Media, Culture, & Society

Assignments

Reading Quizzes (5%, 50 pts.)

• Weekly quizzes on course readings and/or screenings. Make-up quizzes are not allowed. No exceptions.

Experiencing Media in Boston (5%, 50 pts.)

• This assignment is meant to fuel your exposure to and engagement with media beyond the boundaries of our Northeastern campus. To accomplish this, you will need to occasionally pause your current Netflix binge-session, or set down the controllers to your gaming console, and seek out media activities and experiences in the Greater Boston area.
• You will be required to attend five different media events during the semester. You will want to remember to take a photo/selfie of yourself at the event (more information about this below). An (obviously incomplete) list of media events around Boston will be provided on the course website. Feel free to search for other events. E-mail our TA (Cassie) if you’re unsure whether or not an event will qualify for the assignment.
• After you attend an event, you will need to submit two items on Blackboard:
  • A short response about the media event (3-4 sentences is fine), submitted as a PDF. Your response could include your general reaction to the event you attended or, better yet, will try to connect with concepts or topics from course readings/lectures.
  • A photo/selfie of yourself taken at the event (e.g. from your seat at a concert, holding your ticket-stub while watching previews at AMC, etc). You should embed the image in your PDF submission. And, if you need insta-hashtag-inspiration: #forcedtoleavecampus #notbingingtonight #MSCR1220 #mediainboston
  • NOTE: Five “Media Event” assignments will be available on Blackboard. Be certain you upload all required materials the first time, as you will only be able to submit once for each event. Submissions are not accepted via email.
• Each event is worth 10 points. Within about 1-week of your submission, you will receive a partial grade for the selfie and reaction submissions. The other points will be assigned toward the end of the semester (after assessing the variety of media types you selected and the quantity of events attended off-campus).

24-Hour Media Use Time-Log  (10%, 100 pts.) DUE on 1/23

• You will keep a detailed record of your media engagement over a 24-hour period. For the purposes of this assignment you should account for the broad ways “media” might be defined, including but not limited to engagements with print (e.g. billboards, course readings, magazines), audio (physical or digital), video (e.g. film, TV, YouTube), and other electronic/screen technologies.
• Your log of media engagement will be recorded in a table/spreadsheet. You will need to be detail-oriented when tracking your media engagement to account for the following types of information:
  • Time/duration of media use
  • Format/technology used to consume media.
  • How much time you spend continuously engaging with specific types of media (e.g. using your phone to listen to music) in contrast to time spent using one type of technology throughout the day (e.g. all uses of your phone combined)
  • The purpose of your media use, including but not limited to categories like “leisure,” “school,” or “work.”
  • Differences between intentional or accidental/incidental media engagements or encounters. The purpose of these categories is to determine how often you intentionally use media. I cannot determine why you will assign media encounters/engagements to each of these categories but, broadly, I would distinguish between these categories as follows: Intentional encounters with media are the most overt, occurring when you choose to use or engage with media directly (e.g. you look up and view an advertisement you need to write a paper about for a class). Accidental encounters with media occur when you do not have an expectation/foresight about their use (e.g. seeing an advertisement on a bus that happens to drive by you). While similar, an incidental encounter with media would imply that it is more likely that you are to encounter media based upon a specific circumstance or device/platform you are using (e.g. seeing an advertisement in class as part of a lecture about marketing).
• After completing the log, you will need to summarize your media use with graphical representations (e.g. bar or pie charts). Your graphical summaries should indicate:
  • The total time spent consuming or engaging with media.
  • The total time spent using different types of media (you can rank these totals based upon type of device, medium, etc.).
  • The total time spent engaging with media based upon purpose and intentionality (you can provide these comparisons together or separately).

Presentation Slides Assignment (10%, 100 pts.)

This assignment requires you to consider how presentation slides function as a medium and, more specifically, how this medium should be used to effectively supplement oral communication during a presentation (avoiding the all-too-common tendency to fill slides full of text to simply reiterate what is spoken). To this end, you will create a set of (Keynote or Powerpoint) presentation slides about one topic from the course unit you are assigned.

