Readings
Begin Planning your Synthesis Essay
All the research you will do in this unit should be focused on your debatable topic for your final persuasive essay. However, we will ALSO use this research for our next two essays: the Synthesis Essay and the Researched Argument Essay.
Re-Visit Topic Discussion
Use your research as a way to help narrow down your potential topics for the Synthesis Essay and, eventually, the final Researched Argument.
By the time you write your Synthesis Essay, the topic will be set in stone for the rest of the course, so be sure to use this time (and the accompanying research) wisely.
- Think again about why you are interested in that topic. Earlier, I noted that, as the course progressed, you’d have the opportunity to change your opinion/topic later. That’s ending now, so take a moment. How will this help me in my future — career, family, or other endeavors?
Writing Process
- The Writing Process
- Invention: Starting the Writing Process
- Introduction to Prewriting (Invention)
- Symptoms and Cures for Writer’s Block
Media Bias
Before considering media bias, it is important to understand the political spectrum, which is often referred to as ranging between “left” and “right.”
In the United States two-party system, the Democrat political party is often described as the “left.” Democrat-led states are often described as “blue” states.
Thus, the Republican political party is often described as the “right.” Republican-led states are often described as “red” states.
Disclaimer: Please note that the following, brief and simplified sentences aim to capture the political spectrum in a concise manner, and they may not encompass the full complexity of the issues, the wide variety of personal opinions, or the nuances of the current and/or ever-changing political landscape.
- In general, the left tends to value individuality and progressivism.
- Thus, it also may struggle with building unity.
- For them, “freedom” may refer to issues of people being free to express and explore their abilities in an ever-changing world.
- Perhaps ironically, they hope to pursue those goals through proactive government involvement in daily life (especially among social groups, which may include “disenfranchised minorities”).
- In general, the right tends to value group stability and traditionalism.
- Thus, it also may struggle with adapting to changes in society.
- For them, “freedom” may refer to issues of preserving social stability and traditional values.
- Perhaps ironically, they hope to pursue those goals by minimizing government involvement in daily life (especially business, which may include the “industrial military complex”).
Now, please watch the videos below discussing media bias.
Note: YouTube offers speed playback settings under the gear icon. Sometimes speeding up the video can help increase your focus while saving time — since people can often hear faster than they speak. If it’s a new or complex topic, you might want to keep it at regular speed (or rewatch the video to catch what you missed before).
- “3 kinds of bias that shape your worldview”
- “Political media’s bias, in a single chart”
- “You’re being manipulated and don’t even know it”
- “Are the Media BIASED?”
After watching the videos, please examine these two media bias charts, which attempt to “map” the bias of news organizations (and/or their “opinion” or editorial areas, which comment on the news, rather than simply reporting it).
After considering the media bias charts, please note the innovative way that AllSides tries to manage and overcome bias. For example, the AllSides news page offers links to news stories arranged in three columns, offering news from the left, center, and right.
Compare and contrast the headlines on those stories. What is said? What is unsaid? Do you detect any media bias between those three columns?
Another news organization that is trying to manage the different perspectives is TheWeek.com. Take a look at TheWeek’s “Briefing” section. Look for specific articles, on any topic, with the text “Briefing” by the titles (not “Daily Briefing,” which is different). Notice how they link to different sources, seeking to balance authoritative sources (such as government statistics or scientific studies), with responses from left- and right-leaning news organizations.
Contemporary Writing
Finally, please take a minute at how contemporary news publishers write these days, especially their paragraph structure. Look at the popular SpeedReads section of TheWeek.com. How many sentences are in a typical paragraph?
Next, take a look at the homepage of Axios.com, and click on any story of interest, by clicking on any of the “Go Deeper” links. Notice how they use frequent subheadings and bullet points — and how brief their paragraphs are, too.
Both sources reflect a shift in contemporary writing toward brief and focused paragraphs, frequent subtitles, and other enhancements to make writing very clear in three major ways:
- Very clear structure and organization of the articles.
- Very concise writing that is easy to follow and understand — in mere seconds.
- Clear citations with links to asides and explanations (that are located elsewhere).
- Easy to read on digital screens, including phones.
Please ask yourself, “How can I incorporate contemporary writing trends in my own writing?” How can you enhance the clarity of what you write, in what seems like an increasingly busy, distracting, and screen-filled world?”
A Note on Specific Details
One thing that hasn’t changed in contemporary writing is the need for specific details in writing. Sharing details from the thing itself — the readings, the experiences, the research, or whatever we’re writing about — helps engage readers logically and emotionally while making our writing seem authoritative, knowledgeable, and accurate.
Together, specificity helps readers to form a “mental picture” of whatever the writing is about.
