MED312essaywritingandreferencingadvice.pptxEssay advice
MED312 Media Ethics
1
Essay Structure
Introduction
Outline your approach to question
Outline your essay structure
Don’t answer the question in the intro
Say what the essay will do and how it will do it
Main body
Be coherent
Be relevant
Conclusion
Sum up your key points
Answer the question
You don’t need to provide headings for the sections of your essay
2
writing
Your essay should show that you’ve carried out research; that you have looked at the relevant issues – looked at all aspects, where relevant considered both sides of an argument; set out the key facts
It’s not about you giving your opinion.
Be careful not to make huge statements – about the state of journalism, for instance – without backing them up with evidence and an in-text citation.
Good practice:
Previous research supports the view that, on balance, the EU tends to be negatively portrayed in the UK press (Anderson and Weymouth, 1999; Gavin, 2001; Norris, 2001).
Bad practice:
The British press is always criticising Europe and is absolutely biased against the EU.
Don’t use of the first person – I, me, my
3
Harvard Referencing
As you should know by now, you will need to reference your reading using the Harvard system.
There are two key areas of referencing:
In-text citations
Bibliography
You are now at the end of your third year – you should not be making any mistakes when it comes to referencing!
Make sure you are using the correct style for in-text citation and bibliographical references
In-text citations
You use an in-text citation to show where you have obtained your information.
If you are quoting a book or other academic source directly, you use an in-text citation such as the following:
‘Magazine journalists have become increasingly multi-skilled’ (Gough-Yates, 2003: 47).
Note that the full stop goes after the citation.
An alternative is:
As Gough-Yates (2003:47) argues: ‘Magazine journalists have become increasingly multi-skilled.’
In-text citations
If you are making a general statement based on a passage you’ve read, the citation is as follows:
There is evidence that magazine journalists have become more multi-skilled (Gough-Yates, 2003).
Make frequent use of citations in your essay.
Your essay will fail if it contains no quotes or citations.
In-text citations
When citing newspaper or online articles just use author’s name and, if available, year – do not include full web address or headline until the bibliography:
(Preston 2013)
Bibliography
A bibliography is a list of the sources you’ve cited in your essay
It comes at the end of your essay
It is on a separate page
It is in alphabetical order (of author)
Your essay will fail if there is no bibliography
Bibliography
In a bibliography we can list various kinds of sources:
Books:
Gough-Yates, A. (2003) Understanding Women’s Magazines. Abingdon: Routledge.
Book chapters:
Schudson, M. (2005) ‘The Sociology of News Production Revisited’ in Curran, J. & Gurevitch, M. (eds) Mass Media and Society, London: Arnold.
Journal articles:
Boyle, R. (2006) ‘Running away from the circus’ in British Journalism Review, v 17, no. 3, pp12-17.
Newspaper articles:
Preston, P. (2013) ‘Trial by television only saves others from BBC blame’, The Observer, September 15, p.46.
Online sources:
Premierleague.com (2011) ‘Barclays Premier League Tweet Map’ at http://www.premierleague.com/page/Headlines/0,,12306~2288403,00.html (Accessed 23 October, 2019).
However, you don’t need to put your bibliography into categories. You should simply list all your sources, of all kinds, in one alphabetical list
Bibliographical style
You must follow the style we have used in the previous slide; you will lose marks if you don’t
For instance, with a reference to a book you put:
the author’s surname
followed by his or her initial
the date of publication in brackets
the title of the book in italics
then the place of publication, followed by a colon
then the name of the publisher
Gough-Yates, A. (2003) Understanding Women’s Magazines. Abingdon: Routledge.
Make sure to punctuate your bibliographical reference in exactly the way we have done so here.
Note taking
To help you get your referencing right, it’s important to take notes when you are reading.
Take down the following details:
Author (s)
Year of publication
Title
Place of publication
Publisher
Page numbers of particular quotes or ideas
Also, for journal articles:
Volume, issue number and page range
Also for websites
Web address and date accessed
11
Quotations
Your essay must include quotes from books and other academic sources.
But don’t use them just for the sake of it
Blend them into your argument
Don’t simply drop the quote into the text without any introduction or explanation; a quote should be “integrated” with the text that precedes and follows it.
Make sure your quotes are relevant and useful
Use them to:
add clarity
provide evidence/authority
develop your argument
12
Taking material from books and other sources (how not to plagiarise!)
If you take a short extract from a source, and are using the author’s exact words you must put those words within quote marks (single quote marks)
If the quotation is longer than two lines:
It is separated from the rest of the paragraph by one free line above and below
It is indented at left and right margins
It may be in a smaller point size
It is preceded by a colon
It does not use quotation marks
An example of good practice
Here, Martin Conboy has used Harvard referencing with a short extract and a longer one:
at the end of the first paragraph he has used a short quotation and an in-text citation (he hasn’t included the author’s name because he has already mentioned it – in an earlier in-text citation)
At the end of the second paragraph he has used a longer quotation
Taking material from books and other sources
You must not use an author’s exact words in any other way
An alternative is to paraphrase those words, (put the passage into your own words), or make a general statement based on those words, as in the example we used earlier:
There is evidence that magazine journalists have become more multi-skilled (Gough-Yates, 2003).
Final points
Put titles of newspapers, magazines, TV programmes, radio programmes in italics
Double-space your writing (actually, a space of 1.5 is best – you can change your spacing by using the line and paragraph spacing tab on Word)
Don’t use any font below 12 point
