proposal

The influence of the government’s media regulations on the Chinese media industries Part 1: Approximately 800 words Research Question

This should be expressed as single sentence ending in a question mark.

Aims and Objectives300

General statements as what you intend to achieve with this research. This section should be no more than 4 sentences long.

Justification500

This section is the first draft of your introduction. In it, you need to state why this research needs to be done. The aim is to establish that there is a gap in existing knowledge, which you are going to fill through your own particular project.

You can reflect on real-world situations that pose difficulties, and you may draw on existing industry or government data, to outline the current situation that you are interested in, in a way that will support your argument. You can combine this with a brief summary of what the academic literature says about these

situations and what is still unknown.

Part 2: Approximately 2,200 words Literature Review

In this section you will identify major relevant studies in your area, indicate how others have approached similar questions, including definitions of key terms and concepts, and show what the major areas of debate are in the field. The aim is to show where your research fits into the field, and what it can contribute in light of existing academic knowledge.

This section requires critique rather than simple description of what the literature says. In other words, you must describe what is currently known about the area you are interested in, reflect on the relevance of this knowledge to your question, and consider what the literature does not tell you. Critiques may focus

on the methodologies or analytical approaches of previous studies (for example, you might argue that an over-emphasis on quantitative techniques in audience research has resulted in a lack of understanding of actual experiences of audiences viewing a particular type of programme, or film, or that the history of cinema in a particular era has used samples of men to explore the industry, and ignored the experiences of women, or that analyses of the divisive nature of media news have focused on class and ethnicity but have ignored religion).

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Part 3: Approximately 1,000 words Research Design and Methods500

In this section you outline how your research will be structured and present the methods you intend to use to collect and analyse your data. The aim is to show how the choices you have made will enable you to answer your research question. Your choices should follow logically from the discussion you present in your introduction and literature review.

At this stage, you should be able to be specific about your chosen method(s) and the associated processes, the reasons why that method is appropriate, and the limitations of the study based on your use of that method.

Provisional Timetable400

This should be included as an appendix and include major landmarks which can be used to monitor your progress (see the dates in the dissertation module handbook). It is also an opportunity to assess your workload and anticipate any problems that may arise, e.g. research participants’ availability, supervisor availability.

List of References100