Hello.
I plan to conduct Ph.D. on media studies and the proposal that I am working on entails masculinity studies and media; the convergence of the two. Now I notice something after I wrote up the proposal: I am keen to integrate psychology, sociology, feminist theory, cultural studies, media studies, queer theory, and gender studies. Media Ph.D. programs in media and cultural studies often do integrate various disciplines, as you shall know. However, I am particularly interested in studying a non-visible sexual minority group in Turkey; margin in a margin who are under-researched. The most public those minorities get is on LBRTD (Location based real time dating) apps for men who have sex with men (MSM) and I am keen to observe their rhetoric and strategies of visibility and doing gender on these media platforms. However, since there is a dearth in sociological or psychological research about this particular sexual minority group, I presume that a sociological and psychological study of their offline rhetoric is also vital: How does the rhetoric of this sexual minority converge and diversify in-between online and offline platforms? So, as much as I wish to limit the study on understanding this form of emerging masculinity in the specific media platform, I also wish to conduct a psychological/sociological research on the offline rhetoric of the group. Then, however, I feel like I am drifting off the course of media studies because perhaps half of my study will entail a pure sociological/psychological research with no focus on media when I explore the offline rhetoric.
How do I manage to synthesize those online and offline realities in a single strand of research? Is it legit to conduct pure sociological/psychological research on offline artifacts in a media studies Ph.D. Program? Or do I always need to connect it with media? Since I have a challenging configuration here, I wonder if it is out of line to investigate offline cultural artifacts with no media focus in a media studies. I basically want to analyze both online and offline rhetorics and discourses and at the end see how they converge and diversify..
I am a bit confused I suppose. So I wonder what you think about this. I shall also report that I will use a mixed methods study with three sequential phases; first phase is on the online rhetoric in a specific media artifact, and second phase is a Quantiative research on the offline rhetoric of the sexual minority group, and third one is a qualitative research about both online and offline rhetorics.
I hope I made myself clear,
I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Hi Meric
I feel, firstly you have chosen a very thought provoking area of research. You have to decide on the basis of your interest area, choosing between online and offline behaviour/rhetoric of a highly non-visible group in Turkey. My suggestion is to focus on only one aspect of offline (your choice) rhetoric in relation to the group you have selected on the basis of a specific media artefact (apps for MSM in your case)
Once you have decided on that then you need to focus on a sociopsychological offline quantitative research of the rhetoric of same sexual minority group that you have taken in a specific media artefact. I hope my thoughts are clear to you.
Wow. Great topic! Sounds like that will be an excellent study. I think you might need to begin by thinking about WHERE you want to do your PhD. And then it depends on what you want to do with the degree. Do you want to teach in a university yourself? If so, then you need to ask whether you want to be devoted to teaching Psychology? or Media? or Sociology? or?? Your thesis may have a particular focus, but you'll need to be conversant with larger issues in psychology or media or sociology.
If you are flexible, there are many programs in the US where your work would fit in. NYU's program in Media, Culture, and Communications would be a great place. U Amsterdam's School for Cultural Analysis is more Humanities based but would be welcoming I would think.
There's many places, so you might need to start by researching schools and then you'd have to adapt your methodologies to fit the place.
Look up Prof. Elijah Edelman (now in Rhode Island) - an anthropologist who has worked on this VERY thing.
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