English final assessment

8. Keep an eye on the time, and be sure to leave yourself enough time to revise and proofread your answers.

9. We strongly advise you do not look up material online. There is a great deal of misinformation out there; instead, stick with the course materials your instructor has provided.

10. Of utmost importance is your own health and well-being. Please do not stress over this final assessment at this difficult time. You can do this.

Section one: Reading comprehension – short answer questions

Length: 3 questions; weight: 10%

The questions below test your comprehension of the article you read in preparation for this exam “How college students evaluate and share ‘fake news” stories” and your ability to summarize key information from the article. Your work will be marked for accuracy, comprehension, concision, and effectiveness of written expression.

1. What is the main argument of the peer review article “How college students evaluate and share ‘fake news’ stories?” State this point in your own words. In other words, briefly summarize the argument. Write your answer in one or two full sentences. (2 points)

2. Describe the methodology used by the author of the article (that is, how the study was conducted), and list two specific findings. (5 points)

3. Explain what strategies the authors of the article use to address possible counter-arguments. What opposing arguments and/or criticisms do they anticipate, and how do they handle these issues? (3 points)

Section two: Rhetorical analysis

Length: 3-5 paragraphs totaling approximately 300 words – you do not need to write a fully developed essay; weight: 40%

Analyze the effectiveness of the popular press article “Why fake news on social media travels faster than the truth” focusing on how the author uses rhetorical strategies to persuade the audience (that is, the primary audience of the article, which you need to identify). You are not required to include introduction or conclusion paragraphs, just 3 to 5 “body” paragraphs of analysis. Your paragraphs should describe specific rhetorical strategies the author has used to achieve their purpose and how these strategies are used to persuade readers. To support your claims, you must provide specific textual evidence in the form of examples from the text, which can take the form of quotations or paraphrases. (Please do not simply summarize the article.) Where appropriate, you should include in-text references in a citation format that you learned this term.

Section three: Argument

Length: A short essay totaling approximately 500 to 750 words; weight: 40%

Write your own short argumentative essay on a subject related to the topic discussed in the popular press article “Why fake news on social media travels faster than the truth” and the peer-reviewed scholarly article “How college students evaluate and share ‘fake news’ stories.” To develop and support your argument, you must use both of these articles as evidence in the form of quotations, paraphrases, and/or summaries accompanied by appropriate citations. Be sure that you have an arguable claim or “thesis.” At the end of your essay, include a paragraph that briefly describes the primary audience you imagined you were writing to.

Section four: Documentation and citations

Weight: 10%

Following one of the sets of documentation guidelines below, you must offer a correctly formatted works cited/references list that includes the peer-reviewed scholarly article “How college students evaluate and share ‘fake news’ stories” and the popular press article “Why fake news on social media travels faster than the truth.” Your mark for this section will also take into account whether you have cited your sources correctly in sections 2, 3, and 4 above.

APA

Journal article:

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy

Newspaper article:

Author, AA. (Year, Month Day). Title of article. Title of Newspaper, pp. pages, https://URL.

Citations:

(Author, date)

MLA

Journal article:

Author, First-name and First-name Author. “Article Title.” Title of Journal, vol. #, issue #, year, pp. pages. DOI.

Newspaper article:

Author, First-name. “Article Title.” Newspaper Title, Day Month Year, pp. pages. URL.

Citations:

(Author page#)

CSE

Journal article:

Author, A., Author, B. Author, C. Year. Article title. Journal Title. Vol(issue):pages. Available from: DOI or URL.

Newspaper article:

Author, A. Day Month Year. Article title. Newspaper Title. Pages. Available from: DOI or URL.

Citations:

(Author date)

Popular Press Article:

Author: Paul Chadwick

Article Title: Why fake news on social media travels faster than the truth

Newspaper: The Guardian

Date: March 19, 2018

URL: https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/apps/doc/A531496714/ITBC?u=uvictoria&sid=ITBC&xid=e6bbaf7a

False news is more novel than true news, and that may be why we share the false much faster and more widely. Prominent responses to false news include surprise, fear and disgust. True news tends to be met with sadness, joy, anticipation and trust. Humans are more likely than automated processes to be responsible for the spread of fake news.