Indeed, it’s the same specific details that lend our writing logos, ethos, and pathos. When details are missing, the same writing seems vague, weak, and perhaps dubious — even when the points are entirely true and correct.
Keep that in mind for your writing — throughout the course, your academic career, your professional career, and in your life.
Researching Online Databases
Searching “Academic Journals” Online
First, it’s time to learn another interface. Please visit the SEU library’s portal to online databases: https://library.seu.edu/databases/.
From there, you can search online databases of articles from many types of publications. Most importantly for this assignment, these databases allow full-text access to “peer-reviewed” articles published in “academic journals.”
Those terms are not vague adjectives. They are specific types of articles published in specific types of publications. You’ll NEED TO UNDERSTAND what “peer review” and an “academic journal” are. Please click on both of those links and review those pages carefully! If that information remains unclear to you, please continue researching those concepts elsewhere. (Academic journals are sometimes referred to as “scholarly journals,” but I try to use consistent terms here, to avoid confusion.)
“Academic journals” may have a few introductory articles in each issue, written by editorial staff, that are not research studies. However, they are mostly comprised of peer-reviewed research studies and often take years of study and research to prepare and write — by teams of scientists, scholars, and researchers — to produce a single article. As a consequence, these journals are often quite expensive, with subscriptions costing hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year.
So, these online database companies gather those articles and offer access at a less expensive rate. That’s what we’ll be searching, for this upcoming essay.
Popular Sources
For general background information, as when you describe the issue in your introduction, you may use popular sources — such as newspapers of record (New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal) or the AP wire service — along with official sources, like testimony from congressional hearings or statistics published by the federal government (e.g., https://search.gov/ or search Google for “site:.gov” alongside your search terms). However, popular sources do not fill the research source requirements (of seven or more academic journals) on their own.
Please note: Just because an article was found using the online databases does NOT mean it is “peer-reviewed research published in an academic journal,” as the online databases often include popular sources, too.
Helpful “Academic Journal” Databases
The most likely sources — for the types of “peer-reviewed research published in academic journals” that we’re searching for — may be Academic Search Complete, EBSCO, or SIRS Issue Researcher. These databases are general, multi-disciplinary databases that might offer something for all your topics. If you can’t find anything in these databases, browse the listing for a database that might be focused on the topics you are researching.
SEU offers access to these databases here: https://library.seu.edu/databases/.
For the Issue Exploration Essay (IEE), we’re trying to establish what research has proven to be objectively true (or not), as far as experts can know, at this point in time. That’s what we’re after — not mere opinions. So, “peer-reviewed academic journals” are the high-water mark and are what we are relying on for this assignment.
Finding Citations Easily on Academic Journal Websites
Another important term to learn for this assignment is “review articles.” Review articles are research studies that gather all the previous peer-reviewed research on a given subject, offering insights into overall findings and trends. These are the most reliable research studies out there — the gold standard of what we know to be true (in scholarly terms, as far as genuine experts know, at this time).
To offer a direct link, without logging in, here is an example of a sample topic using the free “Google Scholar” service:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C45&as_rr=1&q=Artificial+Sweeteners+Obesity.
On that page, please notice in the left sidebar, that the link to “Review articles” is selected, as shown in red text.
So, as review articles, these search results should each be collections of many studies — gathered, compared, and contrasted in a new study — similar to what you are doing in the Issue Exploration Essay.
One of the top articles on this sample search, for example, has the title, “The Association Between Artificial Sweeteners and Obesity.” By searching for that title on regular Google, we find the academic journal’s website and article here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11894-017-0602-9. Notice, on that page, that there is a link to “Cite this article.”
You may use similar “citation” links to generate (or customize) that information into an MLA formatted citation — quickly, easily, and accurately. See the diagram below to check on MLA formatting.
Notice that a “DOI address” should be offered on those pages, on the academic journal websites. Please include those links in your citations on the essay’s “Works Cited” page.
Pro-tip: I check for DOI addresses on each major citation on your Issue Exploration Essay’s “Works Cited” page.
To help with your research using the “review articles,” mentioned above, what I’m referring to are the article’s “References” — citations for the review article itself. For example, on this “review article,” there are 70 other studies listed for this one review article, alone: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11894-017-0602-9#Bib1.
So, if you were doing an IEE on this topic, you could use that main article — along with other research articles cited there as references — especially the major studies that the review article is relying on heavily. Does that make sense? If not, please ask me about it!
Pro-tip: Once you find a “peer-reviewed article in an academic journal,” you can often find the same article (using regular Google) by searching for the article’s title “in quotation marks” (to limit your search for that exact phrase). Often, the actual academic journal’s article will offer a proper MLA-formatted citation (look for “citation” or “cite” links). You may use those on your “Works Cited” page in (or adapted to) MLA formatting.
