Assignments and research sources
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Examinations
There will be two take-home
examinations.
Questions for the midterm
examination will be distributed on Wednesday, January 30. The completed
examination is due at the beginning of class on Monday, February 4.
Questions for the
comprehensive final examination will be distributed on Wednesday, March 12. The
completed examination is due by 5 p.m. on Monday, March 17.
In addition to the take-home
examinations, there will be occasional in-class quizzes on current war and
communication topics. Students will also write a short statement at the end of
each class period that responds to one of the major points of discussion that
day.
War
communications comparison papers
Truth, war and history: Paper #1, due January 23
Students should compare
memories and media accounts of a previous war in which the U.S. was involved.
Select for interviewing one or more participants in that war, whether as
soldiers, as families, or as voting citizens. Ask about recollections of a
major news event of that war and through which mass medium they learned about
it at the time. For comparison purposes, locate original news accounts of that
event, using library or online resources.
Guide to interviewing.
Organizing
Your Paper Grading Form
Questions to ask: Compare what your interviewees recalled with the
information you found in the mainstream press of that time period. Was the event (or the war itself) described
differently in the memories than in the news sources that you've located?
Analyze those differences. What was the primary source of information given in
the news sources? Who was quoted? Who wasn’t? What points of view were
represented or not? Be specific and give examples. Do the results lead you to
think that wartime audiences in
the past received truthful and appropriate representation of that conflict from
the available news media?
Current sources of war information: Paper
#2, due Feb. 27
Students must locate and analyze information on the wars in Iraq or
Afghanistan from at a minimum of four types of sources:
(1) mainstream news media (2) the U.S government, and (3) alternative media,
including blogs or websites, and (4) an international (non-U.S.) news source.
You must identify and analyze these sources and their points of view, using
cited reference sources. Compare the topics, focus and sources of the
information they contain. For example, if you were interested in the news about
daily conflict, you might compare the U.S. government’s press releases, war
coverage on CNN or other prominent news sources, a report from an institutional
or Internet source, and an international newspaper.
Selected
international news resources
Questions to ask: How do your
sources differ institutionally? What content did you analyze? What were your
criteria? What patterns did you find? Do the accounts differ? Examples? How many points of view are reflected in each
source? How helpful are these sources in presenting a complete picture to
citizen audiences?
Questions to find
out from independent reference resources: Who owns and
operates the sources you have chosen to research? What are their relationships
with the government or other ruling authority? Does this seem to be reflected
in the contents? How? Examples?
Independent reference sources in the Knight Library which may be
helpful: Political Handbook of the World,
Editor and Publisher International Yearbook, Ulrich’s Yearbook,
More resources
Journalism and Communication Library Research Sites
http://libweb.uoregon.edu/guides/journalism/
http://libweb.uoregon.edu/guides/journalism/j396/index.html
Television news archive
The UO Libraries have
purchased a subscription to the Vanderbilt Television News Archive (VTNA):
http://libweb.uoregon.edu/dc/indexes/index.php?go=1&db=417
This is an extensive archive of television news,
including regular newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC from 1968 to the present, CNN
from 1995 to the present, and FoxNews from 2004 to the present.
Our subscription provides