BODY OF KNOWLEDGE

BODY OF KNOWLEDGE

The first thing that comes to my mind when I listen to these words is a huge pile of books and readings. The body of knowledge is vast and inexplicable. The journey of research starts with finding an appropriate topic which not only interests you but also contributes to the body of knowledge. I came from India with the eagerness to learn and explore. I did learn a lot in my first semester and I think that it is continuing and progressing well. My interactions with the faculty and the students introduced me to many new facets of mass communication. I plan to do my masters in strategic communication (public relations). I did read a lot about the latest things going on in PR, the theories of PR and much more.

As a part of my core classes, I did a literature review on Karl Weick’s “sense making” and “leadership”. All the readings and knowledge did give me some direction to where I should go. I plan to study and explore the Situational Theory given by Grunig. I also plan to combine it with the Dialogic Theory and see how the field of PR is undergoing a paradigm shift. The process of deciding a research topic follows a deductive approach, where one starts from an abstract idea and then comes down to a more concrete one. I plan to add new dimensions to both the theories and contribute to the body of knowledge. The basic assumption of Grunig’s Situational theory is that publics form around specific situations or issues produced by the consequences that organizations have on people outside the organization. This theory also explains when and how people communicate about the situations in which they are involved. Public relations practitioners utilize a dialogic approach when building organization-public relationships because a dialogic approach builds relationships that serve both organizational and public interests. This can be combined with the situational theory to better understand the publics. I think these theories when studied together in context with one another will contribute and refine the PR field.

Adding to the JMC body of knowledge

Adding to the JMC body of knowledge--Deb Wallevand

The "body of knowledge" is ubiquitous. The "body of knowledge" is broad. The first daunting step to take when conducting research in such a way that it connects to the "body of knowledge" in journalism and mass communication is identifying what is missing or lacking in the existing literature. Research is finding out what you do not already know. No one knows everything, but everybody knows something. By writing a literature review, the researcher can convey to the reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Reviewing the field allows the researcher to build on the platform of existing knowledge ad ideas. Additionally, this process is important because it demonstrates that the researcher is not re-inventing the wheel (doing research that has already been done).

A literature review is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries. A good literature review requires the following attributes: the ability to conduct exhaustive bibliographic searches, the ability to organize the collected data meaningfully, describe, critique and relate each source to the subject of the research, present the organized literature logically, and last, but not least, to correctly cite all sources mentioned.

It is necessary to consult a wide range of information sources in the process of connecting to the "body of knowledge." Some of these sources include, but are not limited to scholarly journals, books, newspapers, standards, statistics, maps, and government legislation. For example, I utilize Google Scholar quite a bit to find articles regarding women's sports and the media. Not only does this allow me to find articles, but it shows me how many times a certain article has been cited. This in turn tells me if that piece of academia is considered important by those scholars who contribute to "the body of knowledge."

There are cons to doing research because it carries with it an inherent danger to those who are close minded or comfortable in their preconceptions. There are people, including researchers, who reject anything that contradicts, or at least doesn't support, their views of the world. Research may show that what you already know is incorrect. This is a hard thing to accept.

On the other hand, the pros of this process of conducting research certainly outweigh the cons. As I mentioned earlier, a literature review shows where the new research fits into the existing body of knowledge. It justifies the research. The body of knowledge is ever-evolving and it is kind of exciting to think about the fact that your work will help shape the field and the direction that it is headed. Your research may help refine, refocus or even change the field.

Contributing to the Body of Knowledge

Contributing to the Body of Knowledge

When conducting research during undergraduate course work, there is no need to really think about the field as a whole, you pick a topic, conduct minor research and put together a paper of 5-7 pages. Starting out in graduate school, I was quite surprised on day one to hear that my first paper would be between 20-25 pages. The research was so different, and I realized quickly that my undergraduate studies had done little to help me think on a theoretical level.

Soon after starting graduate school, I began hearing this term “body of knowledge” being thrown around. I realize now that the body of knowledge is the world around us, what the past and present researchers have studied and that this body has natural holes within it where new researchers (or graduate students) can find their niche within it.

Journalism and mass communications is in a unique situation compared to other fields. The field is still young (in comparison to other fields) and there is much spill over from other bodies of knowledge that relates to out field. For example, for my professional project I must look into areas such as human resources, job recruitment and gender roles in order to develop a sufficient literature review to work from.

The body of knowledge is important because of the starting place it provides the future researchers. It also points towards new areas of study, giving even more potential areas for those unsure of what they wish to study. The body of knowledge is by no means complete, and never will be as journalism and mass communication is an ever evolving field.

