- Silverman and another expert did research in 2016 on the most popular stories about Trump in European websites. He and Lawrence Alexander, media analyst for Global Voice, discovered that hundreds of websites were being produced in a small city in Macedonia. What did Silverman find out from these teenagers? What were they doing and why? And what is your opinion? Does it matter whether that people are using social media to spread stories that might be misleading, based on false evidence, partly false, or completely a lie?
- List the eleven types of news outlined by Melissa Zimdars in the handout Zimdars's Classifications. Notice that the news lies along a spectrum, and very few types of news is completely fake. And all news has bias and a perspective, as we will learn more about in coming weeks. "Credible" is regular, mainstream news. "Political analysis" and "Extreme Bias" are news that have more clear, obvious perspective and bias. Find three examples of news stories from different types of media and put links to them here, and then discuss one of them in detail. Are there any types of news here that you were not aware of before? Are there some that you don't know what they are? Which ones do you see all the time? What is your opinion about the existence of all these different forms of news?
- List the five modes of communication and use two of them to analyze ONE specific item of news of your choice. I have also provided some links here if you can't find something on your own. Answer the following questions: Visual mode: How does the news item use images? Do the images make the news story seem more real? Do the images make us feel angry? Sad? Shocked? Does it appeal to ethos by making the speaker look more credible? More believable? More trustworthy? Linguistic mode: How does the news item use words, text, font, font size, and language? Does it make it seem more official? Or more trashy? Does the text make you believe the story? Why? Aural mode: How does the news item you chose use sound? (It must be a video or audio story, not a print story). Does the sound make it more realistic? More authentic? Does it bring you into the scene? Does it build up the credibility of the people who are talking? Does the sound bring back memories of anything, or symbolize something that makes you feel a certain way?
Sample Solution