Social Media: Introduction to China & India- Reflective Annotated Bibliography Writing Assignment

Internal Code: 1HCIH

Reflective Annotated Bibliography Writing Assignment:

Task: For this assignment, you will be investigating an aspect of the question you prepared for the Reflective Annotated Bibliography. But where that first assignment had you explore the library and various scholarly databases, this assignment requires you to interact in some way with individuals in (or from) the region that we are studying in this course. Because multiple social media platforms are available for use, each student's project might follow its own unique format. 1) You will document an attempt to interact with individuals or communities in or from China or India. Or, if you do not wish to write social media posts of your own, you will “observe” and report on the discussions of others.

2. You will demonstrate how your specific topic or research question has contemporary relevance. How do people discuss this topic today? You may have to ask specific questions about your topic to uncover this information.

Many of you will be building on some aspect of Assignment One, the reflective annotated bibliography. You will probably not be able to cover the entirety of that project in this assignment. Instead, it may be helpful to pick a single event, a single personality, a small set of online exchanges, and see how this illuminates a part of your topic. Can you bring the questions that arose our of assignment one to bear on these social media exchanges? How do the arguments made by the authors you considered in Assignment One help you understand these exchanges? FORMAT Possible social media tools that you can use to engage with individuals about your topic include: Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Skype, YouTube, and Google Chat. You may limit yourself to a single social media tool for this assignment. Or you may use more than one. To fulfil parts 1 and 3 of the assignment, you will have to ask questions, or respond to other individuals' specific posts on social media. That is, you will need to have a conversation with someone via social media. For part 2 of the assignment, your level of interaction or engagement will vary depending on the topic and activity that you choose. Some possible topics and activities include: 1) Watch citizen journalism in action. World events in China or India unfold in real time on social media. Let someone know that university students in Australia are participating with them remotely, and ask questions about what is happening. 2) Track the use of a word or phrase on social media. How do online individuals discuss issues related to your research topic. Give your research question a spin on Twitter and see what people have to say. 3) Attend an event remotely—a lecture, a film viewing, a political rally, etc. Many events have social media components, allowing you to take part from anywhere in the world. For the final assignment, you must use one of several web tools to organise posts, images, or recordings into a narrative structure. There will generally be two types of information in these narratives: 1) The original social media posts—either presented through screenshots, or through specific tools available on various sites. 2) Your comments, annotations, or analysis inserted after the fact. Discuss how your interactions unfolded. Did they progress as you expected they would? Has this experience changed your views on your research topic? Your final project will be a internet URL that you post to the LMS site. Sites that you can use to create this project include: www.storify.com (a tool for organising posts from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc) www.tumblr.com (a microblogging site that allows users to post various multimedia content into a blog) www.wordpress.com (A blogging tool) soundcloud.com (Audio distribution site, allowing you to upload and annotate recordings you make yourself) The length of this assignment is set at 750-1000 words (the equivalent of around 2-2.5 double-spaced pages). This includes the text of social media posts that you author yourself (but not those authored by others), and also includes the texts of commentary and analysis you write after the fact on one of the above-mentioned websites. Some examples of precious submissions http://gaminginchina.tumblr.com/ https://j18504505.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/first-blog-post/ https://ast1iciblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/04/comical-education/