Students will complete an 8-page paper (including title and reference pages) providing a critical look at the coverage of a social problem in the news media. This paper should include a combination of academic and other sources that analyze the coverage of the issue, and examples of such coverage that the student will collect in the course of the semester. Examples may come from newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio-preferably a combination of sources.

In their paper, students should provide a clear definition of the social problem at stake, present an analysis of the media coverage based on outside sources, and support it with examples they have collected themselves, and link all this to the course material to present a sociological perspective of the impact of the media on how we perceive and address the social problem at stake. It is important that students present a balanced review of the problem, based on research and facts, not personal opinions. Neither is this paper an opinion paper where students give their own perspective on a social problem and how it should be covered.