Does the Russian accounts affects in the last elections ?
Eng 111: Assignment Three: Analysis of Russi an Social Media
Your paper should be 2000 words. It’s due Nov 16.
Write an analytical essay in which you consider the Russian social media postings which were designed to manipulate American voters during the last presidential election. You’ll have to look closely at the images, consider the words, think about the claims that those messages are making. How do you think their designers want them to work? Imagine the targeted audiences—are they having their biases confirmed? Do they do a good job of trying to reach an emotional response, like anger, pride, fear, defensiveness, outrage? Once their audiences are all worked up, how do the designers want them to act?
For the paper, you’ll need to give thoughtful responses to three to five posts, though you might mention others briefly, if they’ll help reinforce a point you want to make.
You’ll have to have a thesis which explains, exactly, what you think the posts are trying to accomplish. You’ll have to say something about the information being calculated to be as divisive as possible, but a stronger thesis will make some comment about the overall message or audience or methods.
You’ll have to consider the graphics and photographs. What subtle details are present which intensify the messages? Look at the people’s posture, expressions, race, age, etc. Consider the colors, and imagine the symbols. Why a white cowboy hat? Why a flag?
You’ll have to consider the word choice. In some places you might notice mistakes or awkward passages—maybe those are there because the designers don’t write English very well. But what about word choice? Why call a candidate by his or her first name? Why references to god or religion? (Remember the lessons from your last assignment!)
And you’ll have to consider the information itself. Can you find any independent information which supports or disproves the claims on those posts? Some fact checking might give you some ideas about what the designers are trying to accomplish.
Sources:
3-5 Posts: At least three Russian social media posts from the handout on Blackboard. If you want to write about a post you found somewhere else, send me an email and the post and we’ll make it official.
2: The two articles on Blackboard, the CNN article about spotting fakes and the Washington Post article about the Congressional hearings in early November.
3 checked facts: Use snopes.com, allsides.com, factcheck.org or the Washington Post fact checker for any information which might be misleading or just plain false. Look up things you actually know (or believe you know) to be true; the fact checkers will either confirm your understanding or they’ll lead you to rethink. Use more basic tools like google images or Wikipedia if you just want to check something that won’t be biased. Does the Constitution really have an amendment about taking command of the military away from the president? What country’s flag is that yellow and green flag anyway?
