Hello all,
At this point in the semester we have lots of assingment based questions coming up, and so I wanted to give written responses to the most common questions that have appeared so far:
1) For the assessments, what kinds of social media can we refer to? is it only news articles, or are youtube videos, facebook posts, etc allowed?
Any kind! Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, blogs, conventional newspaper press. Be creative with where you look.
2) With the media assessment, can it be 2 weeks previous of following the media reports for analysis or is it going forward?
We are asking you to look at one article/press released in particular and follow how it develops. So, please only loook at the press release going forward.
3) My news story was picked up for a few days but quickly dropped. Is that ok? Should I talk about this?
That isn’t a problem at all. In that case you could reflect on the longevity of the news and why, perhaps, it hasn’t been picked up and discussed at length. Is it that it doesn’t speak to a wide audience or that other news pieces are competing for attention? How might this relate lack of discussion relate to the concepts of SSK and boundary work?
4) How might I structure my work?
Structure it as clear, essay-like narrative. This might include (1) a quick summary of the article and what it covers, (2) an overview of where it was picked up, (3) a discussion of why it was picked up and “popularised”, (4) an analysis of its appearance in each your three different examples (across three separate paragraphs), (5) a discussion of how this relates to core ideas from the course e.g. SSK, social construction and boundary work and then (6) a short conclusion.
I’ll stress again though that this is just one approach, so don’t feel like you have to stick to it if it doesn’t quite work for you.
5) So do we reference the articles or posts we find about our topic or focus more broadly on how scientific information as a whole travels through media?
We want you to talk about this particular peice of scientific news and to analyse how it has appeared in the media. So, your analysis will have to be quite focused. You may, however, include reflections in your
discussion of SSK/the conclusion which provideds more general insights.
6) What happens if there is a new development in the scientific study close to the deadline? As it might be difficult to add this to the essay so late?
Don’t worry, it’s perfectly ok to set a cut off date by which you’ll stop looking and only write/polish your submission.
READ INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY
READ EXAMPLE ESSAY CAREFULLY
