Topic: After reading both Dr. Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression and Roger McNamee’s Zucked, your task is to select one issue/idea raised by the two texts, research it further, and create an argument that is either original or adds original content to an already established argument. Please do not merely restate what has already been argued by Noble and McNamee.
Scholarly Investigation/Adding to the Conversation
To get started, you’ll need to develop an original research question. To tackle this open-ended, “big burning” thinking question, you have to gather sources to help you develop your own analysis and discussion. What you explore is up to you, but it should be something specific, something that calls for further analysis, and connected to some specific layer presented in Algorithms of Oppression and Zucked. Likewise, the essay should be exploratory in nature. Go beyond what you already know or think. Your research is a look into something new for you and your readers. Since the texts may just scratch the surface of many of these issues (and sparks many questions), your job as a writer and researcher is to go further in-depth on a specific layer.
Conducting Research/Using Sources (Analytically)
The research process is a chance for you to move outside of our class context and the lens of both Noble and McNamee by engaging with a wider range of sources, voices, and perspectives. The sources that you bring into the essay should act as a lens for you to test, develop, complicate, and evolve your initial claim or question you are setting up early on. Use of sources should be analytical so you do more than just bring in the source to provide facts or “proof” for points you already know to be true. Dealing with your sources, in this case, is a way for you to examine multiple perspectives and develop analysis/discussion.
In class, we will be talking about how to gather credible sources for your essay, including a close look at the GCC library databases. You may use any type of medium, as long as you can justify its credibility as evidence in your paper (this includes books, documentaries, newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, online clips, interviews, etc). Keep in mind that online resources are often not very credible nor scholarly; use the internet with caution. Wikipedia, for instance, is not a credible source. Just typing your topic into Google and going with the top choices isn’t really research, as we all know the biases relating to Google searches! Consider where you might gather a good mix of sources, with appropriate credibility, to help you engage your research question.
You’ll want to have a mix of sources to work with. For the essay, you will be required to build conversation with at least five secondary sources, plus Algorithms of Oppression and Zucked. In that mix of sources must be at least two sources (articles/essays/books, etc) retrieved from the GCC library databases. Therefore, you will have a total of at least seven sources listed on your Works Cited page. You must have at least one quote or paraphrase from each source, although I suspect you will have more.
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