Your assignment is to select ONE of these four events and examine how various media outlets cover it the day after. You will need to plan ahead and start thinking about your paper assignment now so that you can pay attention to media coverage leading up to the event, as the lead-up will likely inform the introductory paragraph of your paper.
On the day of your event you should plan to watch the television coverage and follow social media buzz during it. This will inform your analysis. Then you should monitor the coverage of, and information flow about, that event as it appears in a variety of media and platforms, on the day after. Clearly you cannot monitor everything in all media being published and broadcast, even about a single event. So to simplify your analysis, you should choose one outlet from each of the following five types:
-a general interest (legacy) news source such as The New York Times, CNN, Wall Street Journal, or NPR
-an industry specific news source such as Sports Illustrated for the Super Bowl, Politico for politics, or Entertainment Tonight for the Grammys
-an industry owned source such as the Twitter feed of the NFL, Grammys, or Republican National Convention
-an international news source (anything produced outside the US)
-a niche media outlet that is created for and by a marginalized group (LGBTQ, Hispanic, Black, women's media)
Your sample MUST include examples of all five types listed above so that you can compare and contrast how different media outlets, with different audiences and missions, frame stories differently. Again, you should plan ahead by selecting your media outlets even before your event happens.
For example, if you choose the Iowa caucuses, you might choose to monitor New York Times coverage; Politico coverage; the RNC's website, the Guardian, and theroot.com. Or you might choose, instead, the coverage on the Chicago Tribune's website, politifact.com, the DNC's Twitter feed, Le Monde, and latinomagazine.com. If you are covering the Grammys you might choose the LA Times, Variety, @theGRAMMYs on Twitter, the BBC, msmagazine.com.
That should provide you with a diversified sample of media content about which to make some judgments. If you have any question about the sample of media you have chosen, see us and clear the sample.
Once you have all your data in front of you, analyze it. Think about it. Figure out what lessons you can learn from it. In writing the paper, below are examples of the kinds of questions you might choose to answer. These are not exclusive. They are meant to be suggestive. We will welcome papers that address these questions from novel perspectives.
How do the visuals of your event differ across your various media types? Do some media rely more heavily on visuals than others? What emotions or thoughts do these visuals convey?
What aspects of your event were highlighted by the different media outlets? For example, did some focus on personalized, stories about people while other outlets focused on broader implications of the event or historical context?
How significant are the differences in presentation? What word choices shape possible differences in interpretation (for examples Right-to-life v. Right-to-choose or Climate change v. Global warming)? Are there some clear and glaring differences?
How much of the coverage seems to be fact-based, and how much seems to be opinion, as best you can determine by comparing various sources? Does there seem to be any pattern in this fact-versus-opinion dichotomy based on the type of medium; that is, is opinion more common in the information presented in the industry produced media versus content in general interest news source?
You cannot answer all of these questions in the allotted space. Remember that these questions are meant to be suggestive. Your data might lead you to ask and answer different questions and make different comparisons. However, the paper MUST compare and contrast the information in the five areas under investigation: general interest news, industry specific news, industry produced media, international news, and niche targeted media.
If you want guidance on your selection of sources or your analysis please just ask. If your sample is a weak one, your paper will inevitably suffer. So start early planning what sources you will gather data from.
Once you have organized your thoughts, write the paper, then rewrite it, and then rewrite it again. Do not under any circumstances turn in a paper that is a first draft, written the night before it is due. You cannot pull that off. Believe me.
If you have questions about how to proceed, see professor(s) BEFORE you write.
We will be utilizing TurnItIn.com, which is a website that checks student work against a sizable database of published works in order to detect possible duplications. You will be required to upload an electronic copy of your paper to TurnItIn.com through our class Blackboard site on or before the due date AS WELL AS turn in a printed copy to your instructor.