I know that the four of you are going in different directions with your research, and maybe it's a poor idea to try to connect to common ground, but here are some themes where your work might be able to intersect.
LAUREN's topic: How is news media complicit in hiding legislation? What legislation is being passed? For the benefit of whom? What research methods can one use to know the world?
Current Events:
Military Commissions Act (by extension, habeus corpus, Guantanamo bay detainees, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran)
Net Neutrality
Other possible issues: the REAL ID, North American Partnership (spp.gov), Mexican election fraud, Venezuelan coup, School of the Americas, etc., continuing fallout from Iran/Contra scandal, immigration.
Theoretical/Philosophical Themes:
Epistemology (how does knowledge work? how does one know something is true?), Ethics (pragmatic? fixed?), Ideology/Belief (how do belief systems [ideas] get put into practice [material/bodies]), media ecology (the idea that media is an environment)
AZADEH's topic: How to make sense of U.S. involvement in Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan through various media.
Current Events:
US-Iran relations, war in Iraq/Afghanistan
Other possible ideas: what Lauren is working on? Israel/Palestine?
Theoretical/Philosophical Themes:
Epistemology, Orientalism, "the subaltern", aesthetics (graphic design and photographic elements in news presentation), ethics, Ideology and practice, media ecology.
LISA's and AMY's topic (what I'm gathering are possible topics)
Images of women in the news, gendered media (maybe narrow to cross cultural study of how American women are depicted in news--or excluded from news--differently than Iranian or Afghani or Iraqi or Latin American women?) You may want to analyze the Christian reconstruction movement's image of womanhood vs secular images of womenhood as well.
Theoretical/Philosophical Themes:
Orientalism, aesthetics, Ideology and practice, media ecology
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Does this help?
Tutorial Basics: Larger Themes