These insights emerge from a large and impressive study published on 9 March in the journal Science. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, interested in how and why true and false news stories spread differently, used 126,000 stories that had been tweeted by 3 million people a total of 4.5m times. The data spanned 2006, when Twitter began, to 2017.

The study is unsettling reading, especially in light of what has so far emerged from US intelligence agencies, congressional inquiries and the special prosecutor Robert Mueller about use of social media to distort the 2016 presidential election. I hope the research helps to persuade more people that fake news powered by social media is a serious threat to all democracies' health. A growing bundle of studies shows that this is a qualitatively and quantitatively new problem, not just a digital manifestation of the yellow press of old. Apart from effects on elections and referendums, fake news in social media can assist hate speech to turn into communal violence more quickly. And some government responses are troubling on free-speech grounds, such as Sri Lanka's week-long ban on social media, or "digital curfew".

More openness by the social media giants and greater collaboration with suitably qualified partners is essential The MIT researchers studied what they called "rumour cascades". A cascade starts with a Twitter user making an assertion about a topic -- with words, images or links -- and continues in an unbroken chain of retweets. The researchers analysed cascades about news stories that six fact-checking organisations agreed were true or agreed were false.The study found that "falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than truth in all categories of information". False political news reached more people faster and went deeper into their networks than any other category of false information.

The study compared the emotional content of replies to true and false rumours by using about 32,000 Twitter hashtags and a lexicon of about 140,000 English words that associate with eight basic emotions: anger, fear, anticipation, trust, surprise, sadness, joy and disgust. Were automated processes, or "bots", the main culprits in spreading falsity? No -- the researchers found, it's humans.

Calling for more effort to identify the factors in human judgment that spread true and false news, including interviews with users, surveys, lab experiments and neuroimaging, the paper points to some obvious reasons to look deeper. "False news can drive misallocation of resources during terror attacks and natural disasters, the misalignment of business investments, and misinformed

elections."

Two features of this study, besides its published results, are heartening. Artificial intelligence was successfully deployed to good effect, for example, a bot-detection algorithm. And Twitter provided access to its data, some funding, and shared its expertise. The researchers have conditionally offered to share their dataset.

More openness by the social media giants and greater collaboration by them with suitably qualified partners in tackling the problem of fake news is essential. Traditional journalism organisations are potential partners too. They find, check and disseminate news, are well placed to assess veracity, attract masses of comment online and discussion on social media platforms, and have a clear incentive to maintain trust in their own contributions to democratic life.

* Paul Chadwick is the Guardian's readers' editor

ENGL135 Final Exam Marking Rubric

Section one: Reading comprehension – short answer questions (10%)

Question one (2 points total):

· Up to 1 point for accurate content (statement of the article’s main point)

· Up to 0.5 point for writing one full sentence in their own words

· Up to 0.5 point for grammatical and mechanical correctness

Question two (5 points total):

· Up to 3 points for accurate content (description of methodology and overview of two specific findings)

· Up to 1 point for writing full sentences in their own words

· Up to 1 point for grammatical and mechanical correctness

Question three (3 points total):

· Up to 2 points for accurate content (explanation of the study’s self-imposed limitations)

· Up to 0.5 point for writing full sentences in their own words

· Up to 0.5 point for grammatical and mechanical correctness

Section two: Rhetorical analysis (20)

Section three: Argument responding to the editorial (40)

Section four: Citations (10%)

A level (8 and above): Documentation style is clearly identified; works cited or reference list presents accurate information and is perfectly formatted; citations appear when necessary and are perfectly formatted.

B level (7): Documentation style is clearly identified; works cited or reference list presents accurate information but has some small formatting problems; citations appear when necessary but have some small formatting problems.

C level (6): Documentation style is not clearly identified but is clearly identifiable; works cited or reference list presents accurate information but has some significant formatting problems; citations appear when necessary but have some significant formatting problems.

D level (5): Documentation style is not clearly identified or identifiable; works cited or reference list presents some inaccurate information or has missing information; there are some obvious, significant formatting problems; citations do not always appear when necessary, and there are some obvious, significant formatting problems.

F level (4 or below): Documentation style is not identifiable or is missing entirely; works cited or reference list presents inaccurate information or is missing; there are obvious, major formatting problems; citations do not appear when necessary; citations that are present have obvious, major formatting problems.