What messages are being sent by the writers of the posts and the individual who made the post?

Overview

For this paper, you will select 20 pieces of content to examine both the post and online comments section. For example, you can analyze a post and the comments section of a digital newspaper, TikTok posts and comments, short YouTube videos and comments, Twitter posts and comments, Facebook posts and comments, Reddit posts and comments, or something similar (pending permission from me). Please keep in mind that whatever you choose should have a sizable number of comments. Please aim for a comments section that contains a sizable number of comments (ranging from 100-200 per post or more comments). If the online source’s comment section only contains a handful of comments, you should select another. The goal is for you to have enough data in order to analyze, interpret, and write up your findings section.

Introduction/Methodology

The first part of your paper should be an introduction to the topic or issue that you will be discussing. This will require you to include at least 5 peer-reviewed sources on articles related to your topic. Please be sure to include a works cited page. Here is also where you’ll describe your methodology – where you gathered your data, from which online sources/justify and provide an explanation as to why you selected the sources for your study, and approximately how many comments were read and analyzed. Describe your research question.

In this section you need to also specify your criteria for data inclusion, parameters used, coding/scheme, and list of code used.

Also, please provide an overview of the selected content. What information is the content highlighting? What does the content look like (if there are images or videos)? If these are commercial or short story-like what are they featuring? Who is featured in them? Etc?

Findings/Analysis Section

Once you’ve decided on your topic and research question, and decided on your methodology, you’re going to examine the content and the associated comments. This requires that you look for patterns. What did you discover? Were the comments negative or positive? Was there a word or words or term that was used repeatedly? Was there underlying racism/sexism/ageism/bodyshaming, etc (if this applies)? Was there a pattern of topics most highlighted/commented upon? Giving percentages and counting is expected. You must also be sure to incorporate example comments from your dataset. It is not enough to simply describe the content and general themes. You need to highlight and pull out specific comments and examples that speak to your findings. Remember this serves as your evidence.

Next, what conclusions can you draw based on the data you’ve analyzed? In other words, what messaging are both the posts and associated comments conveying to you? What do the posts and comments section have in common? What might the comments made say about our society? What messages are being sent by the writers of the posts and the individual who made the post? How might the patterns you discovered impact people reading them on a societal level? (For example, if there are a lot of body-positive comments on a TikTok video, might that show that young people are very open to different body types?)

Conclusion

The last part of your paper should be the conclusion. This is the time to wrap up your ideas and concluding thoughts. Read over your completed paper and make sure any point you might have brought up has been resolved, discussed, and dealt with clearly. Briefly discuss the strengths and limitations of this particular qualitative method and avenues for future research.