Assessment Three:

Essay + Workshopped Appendix

Key Information:

Value: 50%

Length: 2000-word essay + a one-page workshopped appendix

Due Date: Friday 15th November, 11:50pm

The essay question:

For your final assessment, you will work with two to three posts from your own social media feed that are connected by a socio-political theme.

These posts will be relevant to our course discussions around ‘everyday politics’ – that is, ‘how political themes are framed around our experiences and interests’ (Highfield 2016, p.3), wherein ‘the political can be present within the personal, without needing to be framed as explicitly “political”’ (ibid, p. 10).

Your task is to write a critical essay responding to this question: How do media and platform. users mutually affect one another to inform. everyday politics? Use the specific example of everyday politics and media dynamics present in your chosen posts, two to three conceptual tools, and the course readings to help you answer the question.

Remember that your position as a media user is important to acknowledge – these posts appeared in your social media feed because of the way your digital identity interacts with networks, algorithms and platforms, therefore you are personally experiencing the everyday politics at work here.

The workshopped appendix:

As part of the development of our critical thinking and reading skills, our tutorials from weeks 7 to 9 will include workshopping the essay. In week 7, you will be asked to use an AI tool of your choice (Microsoft CoPilot, ChatGPT or other) to prompt a short, generated response to your essay question (with reference to the select media studies scholars, concepts and political themes that are your focus). With the support of peers and your tutor, you’ll critique the AI response in class, exploring where the generated answer is falling short, and how you will do things differently as a human thinker. The writing in this workshop doesn’t need to be formal or polished; it does need to show awareness of where generative AI has shortcomings, and a plan for how you will use critical thinking processes of your own. The aim is to give you a stronger awareness of your own critical thinking process and a plan you can follow to address the essay in your own way, in addition to some AI literacy development.

The appendix will include the AI response (copy/pasted) AND your written response (one page in length). After this guided use of generative AI in class, you may only use AI for simple editing assistance rather than for the crafting of ideas. Make sure you understand the guidelines for this definition of AI use before you use the technology to support you (see our Moodle Course Information Hub for details).

Criteria:

• Active research: productive engagement with sufficient scholarly course resources to support your statements and observations.

• Conceptual understanding and insight: ability to show a working understanding of relevant key concepts from across the course, via application to pertinent real-world examples and the formation of original insights.

• Structure and coherence of arguments: development of an articulate, coherent and effectively paced critical perspective.

• Writing and presentation: clarity and coherence of communication. (Please note, if English is not your first language, our focus is not perfectly fluent expression, but effective communication of your essay’s intentions, which are then clearly pursued).

• Referencing: adherence to proper Harvard referencing conventions, with page numbers included where necessary.

Skills:

•    Understanding disciplinary knowledge/conceptual tools from the course (this is the underlying foundation that grounds your essay).

•    Applying these key concepts to a real-world context from your own media experience, which will enable you to then...

•    Synthesise ideas and concepts to form stronger understanding of the

power dynamics at play in the relationship between media, society and politics.

•    Evaluate the significance/implication of your findings for socio-political issues and media users such as yourself.

Ways of thinking:

The focus is on critical thinking as a process that you pursue with flexibility and open mindedness. The emphasis is on how you think, rather than simply what you think. That is why we’re asking for the appendix that draws on workshopped interrogation of AI and its shortcomings. You are developing conscious ways of thinking about how you think, then consolidating the value of this process via a critically informed interaction with a form of media that has implications for the ways social and political processes play out in the future.

The process:

•    From week one, you’ll be asked to keep track of posts with an understanding of ‘everyday politics’

•    You will select the two to three posts by end of week six (this is your flex week task!)

•    In week seven, you will workshop your approach to the essay in class. Please await

detailed instructions from your tutor about how to work with generative AI during class time so that you can produce the required appendix in your week seven tutorial.

o After this guided use of Generative AI, please move forward with your work

using the guidelines for Simple Editing Assistance only (see details for this on Moodle).

•    In weeks 8 and 9, we will continue to pursue your workshopping of your essay using your plan from week 7.

Criteria for success:

•    Your work must demonstrate in-depth engagement with course readings that goes beyond generalised statements and into the analytical/evaluative aspects of key scholars’ ideas.

•    A successful essay will integrate theory with the nuances present in the two/three

posts from your social media feed, so that there is a clear application of ideas to both the everyday politics and media practices involved.

•    A strong understanding of the media’s role should go beyond the surface content of the posts you have chosen and delve into media infrastructures/ practices / institutions in relation to the everyday politics at play (i.e. don’t rely on textual analysis alone).

•    Critically informed essays will show that there isn’t a unidirectional influence

between media and politics (in other words, the media doesn’t cause political relations to emerge, and neither does politics cause the media to evolve the way it does). Instead, these essays should explore how everyday politics and media are mutually influencing one another.

•    Be cautious not to get lost in the political dimensions of your posts to the point that

you lose the central focus of the essay, which is how the relationship between media and platform. users generates power dynamics. Keep a well-balanced focus between the politics and the media you’re exploring. Your chosen posts will act as a microcosm from which you can enter the broader discussion on a symbiotic relationship between media and politics.

•    You will need to demonstrate that your awareness and use of course concepts has

evolved since you did assessment one, the pitch mentorship. Assessment tasks are designed to build and enhance your knowledge over time, and successful assignments will receive feedback and grades in response to this evidenced advancement of your skills and understanding. For this reason, do NOT work with the same ideas from your first assessment; repurposing of your previous ideas and use of concepts will not demonstrate your learning development across the trimester, and would therefore be  marked down.

•    Given you are working with a self-reflexive awareness of your own position in and

with media, it is acceptable to use some writing in the first person, but it must stay critically informed by the concepts from our course (rather than act simply as opinion). You can think of yourself as part of a case study that you are observing from the outside. You are inside the media phenomenon you’re writing about, but you are studying this as an observer equipped with the tools from this course to better analyse and evaluate the power dynamics at play.

Purpose (why are we doing this?):

The primary aim of this task is to cultivate your awareness of how you as a media user are  part of a complex set of relations between media, society and politics. Your involvement in media is informed by political processes that impact social relations in ways that may not be immediately apparent at a surface glance. In other words, this essay should consolidate your understanding of ‘everyday politics’ and be an opportunity to bringing the conceptual to life  by applying it to situations that are meaningful to you. The ideas from the course should become useful tools that you can actively use to consider how you act in and with media. This is good practice for a skillset applicable to the workforce – in your future career you will need to demonstrate a capacity to use key concepts of your field as thinking tools from which to outline new ways of acting and being that are responsive to social needs.