well as to build
towards a logical and convincing context for your chosen research topic.
Therefore, a successful literature review needs to balance and weave together
a number of different elements.
First, you need to set the scene. You should introduce and outline your research
topic and focus, explaining to the reader how your idea aligns with ONE of the
four Media Management dissertation models. This need not be more than a
couple of paragraphs – just a succinct outline of your key research topic, and
one or two lines that get across why this project matters with reference to ONE
of the dissertation models.
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The purpose of this introduction is to convey why your project is a viable and
interesting Media Management research. If possible, contextualise this with
reference to grey literature and/or relevant scholarship, using knowledge
established within prior work to set out the salient aspects of the research topic,
and the key industrial, policy or technological developments (which the reader
may not be as familiar with).
Secondly, you should identify and critically evaluate key works within to your
research topic. You also make clear what the dominant existing research
approaches and disciplines are, critically engage with these and identify
relevant gaps in knowledge. In the main body of your literature review, a
literature review provides an opportunity to demonstrate your conceptual grasp
of the subject area, both through the quality of critical insight you achieve in
your evaluation of the individual sources and through the skill with which you
construct intellectual narratives and create juxtapositions. Exactly how you
choose to structure your review will depend on the research you are proposing,
the dissertation model you apply, the range of literature areas you require to
cover and the nature of the particular sources you need to discuss, but it often
makes sense to handle the discussion of books and articles on the same topic
together.
In this process, it is important to keep in mind that the core aim throughout the
review is to establish a clear focus on the aspect of the topic that will be central
to your research and to prioritise the particular perspective you wish to take.
This means that you may legitimately decide to give less weight and space to
certain widely recognised landmark studies than you might do within a
conventional topic-focused essay. It is important to acknowledge such works,
but they can be dealt with briefly, in a way that highlights the distinctive
approach you have chosen to take, rather than becoming a diversion from your
argument. Much of the work of a literature review is about demonstrating that
you have searched and evaluated the existing research with care and diligence,
and have identified both useful precedents and significant gaps/omissions.
In the literature review exercises in the seminars of Research Methods 1 you
were asked to evaluate a few pieces of sample literature separately, for this
assignment you are expected to show that you can see the intellectual conflicts
between different arguments and methods. A strong literature review will
explicitly highlight these relationships to the reader and show how they are
relevant to the conceptual development of your study. In other words, in
addition to demonstrating an awareness of the provenance/status of the works
you discuss, and their individual relevance to the research you want to
undertake, a literature review should begin to synthesise the ideas within the
selected literature, creating a tailormade academic literature should be carefully
constructed, so that it enables you to conclude with a logical and convincing
argument for the necessity of the key research questions and methodological
approaches put forward within your research plan.
Referencing
Please make sure that all works in your proposal are properly cited in the text
(Author, date: page) using the APA or Harvard style and included in your
reference list at the end of the literature review. You may find the resources on
the Research Methods Moodle useful.
The assignment deadline is:
Marking Criteria
• How clearly have you explained your research focus and aligned the
literature review to one of the Media Management dissertation models.
• How well have you sourced, chosen, summarised, evaluated and
referenced the chosen sources? How clearly have you demonstrated
their relevance to your project?
• How successful have you been in identifying the key texts and areas of
reading that would support, contextualise and inform your proposal?
• What level of critical insight do you achieve in your handling of the
literature?
• How well is your proposal structured, presented and referenced?