You will need to choose a specific concept/topic from the course unit you are assigned rather than providing information on an entire chapter. If, for example, you were assigned to the unit on “representation,” you would be expected to skim the assigned readings for that unit and select a (sub)topic you would like to address (such as representations of Blackness in American television or women in film). Further, you will be expected to logically organize and present your topic in presentation slides. To accomplish this, you will need to consider the best structure to information that pertains to your topic (which typically requires students to avoid duplicating/regurgitating the organization of information in course readings) and to consider the best/ideal visual examples to illustrate your topic (which typically requires students to locate visuals and clips that might not be addressed in course readings).

Assignment Requirements

Presentation Slides

• A “title” slide: Provide a unique title for the topic you have selected and be sure to include your name (and pertinent personal/course information).
• An “outline” slide: Provide an overview of the information addressed in your slides.
• 6-8 “content” slides: These should include carefully designed/curated textual and visual content, which is addressed with more depth in the presenter notes.
  • 3 (or more) visuals: These should complement content on slides or in presenter notes and, ideally, are not text-based visuals (such as logos or tables of data).
  • 1 embedded media clip/video: This clip should not be longer than 5 minutes and should complement visual/textual information in your slides and presenter notes. In the past, students have taken different approaches to select media clips. It is acceptable to select a clip that simply describes a concept from the reading, but it is often better to select a clip that functions as an example of the topic/concept you are describing.
    • NOTE: to embed a clip means you do not just provide a link. Instead, you should attach the video file from the web, which may require you to use a site like BitDownloader

Presenter Notes (for each slide)

• Your slides require a careful balance between text and image, which will require you to include presenter notes to explain or expand upon slide content. The bulk of textual information should be provided in presenter notes.
  • Apple Keynote: Presenter notes can be located by selecting “View” > “Show Presenter Notes.”
  • Microsoft Powerpoint: Presenter notes can be located by selecting “Notes” along the bottom of the window or by selecting “View” > “Notes Page.”
• Structure: You can choose to provide notes in the form of an outline, which would include all of the information you would address while each slide is presented, or you can choose to provide notes that are written like a script, which reads like a word-for-word transcript you would present for each slide.
• Content: Your presenter notes should provide detailed information about what you would address while the slide is presented. Be sure to fully articulate what content is being addressed on each slide and how you are connecting visuals/clips to presentation content.
• References: You will be expected to provide citations for all source material in your slides. 
  • For course readings: you only need to provide parenthetical references to pages. For example: “Race is a socially constructed concept” (Croteau & Hoynes, p. 231). Or, written in another way: As Croteau and Hoynes explain, “race is a socially constructed concept” (p. 231).
  • For visuals/media clips: you should provide a full citation to indicate where the content was found. The format for media content/clips is: Creator/Author (First-Name Last-Name), Image/Video Title (in italics), Publication Date (Month Day, Year), website address. An example would be: Official Rick Astley, Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up (Video), October 24, 2009, https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
  • For other sources: while you are not expected to do additional research for this assignment, you will need to provide citations if you decide to incorporate additional sources. The format for citing other web sources is: Author (First-Name Last-Name), “Article Title (in quotation marks),” Website Title (in italics), Publication Date or Date You Access the Page (Month Day, Year), website address. For example, if I cite this webpage: Kristopher L. Cannon, “Media, Culture, & Society – Assignments & Grading – Spring 2019,” February 01, 2019, https://www.kristophercannon.com/courses/mscr1220/assignments/

Two In-Class Exams (20% each, 400 pts. total) IN CLASS on 1/30 & 2/27

• Exams will be comprised of various types of questions/prompts, including multiple-choice, true/false, matching, and fill-in-the-blank. Each exam will cover material from course readings, lectures, and screening/media content.
• Each exam will be addressed at least one week before the due-date, when an exam guide will be posted online.

Final Exam (30%, 300 pts.) 4/17 Final Exam posted on Blackboard at 5:00pm EST (available until 4/19 at 11:59pm EST)

• The final exam will be formatted with questions/prompts similar to other in-class exams.
• The final exam is longer and comprehensive in nature. However, a disproportionate amount of questions (70–80%) will be devoted to content covered after the second exam.
• The final exam will be addressed during a review session noted in the timeline.
• NOTE: University policies require students to take final exams on university-assigned final exam dates. The university offers very few exceptions for students to receive alternative final exam dates/times, and these exceptions do not include accommodations for personal circumstances like travel scheduling conflicts. Because our final exam date/time will not be assigned until a few weeks after the semester begins, I advise students to avoid booking end-of-semester travel until after the final exam period (or to wait until our final exam date has been assigned).