Name:Sylvie Stoloff

PROJECT #1

1. Revised essential question for project #1

How do todays technological innovations in communication affect the ability of young
people (ages 14-24) to make their own decisions and function independently?

2. Does your revised essential question for project #1 meet the following
criteria?
Yes No Your essential question is open-ended; that is, it typically will
not have
a single, final, and correct answer.
Yes No Your essential question is thought-provoking and
intellectually
engaging, often sparking discussion and debate.
Yes No Your essential question calls for higher-order thinking, such
as
analysis, inference, evaluation, prediction. It cannot be
effectively
answered by recall alone.
Yes No Your essential question points toward important,
transferable ideas
within (and sometimes across) disciplines.
Yes No Your essential question raises additional questions and
sparks
further inquiry.
Yes No Your essential question requires support and justification,
not just an
answer.
Yes No Your essential question recurs over time; that is, the
question can
and should be revisited again and again.
3. Based on the above assessment, do you have any revisions to your
question for project #1? If yes, revise it in the box below. If no, then copy the
question you started with into the box below.
How do todays technological innovations in communication affect the ability of young
people (ages 14-24) to make their own decisions and function independently?

Sylvie,

A very interesting question made all that more complicated by the way in which Mr.
Hourigan (see comment on right) challenged it. If this does indeed serve as your
essential question, would that be the way to word it if you decide to explore this angle
too?

4. Research questions that you would investigate in relation to your revised
essential question for project #1 (please include as many as you think are
relevant to your project).

Would the primary research question simply narrow the lens and be something on
the order of:

How do cell phones and social media affect the ability of young people (ages 14-24)
to make their own decisions and function independently?

If the primary research question were that, you might limit your project to certain
technological media. If you dont want those limits, then redefine the primary
research question.

The rest of these would become secondary research questions.

-Does the constant availability of cell phones make parents more or less likely to assert
control over their childrens whereabouts/activities?
-Does the innovation of social media make young people feel more or less pressure to fit
in with presented social norms?
-Does the constant availability of others ideas (i.e. on social media, the news, etc.)
influence the creation of more unique ideas or the conformity to the most supported
ideas?
-Does the 24/7 reporting of dangerous (however uncommon) situations via innovations in
communication technology make parents more likely to develop more strict parenting
methods?
-Do young people talk to their friends more via social media or in person? How does this
compare to past generations?
-Do young people generally ask others advice before making decisions about their daily
lives? Do they use social media to do this? How does this compare to past generations?
-How much contact do todays college students have with their parents as compared to in
past generations? How does this affect their sense of independence?
-How many parents put tracking devices into their childrens phones? Why do some
parents do this? Do these kids act out less than others? Are they more or less
independent?
-Are there children for whom constant contact with parents allows them to have more
freedom in terms of their whereabouts/activities?

5. Give us a brief, one-paragraph description of your proposed project for
project #1.
For my project, I want to design and conduct studies of young people in my target age
range that answer each aspect of my essential question individually. I would break the
essential question down into mini areas of focus that denote ways technological
communication influences decision-making, for instance parenting styles or peer
pressure on social media. I would compose the findings into a short film, using animated
graphics or interviews with subjects. My final project should end up being a fragmented
Freakonomics-esque video that answers a bunch of individual questions that all fit into my
mini categories and of course my essential questions overarching theme.
it strikes us that you may need to define those categories with considerable precision
before you embark on the studies. Maybe start with a test group of interviewees and then
move broadly out from that to design a formal questionnaire or protocol and then invite
others to reply to that.

One idea I had as an example of one of these studies was to answer my third research
question (Does the constant availability of others ideas (i.e. on social media, the news,
etc.) influence the creation of more unique ideas or the conformity to the most supported
ideas?). I could create a fake facebook/twitter forum asking a pretty general question
about a problem. I would then write comments from a few different people with varying
ideas for a solution to the problem, each having different amounts of likes. I would then
ask the subjects to answer the question themselves after reading the forum, and see how
many of them develop a unique answer or recycle parts of other answers. I could do
different variations (i.e. have some comments not be liked, omit the comments entirely,
give a lot of likes to a solution that makes little sense, etc.) to see how much people are
influenced by what others say/think on social media. I could also do a bunch of different
questions (i.e., some about social problems, some about societal problems, some about
thoughts on current events) to see what types of issues people tend to think more
independently about. There are definitely aspects of this Id need to work out, though. I
will do a few of these types of studies to answer different components of my essential
question.

Interesting idea, but we think Mr. H may be right. Does the whole Ask FM, etc. vehicle
provide a legitimate avenue for this? We can keep brainstorming here.

Some interesting possibilities here, Sylvie. We think the narrower your scope, the more
richness you will get in responses from the people you interview.

