Choose one question: Remember Harvard style is include page number for in text reference. And If you use newspaper article for question one or four, please try to use Australia news.
and the essay request i will upload later
1. Define Ideology. Define Discourse. What is the difference between them? Which one better analyses the power of texts? Provide examples. (Rubric: Define both concepts. Discuss the theoretical traditions from which both concepts derive with special references to theories of power. Discuss which theory of power is more persuasive in terms of capturing audience attention. Use at least two contemporary examples from any kind of textual genre i.e. TV program, newspaper article, magazine story, documentary or movie).
2. How powerful is media content in telling people what to think? Provide examples. (Rubric: Media texts use many conventions to build a preferred picture of reality. How do these conventions work and how persuasive are these devices in composite in constructing reality).
3. How does the structure of the media impact upon content? (Rubric: this topic is related to Media Structures i.e. ownership and control of media and the emergence of social media. You would need to consider the commercial interests of owners, why they purchase and produce certain kinds of texts over others; the difference in orientation and role of the commercial and public media sectors; and how the foregoing is expressed in different kinds of texts).
4. Discourse may be analysed in a range of ways. Sociologists find discourse as performance and discourse as the social construction of reality of particular importance (See Partridge pp. 2-14). Analyse a newspaper text (for example, on climate change, terrorism or gender relations) showing how language use creates realities and identities. (Rubric: Partridge is a key text to begin your reading of Discourse. You will need to outline the various ways that Discourse is used and then the distinctive uses of discourse as performance and constructionism. The creative part of the essay will involve the selection of a newspaper article or the like showing how the language used disciplines and shapes audience perception/interpretation of the text leads to a certain view of reality). One way to manage this question is to compare two articles from different sources (i.e. the Age/The Conversation/Crikey/The Aust Fin Review vs The Herald Sun/The New idea/The Women’s Weekly or another popular cultural text) on the same topic. Look at who published the articles, who wrote them, what were their interests, look at the language, the orientation, the stereotypes, the structure of the text, who reads the publication and how the article would target that audience etc.
