Writing Assignment

You are an advisor to Mark Zuckerberg, the Chairman and CEO of Facebook. It has recently come to light that Russian agents used Facebook as a platform to meddle in the United States presidential election of 2016. Mr. Zuckerberg has asked you to prepare a report regarding the Russians' use of Facebook to sway the election. In your report, Mr. Zuckerberg has requested that you do the following:

1) Identify and analyze the internal and external causes of the problem.

2) Identify the scope of ramifications of this problem and the specific impacts on Facebook's business, shareholders, and management.

3) Outline what steps Facebook has already taken in response to these issues and analyze whether its response is sufficient. Assuming you have the authority to implement the changes you recommend, how would you fix the problem? Which changes would you recommend?

You should conduct research to familiarize yourself with and identify: the problem, the actual and potential fallout from the issues, Facebook's initiatives and response to the issues, and any other relevant information.

Evaluation Criteria:

In addition to your use of persuasive writing techniques as we have discussed in class and mechanics (grammar, punctuation, style), you will be evaluated on:

1) your identification of the most relevant and salient issues;

2) the quality of your research;

3) your use of specific evidence and examples to support your analysis; and

4) your demonstration of critical thinking about the causes and impacts of the issues.

Please submit a Microsoft Word document, use Arial 12-font type with one-inch margins, and double-space your report.

The report should not exceed 1,000 words.

Research and Citations:

In accordance with the University of Miami's plagiarism policy, you must include citations (either as footnotes or endnotes) in your memo.

The purpose of citations is to give credit to the  authors of any ideas that are not your own by identifying the source of the ideas.

In addition, citations enable your reader to evaluate the quality of your research and to verify the information in your analysis. Although there are many ways to document your research, you should use a consistent and clear method.

One such method is the Chicago Manual of Style. You should also include a bibliography of sources that you researched and consulted in preparation of your analysis. The bibliography and citations (footnotes or endnotes) will not count towards the word limit for the assignment.