TWC494/598: Infoglut Deal With It
Multimedia Writing and Technical Communication
Spring 2005

"Discovery" Assignment

The intent of this assignment is twofold. One, you will explore how information about science and technology is disseminated and communicated differently in the popular media vs. academic/scholarly/technical media. Discourse communities, whether they be cultural, professional, or academic, use language and media to present information. Second, you will examine how the production and dissemination of information impacts our ability to use it to understand and make decisions about technology and its products.

For this assignment you will select a "discovery" related to health, medicine, science, technology that has been reported on in the popular press (one example might be Celebrex). During the semester, you will trace and examine how the topic has been discussed and reported on in various forms of media; first reading popular press accounts and then other forms of media.

Part One

Select a topic. This can be any topic of your choice but it should reflect a "discovery" in the sense that new information is being disseminated to the general public.

Submit your topic to me via email by Sunday, January 30th. In addition to telling me what your topic is, explain why you have selected it.

Part Two (20 points)

Read a minimum of three newspaper or other popular media articles about the discovery (magazines such as Time or Newsweek, news website, blog). For this part of the assigmnent, do not use scholarly or technical magazines/journals; keep your selection to the types of media that would be read/viewed by the general public.

Summarize and compare the information in the articles. How is the information presented? Do they include the same information, different? Cite the sources of their information? Is there a slant or bias to them?

Submit your summary to me by Sunday, February 27th. Be sure to cite the articles you have included.

Part Three (30 points)

Find and read 5-10 additional items about the discovery. These may come from scholarly/academic journals, books, websites, listservs, blogs, alternative press, technical publications. Each item should reflect reporting on the discovery from a different perspective (and ideally, from a different time period). In other words, each item should be written for a different discourse community.

1. Compile an annotated bibliography of your items. Your annotations should be one paragraph summary of the item.
2. Write a 3-5 page comparison and analysis of the information reported on. You should include the items from Part Two in the analysis. How is the information presented or reported on differently based on the type of source? Evaluate what that may mean in the context of finding and using information. Does the perspective/attitude/bias in the presentation of the information differ based on source?
   NOTE: Your analysis should not be a "scholarly vs. popular source" type of analysis in which you list criteria for academic journals vs. popular magazines. Your analysis should be based on the context of the course: the production, organization, dissemination of information and how that impacts our ability to use it.

Submit your analysis to me by Sunday, April 17th.

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Last modified: 4 January 2005