Paper Topic 1
In his book Mightier Than The Sword, Rodger Streitmatter writes about the impact of the media on a) the women’s movement, b) the civil rights movement, and c) the political career of Boss Tweed/political corruption. Streitmatter suggests that the media are not neutral with regard to social movements or political events. Rather, he says, the media convey a particular stance on a movement or political figure through reporting, editorials and visual images/audio; this has important consequences for public opinion and for how the movements or political officials fare.
In this essay, you should discuss the “positive” and “negative” impacts that the media had, according to Streitmatter, in TWO cases. So pick TWO out of the three assigned chapters to discuss. You should bring into your discussion SPECIFIC EXAMPLES of ways that Streitmatter says the media exerted influence or had an impact.
In a final page, you should address a current social movement, such as Black Lives Matters or the environmental movement (you can choose another social movement if you like). Discuss how media coverage may be affecting that movement’s progress/public perception of the movement. You should base this on your reading of two newspaper articles on the social movement you choose. How might media coverage be helping or hurting this movement?
Guidelines for writing the paper:
Your paper should be 5-7 pages. You can write more and you will NOT be penalized for going longer.
Papers should be double spaced with 1.25 inch margins on each side. Use a 12-point font, preferably Times New Roman, and DO A SPELL/GRAMMAR CHECK AND PROOFREAD!!
Papers with excessive spelling and grammatical mistakes will be marked down. Please put your name on a cover page and NUMBER YOUR PAGES. When quoting from the Streitmatter book, simply put the author and page number after the quote, in the paper itself. For example: “Newspapers promoted the abolitionist cause.” (Streitmatter, p. 45).
You do not need to use any sources besides the Streitmatter book and two newspaper articles.
So you only need to put two things in your bibliography on the last page: citations for the articles that you use to assess media coverage of a current social movement. You could take them from New York Times, or Washington Post, Washington Times, Florida Sun Sentinel, Miami Herald, etc. Any national newspaper is fine. The newspaper cite should have the author, title of article, name of newspaper, and date (Bob Higgins, “BLM holds rally in Miami,” Miami Herald, November 20, 2020).