Ms Freeman and Mr Mikalaitis





PROJECT #2

1. Revised essential question for project #2

How are media outlets presenting the news to meet the diverse tastes and intrigues of the
American public? How are the same stories presented differently from region to region
and on different types of websites/publications?

2. Does your revised essential question for project #2 meet the following
criteria?
Yes No Your essential question is open-ended; that is, it typically will
not have
a single, final, and correct answer.
Yes No Your essential question is thought-provoking and
intellectually
engaging, often sparking discussion and debate.
Yes No Your essential question calls for higher-order thinking, such
as
analysis, inference, evaluation, prediction. It cannot be
effectively
answered by recall alone.
Yes No Your essential question points toward important,
transferable ideas
within (and sometimes across) disciplines.
Yes No Your essential question raises additional questions and
sparks
further inquiry.
Yes No Your essential question requires support and justification,
not just an
answer.
Yes No Your essential question recurs over time; that is, the
question can
and should be revisited again and again.
3. Based on the above assessment, do you have any revisions to your
question for project #2? If yes, revise it in the box below. If no, then copy the
question you started with into the box below.
How are media outlets presenting the news to meet the diverse tastes and intrigues of the
American public?

The above question is a terrific essential question.

And what follows maybe the basics of your primary research question:

How are the same stories presented differently from region to region and on different
types of websites/publications with different target audiences?

You might have to define the regions and the stories so that this project is manageable
but this would be interesting.

Wait...from the project description below, we sense that you are focusing on print media
(and their outline counterparts). Is that correct or are we confused? If so, you need to
modify the primary research question too.

4. Research questions that you would investigate in relation to your revised
essential question for project #2 (please include as many as you think are
relevant to your project).

These questions, of course, become your secondary research questions.

-What kinds of stories do people find most interesting? (Which stories on online
publications get the most hits, etc.)
-What are the most common preferences people use when setting up Flipboard
accounts?
-What methods do editors use to decide which stories should appear on the front page?
How do they study the demand of their consumer base?
-How long before a story becomes old news? How do journalists determine when
readers no longer care about a story?
-How do journalists spin a story to keep intrigue high?
-Are national stories covered with different spins in different areas? How do different
affiliates for the same network portray the news in different parts of the country?
-Do publications that target a specific audience (i.e., ESPN, TMZ) spin stories according
to what their audience wants to hear?
-Historically, what are some of the stories that have caught the interest of the most
readers?
-What kinds of stories are newspapers choosing not to run (or feature prominently) when
they feature articles about the same events for multiple days?
-Where do most people get their news?
-How do editors decided what headlines to give articles? What kinds of headlines grab
readers attention the most? Why?

5. Give us a brief, one-paragraph description of your proposed project for
project #2.
For this project, my research would involve tracking the number of views certain
articles get, and studying the elements of stories that give them the most appeal to a
number of different audiences.

To do this, Id isolate and study patterns in the most-visited/most-purchased articles. I like
the idea of researching peoples Flipboard preferences to gauge what intrigues people the
most.

Id also interview people who work in the media business (at the highest level I can
manage to contact), to ask them about their process of prioritizing and the research
behind that. Id conduct a lot of man-on-the-street interviews to investigate what types of
news the public wants to hear about, and ask them why they care less about the articles
they skip over in the newspaper. For my final project, I like the idea you suggested of
following a particularly intriguing news story as it is printed in different areas across the
country on different types of sites. I could condense my findings into a short video, again
using a combination of animated graphics and interviews, that tracks the article and
considers why it was prioritized in the news, taking into account reader responses.

It would trace the entire process of journalism, describing each role involved, and explain
at each step why certain decisions were made based heavily on pleasing the intended
reader. Id also like to take the format of my video and form a curriculum that can be
taught in schools about this topic. It would essentially be a class exercise or project where
students track the process of putting out a news story and why a certain news story
became popular. I think its an important topic, and it could be used (on a less intensive
scale) again and again as different news stories become prominent. I could simplify my
own process into the framework for a lesson plan that asks intriguing questions based on
my own research and investigations. The video I create could be used as an example
of/introduction to the activity. It could lead to building a workshop on the media and how it
presents information.

Lots of ambitions here. Try to decide: do you want to make a video? Do a series of
lessons (as part of a curriculum)?

You may want to talk with Ms. Ellis, who did a program at the Library of Congress this
year, regarding how to assess primary sources (in this case, media coverage is your
primary source)....she may have some good strategies for you.

You may want to chat with Maddie Kilgannon because she is doing one of her possible
Capstone projects on print media coverage of the final stages of the gubernatorial
campaign and has seen wide differences already between the Globe/Herald and other
print media outlets. Your two projects intersect somewhat.

Could the Museum of TV and Radio (NYC)s resources also be helpful on this?

Lots to think about but it seems critical that you are clearer and more definitive about
your final project and the scope of both of your projects by the time we read the final draft
next week.

Ms. Freeman and Mr Mikalaitis