The final assessment of ARIN3620 - which the entry tickets, research exercise, tutorials and the readings all lead up to - is the research proposal.

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The final assessment of ARIN3620 - which the entry tickets, research exercise, tutorials and the readings all lead up to - is the research proposal.This is a 2000-word submission in which you outline how you would go about answering a research question.You should provide a title for your research and then use these four subheadings, and answer:

AIMS AND BACKGROUND (~400 words)

What is the background to your area? What field are you researching? What previous work has been done in this area? What did such research find? What is the cutting edge of scholarship in your field? What are you aiming to do? What is your research question? What will your project discover? I suggest writing this as two paragraphs, the first being background, and the second being aims, which should be a logical extension of the background - you first tell us the current state of research in your field, and then you tell us what you propose to do.

SIGNIFICANCE AND INNOVATION (~400 words)

Why does this research matter? Why should anyone care? What will be the value of the findings? How and in what wayas wil your project be new? What pressing concerns will this answer? Will you be using a new methodology? Will you examining your domain in a new way? Will you be bringing new conceptual or theoretical material to bear? Why is your project not just a repeat of previous work? Why do your project now? Why is your project important? What will this tell us that we didn't previously know?

APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY (800 words)

How will you carry out your project? This splits into two parts, a) your conceptual or theoretical approach and b) your methodology. In the first case: how are you framing your work? What theories will help inform your method and help you understand your data? Why have you chosen these? Why are they appropriate? What tools do they give you for conducting this research project? What literature and what thinkers will you draw on? In the second case: what method(s) are you using? Why these methods? What do they offer you? How will you recruit participants (if relevant)? How will you narrow down the availability of online data (if relevant)? How will you secure informed consent (if relevant)? How long will your interviews be and what sorts of things will you ask (if relevant)? How will you distribute your survey and what sorts of questions will it ask (if relevant)? Etc etc. And: how will your chosen method answer your research question? Why are these methods the best possible choice for your research question?

ETHICS STATEMENT (~400 words)

How will you make sure your research is conducted in an ethical manner? What are the main potential ethical issues with your research project? How will you handle them? How will you prevent harm? Do you need to secure informed consent, and if so, why? Is your data public or private? What are the implications of this? What possible harms might arise? Can these be justified given the benefit of the project, or must they be avoided instead, and if so, how? What are the ethical implications of using data from interviews, survey, data analysis, etc? What materials will you provide participants (if relevant)?

Important: this module isaboutwriting a research proposal.If you want to carry out your research - or another project - we suggest that you consider pursuing an Honours degree, which will give you a fullyearof time dedicated to carrying outan original piece of researchwith one of the Digital Cultures scholars listed below.

DO NOT CARRY OUT THE RESEARCH. YOU CANNOT CARRY OUT RESEARCH WITHOUT ETHICAL CLEARANCE FROM THE UNIVERSITY. The goal of this is writing a research PROPOSAL.

RUBRIC:

Criteria DESCRIPTION Pts

Aims and Background What is the background of your area? What has other research shown? What do you plan to do? 15

Significance and Innovation What is new about your research? Why does your research matter? What outcomes should we expect? Why will these be valuable? 15

Approach and Methodology What will you do? Why have you chosen this method, or methods? If multiple methods, why do you need multiple methods? How will you carry out this method? If involving human subjects, how will you recruit? Sample? What will you ask them? If nonhuman subjects, how will you choose your content to analyse, or data to analyse? How will you conduct your analysis? What conceptual framework(s) will you employ? How will your method answer your research question? 30

Ethics How will you conduct your research ethically? What pitfalls have you identified and avoided? Remember to talk about things like consent forms, and participant information sheets, if relevant. How will data be stored? 15

Writing and ReferencingQuality of writing, appropriate referencing. APA 7 25

References to use:

Richardson, L. (2000). Writing: A method of inquiry. In K. Denzin, & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed.) (pp. 923948). SAGE.BEFORE TUTORIAL

McKee, H. A., & Porter, J. E. (2009).The ethics of Internet research: A rhetorical, case-based process. Peter Lang.Read Chapter 1: The ethical complexities of Internet research.

Neuman, W. L. (2003).Social research methods.Allyn & Bacon.Read pp. 116134.

Newell, R. (2008). Questionnaires. In N. Gilbert (Ed.),Researching social life(3rd ed.) (pp. 94115). SAGE.

Anderson, J., & Rainie, L. (2012).The future of smart systems. Pew Internet Center.

May, T. (2011).Social research: Issues, methods and process(4th ed.). Open University Press.Read Chapter 6:Interviewing Method and process.Cronin, A. (2001). Focus groups. In N. Gilbert (Ed.),Researching social life(pp. 164176). SAGE.

Burgess, J., & Matamoros-Fernndez, A. (2016). Mapping sociocultural controversies across digital media platforms: One week of #gamergate on Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr.Communication Research and Practice, 2(1), 7996.

Marres, N., &Weltevrede, E. (2013). Scraping the social? Issues in live social research.Journal of Cultural Economy,6(3), 313335.

Kaur-Gill, S., & Dutta, M. J. (2017). Digital ethnography. In C. S. Davis & R. F. Potter (Eds.),The International encyclopedia of communication research methods. John Wiley & Sons.Kaur-Gill, S., & Dutta, M. J. (2017). Digital ethnography.pdfDownload Kaur-Gill, S., & Dutta, M. J. (2017). Digital ethnography.pdfHine, C. (2017). From virtual ethnography to the embedded, embodied, everyday Internet. In L. Hjorth, H. Horst, A. Galloway, & G. Bell (Eds.), The Routledge companion to digital ethnography(pp. 21-28). Routledge.Hine, C. (2017). From virtual ethnography to the embedded, embodied, everyday Internet.pdfDownload Hine, C. (2017). From virtual ethnography to the embedded, embodied, everyday Internet.pdf

Bouma, G. D. (1996).The research process(3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.Read Chapter 2: Research as a way of knowing (pp. 619).

Arber, S. (1993). The research process. In N. Gilbert (Ed.),Researching social life(pp. 198207). SAGE.

Baym, N. K. (2006). Finding the quality in qualitative research. In D. Silver, A. Massanari, & S. Jones (Eds),Critical cyberculture studies(pp. 7787). New York University Press.

boyd, d., & Crawford, K. (2012). Critical questions for big data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon.Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 662679.https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878Links to an external site.Links to an external site.Salganik, M. J. (2018).Bit by bit: Social research in the digital age. Princeton University Press.https://www.bitbybitbook.com/en/1st-ed/observing-behavior/Links to an external site..Read Chapter 2: Observing behavior.

Machi, L. A., & McEvoy, B. T. (2016).The literature review: Six steps to success. Corwin Press.

Read Chapter 1 Step 1: Select a topic.

Orgad, S. (2009). Question two: How can researchers make sense of the issues involved in collecting and interpreting online and offline data?. In A. Markham, & N. Baym (Eds),Internet Inquiry: Conversations about method(pp. 3367). SAGE.

Markham, A. N. (2016). Ethnography in the digital internet era: From fields to flow, descriptions to interventions. In N. K.Denzin, & Y. S. Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.),The SAGE handbook of qualitative research(pp. 650-668). SAGE.