Matter Actual Communications Question

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Matter Actual Communications Question

Use the following questions as a guide to form a pointed analysis that involves relevant aspects from the nine sources listed below (These 9 sources need to be used, but more sources are welcome to be incorporated into the paper). You’re not required to answer all of these questions for each source listed below but be mindful that answering these questions where appropriate should work towards your thesis. Always support your analysis with specific examples from the sources you collect. There should be an intro paragraph, body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. The sources are listed below in APA format, and the in-text citations should also be in APA format.

  • What are their sources of information?
  • What information is being highlighted? What information is not being highlighted?
  • What facet of the story is being held up as most salient?
  • What are the facts of the matter as they are presented by the news items?
  • Other than the basic facts of the matter, what else is being written about/shown?
  • What “narrative” is being built up across media? (is there a single narrative or multiple competing narratives?) Is any of the above going against the narrative?
  • How much of the coverage is apparent fact? And how much is opinion? How are these being presented?
  • Is the same factual information being presented differently in the different news stories you are evaluating?
  • How much of an effort is being made to get at “the heart of the matter”/ “actual reality”?
  • What is the depth of coverage on this topic? What gaps, if any, exist in the coverage of this topic?

Nine Sources:

Agarwal, A. (n.d.). With COVID-19 mandates rolling out, what to know about religious exemptions. ABC News. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid-19-mandates-rolling-religious-exemptions/story?id=80218340.

Baptiste, N. (2021, September 18). Conservative baptist pastor sees “no credible religious argument” against vaccines. Mother Jones. Retrieved October 11, 2021, from https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/09/baptist-pastor-jeffress-pope-vaccine-mandates-no-religious-exemptions/.

Fox, M. (2021, October 10). Is my immunity waning? doctors advise pfizer vaccine recipients not to worry. CNN. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/09/health/pfizer-covid-vaccine-waning-questions-wellness/index.html.

News, Y. (2021, October 8). The union representing American Airlines warned that staffing shortages could start as the holiday travel season begins if employees lose their jobs for refusing to get the COVID vaccine. Yahoo News. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://twitter.com/yahoonews/status/1446399559610032140?s=12.

O’Brien, C. (2021, October 10). New Jersey teacher says her stomach was ‘churning’ following union demand to log students’ vaccination status. Fox News. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-jersey-public-school-teacher-says-her-stomach-was-churning-following-union-demand.

Public Broadcasting Service. (2021, September 4). Chicago Tonight: Latino voices. PBS. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://www.pbs.org/video/vaccine-hesitancy-kzfszh/.

Smith, J. D. (2021, October 6). I enrolled my kids under 12 in a COVID-19 vaccine trial. here’s what happened.HuffPost. Retrieved October 11, 2021, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/moderna-vaccine-trials-under-12_n_615c6600e4b0f7776310dead.

What you need to know about covid-19 vaccines. UNICEF. (2021, August 18). Retrieved October 11, 2021, from https://www.unicef.org/coronavirus/what-you-need-to-know-covid-vaccine.

Wolansky, H. (2021, September 17). Study finds virus frequently fooled by fake vaccine card. The Onion. Retrieved October 11, 2021, from https://www.theonion.com/study-finds-virus-frequently-fooled-by-fake-vaccine-car-1847696696.

Your next step should be to see if you can draw any conclusions by comparing/contrasting how your sources characterized your story in their coverage. Remember that looking at any similarities between sources can help in this regard in that they can paint a picture in the minds of their readers a narrative that can involve multiple sources conveying the same general point. Conversely areas of differences can be useful to illustrate how these sources frame the story differently and perhaps to what end.