Your task will be to create your own blog post using Microsoft Word. The purpose of this specific assignment is for you to provide a critique of an existing news article about a topic related to this course. While our textbook uses data to assess the reality of the relationship between gender and crime, many media sources distort the reality to sensationalize what happens to sell more newspapers. We want to check the news media’s portrayal of events versus what the science tells us. If this is not the centerpiece of your blog post, you will not receive a good score.
Steps:
- Choose an issue relating to class topics that is interesting to you
- Find a NEWS article that discusses the problem (your choice is important here—see below)
- Discuss how the article is covered. Does this portray a bias, or a specific side of the issue? What causes are mentioned in the article?
- Does the article make any claims or raise any statistics? Research the topic in depth. Find academic research that discusses this same problem/issue. What answers does the academic material provide that the news article does not? Find current statistics related to this issue.
- Create your blog by attaching a Word file with your blog post. Make sure your links are live and your pics are there.
Requirements and Assessment (50 points total):
- In depth discussion of the issue (10 points)
- Discuss how the media cover this issue. What causes have been discussed? Discuss what the media coverage does not show, that the academic research does show. I want you to break down biases here, and discuss how the academic research explains the topic more objectively than media coverage. (20 points)
- Hyperlinks and citations. Minimum of five hyperlinks and three academic citations. Citations must be different than hyperlinks. (15 points)
- Pictures/Charts/Graphs (5 points) No videos please!!!
Here are some examples of blogs:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
