Is my research topic significant?

[Hifamoo]

Hi,

 

I'm a new member.

 

I'm a novice in doing research project, my first time.

 

I'm trying to choose a thesis topic for my B.A. thesis. I study cultural studies and I picked a topic but not sure if it deserves researching.

 

The topic I chose has to do with my home-country culture, that's to say a cultural phenomenon related to my country.

 

This cultural phenomenon takes place in cyberspace. It is well-known and established in the real world. Thus, the idea behind my research lies in the transition of this cultural phenomenon from the real to virtual world, especially given its spiritual nature.

 

Are those sorts of topic worthy of researching?

 

Your help is very appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[yhakak]

this sounds very interesting...as for whether a phenomenon deserves researching, the answer is YES. The question is not whether the topic is good, it's what you do with it.

[Hifamoo]

Thanks, yhakak.

 

I hope to see others' views.

[pears]

significant? definitely. however, for a B.A. thesis, i could see how it could grow into an enormous project very easily. you might want to have a small handful of specific examples in mind, then use those to come up with an argument, rather than talking about a big, potentially nebulous phenomenon. sounds interesting! good luck!

[Hifamoo]

Thanks a lot, pears.

 

Your reply is appreciated, but I didn't get the idea below.

 

 

 you might want to have a small handful of specific examples in mind, then use those to come up with an argument, rather than talking about a big, potentially nebulous phenomenon. sounds interesting! good luck!

 

I wish you could explain it more.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Hifamoo

[danieleWrites]

Significant? That isn't an issue. Anything can be significant. What might be an issue is repetition. For example, I once had a great idea for a paper. I had my argument, and what I wanted to discuss planned. I spoke with the professor about it, and he liked it. Then I went out and did some research for the theoretical background. And found out that 8 other people had already written that paper. They were all different, but the arguments were the same and so were the points. The topic itself was very narrow, so there are very limited ways to talk about it, and those ways had been done several times. I would not have added anything knew to the topic. I wrote a different paper on a different topic. Right now, there is a lot of academic discussion (in the form of papers and theses) about the use of social media in the revolutions that have taken place in the Middle East. Many people are writing about the same thing, but in different ways. It's a broad topic with a lot of ways of looking at the same thing. Unlike my paper, which had a topic too narrow to not repeat someone else's argument completely, social media in the Middle East is very broad, and there are many view points that can add to the topic.

 

When you choose something to study, it doesn't matter if other people think it's important enough to study or not. When Isaac Newton noticed that an apple hits the ground when it falls from a tree, many people would have thought this insignificant and not worth study. It happens all the time, right? But he studied it anyway. If it's important to you, it's important enough to study. The question then becomes, can you add something new to the discussion on your topic? Even if it may not seem like it immediately, it's almost always possible. Very few topics are so narrow that they've been done to death. People have been writing papers about certain topics for thousands of years. The Talmud, the Hadith, and so on. Adding to the discussion does not mean doing something no one has done before, but looking at it in a different way.

 

pears is correct. The topic you're looking at, cyberspace in your homeland, is huge. The problem with cyberspace in a single country is that there are many, many, many things to study. pears is advising you to focus on one thing about cyberspace. Pick a few things about cyberspace and your homeland that interest you. For each thing, write an argument, that is, write a single sentence that tells your opinion of the thing. For example, if my topic were about video games in my culture, I might focus on things like: how online game environments change the way players define friendship, or how some game players emulate the personality of their favorite video game character. I could then write a sentence (argument) like so: Online game environments, like Call of Duty or Halo, change the way game players define friendship because game friends are also allies in a war simulation, and these allies are people that game players must trust to work with them to accomplish the game's objective.

 

Take the sentences (arguments) that you are most interested in to your adviser. If you cannot express your argument in one sentence, the topic should be narrowed down so that your thesis will have a strong focus.

Edited September 14, 2013 by danieleWrites

[Hifamoo]

Such an informative reply.

Thanks a lot, danieleWrites.

[pears]

danieleWrites did a great job of explaining what i meant! best of luck!

[jamesshaffer85]

I would agree with danieleWrites and Mocha - the the topic fo cyberspace is significant and interestign and important, but you'd better choose some more specific examples, such as the role of social media in creating public awareness about a particular event. In other words you should choose a very specifc phenomena and narrow down your topic as much as you can. Your question can be only as significant an interesting as you make it.

[TomJones]

Great topic. Good luck with your research!