Building the knowledge base starts with the topic analysis phase. This involves defining the concept and searching for information. The starting point is the research problem, or the research question: What question is the thesis or project trying to answer?

The research question is structured into higher level concepts and lower level concepts that are then given different expressions.

Structuring the topic

Write down the key concepts and sub-concepts of your topic, which you can use as keywords in your search.

Think about alternative search terms for key concepts, such as synonyms and closely related words. You can use tools, such as online glossaries and dictionaries, to help you find keywords.

Case study: children and young people as targets of social media marketing

main concept: children and young people
1. expressions: children, young, teenagers, minors, students etc.
main concept: social media
1. expressions: social media, Tiktok, Instagram etc.
main concept: marketing
1. expressions: marketing, marketing communications, content marketing etc.

Mind map as a tool for thematic analysis

When structuring your topic, you can use a mind map to help you. Think about which are the main concepts of the topic and which are sub-concepts of the main concept. Also consider the theoretical background to the thesis and the methods you can use. You can find several tools for making mind maps online (MindMeister, Mind Mup), but you can also do it yourself with pen and paper - or just sketch the topic as a bullet list.

The image below outlines the example topic using a mind map. It is also useful to think of different expressions for concepts.

Refine your need for information

The topic of a thesis must be well defined and precisely limited. Consider answers to questions such as:

What are the key issues, i.e. what is the core of the topic?
What are the main elements of the topic?
To which broader/concise entity does the topic belong? What issues have been addressed in the past?
What is the theoretical background to the topic?
Which questions should be answered by the information to be obtained?
If you had one complete source for your thesis, what would it be? What would it contain?

The example topic 'Children and young people as targets of social media marketing' has other aspects in addition to the one that the title would suggest. When children and young people are the subject of research, there are ethical aspects involved, both from the point of view of research methods and certainly also from the point of view of marketing ethics. There is also the choice of different research methods, for which sources are often needed.

Make preliminary searches

Make orientative information searches in Finnish and English. If you are unfamiliar with the subject, start by getting an overview of the topic from familiar course books or Wikipedia. For example, if the topic is "Children and young people in social media marketing" but you are not familiar with what social media marketing actually is, you should first familiarize yourself with a generic work on the subject and create an overview of social media marketing. After that it is easier to move on to article searches. This is because it is often difficult to get the big picture from articles.

Preliminary searches will give you an idea of whether the keywords you have chosen will work. For example, if you feel that you cannot find anything on a topic using Google Scholar and it is a general topic, the problem is probably with the keywords you chose.

Note that Google Scholar produces very different results when searching in English and in Finnish. When searching in Finnish, many theses from Finnish universities come up; in English, scientific articles can be found in databases that Laurea pays the licenses for, in order to have them available for students.

Starting points for exploring your own topic:

Locate data sources and identify their search capabilities

Think about what type of materials do you need. Do you need articles, textbooks, publications from different sources, theses?

Consider the time perspective: Which years or decades of publication are relevant to you? Plan in advance where to look for information, and whether you are looking only at domestic sources or also at international sources.

Check the search features of the search site, in particular how you can narrow down the search results.