In your first project, you critically interrogated the ways in which a historical– and primary– piece of public writing engaged audiences, contexts, embodiments, and rhetoric. This project builds on these understandings and looks to contemporary public writing work online, in our networks and communities.
In this vein, public writing can include the kinds of writing we’ve studied in the first project– public pamphlets, essays and addresses meant to persuade people to act. In the twenty-first-century– however– we can include public art and murals, online content, stories from this place, and stories from people who have lived through turbulent, change-making times, among other artifacts.
This project invites you to practice designing research questions, collecting and analyzing primary data, and showcasing your findings in a 5-7 minute multimedia presentation. This project requires you to pose a research question and identify methods for data collection, collect and analyze primary data, contextualize your findings within other research, and present your findings in a rhetorically accessible way.
Purpose:
For this project, you have the option to select one of the following foci for your research project. Whichever you choose, you will be responsible for creating a 5-7 minute, engaging presentation [a][b]that contextualizes your research topic, presents findings, and offers key takeaways/contributions/questions.
Social Media/Web Presence content analysis. You will select a public facing social media account, create a framework/set of questions to analyze a suitable sample of the posts. You should analyze message, audience, content strategy, etc. to better understand how this account educates and persuades a broader public. For social media project, you will need to consider what processes of consent and other ethics[c][d] (e.g., not quoting comments without permission). For more information, check out Haywood’s (2019) piece.
Archival research of an organization, event, or person. You will select an event, moment, or strings of moments about an activist event, organization, and/or group of people and using curated archives online, you will select primary images, posters, testimonies, and/or other documents. You will then create a framework/set of questions to to better understand how this event educates and persuades a broader public.
Public writing/art content analysis. You will select a public artifact such as public art, performance, an essay, or some other public writing activity. You will create a framework/set of questions to to better understand how this event educates and persuades a broader public.
Oral history of an event. You will interview a person who has lived through a time or access archives of oral histories[e][f]. You will create a framework/set of questions to to better understand how this person’s stories can educate and persuade a broader public.
In particular, your presentation should:
Provide background and context on your topic
Pose a specific, answerable, and appropriately scoped research question
Describe the method for data collection and analysis[g][h]
Overview the findings from data collection
Note takeaways, conclusions, limitations and recommendations
Effectively design a presentation, website, or other multimedia presentation that is accessible to your audience
Includes at least one application of a rhetorical concept or theory used in the class
Incorporates at least 2 secondary, peer-reviewed sources that enrich, complicate, and/or extend the analysis
Employ MLA or APA citations and accompanying reference page
Resources:
Oral History Hub
Content – The Archive of Public Protests
The Movement Oral History Project: Antiwar Protest and Allied Activism in the Stanford Community, 1963-1973.
https://www.loc.gov/collections/women-of-protest/about-this-collection/
Civil Rights History Project, Available Online, Oral Histories | Library of Congress
Lift Every Voice: Collecting Stories from Atlanta’s Activists
Protest in the Archives
Archives and Manuscripts | UM Library
What You Need to Submit:
You will complete a reflective Google Form submission that will include the following to help scaffold and chunk your work. In particular you will be asked questions about the following:
Reflection on in class writing during the unit
The feedback you received during your proposal conference and how you used that feedback.
A link to your final presentation
Proposal Conference:
For this project, you will post a discussion prompt with a proposal during Week 10 or 11. For this post, you should have a 1-page proposal, with the following:
What is the object/event/person you will focus on for this presentation?
What are your research questions?
How does your identities/experiences inform how you will engage this project?
How are you thinking about centering ethics in your project?
What methods for data collection? How will you analyze your data?
What do you hope to find?
Nuts and Bolts:
Your multimedia presentation will be presented in class in Week Eleven & Twelve (March 29- April 5) and should be 3-5 minutes in length. You should include your primary object of analysis and at least 3 secondary sources to contextualize your project. Please sign up here for the day you plan to present your work.
Outline:
Introduction: Introduce your topic, provide background knowledge
Research Question: State the question you are trying to answer
Positionality[i]: How do your identities/experiences/ways of knowing orient you to this project?
Theoretical framework[j]: Explain what concepts are guiding your question and analysis
Ethics: How do we protect communities in our research?
Methods: Describe how you collected and analyze your data
Results: Provide an overview of what you found and analyze example data
Discussion: Explain what is important about what you found
Rubric:
Yes (3.5-points)
Kind of (2-points)
No (1-point)
Presentation is effectively and accessibility designed, by using alt-text, large fonts, and headings[k]
Presentation offers context with secondary sources and poses a research question with an appropriate research method
Presentation offers analysis of selected object to answer the research question
Presentation ends with take-aways, recommendations, and other conclusions
[a]can this be a slideshow?
[b]Yes!
[c]For the Social Media one, if the media happen to be a forum(Reddit/Medium) does this mean we would need to somehow get each person if we would like to quote their comment?
[d]Yes and no– you can either ask permission in a DM or you can anonymize the comment. So instead of giving the user name they have, you can make another up or anonymize it (e.g., “According to one user “quote”) so that is it isn’t traceable to that initial user.
I will confess that internet ethics are very complicated, partly because online discourse is inherently public and sometimes doesn’t expect privacy, but also that doesn’t mean internet researchers don’t have a responsibility for ethics– if that makes sense?
We will discuss this more in class Wednesday!
[e]This would be something like the Human Library at WCC library?
[f]Yes! I love this idea!
[g]Can you go over different methods and describe how to incorporate them in our project?
[h]Yes! That’s what we’ll do on Wednesday!
[i]One way to think about this: “I am interested in this topic because….”
[j]What ideas are important to your project?
[k]This means the presentation is designed for varied audiences. There are a few readings that we will discuss in class 🙂
