Paper (30%)
Due date: See syllabus. Late submissions will be penalized 3% for each day – including
Saturdays and Sundays – that they are overdue. Assignments that are submitted seven or more
days after the deadline, will not be accepted, and will receive a 0%.
Length requirements: 1500-2000 words, including the title and bibliography/works cited pages.
For every 100 words under or over the word count, papers will be penalized 2%, e.g., a 1250word paper will incur a 4% penalty, while a 2125-word paper will be levied a 2% penalty.
Formatting requirements: Double-spaced, 12-point font, Times New Roman/Arial/Cambria.
APA citation style, with a bibliography or works cited page and a cover page that includes
student name, number, and course information, along with an original title (e.g., “I’d Buy That
for a Dollar!: Canadian Newspapers, the Internet, and the Death of Journalism”). Students should
upload their assignment to Avenue to Learn as a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx);
those using Keynote, LibreOffice, Google Docs, etc. should export their papers as Word or
Word-compatible documents. Files should be named as follows: “Surname-FirstNameStudentNumber,” e.g., “Shin-Dale-1234567.docx”
Research requirements: Students must cite or refer to at least five (5) academic sources, of
which no more than two (2) can be from the course assigned readings. (Course assigned readings
do not have to be used; all four academic sources can be from outside of the course.) An
academic source can include an article from a peer-reviewed journal, a chapter from a text
published by a university or scholarly press, etc. If students are unsure as to whether a source can
be considered sufficiently academic, they should ask the instructor to confirm its acceptability.
Turnitin: Students can upload papers to Turnitin through the module on Avenue to Learn. For
their paper to be accepted for grading, students must produce a similarity index score lower than
20%. Papers submitted with a score of 20% or higher will not be graded, and will be considered
late after the due date, until they are resubmitted with a satisfactory score. Assignments can be
resubmitted as many times as necessary in order to produce a satisfactory score. Note: students
who submit their assignment on the due date may not receive their originality report until after
the deadline. In the event that an assignment has been submitted on time but an originality score
of 20% or higher is revealed after the due date, the student may be required to resubmit the
paper; otherwise, the submission will be considered a breach of academic integrity.
Instructions: Students may choose one of the following topics:
1. Describe the political economy of one of the major entertainment industries (movies,
television, music, video and computer games, book publishing, comic books), with an
emphasis on the trends towards concentration of corporate ownership, and explain their
connection to one of their most visible or established genres (e.g., superhero action films,
reality television, pop music, AAA or indie video games, superhero comics). In particular,
illustrate the relationship between the economic underpinnings of the chosen industry and the
rise (or fall) of the corresponding genre, and identify any developments that might be
deepening or disrupting that relationship.
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2. Choose one of the major entertainment industries (movies, television, music, video and
computer games, book publishing, comic books) and summarize the political economy of
that industry, and consider how the Internet and digital technologies, networks, and media
have impacted that industry, either positively or negatively, either by producing new business
opportunities, or raising fresh economic, cultural, or other kinds of challenges. Be sure to
identify the role that new online-based organizations, platforms, and actors (e.g., Netflix,
Spotify, Soundcloud, indie publishers or developers, pirates) are playing in this changing
landscape.
3. Consider the state of journalism and news media, and the effect that concentration of
corporate ownership has had on both the business and practice of producing news. In
particular, discuss the consequences of the corporatization of news media for the quality and
type of news available from mainstream news organizations.
4. Examine the relationship between journalism and the Internet, focusing on the role either of
citizen journalism or social media and search engines in reshaping the news industry. In
particular, discuss the positive and negative impact that citizen journalism or social media
and search engines are having on the way the public receives and consumes news.
Note: students may produce another topic to write their paper on, either out of whole cloth or by
modifying one of the preassigned questions, but it must be approved beforehand by the
instructor.
The purpose of this assignment is to demonstrate the student’s ability to specify a topic that
relates to the course themes and independently research and write on that topic; identify some
contemporary examples that illustrate or dramatize the argument they are seeking to establish;
and articulate and expound an informed, well-reasoned critical opinion in regards to that topic.
As such, the paper will be evaluated according to the following three criteria:
1. persuasiveness and rigour in arguing for a particular position or perspective in relation to
the chosen theme from the course, as illustrated through references to contemporary
examples, issues, and debates about digital culture related to that theme;
2. relevance, use, and explication of academic sources, that is, how judiciously they choose
and faithfully they reconstruct the scholarly literature on the chosen theme from the
course, demonstrating that they have undertaken a studied engagement of the course
material and/or external scholarship through quotes, paraphrases, etc.;
3. quality of writing, as reflected both in the attention to proofreading, editing, citations,
etc., to limit typographical, grammatical, and other errors, and in the observance of the
assignment’s formal and technical requirements, e.g., citation style, spacing and margins,
etc.
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