Mediation

Mediation: Unit 2 Essay Prompt

Background

Information is mediated to us in a variety of ways: through the books we read, the advice of friends and family members, through sermons delivered at church, through the television shows and movies we choose to watch, the music we listen to, the advertisements we take in--however quickly--and the social media posts we scroll through. Information is coming at us all the time, in all sorts of mediated forms. As de Zengotita tells us, we are flooded with information, so much so that he argues we have become desensitized to the extent that now “there is no important difference between fabrication and reality” (502).  De Zengotita’s concern is over our failure to distinguish between the continuum of reality and its numerous mediated forms, ranging from “real real” to “unreal real”; the crucial issue, he points out, “isn’t can we do it, it’s do we do it—and the answer is, of course not” (503-4). He worries that we accept whatever information is thrown at us without fully considering its relationship to reality. Your response to these opinions about the power of mediation and your own ideas about how we can distinguish the genuine from the sham, the true from the false, will guide your work on this essay. 

Assignment Description

In this unit, we will examine and evaluate a variety of our culture’s discourses throughout our discussion.  In your own essay on the topic, however, you should focus on a specific representation of a topic (be that a news story, an advertisement, a film, a group of representative episodes of a television program, one season of a particular reality TV show, etc.) and analyze it as a form of mediation to make a commentary on the effect that mediation has on content/ideas and the receivers reaction to them.   

 

To begin this essay, you must first select a topic. You may chose a specific object of analysis like a film or a television show, which informs viewers on many subjects (like gender roles, history/current events, opinions on social institutions like the education or government system, etc.); in this case, you should narrow your focus to analyzing one of those subjects within the full range of that complex representation. Or, you may chose a very specific and limited topic—like the health benefits of beer, the women’s march on Washington, the value of a college degree, the representation of female athletes, etc.—and compare/contrast two or three representations of that topic in the media.  In either case, the goal is a balance between focus and depth that allows you to draw conclusions about the way issues are presented in the media and the way media shapes/alters the information we receive and opinions we form on issues and information.

Assignment Requirements

1. 5-6 pages in length, 12 point Times New Roman (or similar) font

2. incorporate and properly cite (in-text and on a works cited page) at least one essay from this unit and one other source (which may come from other essays in our textbook or an outside source)

3. submitted as a draft (dropbox and discussion board), revision (dropbox), and final essay (dropbox)