Assignment: Social Construction of Media Paper

Module: Critical Thinking

For this assignment, pick a media event to analyze based on the social construction of reality. The authors of the textbook are interested in the ways that media constructs, regulates, and maintains the social relations among people. The ways in which relations among individuals are constructed, and in which reality is constructed by socially integrated individuals, are never fixed, but instead are conditioned by the varying circumstances of history.

Using the ideas of structure and agency, analyze a media event to determine how media coverage did or did not construct, regulate, and maintain the social reality of the audience. Questions to keep in mind include:

• What kinds of coverage were given or shown about the event? (You may want to look for printed, broadcast, and online coverage to get the full picture of the media event.)

• In what ways did the media regulate and maintain the reality of the event? Did media reflect the reality of the event, or did it construct reality?

• What legal or ethical issues were apparent in the coverage of the event? How did these issues affect, or not affect, the ways in which media constructs, regulates, and maintains the social relations among people?

In order to back up your claims, be sure to define and incorporate terms from the module lecture pages, as well as from the textbook readings and the sources you find. Support your claims with external evidence from at least three reputable sources. (One of the best places to start researching includes the peer-reviewed articles found in the CSU-Global Library.)

Your paper must:

• Be 3-4 pages in length.
• Be well written.
• Include at least three references from the readings or outside sources, cited in proper APA style. The CSU-Global Library is a good place to find these sources.