I plan to conduct my professional project on the subject of recruiting more women into the field of sports information directing within higher education institutes. I feel this will connect me to a very large gap in the current body of knowledge, seeing as there is little existing research in the field of sports information directing. I find it interesting that so many female public relations students express interest in working in the sports information directing industry, but the current research shows that very few women are within the field.

Finding these sorts of holes is key when conducting research which you wish to use as a contribution to the body of knowledge for any subject. Our field is lucky because the body of knowledge is continuously growing into new areas, continuously adding new gaps that require study and rapidly changing with the technology. It is unfortunate that this idea of contributing to the greater good of the journalism and mass communication field is not introduced to undergraduate students more often. I believe that all higher education students should be introduced to this idea much sooner, and should begin understanding that what they choose to research can be a contribution to the greater body of knowledge for the entire field.

Contributing to the body of knowledge

I think we need to conduct research by having something that interests us in the first place. Then, in order to properly conduct the research we want to, we have to explore what has already been done. I have learned in so many ways that reviewing the literature is the most important part. I have had many ideas (the impact of the Internet, children and advertising, digital cable v. analog), but when I went to explore all of these nifty ideas that I had, I found that someone had already done something close to what I wanted to do. Had I not reviewed the literature, I would have wasted my time and the time of any scholars of whom I had asked to read my work. So, what to do? I come up with different ideas based on what I have read.
I learn that the impact of the Internet is being explored, but what about how news stories and their images are told in the Internet? Or how about the idea that advertising is really trying to reach the younger generation so why not explore the baby boomers or the elderly or even our generations X and Y to a different extent? What about what causes a person to choose the more expensive digital cable over basic or analog cable?
It is very important to aid in developing the field of mass communication because technology is aiding in changing the field, so why not the scholars? The Internet, though a force of great impact to the field, is still evolving and still changing. If we don’t explore the medium, we will be lagging behind in the years to come when the next new medium comes along. We use the Internet to meet so many of our needs, that it can be compared to print, television, video, gaming, etc. The idea of not expanding our research and knowledge would mean remaining antiquated while new technologies expand.

Connecting to the Body of Knowledge

As a graduate student, the body of knowledge daunting and even overwhelming at times, and finding your place within the vast body of knowledge can be difficult. The process of finding your place within the ominous body of knowledge you first must begin with your own interests and ideas. From there the process continues with basic research on the topics that emerged from your areas of interest.
In the beginning stages of research, I know that I was overwhelmed because though I had several ideas on research topics that I found very interesting I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to focus on. Last semester I focused on the effects thin-image media has on young girls and this semester I am focusing on brand image, but I am still not one hundred percent locked into a topic. I still struggle with this because I am doing the project option and I find it hard to decide on a research topic without knowing for certain that it will be able to be disseminated to a broader audience or a specific client and be of benefit to them. I want to do an ad campaign and that is hard to finalize your plans when you don’t have a specific client in mind.
I think that really the best way to conduct research in a way that connects to the body of knowledge in journalism and mass communication studies is to research and read past studies until you find a topic or study that sparks your interest. A good way to make your research really connect to the larger body of knowledge is to look at the limitations and suggestions for future research that is presented in past studies. A couple of good places to find scholarly articles are Google Scholar and the OU library and Lexis Nexis. This is an easy and logical way to tie your research to the basis of a past study and build off of the already known findings. It is important to connect your research to other researchers work, because the work of others provides a good foundation to build your own studies. Also connecting your work to others research is a way of validating your work and showing to readers that you are knowledgeable on the topic.
The pros of connecting your research to the body of knowledge are vast. As I mentioned earlier, connecting your research with other researchers’ work give you a good foundation for your own study. It also helps to validate your study if you use previously published or validated work to build your own study.
The cons of connecting your research to the body of knowledge are few to none. The only major con, which isn’t really a con at all, only an annoyance, is that it takes a lot of time to conduct the research. Also if your study contradicts the previous findings on a topic, you may have a much harder time getting people to accept your study as valid. Really neither of these are cons, they are just a part of the process of conducting research and writing a thesis or project.

The Search for ReSearch

By Jordan Kinley

Connecting and contributing to the "body of knowledge" in journalism and mass communication is dependent upon finding gaps in the existing literature. An in depth review of what has already been studied and researched is required in order to determine what areas of a topic have not been studied. Without a literature review, a researcher does not have the ability to know if the thoughts about a subject are original or simply a replication of another's findings.

Various tools exist which enable a researcher to connect to the "body of knowledge." Scholarly articles can be perused online via Google Scholar. In order to find most of the available documents it is important to query searches using a variety of keywords that are prevalent in a particular area. For instance, my research concerning sponsorship includes such common words and phrases like, "corporate," "goodwill," "brand equity," "local event," "Olympics," "World Cup," and "advertising." However, as a researcher's familiarity with a subject increases additional searches using keywords that were not readily apparent can be used like, "celebrity endorsement," "attribution and balance," and "ambush marketing."

