Anthropological analysis of news/social media: This prompt asks you to use your anthropological skills and course concepts to analyze media coverage of an issue or event of your choice in much the same fashion as Jones and Schieffelin did: using that media coverage as source material to analyze what it reveals about the culture in question. You can pick any topic you like (e.g., political controversies; media discussions of terror attacks in different parts of the world; coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement, etc.). Use a search engine and read/watch at least 4 or 5 different news articles, videos, or blog posts about the topic, then write about how the issue is presented and what it tells you about social values and cultural norms. Use course concepts to help you reflect on your topic. Hint: sometimes its helpful to read news coverage from different countries or different political affiliations.
a 6-page essay, which will include your anthropological analysis of your topic, your thesis statement, and in-depth engagements with at least 3-4of our course readings.
You will then analyze the underlying cultural ideologies that are revealed through the way the issue is presented in the media you must actually in-depth engagements: meaning you will choose some aspect of each of the readings (a key concept the author uses, a particularly useful quote, some aspect of their argument, perhaps a description of their methodological approach) and will apply it to help you analyze your own case study.
Choose a topic that youre interested in. If youre doing the observation option, you might choose to analyze a couple of interactions in particular, or else to describe something that is a pattern youve seen several times. Just make sure you have some stuff actual things youve observed, or examples from the media to analyze
The thesis statement or argument; the overarching insight or analysis you are making
What does the phenomenon you observed tell us about some other aspect of culture, or about an anthropological theory/ concept, or how does it challenge our everyday assumptions about culture? What is particularly surprising about your findings? What overarching analytical insight will you argue in your essay?
must be double spaced, Times New Roman,12 pt font, 1-inch margins (note that your bibliography and any title page or header do not count toward your page count).
