Summarize and evaluate the views of two writers on this question.
The final major assignment will build on strategies you developed while crafting the summary/strong response essay. For this essay, however, you’ll engage with two texts involving a relevant contemporary problem or question – this time one with ethical implications. You’ll summarize and analyze the authors’ purposes and main ideas, create connections between the two texts, e.g. tone or rhetorical strategies, and then synthesize them into a new perspective of your own. As the authors of your textbook explain in Chapter 12, analysis/synthesis is an intellectual activity you’ll encounter in many academic settings (286). In fact, the foundation for thoughtful and effective research begins with demonstrating your awareness of a larger conversation and beginning to claim your own place in it.
Successful essays will accomplish the following:
1. Address a synthesis question and make a claim (thesis) about the readings.
2. Summarize and analyze the views of two writers on this question.
3. Show you have wrestled with different perspectives and articulated your own new view of the question. Consider not only how you’d speak back to these texts but how they’re speaking with each other and what ideas, questions, or conclusions that conversation leaves in your mind.
Use the strategies for drafting your essay on pp. 300-301, the possible frameworks on p. 302, and the sample essay on pp. 305-306 to shape your draft.
As illustration and support for your main ideas, include 2+ images in your final draft. Choose images that go beyond the obvious first-thing-that-comes-up-in-a-Google-image-search and find images that will enhance and enrich your essay for a reader. Your recent work on analyzing images should help you here. Think about the subject matter, style, and placement of the images within your text.
Choose ONE of the following two synthesis questions and accompanying texts as the focus of your essay. Consider the synthesis question as both the starting point and the frame for your discussion of the two texts.
Synthesis Question 1: Given the many social media and other digital platforms available to journalists, how should we rethink journalists’ ethical responsibilities to their readers and to each other?
· “Is All of Twitter Fair Game for Journalists?” – Amanda Hess
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/03/twitter_journalism_private_lives_public_speech_how_reporters_can_ethically.html
· “Digital Media Ethics” – Stephen J. A. Ward
Synthesis Question 2: The current phenomenon of big data has created big buzz and big business. It’s now possible for almost any action in our lives to be translated into digital data points for multiple applications, including tracking college students like you from entrance through graduation. What particular ethical considerations, responsibilities, and consequences do university administrators face as they gather and use (your) big data on college campuses?
· “Big Data on Campus” – Marc Parry
· “Ethics, Big Data, and Analytics: A Model for Application” – James E. Willis III, John P. Campbell, and Matthew D. Pistilli
http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/ethics-big-data-and-analytics-model-application
Synthesis Question 3: Digitally manipulating photographs feels like normal practice now for anyone with Instagram, Photoshop, or even a simple cropping tool. How does the manipulated image create dilemmas for journalists and editors whose ethical standards require truthful depictions of reality?
· “Shaken Photojournalism Industry Questions Itself After Souvid Datta Scandal” by Olivier Laurent. http://time.com/4772234/souvid-datta-question/
· “The Reality of a Fake Image: News Norms, Photojournalistic Craft, and Brian Walski’s Fabricated Photograph’” – Matt Carlson
Journalism Practice 3.2, 2009; available through the UH Library
Formatting:
-12 pt font in Times New Roman, Cambria, or Garamond
-1 inch margins
-double spaced
-Word count noted at the bottom of the last page in bold
Length: 1500-2000 words
Breakdown of Points:
Each mechanical, grammar, and usage error is worth .25 of a point. Errors that involve comprehension, format, logic and flow within the areas below will be evaluated individually.
1. Introduction with claim 15%
2. Clear Summary & Analysis of Article 1 15%
3. Clear Summary & Analysis of Article 2 15%
4. Response to Synthesis Question 25%
5. Conclusion 15%
6. Grammar, Spelling, Usage & Formatting 15%
