Topic:
Americans and International (Foreign) News Instructor: Jack
Lule On this page are the assignments for Thursday of Week One. DEADLINES: Remember, each week, you should have the assignments that are posted Monday completed by Thursday, 7 p.m. You should have the assignments posted Thursday completed by Monday, 7 p.m. Today's assignments for Thursday, May 20, are due Monday, May 24. WEEK ONE, THURSDAY: Now that we are experienced online learners, we have numerous assignments for this day. Remember, you should have them all completed by Monday, May 24. 1) An important part of this class will be taking advantage of the many resources for research that are available on the World Wide Web. I want you to visit some of the U.S. and international news sites on the Web. I want you to look carefully at how they present the news. I want you to compare and contrast. You will find comprehensive listings of news media at the Crayon page. Scroll down that page and you will find international news media, listed country-by-country. American Journalism Review's NewsLink has a varied list of international news and broadcasting sites online. INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON: I would like you to compare online news sites from five different countries. One should be a U.S. news site. When you are finished, please send me an email analysis. Tell me what sites you visited and why. Tell me about the national and international news at each site. Tell me about any advertising. Tell me what you thought was good. Tell me what interested or surprised you.
******* 2) For our discussion assignment, I want us to begin thinking about U.S. news coverage of international affairs. Especially since the end of the Cold War, U.S. coverage of international affairs seemed to have dropped dramatically. Newspapers and networks closed foreign bureaus. After September 11, with the U.S. military action in Afghanistan, the second Gulf War, and the subsequent occupation of Iraq, the turn away from international news seems very short-sighted. Are American news media -- and Americans -- rediscovering the world? To understand the issues, you have three tasks: a) I would like you to read a thoughtful article, "Bureau of Missing Bureaus," from the the American Journalism Review. The article discusses the future of foreign news on television, especially in the aftermath of September 11. The link will take you to the article at the American Journalism Review site. In case that site is down, I have put a copy of the article at my site. (I saved this article in Microsoft Explorer and Netscape doesn't "read" it well. If you need to read the copy, open up the Explore browswer and come back to this page.) I also would like you to see a funny, satirical essay: "Americans Annoyed by 'All This International S***' on Internet." Warning: the essay obviously has some profanity. But it is funny. b) Once you have read these articles, I would like you to send me an email message that discusses the main points of the readings. Take a screen or so and tell me what you have learned. c) Once you have thought about these issues, please go to our online discussion area, http://bb.lehigh.edu Select Topic 5-20, and address these questions: Do you think U.S. networks were correct in closing down expensive news bureaus since Americans didn't seem interested in international news? What do you think: Are Americans uninterested in international news? Why or why not? Let's update the articles: Has the war made you and your friends more interested in international news? If you come from another nation or have spent time in another country, definitely compare U.S. citizens with your own experience. Just write a screen or so. Tell us what you think and why. Make reference to the readings if you can. GRADES AND DISCUSSION BOARD To get a solid B grade for your conference discussion, you should post three times. You should write once early, before noon Saturday, responding to the assignment and making reference to the readings. Then before Monday, 7 p.m. you should post twice more, commenting on one or more of your classmates' postings. If you do less than that, your grade ultimately will suffer. To get an A, you should be contributing and commenting more frequently. You should be reading and responding regularly to classmates. Some people write 5-10 comments per assignment. This is an online seminar. An ongoing, thoughtful dialogue is our main goal. You should know: The bulletin board software keeps track of when you visit the site, how many postings you read and how much time you spend reading and writing so you will always get credit for your work. If you do this well, we will have an in-depth, wide-ranging discussion of the issues. Indeed, I have found written conference discussions to be much more thoughtful and thorough than similar "in-class" talks. I think you'll find online learning to be interesting and fun. See you in cyberspace. Remember: we never close. return to J/IR 246 International Communication |