The process of finding ways to contribute to the existing body of knowledge while tedious, cumbersome and sometimes boring is all for good reason. It is important for research to contribute to the body of knowledge in order to provide support to existing theories and enable future scholars to build upon your findings. In theory, the body of knowledge is forever growing and will be able to explain every phenomena. Therefore, as new technology, communication methods and theories are developed, further research will have to be conducted in order to attempt to explain such models.

The pros of this process are that research is held in checks and balances to past and future research. Existing findings can be supported or refuted based on additional studies, which in turn can be substantiated or denounced. As a result, the process comes to life as an "ever-morphing being" that can change with the emergence of new technology or greater research. However, as a con, this process cannot reveal absolute truths. Unlike some of the "hard sciences" nothing in the field of journalism and mass communication research can be pinpointed as an absolute certainty. As such, researchers will be able to contribute to the "body of knowledge" but may not be able to define the "body of knowledge" as Newton, Einstein and Pythagoras were able to do.

Conducting Research

Taylor Newcomb

Of course, before anything else is mentioned, quite possibly the greatest tool in conducting scholarly research is Google Scholar. This tool opens us up to hundreds, maybe even thousands, of relevant articles and books by the scholar we prefer. It is our shortcut to the body of knowledge, in that it helps us do it from home and at our leisure instead of dealing with the time and material constraints of libraries. For those of us who want to go beyond Google Scholar into the body of knowledge, there is Journal Storage which stores articles past five years ago. This site has been most helpful in tracking down books and articles by Bernays, whom is one of the foundations of my project. 

Once, there is that connection to the sites, the body of knowledge is just a click away. Knowing what has been done before is very important to research, because if we don't take the time to learn what others have said, then we are just wasting the time of others who will come after. The literature review, which is the manifestation of the body of knowledge, is key to showing others we have connected. It shows we have conducted the research by going through journals and articles to find that one article which explains it all. The body of knowledge is the foundation upon which the rest of our project/thesis rests, in the same manner as houses and buildings. 

The pros to conducting research into the body of knowledge could be wide ranging, but I will only stick to a few. The most important pro is that it might give us new avenues through which to peer. We may be pigeonholing ourselves to one item, but then one day, bam, we find an article that switches the light on for our project and lets us go a new, better way. This would have been impossible if we failed to conduct the research. Another pro is that we know the information. By researching the reading everything we can find, then we have a step up on people who fail to do it. A third, and for this section, final pro is that it gives us guidelines for conducting future research. We read what has been done and then from that figure out what needs to be researched next and how best it could be found. 

As for the cons, it is very time consuming. One can expect to lose hours conducting this research. We have outside lives, well most of us, that can't be pushed aside for the long time needed for research. Another con is that we may hit the end of our research trail. If we run out of items to find but still need more, then we may either have to change the point of our project or go insane. I faced this last semester when I ran out of items for sports crisis communication. There was just enough for that paper, but anything beyond that was impossible. A final, for this section, con is that the research may be leading us down the wrong path. We might not know it until too late, but we may have been following the wrong avenues and guidelines and ended up with a incomplete project and a defense deadline coming sooner than we want. 

Overall, the body of knowledge is something that is important to all. It gives us foundations and avenues with which to find our route. Without that research and body of knowledge, we would just be floating aimlessly in the ocean.

A Graduate Student and the Body of Knowledge

A Graduate Student and the Body of Knowledge
Leslie Cermak

In each class since my first as a graduate student in the Gaylord College, I have learned how important it is to develop a research topic that contributes to the body of knowledge. Each professor in his or her own way has taken time to explain that research at the master’s level is not done just for the fun of it but because it can be meaningful for scholarly and practical purposes. Even scholars and professionals in the fields seem to question whether they are effectively contributing, as is evident by Gaudino and Steele’s (1988) article about public relations research. After reading more articles than I can possibly remember, it becomes easy to spot the paragraph where the author validates the study and how it will contribute to the body of knowledge. It inevitably goes back to finding that one gap in the literature that hasn’t been considered or studied from another perspective.
I think in order to connect to the body of knowledge one has to do what Dr.Gade would say, which is to dig deep into the research until you find that one gap that hasn’t been considered before and that you are interested in. I also think, however, that aside from reading, ideas from observation can also contribute to the body of knowledge if what you observe prompts you to explain a phenomenon. You can no doubt hear the influence research methods and theory class has had on me.
As a graduate student, it seems daunting if not almost impossible for me say that my research will contribute to the body of knowledge because it seems above what I can achieve with one study with so little experience. For me, the most difficult part of it has been realizing that I didn’t have to come up with a completely original idea but be able to redefine, reconsider, or extend another idea through theory and new concepts. That has made it seem more achievable.
Dr. Self’s discussion of how to contribute to the body of knowledge was also helpful by considering how research may be relevant to professional organizations such as ASNE, RTNDA, and OPA, and through broader communication-based organizations such as AAPOR and ASA in that there are several avenues through which research can contribute.
There are definite benefits to contributing to the field’s research. For one, we will have more than our own validation that we achieved something important, but in a broader sense, our research may have implications that positively affect future studies or the professional world. However, achieving these goals is not easy and takes much time. Dr. Beard’s discussion about the importance of the IRB emphasizes that this research shouldn’t be treated like every other class assignment especially when humans are involved in the study. In the end, I hope to have created something that is useful for more than just my final grade of my graduate studies or as a skill necessary to continue with doctoral school or earn more money. I would be proud to say that I did something more with all of the hours and effort I put into my thesis.

