English major

English  1303  Major  Essay  #3    

Synthesis/Analysis  Essay  Assignment    

The final major assignment will build on strategies you developed while crafting the summary/strong response essay. For this essay, however, you’ll engage with two texts involving a relevant contemporary problem or question – this time one with ethical implications. You’ll summarize and analyze the authors’ purposes and main ideas, create connections between the two texts, e.g. tone or rhetorical strategies, and then synthesize them into a new perspective of your own. As the authors of your textbook explain in Chapter 12, synthesis/analysis is an intellectual activity you’ll encounter in many academic settings (p. 286). In fact, the foundation for thoughtful and effective research begins with demonstrating your awareness of a larger conversation and beginning to claim your own place in it. Successful essays will accomplish the following:

1. Address a synthesis question and make a claim (thesis—with three major points) about the readings.

2. Summarize and analyze the views of two writers on this question. 3. Show you have wrestled with different perspectives and articulated your own new

view of the question. Consider not only how you’d speak back to these texts but how they’re speaking with each other and what ideas, questions, or conclusions that conversation leaves in your mind.

Use the strategies for drafting your essay on pp. 300-301, the possible frameworks on p. 302, and the sample essay on pp. 305-308 to shape your draft. As illustration and support for your main ideas, include 2+ images in your final draft. Choose images that go beyond the obvious first-thing-that-comes-up-in-a-Google-image- search and find images that will enhance and enrich your essay for a reader. Your recent work on analyzing images should help you here. Think about the subject matter, style, and placement of the images within your text. Choose ONE of the following three synthesis questions and accompanying texts as the focus of your essay. Consider the synthesis question as both the starting point and the frame for your discussion of the two texts. Synthesis Question 1: Given the many social media and other digital platforms available to journalists, how should we rethink journalists’ ethical responsibilities to their readers and to each other?

• “Is All of Twitter Fair Game for Journalists?” – Amanda Hess http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/03/twitter_journalism_ private_lives_public_speech_how_reporters_can_ethically.html

• “Digital Media Ethics” – Stephen J. A. Ward https://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/resources/digital-media-ethics/

Synthesis Question 2: The current phenomenon of big data has created big buzz and big business. It’s now possible for almost any action in our lives to be translated into digital data points for multiple applications, including tracking college students like you from entrance through graduation. What particular ethical considerations, responsibilities, and consequences do university administrators face as they gather and use (your) big data on college campuses?

• “Big Data on Campus” – Marc Parry http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/education/edlife/colleges-awakening-to-the- opportunities-of-data-mining.html

• “Ethics, Big Data, and Analytics: A Model for Application” –Matthew D. Pistilli and James E. Willis III http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/ethics-big-data-and-analytics-model- application

Synthesis Question 3: Digitally manipulating photographs feels like normal practice now for anyone with Instagram, Photoshop, or even a simple cropping tool. How does the manipulated image create dilemmas for journalists and editors whose ethical standards require truthful depictions of reality?

• “Distorted Picture” – Sherry Ricchiardi http://ajrarchive.org/Article.asp?id=4383

• “The Reality of a Fake Image: News Norms, Photojournalistic Craft, and Brian Walski’s Fabricated Photograph” – Matt Carlson, Journalism Practice 3.2 (2009): 125-139; available through the UH Library in the Database entitled Communication & Mass Media Complete

Works Cited page

• Begin at the top of the page that follows the last paragraph of your paper. • Gives the formal citation for your article in MLA (Works Cited) format. You can

find models for MLA citations by consulting: (1) your textbook, Ch. 23, (2) the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/, or (3) the Bedford/St. Martin’s Research & Documentation Guide http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/ resdoc5e/.

Length: 1200 – 1500 words Format: Double space your paper, and use a 12 pt. font, Times New Roman. There should be a title at the top of page 1.    

Submission of the Synthesis/Analysis Essay: • Submit your paper file in the Turnitin link for Essay 3 that has been set up in

your Blackboard course (under Content). Your file should be saved as a Word file (.DOCX or .DOC) or as Rich Text Format (.RTF).

• Keep in mind that your paper will be subjected to a Turnitin Originality test; ALL quotes, paraphrases, and summaries MUST be documented correctly and completely according to MLA guidelines. Failure to document quotes, paraphrases, and summaries can result in the invoking of the Academic Honesty Policy (see pages 2-3 of your Syllabus, as well as the UH Student Handbook for elaboration).