S13: How to Research
Misinformation and China
February 4, 2026
Your Project
About Your Project
Make a one-minute elevator pitch of your research proposal.
- What are you studying?
- Why should we care?
- What’s your original take?
- What sources or methods will you use?
Project Diagnosis
- One thing I started / discovered / accomplished
- One difficulty I ran into
Troubleshooting Your Project
- Too much to read
- Too little information
- Too little time
- Too many directions
The Library as Database
The Book as Information Technology
Read a Book: Step 1
- Read the table of contents and index
- What are the main topics of the book?
- A (good) book’s structure is part of its argument. Can you guess what it is? How does the author develop her claims?
Read a Book: Step 2
- Read either the introduction and conclusion
- Scan the subheadings first: A (good) chapter’s structure is part of its argument, too. What’s this?
- Now try to read with questions in mind.
- What is the author studying?
- Why should we care?
- What’s her original take?
- What sources or methods does she use?
Read a Book: Step 3
- Look at the footnotes / endnotes of the chapter
- Scan bibliography at the end of the book
- What sources is the author using to make the argument? What are the gaps?
- Which sources – primary and secondary – are useful for your project? Why?
What do we read when we read a book?
- Knowledge is personal: filtered info integrated into one’s understanding.
- Google/AI search gives info; selecting/learning makes it knowledge.
Now Your Turn
- Make a list of your evidence or primary sources for this chapter (texts, passages, interviews, field notes).
- Briefly describe each piece. What is it? Why is it here?
- Reflect: What kind of a collection is this? How will it be helpful for the chapter?
Adjusting your evidence base, argument, or both
Think about:
- My project’s main examples or case studies
- Are the claims I make appropriate given the project’s scope and evidence base?
You can:
- revise the claims to match the evidence I have
- broaden the evidence or shift the evidence base to match the claims
- a combination of broadening/shifting evidence and revising claims
Reviewing Your Research Proposal
Empirical
- What can we learn about X?
- Time, place, actors, context
Methodological
- What sources do you need? Can they answer your questions?
- What’s challenging about them?
- What’s original about your way of reading them?
Theoretical
- So what? How does this relate to other times, places, or contexts?
- How does your case study confirm / nuance / contradict our existing knowledge?
Up next: My action Plan
- The next factual question I will ask
- The next thing I will read
- What do you plan to do with it? Your tentative hypothesis / argument