Using source synthesis to frame a research problem.
This literature review gathers scholarly conversations about political influencers and social media rhetoric in order to establish a research gap for the larger semester project.
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Reflection
This reflection frames the literature review before the embedded essay and process artifacts below.
When planning and writing my literature review paper, I progressed in multiple course outcomes, including Generating Inquiry, Multiple Ways of Writing, Information Literacy, Research Genre Production, and Revision. My research question started with a topic I was interested in: AI. I was originally going to write a research paper on the rhetorical strategies users employ on Reddit during the debate over AI-generated images/art. However, I quickly realized this topic wasn’t a good choice because there isn't much data to gather on both sides to satisfy an ENC 1102-level research paper. I then decided to shift to a more popular and relevant topic: politics on social media and the rhetoric surrounding it. I was able to find plenty of research articles on the topic and the rhetorical strategies used by political influencers on social media. I also found many papers that compared this rhetoric to that of traditional media. I identified a specific issue in that field that had not yet been covered by scholars. I had decided to base my research paper on the controversy and rhetoric surrounding the Minnisoda childcare facilities' alleged fraud. When choosing my scholarly sources, I looked for works that compared the rhetorical strategies employed by digital political influencers, contrasted those strategies with those of traditional journalists/mainstream media, and examined the reasons and incentives behind both rhetorical styles. For the course outcome Multiple Ways of Writing, I used a couple of strategies to evaluate sources. During my research, I read each article’s abstract section for a brief summary of its content and purpose. I reviewed the subject headings to identify sections relevant to citing in my research paper. I also used citation tracing to find several related articles on digital political discourse and online communication. As for Information Literacy, I looked for secondary sources that supported any factual claims I made, such as the percentage of young adults who use social media as a news source. For that claim, I cited the Pew Research Center to support my claims with verified research. The secondary sources helped me strengthen my paper by providing trusted sources to back my claims. When it came to Contributing to Knowledge, I used research and quotes from scholarly sources, as well as data from secondary sources, to draw conclusions and answer my research question. Lastly, I progressed in Research Genere Production and Revision by using the rubric as a checklist to ensure I followed the guidelines, utilizing error correction tools like Grammerly to correct any errors in sentence structure, grammar, and spelling, reading feedback from minor assignments to make sure I was learning from previous mistakes, and using AI to grade my essay based of the rubric and assignment as one final check before submission.
Literature review
The full essay is embedded below as the main evidence of my academic research writing in ENC 1102.
Related Artifacts
Quick reference to the supporting research materials.
Research Log
While completing my research log, I developed the course outcome Multiple Ways of Writing by evaluating sources. During my research, I read each article’s abstract section for a brief summary of its content and purpose. I reviewed the subject headings to identify sections relevant to citing in my research paper. I also used citation tracing to find several related articles on digital political discourse and online communication. As for Information Literacy, I looked for secondary sources that supported any factual claims I made, such as the percentage of young adults who use social media as a news source. For that claim, I cited the Pew Research Center to support my claims with verified research. The secondary sources helped me strengthen my paper by providing trusted sources to back my claims.
Synthesis Matrix
When completing my Synthesis Matrix, I demonstrated Digital Literacy and Multimodal Skills by recording my research in a Google Sheet, which enabled me to easily compare articles, key arguments, and key findings. I used formatting tools like bold, outlines, and highlighting to make important information stand out. The Synthesis Matrix made it easy to create multisource citations and to find the quotes I needed based on the summaries and keywords of my sources. For Information Literacy, I chose sources that directly related to my research topic of political influencers and rhetorical strategies on social media. I used reading strategies from the Reading Academic Texts slideshow, such as starting with abstracts to determine relevance, scanning selection headings to locate topics, and finding repeated keywords. I also used citation tracing to find other articles that were relevant to my research topic.
Draft Lit Review Body Paragraph
While drafting my literature review body paragraph, I developed the course outcomes: Research Genre Production and Information Literacy. In this draft, I began with a topic generalization about political communication and ended the sentence with a multi-source citation. I also introduced each scholar before quoting them to avoid abrupt quotes that would break the paper's flow. At this point, I had not made my intro paragraph or my subject heading. I conclude the paragraph by pointing out the research gap I intend to address in my research paper. In the final version of my Literature Review paper, I moved the full research question to the intro paragraph to improve the paper's flow and sequencing.
Brainstorming Research Question
While completing the brainstorming assignment, I developed the course outcome of Generating Inquiry. I started by listing personal interests that would be easy to research online. Then I shortened the list to a couple of topics and, below each topic, listed common online debates for that topic. My original topic on AI debates was too broad, and there wasnt enough rhetoric online to write a research paper on. As a result, I changed my research question to a topic with much more existing research, while still addressing a specific issue that lacked research I could write my paper on. This process strengthened my Information Literacy by allowing me to evaluate sources and determine which would support my research question before settling on it.