When tasked with choosing how I would receive credit for my practicum, I had numerous options available to me. The option to take the course CPSP359S was extremely intriguing to me. I was quite excited to be able to engage in a course where I could develop my own research question to dive deeply into, while broadening my perspective through discourse and peer-review with other members of the scholars community.
The journey in Discovery Research began with the all-encompassing question of “What is research?”. Through numerous readings and discussions with classmates, I began to gain a better understanding of what research actually was. As we moved on, we began brainstorming potential research ideas. I knew that I wanted my research topic to involved the intersection of politics and social media because these are two areas that I am greatly interested in and are extremely relevant today. After performing an extensive literature review, I was able to further refine my research question. I decided that my question would be: What impact does the regulation of political advertisements on social media have on voters? Once my question was more clear, I began performing more research about my topic. Through reading of scholarly articles and primary sources from major social media companies, it became quite apparent to me that a real problem existed and I was glad that this was the topic I chose to study.
Josh Benjamin's Discovery Research Practicum 