Pro-tip: While on that website, find and use the article’s “DOI” address in your citation. The DOI system is a way to link to academic journal articles so they always point to the right place online (even if the academic journal redesigns its website, goes out of business, or whatever). If there is no DOI address, then it is probably not “peer-reviewed research published in an academic journal!”
Pro-tip: On your Works Cited page, remember to select each citation and type both [Ctrl] and “T” (at the same time) to create a “hanging indent,” as required in MLA formatting.
Pro-tip: On your MLA-required “Works Cited” page, remember to list your citations in alphabetical order — by the lead author’s last name. I also check for that, specifically, while grading.
Choosing Your IEE Topic
There’s another reason I used an example from Google Scholar. Before even beginning your IEE, Google Scholar can help you run some quick searches to see if there are enough (review) articles on a specific topic. However, since the full articles that Google links to are (often) behind a paywall, search for the same article using online databases, like Academic Search Complete, to get access to the full text.
Pro-tip: Before selecting a specific topic, try running some quick searches, using the online databases and/or Google Scholar, to see if there are a variety of studies examining the same topic to offer contrasting opinions as required in the IEE. Let the research lead the way.
Note: The goal for your topic is to select an issue you’re likely to encounter in (what may become) your future career.
When the instructions call for a “debated” issue, it is NOT asking for something covered in the news last night, or argued about on a recent panel show on television, or that someone ranted about on a radio talk show. Such newsy topics are often so new that they have no “scholarly research studies published in peer-reviewed academic journals,” which is what your Issue Exploration Essay is based on. See the problem there? Think about problems that have been around for years.
Instead, by “debated,” the IEE instructions refer to a recurring problem or ongoing issue, so there are differing opinions among industry professionals and experts.
By studying one of those topics, when the issue arises in the future at your workplace, you’ll already grasp the issue’s complexities.
Consequently, unless you’re becoming, say, a medical doctor, or will study criminology, you probably shouldn’t select issues related to, for instance, abortion or the death penalty, however debated or controversial they may be. (By the way, please note that issues related to death, in general, are sometimes more depressing than students expect.)
So, instead, former students majoring in accounting have written about issues related to conducting audits properly.
Future educators have researched tuition increases in colleges and problems of bullying at school.
Engineering students have considered the ethics of weapons design.
Those studying music, or audio engineering, have examined problems in the music industry, including competing ideas on copyright and how musicians are paid for their efforts.
And, those seeking a career in Human Resources examined the impacts of raising the minimum wage — as in, actual impacts, not those pre-supposed on a radio talk show.
Things of this nature are what is meant by “debated.” All of the approaches to these recurring or ongoing challenges are debatable. Discovering that debate, and the differing views around it, are a big part of what the IEE is about.
Conclusion
Thus, the goal of the IEE is to present experts’ findings, as published in academic journals, on various ongoing issues, including insights from some of the world’s foremost experts in specific fields and industries.
These studies are “peer-reviewed,” which means that the experts’ research is studied by many other experts — who were not participating in the study — and who must agree that the findings are both true and valid (or the studies wouldn’t have been published in an academic journal).
One impact of that goal is that the Issue Exploration Essay primarily covers the experts’ findings.
Your own opinions are relegated to the conclusion. Even there, it is perhaps best to emphasize what you’ve learned from your research, demonstrating your consideration of a variety of contradictory viewpoints, at the same time — a mark of maturity and an important part of the assignment.
An important secondary note is that the IEE should be written in a formal style. In formal writing, we try to avoid phrasing and word choices that may sound either informal or that sound extreme — including overstatements, exaggerations, or hyperbole. When we overstate, we may cause doubts to arise in the minds of our readers because, if we are only partially right, then we are partially wrong as well.
“Why Not Just Use Google?”
Finally, some may still wonder, “Why don’t we use the regular internet, and regular online articles, for our research?” Here are three reasons why we don’t:
- It’s too big. It is common to find thousands of documents on any one topic. That’s too many and could take you years just to read through them. It takes some expert training to narrow the results.
- It’s too commercialized. There are thousands of companies trying to sell you something on the Internet, so there are many distractions you have to weed through. Whether it’s an outright ad on the screen, an article posing as informative but really trying to sell you something, or someone who paid Google to have their articles show up on your searches (relevant or not), they are all time-wasters for someone doing serious research. Like you.
- It contains mistakes and untruths. There are no controls on Internet material (that’s part of its magic). That means ANYONE can put ANYTHING out there under false names and false pretenses. Rather than spend your time trying to verify or validate some of this stuff, use a “paid for” database to start with. Then you know the material has already been subject to verification — by genuine experts in the field. Nowadays, there are fake “academic” online journals, posting articles to the highest bidder. These databases weed those out, too.
Complete these readings as you work through Unit Four: