Research Paper Part 1: (a) Essay Topic Selection, (b) Annotated Bibliography, (c) Sub-Topics – Part 1

Late Submission Policy

• This assignment is subject to the Late Submission penalty policy, namely 5% per day for three days.
• This page will close and will not allow further submissions after this Late Submission period has expired.
• In the event of an emergency preventing you from submitting within this time frame, special permission must be obtained from your instructor. Documentation substantiating emergency is required. In such a circumstance, if the extension is granted, the professor will reopen the submission function for you on an individual basis.
• Please do not email your submissions to your professor, either before or after the due date; all coursework should be submitted through the online course (Moodle).

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this assignment, students will be able to

• identify their essay topic/thesis to allow them to start researching and writing;
• choose research sources from a variety of scholarly materials, including books, articles, and other sources;
• assess the value of sources in terms of credibility and scholarship;
• relate and link sources to a specific aspect and need with relation to an essay topic thesis;
• write within a tight word constraint to communicate information and meaningful context;
• format an annotation in by acceptable scholarly standards; and
• identify the relevant subtopics of a research paper to allow for a systematic plan of research and writing to create a coherent organized scholarly paper.

(a) Research Paper: Essay Topic Selection

The following is a list of suggested topics for your research paper. Many of these topics are amenable to exploration by examples of power in particular instances. The intention of the research paper is to get you to explore a narrow topic in depth, and so you might wish to look at an even narrower aspect of any of the topics listed. If you wish to alter any of these topics, however, please discuss it with your instructor.

• How does social media influence power dynamics? Please provide specific examples.
• What are some of the ways in which nation states engage in power relationships with one another? Please provide specific examples.
• How do social movements create, engage, and protest power structures? Please provide specific examples.
• How does technology impact power relations? Please provide specific examples.
• There is a famous expression that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Do you think this is true? Please provide specific examples to explain why (or why not).

(b) Research Paper: Annotated Bibliography

Instructions

For this graded assignment, you are to write an annotated bibliography of materials relevant to your chosen research essay topic from eight different scholarly sources.

1. Each annotation is to be 150 words (+/- ten words) of text, excluding the bibliographic reference itself.
2. At least three sources are to be scholarly articles and two either scholarly books or a chapter from a scholarly book.
3. Otherwise, any sources that you deem to be credible (see “Evaluating sources” in the Purdue Online Writing Lab – Purdue Online Writing Lab. (n.d.). Evaluation sources of information. Retrieved from https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/conducting_research/evaluating_sources_of_information/index.html) are acceptable, such as government reports or statistical databases.
4. The annotation must describe both the content of the source and describe how the source is relevant to your essay topic.
5. Do not copy (which is plagiarism) or rely on abstracts.

(c) Research Paper: Sub-Topics

Instructions

1. You are to choose subtopics of your research essay topic
2. You should aim to have six to ten subtopics identified which will be subtopics in your final paper.
• If you wish to elaborate on each, you may.
• the more detail you put in your outline, the more able the instructor is to give you useful feedback.
3. Submit your file to the assignment submission page before the posted deadline.
4. Late penalties will be applied to subsequent graded parts of the overall assignment.