Analyzing how politics gets discussed in aggregate regarding media and politics.
Structure Guide For Essay One.
The layout for your essay should look like this; please use it as a guide and stay as close to this outline as possible:
Introduction.
Begin by establishing why your topic is important to a contemporary reader (ex: Last year, print newspapers hit a record low for sales, leading many journalists to assume that they’ll soon be extinct). Follow this with support for the claim you are making about the issue’s relevance.
Transition into a discussion of the two media you chose.
Name one of your choices, the medium, the outlet, and your reason for choosing it (ex: The biggest competitor for print news these days is online journalism, and the Huffington Post is one of the most widely-read online publications, so let’s use that as one example).
Name the other, and do likewise (ex: Of course, in order to recognize online journalism’s possible triumph over print, we should look at The New York Times in relief against HuffPo’s coverage to get a sense of the difference between the two).
Follow this by announcing your project itself, including the dates and subjects (For the last week of August in 2017, I looked at each publication’s coverage of issues such as the border wall, neo-Nazi rallies, and the right to protest).
Finally, give an academic thesis question, letting us know what you’ll be exploring in the essay (ex: The coverage begs the question: are online publications able to produce faster coverage, or are they sacrificing substance for “being first”?)
Audience
Transition into your next paragraph by making it clear why you’re discussing the audience (ex: Before we can answer the question of which publication delivers more accurate news, we first need to look at who their delivering that news to).
Go into the audience descriptions of each medium.
Outline the first one’s audience by stating the
Demographic and
Psychographic
Then state the second one’s audience by also stating the
Demographic and
Psychographic
Include here a brief (3-4 sentence) discussion as to why these specific audiences might be drawn toward those specific publications/TV shows/websites (ex: “One reason why Huffington Post tends to draw a younger, more liberal audience is that statistically, millennials get the majority of their news online, according to…”; “Generally, online periodicals have a stated political slant, and audiences can tailor their news to whatever they personally believe by seeking it out, which accounts for Huffington Post’s larger liberal base…” etc)
Medium #1
A. Here, introduce one of the topics both of your choices discussed (ex: one of the top stories during the week of this project was the border wall).
1. Introduce the article on the topic, and give several specific quotes from the piece in question—the headline too, if it’s relevant.
2. Follow this with your analysis, both of what the piece discusses and what you feel it’s left out (ex: As you can see, in the Huffington Post’s article, the author assumes from the first word that the border wall will not be put in place)
3. Include whatever sources the piece uses (ex: Many of the article’s sources link to other articles on the same website, which doesn’t suggest a broad base of information…).
B. Then, introduce an alternate topic with a smooth transition (ex: And before you assume that this issue is the only one with a particularly partisan slant, let’s look at the other big issue of the week: the right to protest).
1. Repeat the steps from above here.
2. Here
3. And here.
C. Conclude this paragraph with an informed point about what you’ve stated above (ex: It’s fair to say that the publication has at least a slightly left-of-center agenda, as most of the statements they make don’t come from evidence—at least not evidence presented in the article itself).
IV. Medium #2
A. Here, transition into your next choice by acknowledging that you’ll be discussing the same topics, but through a different publication/website/TV show (ex: That said, the very same topics were handled quite differently by the print source, The New York Times).
1. Again, as above, include direct quotes as you discuss the issues, and repeat the above steps here
2. Here
3. Here
B. Here
1. Here
2. Here
3. And here, but be sure to continue comparing the two, rather than just restating (ex: Unlike the Huffington Post’s coverage, NYT doesn’t immediately take the position that protesting confederate statues is “right” and that the statues themselves are “wrong”; in fact, the Times resists taking any position whatsoever, except for its op-ed page, which allows room for both sides).
V. Conclusion
A. Come to a conclusion about the relationship between the audience and the source. Is the audience, in your opinion, aware of any biases? Why do you think that? Is the audience demanding slanted coverage, or does the audience believe the slant they’re told and thus unable to demand anything?
