Communication is essential to civic engagement, political participation, identity formation, and democratic inclusion. On the communication side, media systems in many developing contexts, especially in the Global South, face issues related to state censorship, digital inequality, and cultural failure. These dissertation topics provide a critical analysis of communication infrastructures, media literacy, intercultural dialogue, and digital engagement, and are particularly relevant to newly emerging democracies like Nigeria. The topics below offer suitable and notable avenues for research regardless if you are pursuing a media studies, political science, communication, or sociology degree.
Choose from this selected list of dissertation topics to help shape your academic journey into communications!
Focus: Investigates how urban digital platforms—such as social media and electioneering apps—shape political engagement and trust in developing democracies, using Nigeria and similar contexts as case studies.
Focus: Examines trust, perceived risk, and digital literacy in shaping consumer behavior toward mobile informational and marketing services in low- and middle-income markets.
Focus: Examines the role of timing in digital text communications (email, WhatsApp) in the cultural interpretations about a response time, and effects on trust, as well as perceptions of politeness and engagement in intercultural, international professional interactions.
Focus: Explores influencer credibility, message framing (humor, moral), follower psychology, and uptake of public health behaviors on social media platforms (e.g., Instagram, TikTok).
Focus: Explores how communication access, or lack thereof, structures communication infrastructure, policy engagement, citizen participation, and fiducia in government in the case of hybrid democracies.
Focus: Examines from the grassroots level, benefits of digital literacy, and education interventions that impact media literacy and counter misinformation in under-resourced, at-risk populations.
Focus: Assesses represented and unrepresented of minority ethnolinguistic groups in national broadcasting in Canada, and the significance of this representation in the formation of a nation, and solidarity within a Nation, all of which depend upon a shared representation of the same thing in context.
Focus: Assesses how various hybrid democracies were using state media to inform narratives and control political agendas, provide a narrative for managing public opinion with state/media from a comparative, cross-national approach.
Focus: Proposes frameworks for building locally owned, culturally resonant media platforms that counter historical marginalization and promote communication justice.
Focus: Evaluates the rise of parental surveillance technologies (apps, wearables) and their implications for child autonomy, trust, and digital ethics in modern parenting practices.
McIntyre, K., Sobel Cohen, M., Semujju, B., Ireri, K., & Munyarukumbuzi, E. (2025). Digital media literacy in Africa: Towards a research agenda. Journal of Media Literacy Studies. Study compares misinformation literacy across Kenya, Uganda & Rwanda tandfonline.com.
Flaherty, G. T., & Mangan, R. M. (2025). Impact of social media influencers on amplifying positive public health messages. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 27. Demonstrates how influencers can promote credible health messaging jmir.org.
Nickel, B. et al. (2025). Social media influencers promote misleading health tests: study finds. The Guardian. Highlights misinformation risks in influencer-endorsed medical content theguardian.com.
Wasserman, H., & Madrid Morales, D. (2025). Misinformation and Digital Inequalities: Comparing Exposure & Engagement. Tandfonline. Provides survey-based insights into rural vs urban engagement with misinformation tandfonline.com+1tandfonline.com+1.
UNESCO (2025, May). UNESCO strengthens global push to media and information literacy. Announces MIL toolkit and training across Africa & Central Asia unesco.org+1en.wikipedia.org+1
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