With this essay, you will provide a resource for your reader that will enable them to know whether or not a certain World Wide Web site, built on an issue/passage drawn from your reading chapters five and seven of Unspun is worth visiting in an effort to gather useful, reliable or effective information regarding the topic, the upcoming presidential elections and the attendant issues and concerns in particular. You may decide to write about why someone should avoid your chosen website when they look for information regarding the particular topic you address. For starters, though, provide a passage from the text that illustrates the issue you will examine via your discussion of your chosen website. Use this passage from the text as a spring board, a starting point for the discussion as you did with the second essay. Since our focus to date is the presidential race, I'd like to encourage you to look at candidate sites as well as issue sites that address issues such as health care, the war, leadership capabilities and potential, the economy or anything else you find important with regard to the election and the candidates and their positions. There are some suggested links, to candidates past and present, below. If you want to do a candidate who has dropped out of the race, you might look at their site for evidence as to why they didn't make it any further than they did. But keep in mind, the focus is on the website as a tool of communication, not the candidate or issue.

You must use the essay to make it clear to your reader how the issue/candidate is treated on the website of your choosing, making a judgment about such things as whether the site provides authoritative, useful or useless material, a balanced approach to the issue, or an obviously biased perspective. The site may be put up by any one concerned with your issue in anyway. In many respects the criteria you used for the video analysis will work for a website analysis as well.

You might discuss whether it is good for the site to take either a balanced or biased perspective. You might discuss whether the site provides information to enlighten in the form of text or graphics, or if it merely provides sensational graphics that don't further the site’s purpose. This requires that you provide your reader with an accurate and somewhat objective description of the site's elements that you discuss. Use the Web Site Analysis information presented in class to help gather the data for this description. We'll look at some sites in class to get an idea about what is out there. This assignment also calls for a works cited page and correct in-text citations, and clearer integration of the source material, something we've only touched on informally to date. Once again, We are looking for about 1200 words.

Candidate Websites John McCain Campaign site John McCain Official Senate site Barak Obama Campaign site Barak Obama Official Senate site Bob Barr campaign site Chris Gregoire campaign site Chris Gregoire Governor site Dino Rossi campaign site Political Party Sites Democratic National Committee Green Party of the United States Libertarian Party Republican National Committee Socialist Party USA

Political Websites Fight the Smears Change our Gov Apollo Alliance FactCheck.org from the authors of our text ePluribusmedia Vote From Abroad Right Wing News Save Darfur Greenpeace USA Sightline Real Clear Politics Project Censored National Rifle Association Top Political Sites Vote Smart 20 Popular Political Sites Open Secrets American Red Cross Political Information Iraq for Sale The ONE Campaign Make Poverty History We Can Solve the Climate Crisis

These are just a few of many possibilities. If you want to find another based on some issue of concern to yourself, feel free.

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Assignment Goals

Passing Portfolio Evaluations

While making your view on the issue clear and clearly supported with examples from your the reading, you also want to compose a work that is technically solid and will pass portfolio evaluations. See the following goals for more on this.

Citing and Integrating Sources

This is our first assignment where cited and effectively incorporated sources are a required component. Proper in-text (sometimes called parenthetical) citations are required for quoted and paraphrased material and a works cited page is required as well. We'll go over how to do this.

Getting Work Done on Time

When a class meets just twice a week, the time frame seems accelerated, and in many ways it is. See the course schedule for due dates. The draft for evaluation must be posted in your blog before the start of class on the due date. The draft for grading should be printed out before the start of class. There will be further opportunity for revision following the initial/ preliminary grading process.

Effective Analysis

In order to provide an effective analytical look at the issue as you see it, there are several elements the essay must contain. The first is a thesis statement that makes a clear claim about the value of the website in relation to the chosen issue. Following that thesis, there must be specific examples used to illustrate each point. There must also be some explanation tying the evidence back to the thesis, some interpretation of the data on your part. As the writer, it is your job to tell your reader why the evidence you present matters. You should consider making use of the rhetorical triangle, the relationship between the writer (ethos), reader (pathos) and text (logos) as you examine the issue and discuss the manner in which the website seems to make meaning and/or sway thinking.

Grammar and mechanics

Solid grammar and mechanics are expected. As this is the second essay, there will be some things pointed out to you in the first essay that you are expected to address, and ideally, remedy.

Evaluation

General Criteria

The essay is expected to have a thesis that is clearly arguable and worth the reader's time to consider. The evidence in the body of the essay must provide specific descriptions of the video elements being discussed There must also be some explanation making clear how these pieces of evidence are supporting the essay's thesis. There must also be some reasonable organizational structure along with clearly effective grammar and mechanics.

Self Evaluation

In a brief paragraph, describe what you learned in writing this assignment. If you did not submit an essay for evaluation, or receive essays for evaluation, be sure to address this. You need to include the names of your peers along with your description of their responses to your work. Describe how this, or anything else, affected your ability to do your best work. Turn this in with your final draft.