Effective Strategies For Creating A Dissertation Proposal On Mass Media
You’re nearing the end of your graduate school studies in mass media and are preparing yourself for the final months of intensive research and dissertation writing. Before getting to the hard part, though, you need to submit a dissertation proposal which is reviewed for approval by your advisor. A lot of students don’t really know what goes into a proposal and find this to be as difficult as writing the dissertation itself. Here are some effective strategies for creating a great proposal on mass media:
- Develop a short plan and get started early
- Understand that you aren’t writing a long paper
- Get familiar with each of the required sections
- Ensure the citations in your review are accurate
Usually there is a very loose deadline for submitting your proposal to your advisor, but this doesn’t mean you should wait around until halfway through the semester to hand in your document for review. Remember that it needs to be approved before you can start work on your research. Develop a short plan and try to get your proposal turned in within two weeks of starting the semester. This will give you more time to focus on the major project.
A lot of people panic when writing proposals because they believe they have to submit an academic award-winning piece. Most proposals have anywhere between a 500 to 1000 word limit. And as you are familiar with writing academic research papers for mass media you know that this amount of words is really not much at all. Get your hands on a sample proposal so that you can visualize the page length and have an easier time getting your message across in the limited space.
You need to know the individual sections that should be covered by the proposal. Generally, you should provide a sentence or two explaining your reasons behind undertaking your specific study, what you hope to achieve with the study, and what your study will contribute to the field. Make mention of any limitations you can reasonably expect and provide a draft hypothesis of what you think the outcome will be.
When writing your literature review, which is really the only additional page that will go with your proposal, you need to make sure you have listed the appropriate citation information. Your advisor needs to see that you have conducted some preliminary research and that you have planned on reading specific works you think will help your study on mass media go as planned. Without appropriate citation information you might not get recommendations for works that would supplement your own.