Scholarly Journal

TOPIC SELECTION, JOURNAL SELECTION

This prompt might seem restrictive, but keep in mind that communication studies is one of the most interdisciplinary areas of study around. Areas of communication studies include (but are not limited to): business communication, interpersonal communication, intercultural communication, environmental communication, and gender communication. Interested in advertising? Technology? Video games? Exercise? Television shows? Zombies? We can find an article for you, but note that you may not particularly like or agree with the article. This essay will ask you to dive deep into your topic, so finding a specific topic that is well covered in these journals is important.

There are several academic journals you can choose from. Some of those academic journals are:

You can start with a specific topic, a general topic, or the journal itself.

To search our databases for an article: (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THAT YOU START HERE!)

• Go to main library web page (library.sjsu.edu)
• Scroll down to Research Guides(middle of the page) go to the drop-down menu under Subject Guides, and select Communication Studies.
• From there, you’ll use the side menu bar and click Databases and Articles.
• There are several databases you can use, but I would suggest using the main database, Communication & Mass Media Complete.
• Once you use a search term, you’re probably going to get thousands of possible results. How do you narrow down that list? I’ll give you some tips.
• On the left-hand column, under Limit To, you’ll want to select Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals. You can also select Full Textarticles, since that will give you the PDF. Then scroll down and click Publication, and then click the Show More From there you’ll get a list of all the different scholarly journals that have articles that match your keyword. Select journals that include “communication” or “speech” in the title, and then click Update. (NOTE: There are journals in this database that are NOT communication studies journals, so make sure that YOUR CHOICE is an article from a communication studies journal.) See below:

ANALYZING YOUR ARTICLE AND COMPOSING YOUR FINAL PAPER

There are three parts to this paper: the summary, analysis of the strengths and limitations of the paper, and your researched proposal for a next step. Note: You may agree or disagree completely with the article you choose. Either way you can evaluate the strengths and limitations of the article and can talk about what you think should follow this research.

INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSION

The introduction should include an attention-getter to gain the interest of the reader and introduce the topic, your thesis, and preview your main points. The thesis should briefly include your argument about the article and hint at your conclusions.

The conclusion will also be short and should include your thesis and a review of your main points. You should briefly provide closure to the paper. You might use this section to recommend or not recommend reading the article based on your analysis.

BODY SECTION: SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE

Translate the meaning of your article for a non-academic audience, once that is perhaps not as well-versed in the area but who still wants access to this information. While you should summarize the article for your readers, please do not feel as though you need to excerpt the entire article all over again in your essay. This section should be about two to three pages long. Consider the following questions to answer in the summary of your article:

• What was the article about?
• Does the author indicate what other research or occasion led to this article? What is the interest in this research?
• What questions are the authors trying to study/answer? What are the research questions or hypotheses?
• How does the researcher conduct the research? Interviews? Statistical analysis? Observation? Content analysis?
• What are the findings? Why do they matter inside or outside of academia?
• Besides academics, who would be a good audience for this article? Who shouldread this article?

BODY SECTION: STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS

Now that you have offered your reader an overview of the article, you should then begin to explore, using additional research:

• the article’s potential usefulness to the intended scholarly audience; what did you like about the article, and what you think the author (or authors) did well;
• the author’s assumptions, limitations, and misconceptions; where does the article fall short (aside from not directly addressing a non-scholarly audience)?
• what, if anything, have other researchers said about this article or topic? How does your chosen article fit within the larger body of research around this topic? This will require you to do some additional reading about your topic. This is why topic selection is so important for this essay! There has to be additional research for you to explore.

BODY SECTION: Synthesis and Future Research

One of the limitations to scholarly research and writing is that its findings are, in general, relevant to the outside world, but the writing style itself sends a contradictory message. After all, we also don’t all have subscriptions to these academic journals. In general, these researchers find other avenues to distribute their research and findings, and you are going to make such a suggestion.

The article you’ve chosen should make a point about future implications to better society (or part of society) in some way. What are those implications? Who do you think would benefit the most from this research?

Be sure that you write in a style that is appropriate for your chosen audience, while still engaging their attention and sharing the author’s (or authors’) insights.