Presentation (tomorrow, 4/27):

• Over 2-5 minutes, explain the topic of your research, an idea of what you will have to say about it, and what media you looked at.
• Using Zoom screen share, show us some portion of your digital presentation/WordPress page (as I said, it can be just an opening section/introduction or as much as you have completed to date)
• Tell us about what you have found out through your research—it can be an explanation of your argument, merely something interesting or unexpected you discovered, etc.

Final Digital Project (due last day of finals week)

• This should be a summary of your research, presented on your WordPress site.
• Include an 1) explanation of key themes (what’s the historical or social context, what about it made it newsworthy?, etc.) about your topic and 2) themes or key details that have emerged from your research on that topic in journalism outlets. As I’ve said in class, the easiest way to approach this–and your paper–is to think of a “story” or narrative you are telling about your subject, then give a presentation of that story.
• You can include media as well—videos or images or visualizations of data
• In terms of the length of your digital project/WordPress page, between text and images, aim to make it fill at least 2 pages if it were in a Word document or PDF—not covering every inch of 2 pages, but spaced out and presented in a readable visual arrangement. In terms of giving readers a substantive experience and overview of your work, you might make it longer but that is not required.
• That’s it. You can look here for some ideas, but there are no stipulations on how you present beyond the above. https://contentinsights.com/5-great-examples-innovative-longform-journalism-online/

Final Essay (due last day of finals week)

• 5 pages. This should be just like a research paper you would write for any class of intermediate level: give an introduction that offers a broad view of your subject and indicates the direction of your argument or themes; in the body of the paper, balance your analysis of news articles or images or other aspects of visual layout with an incorporation of secondary articles and books that provide historical, social, or cultural context for what you’re writing about; close with a conclusion that brings back in a wider view and says something about the significance of your subject.
• Use at least 3 scholarly sources—articles, chapters, books—in your paper, and aim for incorporating at least 6 articles.
• Give either in-text (parentheses) citations or footnotes. It can be MLA or APA format. Bibliography at the end.
• That’s it. Reach out if you have any questions about your paper.

Manufacturing Consent – The “agenda setting” function of the press. Start about minute 32 for an example of the strongest interpretation of the agenda setting theory.

Cambodia: Year Zero – Advocacy journalism. This is an example of advocacy journalism in the Vietnam war era: journalists arguing for change of some sort even as they also do traditional reporting. It is also an example of “adversarial” and “watchdog” journalism, where journalists 1) take a strongly critical stance toward the insitutions and/or individuals involved in the story or 2) approach their work as providing a check on abuses of power.

“What is Media Studies? Key concepts explained!” – A useful summary of key concepts of media studies. This gives an introduction to analyzing all different kinds of media–especially how to look at visual form and representation–and it can all be applied to journalism.

“Cultural History Advice for Students from Professor Ken Bartlett” – He’s kind of condescending, but explains cultural history well.

“Every NYT Front Page Since 1852” – A digital journalism history project by Josh Begley.

“Blackface: A cultural history of a racist artform” – From CBS news, with interviews with two cultural historians who explain how they look at media from the past to understand the history of race.

Ray Kurzweil: The Coming Singularity – Google’s Director of Engineering predicts the coming singularity, or the point when humans and supercomputers will merge.

This is Marshall McLuhan – The Medium is the Massage (1967) – Interview with Marshall McLuhan explaining his ideas about the consequences of living in an “electric age.”