One of the primary goals of this course is
to get you to think more critically about the sexual socialization messages in
the media content you regularly consume. I believe
this competency is best gained through regular practice. Consequently,
you are expected to write weekly(ish) blog posts (guidelines below).
Your blogging throughout the semester
accounts for 24% of your final grade. Specifically, your blogging during
the first half of the semester will account for 12% of your final grade, and
your blogging during the second half of the semester will also account for 12%
of your grade.
First half of semester
- Week 1: January 18-January 24
- Week 2: January 25-January 31
- Week 3: February 1-February 7
- Week 4: February 8-February 14
- Week 5: February 15-February 21
- Week 6: February 22-February 28
Second half of semester
- Week 7: March 8-March 14
- Week 8 March 15-March 21
- Week 9: March 22-March 28
- Week 10: March 29-April 4
- Week 11: April 5-April 11
- Week 12: April 12-April 18
Guidelines for blog posts
- Introduce media content. You may take one of two approaches to introduce your media content.
1.
Embed or link to the
content you discuss. Provide a brief description of the content before
beginning your analysis.
2.
It isn’t always
possible to access media content. If you are unable to embed or link to
the content you wish to analyze, you may describe that content instead.
If you take this approach, you will need to write a lengthier description of
the content than you would if you took Approach 1, because your readers will be
relying solely on your description to understand your analysis.
- Reference at least one of the readings from class. Does this content exemplify one of the codes identified in one of our readings? Can you make predictions, grounded in scholarly work, about what sort of effects this content might have? Is there a trend you’ve noticed in the media (e.g., increasing levels of condom use, decreasing amounts male homophobia) that suggests that one or more of the findings in a reading from class no longer hold?
- Length is flexible. Posts should be a minimum of two-to-three paragraphs, but you are welcome to write more if you wish.
- Snark is allowed. But only well-informed snark. Snark is not required, but if you think your blogging voice is snarky, go for it!
- Need a break? Sometimes life gets unusually busy, or you find that you don’t have anything you want to say. There are a total of six weeks in each half of the semester; you are only required to blog for four of them. (You can choose which ones.) Of course, if you would like to blog all twelve weeks, or more than once in a given week, you should feel free!
- Important: you must blog for four DIFFERENT weeks (as defined above) in each half of the semester to meet the minimum requirements of this assignment. If you were to submit one blog post on February 1 and another on February 7, that would count as having blogged during one week. If you were to submit one blog post on February 7 and another on February 8, that would count as having blogged during two weeks.
- Cite your work using APA style. There are resources to assist you with APA style posted on the CTools site. You do not need to include a citation for any source to which you provide a link.
- Tag your post using your full name.
How I will evaluate you: I am looking for evidence of thoughtful, critically informed engagement
with the media, the course readings, and your peers that conforms to the
guidelines listed above. Exemplary
posts typically have some or all of these characteristics:
- They make me think about something in a new way, or help me to draw connections I never had.
- The author starts with a media text of interest and then built an argument around it using the course readings, rather than trying to slot media examples into a specific reading (though there have definitely been notable exceptions—typically when the reading genuinely sparked an idea about a particular TV episode, movie, etc).
- The author connects multiple readings or course concepts to a single media text, and these are woven together seamlessly. (Again, I’ve definitely seen outstanding posts that only use one course reading.)
- The prose is stylish and free of grammatical errors.
- The post uses appropriate citation.
Responses
You are strongly
encouraged to respond to others’ blog posts throughout the semester as a form of class
participation. This is especially true if you are someone who tends to
be less vocal during class discussions.
Guidelines for responses
• Provide an introduction to the topic of your response. You may also want to think of this as your thesis. For example,
you might write something like, “Although I agree with Lila’s claim that
________, I think that Aubrey and Taylor’s (2009) findings suggest that it
might also be useful to think about ______”; “I’d never really thought about
_____ [topic of post] before, and it led me to realize that this is indeed a
common theme in media content. After reading this, I noticed that this
occurred in this week’s episode of ________” or “I think Thomas raised an
interesting issue. However, I disagree with his argument, because it
doesn’t seem to account for _______ as discussed in ___________
[reading].” In short, you are welcome to agree with some, all, or
none of the initial post, as long as you do so in a way that is both respectful
and informed.
• Use outside source(s). Your
responses should be informed by at least one outside source, but in this
context “outside source” can mean anything from a class reading to other media
content you may have seen to a popular article you read on a related topic.
• Length is flexible. For
responses, flexible does not mean “a minimum of 2-3 paragraphs”; flexible means
“any length you think allows you to effectively respond to the top-level post.”
• Snark is not allowed. Please do not
write snarky responses to others’ posts, since what you believe is good-natured
snark may be interpreted as an attack by the original author.
