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.