The purpose of this post is to detail the general aspects and the criteria
of report 4.
What to do for report 4?
1. Determine the themes (i.e., ideas, categories, concepts) of the ebola
controversy (i.e., your dataset), and identify those that interest you. E.g.,
I’m looking at the themes of ‘social control’ and ‘stigma’.2. Ask one (or more) questions about or formulate one (or multiple) hypotheses relating to one (or several) of the themes that interest you. E.g., I’m asking “How are the ill, diseased, disabled, and infected treated by others? How are they controlled? How are they stigmatized?” Notice that the themes form the subject matter of my question.
3. Determine where to look (i.e., decide which datasets to look at) in order to answer your question(s) or test your hypotheses--datasets can include articles, books, your textbooks, videos, etc. E.g., I’m looking at Ebola articles and comments, at the textbooks, at other sociological articles and texts.
4. Find sociological ideas (theories, hypotheses, facts, propositions, concepts) that are capable of dealing with or enabling some comprehension of the datasets, the themes, and the questions or hypotheses. E.g., I’ll be using ideas from “the Meaning of Social Control” and from “Outsiders”, as well as ideas from other texts.
5. Correlate, compare, relate, or otherwise use the ideas to make sense of the themes as they exist in the data. IOW, use ideas to talk about something that is going on (i.e., a dataset) in an illuminating and informative way.
6. Create an infographic and a corresponding description that carry out this task of illustration and illumination.
7. In general, keep up with homework and class activities, as these are part of the report.
Infographic & Description Criteria
1. For those asking a peripheral question, a 3-5 sentence paragraph (minimum) must be dedicated to how the themes relate to
and are embedded in the Ebola controversy/situation. For those asking a central question, the whole report will be dedicated to analyzing Ebola controversy themes, so this minimum is superfluous.2. How many pictures are needed for the infographic? As many as are needed to get the point across, to answer your question or test your hypothesis, to inform others in a meaningful way.
3. How many sociological ideas are needed in the description (and optionally in the infographic)? A minimum of five sociological ideas.
4. How many files should be turned in for report 4? One image file for the infographic; one word document for the description.
5. What types of references are needed for report 4? For the description, in-text citations and a reference section are required. For the infographic, reference numbers should be included next to any text or images that have been borrowed or copied from elsewhere, and these reference numbers should obviously refer to their sources. All sources (from textbooks, to articles, to comments) must be referenced.
6. Will the infographic and description be the only items graded for report 4? No. Additional items (e.g., homework and class work) will be included in the report 4 grade.
7.