Narrowing down a research topic appears as a daunting endeavor during this semester. The task primarily seemed easy as I thought I just knew what I was to deal about. In the process things got broader instead and more interesting avenues opened over what I really want to do.

Now I’m in the process of figuring out the main elements that I need to get through to what I really want to do. I’m actually interested in media and politics. The topic is about how the media participate in the consolidation of democracy in the Third World in general and in the Sub-Saharan Africa in particular.

The approach, so far, consists of using theories of democracy in political science and apply them to the media. In more specific terms it is how the media is incorporating the deferent elements of democracy in those countries to help consolidate it.

The most important element in this research is that democracy is a continuum and one would need to take into consideration that most of these countries are relatively young democracies. The task then would be to start with the first step of democratization. It starts with the establishment of democracy dealing with nation building.

Another issue also related to the topic is media ownership. In fact the press is mainly owned by the elite and agenda settings might not appear as a two-way street between the media and the public. Yet things are changing as a growing number of private media is coming out of the spectrum. It actually led me to think if it would be better to confine the research to just studying the private media. This is a possibility that I’m still exploring to make sure that it can provide the research with more rationale.

What actually drove me to think about changing the topic sometimes and even change my area of study is this project and thesis class. With the faculty coming to class with valuable insights every almost every single week opens avenues of possibilities. This class formula is helpful in the sense that it allowed me to go deeper on things I thought I already understood. Now I feel I’m having more feedback and insights on how research should be conducted and I definitely know that at the end of this class the main elements of a thesis or project would appear clearer to me.

My Research Topic -- The Future of Public Relations! -- by Christina

When I first began developing my research topics I looked into my future. I thought about what I wanted to do and how I wanted to get there. After much soul searching I knew I did not want to go on to attain my doctorial degree, but rather wanted to go into the practice of public relations, either corporate or agency work. With this decision made, I had to answer the question of how my studies can help me get the job I wanted. My focus turned to what it was I wanted to get out of graduate school and how my studies could help me attain my career goals. I decided the best course of action would be to focus on the future of the public relations industry. One major portion of the future of public relations is the utilization of Web 2.0 tools in the practice of public relations. The industry to catching onto the importance of using Web 2.0, but there is not much scholarly work on the topic. I decided that I wanted to become a pioneer in the study of utilizing social media as a public relations tool that should be implemented into public relations campaigns. Ultimately this is how my research topic was decided. When it is all over, I want to use my newly found expertise in this area as a stepping-stone to the career I choose. Also, I strongly believe that social media is the future of public relations. Becoming an expert in implementing social media tools is something that every public relations practitioner must understand and use sooner than later.
The Public relations industry is beginning to show interest and see the importance of using social media in public relations, hosting multiple conferences to assist practitioners in this new, untraditional form. The academic side, however, has been slower in acceptance and studying about social media use in public relations. Our own Dr. Michael Kent is one of the leading researchers about the importance of using interactivity on Web sites in order to build relationships with publics. Being published in the next Public Relations Review, Dr. Kent conducted a critical analysis of blogging in public relations. Another scholarly article that is a key part of my research topic will be from Trent Seltzer and Michael Mitrook about the dialogic potential in social media for relationship building. Blogging is a key component of social media. Some of the most successful blogs that my research project could potentially study include Southwest Airlines, General Motors, as well as social media experts blog, like that of Giovanni Gallucci’s Blog and The Marketing Blog. The experience with my research topic so far has been wonderful, yet very overwhelming. There are many different opinions out there about what is social media even is, what purpose it serves, and many critics call it a fad. The most difficult part about choosing a research topic so new is that there are very little scholarly reviewed articles about this. Though there has been a lot published in the practitioner and trade journal world, most of it is not based on actual methodological research studies. Taking on a topic like this will be very rewarding and has great potential to be extremely significant to the field of public relations.