Analyze: News Media Impact
Evaluation Title: Popular Culture, Politics and New Media
For this week’s assignment, you will be considering how news media coverage affects public perceptions of issues in the news. You will be selecting a current event in the news and you will read three news articles related to the same event: One from the United States and two from other countries that also reported on the same event.
The presentation should include the following:
- Identification of the current event chosen along with identification of the three news articles.
- Include the full APA citation for each article, including the date it was published and the country it was reported in, and a URL/web link to each source.
- Include screenshots of the first page of each article in your presentation.
- Compare the similarities and differences between the articles in the facts, perspectives of the reporter (tone, opinions shared, etc.). Consider the way images were used in the article or whether you can detect the reporter’s bias/position in relation to the issue.
- Discuss your perceptions of the current event before and after reading the news articles. Did your opinion or perception of the event/issue change after reading three articles about it?
In the presentation:
- Provide speaker’s notes or a voice over on the PowerPoint to accompany each slide. If you choose speaker’s notes, the total word count of your notes should be 1000-1200 words. If you choose to create a voice-over recording your presentation should be 5-7 minutes long.
- Include a title slide and include your references page in APA format on the last slide of the presentation.
Submit:
- A 10-12 slide PowerPoint presentation or Prezi that answers the questions posed above. Include speaker notes or a voice-over, images, and videos where applicable. If you choose the voice-over option, upload your recording web link (URL).
Tips on locating articles to use for this assignment:
Choose a current event or issue that you are familiar with in the news today.
- First: Go to an American news source (such as CNN) and find an article related to the event/issue.
- Second: Consider what two countries’ news you should look for the issue in. It’s best to select countries that have a social or political interest in the story, countries that are nearby geographically to the news issue, or even countries that are close allies of the country the story relates to.
- Third: Locate an English language news source for each country by searching online for “English Language news in [country name]”.
For example: If you chose a story related to North Korea’s attempts to test nuclear bombs, you might choose China (North Korea’s main ally) and South Korea (North Korea’s main enemy) as two additional countries to read about the event in.
- Fourth: Once you locate an English language news source for that country, locate an article on the same current event and/or global issue. It’s a good idea to choose an article with a publication date close to your American article to be sure that the same event is being discussed.
- Fifth: Repeat the previous step for your third article.
