Week 2: Introductory Paper
Instructions
The working prompt for this first paper is as follows: “Write an introduction to a topic of your choosing.”
You are not writing the literature review for a topic but rather the introduction that sets-up a hypothetical literature review to follow. By sets-up it means that the introduction suggests the main areas that will be covered in the upcoming literature review. The introduction should be in the style of an academic journal paper.
The working prompt for this paper is intentionally very broad in scope to give you lots of opportunities to select a topic that is motivating to you. This is a recurrent theme throughout this course. In subsequent papers you, or your group, will decide the specific topic to which you will apply research methodologies. So, let’s define what is meant by topic here. Literally any topic associated with communication is appropriate for this paper. Due to communication being incorporated into most components of professional and working lives this provides an initially overwhelming amount of options to you.
For example, thinking very broadly, you could write about the following domains, legal settings (e.g. communication in the opinions of judges in legal cases), marketing (e.g. brand logos), human resources (e.g. employee morale), or social media (e.g. how users communicate status) to name just a few options.
To make your task more manageable you should focus on a specific topic within a domain. The examples inside parentheses in the previous sentence are concrete examples of initial steps toward providing focus. For example, the area of human resources is too broad to write coherently about in this paper as there are simply too many facets of human resources to cover. However, focusing in on employee morale narrows your research topic and substantially reduces the amount of things relevant to your paper and so makes it a more appropriate and relevant topic for your introduction paper. You may also find it useful to provide even more focus.
Here are three examples with even more focus:
a) How do companies improve employee morale?
b) The effect of social media use by companies on employee morale
c) What is the relationship between employee moral and company size?
Note: in example a and example c the topic was posed as a question whereas in example b the focus was in a non-question form. For this paper either approach is fine.
For this paper it is fine if more than one student writes on the same general topic. For example, it is likely that more than one of you will write about social media. However, there are so many different types of social media (e.g. Facebook vs. LinkedIn) and different specific topics within these social media (e.g. how does social media recruit users? vs. gender differences in social media use vs. can social media promote brand loyalty) that it is unlikely that two students will write about identical topics.
The paper you submit for this assignment is produced individually. However, you can engage in discussion with other students in the class about your paper. Later in the class there are some assignments where there is group work, but this is not the case with this assignment.
The key thing with the introduction is that it should achieve the following three main goals:
a) Set-up the hypothetical literature review that would follow this introduction in a paper
b) Let the reader know what the focus of the paper is (e.g. how does social media recruit users – to return to one of our previous examples)
c) Justify to the reader why this topic is important and why the reader should care about this topic.
The introduction should:
1. Be at least three pages long.
2. Contain at least ten references.
3. Should not have any text on the 5th page. In other words the final word of the introduction should, at a maximum, be on the 4th page.
4. You should include a title page.
5. The title page and reference page do not count toward the page limit.
6. An abstract is not needed.
7. Academic sources (e.g. journal articles) should be used when possible as sources.
8. There is no requirement to use communication journals and doing so or not doing so this has no impact on your grade
We do not review papers before submission. If you have specific questions about your paper you may discuss them with us but we do not review entire papers or pages of a paper.
After you make your formal submission of your paper, an instructor will provide feedback. You then take this feedback and make edits to your paper and extend the paper to be a formal submission at the end of the course as your final paper. More details regarding this will be provided later in the course. Although late papers are accepted with late penalties applied as outlined in the syllabus we do not provide feedback on intro papers that are submitted less than two weeks before the final paper is due. Any topic you pick is fine for the final paper.
Here are some general hints about writing a good introduction.
• Include lots of citations (it is likely you have too few rather than enough).
• Typically, for any point you are making, there are multiple possible citations that could be used. One or two citations will be sufficient.
• Make sure to review and use information from the readings in previous weeks, especially week 1 and week 2. The templates at the end of the They say/ I say book are very useful.
• As we work our way through the course you will be exposed to more and more journal articles. Pay attention to the writing within these articles to see how they have framed and written their introduction.
• Remember you are writing an introduction in an academic research style, not a business report or a book chapter. The writing styles for these formats differ from what is required here (again, look at the introductions from current journal readings within your courses).
• Write in a concise style.
• Avoid ambiguity. Try to make sure there are not two possible meanings to what you have written.
• Avoid superlatives (adjectives) that are difficult to support. If you are unfamiliar with what superlatives are, look them up on the web.
• Write literally – this is key to research writing.
• Do not plagiarize.
Objectives
Produce a research introduction on self-selected topic
Write in the research style (e.g. concisely, accurately, using citations)
Demonstrate an understanding of APA style via correct application of style rules
Improve your writing
Adept at using USC library databases to identify and access relevant literature