Overview
Short essays are 3 pages double-spaced, 12-pt font, 1-inch margins. Papers must include proper citations and a bibliography in APA format. These essays briefly review the readings for a given Topic, and connect that material to other readings and/or entertainment media (of your choice). This class is Affect and Emotion in Political Communication. Do not strive away from this topic. In addition: Essays MUST include a discussion of at least one of the required readings.They can in addition include a discussion of (a) other required readings from the syllabus or (b) optional readings from the syllabus. There is a fair bit of flexibility in terms of the content of the paper. The objective is to use the readings in some interesting way. Do not use your essay to just to list the contents of readings — you can describe the readings briefly, but your aim is to then discuss that reading in relation to other published research. So you could, for instance compare arguments or methods across academic papers. You could use academic papers to help explain recent media content or news coverage. You could do both! Generally speaking, an essay that does a good job of (briefly) describing a required readings, and then connects that reading effectively to other research (and perhaps also current affairs) will receive a grade of 8 or above.
Here is a hypothetical essay layout:
1. Introductory paragraph describing what the essay is going to do.
2. A 1/3 to 1/2-page summary of one required reading.
3. A 1/3 to 1/2-page summary of another reading.
4. A 1/3 to 1/2-page discussion that connects those two readings, and reflects on the ways in which they overlap or conflict
5. A 1/3 to 1/2-page discussion that connects those two readings to a current credible news source (New York Times, The Guardian, BBC News, etc.) (If you are unsure whether a news source is credible please ask before you use it)
6. A concluding section that relates those readings to political communication or public attitudes about X.
Required readings (must use one) :
*Hilbig, B. E. (2009). “Sad, thus true: Negativity bias in judgments of truth.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology45(4): 983–986.
*Weeks, B. E. (2015). “Emotions, Partisanship, and Misperceptions: How Anger and Anxiety Moderate the Effect of Partisan Bias on Susceptibility to Political Misinformation.” Journal of Communication 65(4): 699–719.
Can choose between any of these (Or both required readings) but only use one, if you use both required readings, you do NOT need to use any of these two readings below:
Guess, Andrew, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua Tucker. 2019. “Less than You Think: Prevalence and Predictors of Fake News Dissemination on Facebook.” Science Advances 5(1): eaau4586.
Sharma, P. R., Wade, K. A., & Jobson, L. (2022). “A systematic review of the relationship between emotion and susceptibility to misinformation.” Memory 1–21.
Do not use outside sources other than a credible current news article. No plagiarism and no AI, this assignment will go through a detector. I will upload all 4 of the sources, again you will only use two of them, the required one (or both required) and the one that will choose out of the 2 options above