Final Research Paper

For your final paper, you will be picking one aspect or form of media and take an in-depth look at how it has affected our culture and/or how it reflects our culture. This will require you to actually do research, you cannot write this paper from personal opinion only. In fact, you cannot use any first person pronouns (so no “I”, “my”, “me”, etc.).

For now, I need you to pick a topic and find at LEAST 2 sources of information to help you with that topic. You will need at least 3 total for the final paper, but for now, just get me 2. These sources MUST be academic in nature, meaning something that is peer-reviewed, like a book, journal, notable magazine article or notable newspaper (NOT an editorial or something your Aunt Tilly wrote for the local rag, think Times, Post, etc.). At least ONE of these sources must come from an academic journal.

Possible topics could be the following:

~ a media technology, like the iPad and how it has changed how pre-school kids are learning, e-readers and how they have affected libraries around the world, etc.
~ a form of media, like a specific Reality TV series and how it reflects and affects its viewers, political blogs and how they affect our democratic process, etc.
~ a media company, like Apple or Disney and how they affect and reflect aspects of our culture like consumerism or the environment.
~ a media outlet, like Facebook, Twitter, CNN, etc. and how they connect to our cultural values of success, love, or religion.
~a media trend, like mash-ups or memes (either a specific one or the idea of them as a whole)
~ or how media is used by certain corporations to affect our culture, like how fast food companies leverage media aimed at kids to sell their products, or companies use media for PR (good and bad).
~a media theory like agenda setting or spiral of silence and how they can be seen in today’s media marketplace
~how certain forms of media don’t just inform or sell us a product, they sell us a concept for our culture, for example, you could look at billboards for a particular product, like Bud Light, and analyze what else they say about our culture.

This will be a 6-8 page (double spaced) paper looking at how your chosen topic affects and reflects our culture, so pick something you are interested in!

Send me this as a word doc. with the topic and at LEAST 2 ACADEMIC sources (one being from an academic journal) by the due date. Any questions, let me know!!

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