From now on, the Chair of Science Communication offers new  topics for theses in the degree courses BA Journalistic and Strategic Communication, BA Media and Communication (StuPO 2010) and MA Media and Communication. They serve for direct realisation, for orientation concerning the supervision expertise of the chair as well as for stimulating your own ideas which are also well accepted. 

To your first briefing, please bring a concrete research question you want to examine within your work. The chair principally refuses to be involved in formulating a concrete question, i.e. we cannot accept requests of a general nature such as “I want to write something about sport journalism” or “Preferably something with campaigning”.

After the first meeting, the candidates prepare a short exposé. Based on this short exposé, that has to be handed in prior to the next meeting, the candidate can officially be registered. In general, you should factor in four to eight weeks for the meeting(s) and exposé prior to the registration. Requests at short notice cannot be taken into consideration.

Exposé and Commented Structure

The short exposé comprises the following sections in written form:

• Background of the question, short derivation, if possible with a specific example

• Concrete research question that is formulated as a question

• A justification of your question's relevancy (why is it necessary, from a scientific and social point of view, to deal with this question? Who can use the results in what way?)

• Possible theoretical foundations from the field of communication science

• A brief literature review

• Briefly: intended methodology
  to hand in additionally:
• Commented outline that shows the common theme of the work
• Time schedule: what should be prepared when? When should the different parts be finished? When to conduct the survey?

Further Procedure of the Supervising

If the exposé is accepted and the thesis is registered, there are three more meetings for which you have to announce yourself in good time. Items of the meetings are:

1st Meeting:

• Discussion of the main question(s) derived from the research question and/or the hypotheses (the theoretical part/literature review has to be finished)
• Discussion of the further time schedule

2nd Meeting:

• Discussion of the operationalisation of the constructs and the research tool (the survey instrument such as a questionnaire or a codebook has to be finished)
• Discussion of an overall evaluation strategy (please think about a suggestion)
• Discussion of the further time schedule

3rd Meeting:

• Discussion of the results and if necessary further evaluations (please bring along your results/evaluations)