Paper : Media and Tribalism

Paper #2 has a challenging agenda. We are aiming to do justice to Dr. Postman’s media-analysis model, the systematic method he uses to scrutinize media in ways that the public is not used to. Postman’s model and methodology looks past the fact that a tool has functions which empower us to perform some task. Dr. Postman wants us to think about a tool and its medium as an IDEA with symbolic value (metaphor). The medium’s metaphor, according to him, speaks a narrative or language about the nature of knowledge, and this is why Postman calls each medium’s format a “way of knowing” or a means of “truth-telling.” This way of knowing is the medium’s epistemology and derives from its metaphor. Finally, the last stage of Postman’s model is examining how this way of knowing molds our thinking and our culture in ways both empowering and debilitating. In the summary portion of your paper you are trying to reach these outcomes at a high level:

· Precise and accurate paraphrasing of Postman’s big ideas about a tool, its medium, the medium’s metaphor, the medium’s epistemology, and the implications of the epistemology on the public’s thinking and the culture. This will help a reader who has NOT read Postman’s book to grasp his theory of media analysis.

· Avoiding plagiarizing Postman—give credit to Postman via signal phrases or end citations for both his points/ideas and his phrasing/language/sentence structure. Remember that plagiarism results in a failing grade. Follow correct MLA page citation format.

· Make the move from theory (Postman’s model is theoretical) to application by paraphrasing how Postman uses evidence (such as examples) to make each concept within his media-analysis model understandable or relatable to the reader.

For the second required component of the paper—the bulk of your paper is this part NOT the summary of Postman’s thesis—aim for the following:

· A thesis statement that clearly and precisely reveals which Internet tool you are writing about, and which states your precise metaphorical and epistemological commentary (see below for a sample thesis statement about Twitter) about that tool. Remember: you are aiming for a Postmanesque media analysis of your Internet tool, the kind of analysis Postman would have conducted had he been writing about the Internet tool you chose.

· Provide ample support for your commentary. Recognize each time you are offering a claim (not a fact; a claim requires evidence to substantiate it) and provide an ample base of quality evidence. This will require drawing from other sources you read, sources you research.

· Focus on analytical exposition: devote sufficient space to tying the supporting evidence you use to the points which constitute your thesis. This is key: it is possible to present supporting evidence without conducting analysis. The result will be a paper that won’t earn higher than a C and could earn a lower grade based on assessing other facets of the paper.

Before submitting paper #2 for a grade, please gear your paper to align with these quality control metrics:

· Limit your Postman summary so that you don’t make it the centerpiece of your entire paper. Handle summarizing his thesis in a concise space. This means limiting your summary to this agenda: a) defining Postman’s key terms and the stages of his media-analysis model. The key terms are tool, medium, metaphor, epistemology. The stages of his model are these: every tool is embedded within a medium; the medium possesses a metaphor; the metaphor constructs an epistemology; the epistemology has cognitive and cultural impacts (beneficial and/or detrimental).

· Consider that you can limit your Postman summary to ONE exemplary illustrative piece of supporting evidence he provided. Take a deep dive into that ONE illustrative piece of evidence so that we concretely see how Postman’s media-analysis model works. For instance, you can mine Postman’s example of the Nixon-JFK first televised presidential debate, along with his William Howard Taft example. How would you do this? You would have to explain that television is a tool (Postman also calls the tool as “technology”) embedded within the medium of broadcast visual imagery. The medium’s metaphor can be framed many ways, but let’s use this one: appearances. The medium’s metaphor produces a way of knowing (Postman also calls this “truth-telling”), an epistemology, of “watching-is-knowing.” The epistemology results in determining the superior presidential candidate based on how the candidate looks, the images the candidate projects. You would summarize Postman’s remarks on how reading about presidential candidate’s ideas or policy would construct a different understanding of the candidates than watching them on a screen: to “know” Nixon, JFK, or Taft changes when the medium we use defines knowledge as what we view (motion pictures) versus what we read (printed words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs). You can also clearly indicate with this body of material Postman’s evident preference for judging print to be the superior medium over television should our goal be to gain deep contextual understanding of the qualifications and intelligence of presidential candidates. If we want to decide which candidate to vote for based on a popularity contest of appearances—who looks better than whom—we can go to television for that. This ONE context using Nixon vs. JFK, and using Taft, is sufficient to help us concretely see the abstract terms and concepts of Postman’s media-analysis model in action.

· Present a clearly identifiable thesis statement for this paper. The thesis statement should name your Internet tool and deploy Postman’s key terminology and concepts. Here is an example of a viable thesis statement which signals the transition away from summarizing Postman to applying Postman’s media-analysis model to your Internet tool:

Were Neil Postman updating his 1985 book for today’s social media landscape, he no doubt would lambast Twitter as accelerating the damaging metaphor and epistemology of its predecessor, the telegram; Twitter also traffics in the metaphor of brevity (Twitter’s format limits content to taking form in a maximum of 280 characters) which produces the epistemology of vapid triviality and irrelevance, the definition of truth being what a people and a culture can digest by volume (abundantly short, stand-alone messages) for entertainment as opposed to what a populace and a culture can deeply learn and then put to pragmatic use through exposure to and engagement with an alternative medium such as print which constructs knowledge as an exercise in critical analysis of complex and thoughtfully connected discourse.

· Ensure that you support your thesis with copious evidence and reasoning, including the use of outside researched sources. To support your thesis you will need to provide ample evidence and interpret (frame) the relevance of the evidence to your point. To meet this agenda, try the following tips:

a) Have the thesis statement in front of you so that you can refer back to it. Remember: the thesis is the unifying message which you are arguing in your paper. All evidence must be relevant to your message, and you must take the space to explain, to analyze, HOW your evidence backs or substantiates your message.

b) Ask whether you have enough supporting evidence to back your thesis. For instance, when it comes to asserting the metaphor of your Internet tool, how much evidence have you provided? Using Twitter as an example with the metaphor of brevity, I would certainly describe the limits on the number of characters of text that a Tweet can have. But is that enough to establish that the format of Twitter speaks the metaphor of brevity? Might I also want to note that Twitter’s metaphor comes from the realm of ornithology? Who tweets and twitters? Birds do. The short bursts of constant streaming chatter that Twitter provides is the symbolic language of birds. Do I need to include more supporting evidence to establish the metaphor of Twitter? If so, what? Ask the same question for the rest of Postman’s model. Do I have enough supporting evidence to describe what the epistemology is? To describe the cognitive and cultural implications of the epistemology?

c) Ask whether it will be clear to your reader HOW your supporting evidence fits your thesis. Are you explaining enough, framing enough, the fit between what you are arguing and the material you are using to argue it? Are you merely asserting a point as true (leaving it as an unsubstantiated claim) or are you actively persuading through explanation the grounds upon which the point rests?

d) Remember that supporting evidence should come from reliable academic sources, predominantly print (other sources you read as opposed to personal experience). And remember that for all sources you cite in your paper you must have a properly formatted MLA entry in your Works Cited page.

Finally, before submitting your paper, ask yourself questions like this:

· Have I read the teacher’s feedback for students who posted drafts of their paper?

· Have I worked on my paper alone without asking help from anyone? Am I confident that working alone has produced the kind of quality that doesn’t require working with others?

· How well edited is my paper? Am I applying what I learned/studied in the weekly lectures?

· Have I written a complete 1,500 words consisting of just the title, introduction, body, and conclusion?

· Have I included the required Works Cited page listing an entry for every source I cited in the paper?

· How well am I complying with MLA citation style?