Answered Questions

Hi,

Before you begin your research you may want to refine your topic / thesis statement as it will help you determine search terms for your research project. The decline of communication due to communication is very broad. What type of communication? Face-to-face, written, or other types of communication? What type of technology? There were some people who were horrified by the advent of the telephone and saw it as intrusive and impersonal. Also, your thesis is making a blanket statement and you may find research that says the contrary. To some people it may be that they see communication as improved by technology.

An example of a better research question would be, "How has handheld technology impacted face-to-face communication?" In that research question I have identified the type of technology I'm investigating, the communication impacted, and I've left out biased opinions (I didn't say it negatively impacted face-to-face communication as the research may contradict that assumption).

Once you have narrowed and refined your topic, I recommend visiting the All Purpose LibGuide. Click the Journal Articles tab and select the second database, Research Library by ProQuest. You'll need to log in with your Brenau username and password. Then you can enter your search terms. I chose handheld technology AND communication changes. I narrowed it to scholarly journals and to articles published in the past 10 years. My search yielded about 100 results. However, when I changed my topic to social media AND communication I had thousands of results. It will all depend on 1) what type of technology you want to investigate, 2) the impacted mode of communication, and 3) how far back in the research you'd like to go.