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Purpose

This project has 3 goals:

  1. to cultivate the critical information literacy skills research experts at the Assocation of College and Research Librarians identify as essential for informed, engaged 21st-century citizens in the Framework for Information Literacy:
    • Authority Is Constructed and Contextual: Information resources reflect their creators’ expertise and credibility, and are evaluated based on the information need and the context in which the information will be used. Authority is constructed in that various communities may recognize different types of authority. It is contextual in that the information need may help to determine the level of authority required.
    • Information Creation as a Process: Information in any format is produced to convey a message and is shared via a selected delivery method. The iterative processes of researching, creating, revising, and disseminating information vary, and the resulting product reflects these differences.
    • Information Has Value: Information possesses several dimensions of value, including as a commodity, as a means of education, as a means to influence, and as a means of negotiating and understanding the world. Legal and socioeconomic interests influence information production and dissemination.
    • Research as Inquiry: Research is iterative and depends upon asking increasingly complex or new questions whose answers in turn develop additional questions or lines of inquiry in any field.
    • Scholarship as Conversation: Communities of scholars, researchers, or professionals engage in sustained discourse with new insights and discoveries occurring over time as a result of varied perspectives and interpretations.
    • Searching as Strategic Exploration: Searching for information is often nonlinear and iterative, requiring the evaluation of a range of information sources and the mental flexibility to pursue alternate avenues as new understanding develops.
  2. to introduce you to the longform journalism genre, an oppoortunity to reseach and think critically about a pressing contemporary issue for a public reading audience --> see LONGFORM ARTICLE HOW-TO GUIDE developed in class
  3. to provide opportunities for you to continue honing the website building skills you've worked on throughout ENGL 109, this time focusing on laying out a media-enriched written text using relevant, ethically-sourced content

Components

Research-Informed Longform Article

Write a carefully-researched piece of longform journalism for a special issue in The Verge. As a publication, The Verge "examine[s] how technology will change life in the future for a massive mainstream audience," and this special issue focuses on the the relationship between society/culture and technological design. You're welcome to focus your research around a topic brought up in your Digital Community or Platform Redesign Project, around a question/research area referenced in our readings, or around another relevant topic that sparks your interest. I'm very happy to talk through ideas with you as well.

As you'll see in the examples of longform journalism we look at, longform journalism differs as a genre from thesis-driven essays in that, while the topic is clear from the outset, the writer's argument/conclusion isn't usually stated until the end: the function of the article is to lay groundwork leading the reader to the writer's own conclusion, taking the reading through the author's research to bring them to the author's conclusion. This parallels the question-based research proecess we'll use, where you use your research to develop your conclusions about your topic, rather than searching for sources that confirm existing ideas.

Stylistically-speaking, longform journalistic writing differs from other forms of journalism by its length (1000-20,000 words) and its use of extensive sources, including popular journalism, academic research, and data. It also often--though not always--draws on the author's own experience and expertise, makimg the writer/researcher an explicit presence in the investigation of their topic. As the examples we'll view also show, longform articles also use images (original photos, stock images, diagrams, etc) to illustrate their content for an online reading audience. --> see LONGFORM ARTICLE HOW-TO GUIDE developed in class

Annotated Bibliography & Conference

To emphasize the critical research elements of this project, you'll prepare an annotated bibliography of 5+ sources, including scholarly, popular, and/or data types (depending on you topic). We'll discuss the research this bibliography documents and the directions it implies for your longform article at conferences on June 3 & 4. Submit annotated bibliography as a document to Camino, not as a page on your website.

Source annotations should cover: see SAMPLE ANNOTATION

  • Search Procedures
    • search engine/database used to find source & reason for selecting this search tool
    • search term(s) used
    • summary of first 10 search results: what topics, sources, authors, views on search term are included?
    • source's postion in search results
  • Source Content & Characteristics
    • description of the content of the source & how it relates to your research question
    • information about the publication/organization/site that produced the source
    • author background
    • intended audience

Resources

Sample long-form science, technology, & society articles

Criteria

Annotated Bibliography

    Content
    • 5+ sources
    • see "Source annotations should cover" info above
    • relevance of sources for project: considering how well they cover the information need they serve in your project and your plans for using them
    Design/Format
    • use your choice of documentation system (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc)
    • Include annotation along with citation for each source
    • submit as uploaded file to Camino dropbox (not a page on your course website)

Longform Article

Timeline

  • May 13: project introduced
  • May 13-June 5: reading Noble's Algorithms of Oppression on bias in search engines and information architecture
  • May 20: time to work on topic development
  • May 22: identify topic
  • May 24: research workshop with Librarian Nicole Branch
  • June 3 & 4: conferences, annotated bilbiography due as document via Camino dropbox at conference time
  • June 10: Research-Informed Longform Article due by 1:30 pm to Camino dropbox, submitted as URL