Description
Description: The first assignment in this subject requires you to conduct original research and produce an evidence-based report by choosing one recent global crisis reporting – media stories published from 22th July 2024 onwards. You should analyse the crisis by comparing the coverage in newspapers from two different countries. In the report, you should discuss and analyse different perspectives of the event or frames in reporting over this period, compare/contrast news stories from specific media outlets in two countries to generate your findings and arguments.
You should use TWO countries and one crisis allowing you to compare and contrast. You may not use your home country as one of the two countries.
You should use news from branded, daily, mainstream news publications. Do NOT use stories from aggregating news sites like Google news. Do NOT use stories selected on social media by influencers. Do NOT use news agency stories – eg Reuters, AP, AFP, Interfax, Tass or Xinhau.
You should examine 8-20 news stories on this crisis over no more than a two week period. Please include working URLs for each of the 8-20 news stories which you examined, in an appendix (this will not count toward the word count).
You should use a minimum of five academic sources.
Please note that the report should not follow an essay-like structure – rather it has a structure more like an academic journal article.
Structure
Introduction (100): Introduces the topic, relevant context of the study and main research question. Write your research question clearly in one sentence.
Approach and theoretical background – (400): Identifies the sources and evidence you will be analysing, and establishes why these were selected. Defines key theories and concepts which will be used in analysis
Analysis/Findings/Discussion (900): Analyses the aforementioned media sources and draws direct conclusions based on that evidence
Conclusion (150)
Reference list
Appendix (if you used any graphs, tables, charts, or particular sections from news articles)
The report should move from descriptive analysis to critically discuss different publications and journalistic practices, while incorporating theoretical views and discussions learned in the subject. Therefore, in developing the media report, you are required to engage with scholarly literature from this unit (weeks 1-7), required and recommended readings, as well as independently sourced academic material. The literature should be used to support original empirical findings that you generated through analysis of news articles/sources for the report. Therefore, the media report requires you to produce your argument through careful analysis and understanding of media examples and interpretation of subject material.