Research Literacy

Definition and components:

Research literacy within the communication discipline is demonstrated by the ability to create and complete at least one inquiry project that:

• Articulates a communication problem, strategy, or initiative to be analyzed and evaluated
• Adopts an epistemological standpoint
• Locates, aggregates, and analyzes credible research
• Drafts a literature review that supports and illuminates a chosen area of inquiry
• Composes and supports arguments using at least one theoretical framework

The research literacy component has been extremely important in every single assignment that I have completed during my M.A. It is crucial to understand first what a research is and how to develop and complete a good research in order to accomplish an outstanding research that surpasses all the academic standards and peer review processes.

Defining the mission (thesis) of my topic research has always been a challenge for me. When this step is fulfilled, the workflow process to follow becomes straightforward. From an epistemology standpoint, I analyzed the steps of my research and identified the research questions that I pursue to answer. It is important for me to maintain the main purpose of my investigation and substantiate how the sources that I am using are helping me to develop the analysis, yield findings, and provide solutions.

The Literature Review process is a significant step that reinforces my professionalism as a researcher. It allows me to demonstrate how I identify, analyze, and summarize, in a significant way, previous and existing literature about my research topic.  One of my personal goals when producing a Literature Review is to go beyond a simple summary of academic and popular sources. I discuss and reflect critically upon other sources, and identity possible gaps in academic researches.

One of the inquiry projects that I enjoyed the most was about the Fake News Phenomenon in Twitter, and its impact on the audience. (Com 638 – Strategic for Global Communication). The Literature Review for this research generated an “in-depth†analysis about the social media platforms and the “fake news†phenomenon. This Literature Review helped me reflect upon the role of mainstream and civic media on social networking sites, the need of a discoursed analysis, and the role of the audience as a user-created content.

The Literature Review supports the importance of our researches and helps to compare and contrast among other types of academic work.

Example:

Digital presentation: Applying Giddens to Huffington Post