ENGL 301B Sections 12 & 15 Prof. Guzik Spring 2020 Assignment #2: Mis and Dis Purpose and Logistics: Normally, as we work on assignment #2 in ENGL 301B we would be revisiting key structural elements of essays more advanced than the Five-Paragraph-Style (FPS) Essay. However, many of the lessons that I usually use for this assignment to focus on global organization are activities that (despite my best efforts) are activities that I don’t have an easy fix for to convert them to activities that can be done at home or online. So this is going to be a bit awkward. Instead, we’ll drill down on paragraph development and strategies for introductory paragraphs and concluding paragraphs. Moreover, since many (but not all) of you are taking the class C/NC instead of for a letter grade, some of you will only plan to write two out of class essays instead of all three. This assignment topic should be completed by all students taking the class who DO NOT plan to use A1 in the final portfolio. It’s another argumentative, thesis-driven essay, and every passing portfolio should have one. A3 is a more narrative topic (although it does involve some heavy-duty analysis.) However, I am mindful that even though this assignment has two topic options, both of them may be close enough to current events that students who either struggle with issues of anxiety or who are easily distracted by news in our current study and work environments might find this assignment hard to complete, even if you choose to focus on political mis and dis instead of public health mis and dis. (Those terms will make sense soon.) To that end, I am posting the materials for A2 and A3 at the same time and asking students to make the choices that work best for them when selecting which assignment to work on next. When we hold online classes, we may divide up into A2 and A3 groups to discuss the topics. Stay tuned for details. Readings: Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life by Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich (you are only required to read the summary and the introduction of this book-length report. If you choose to use this as a reading for your essay, you are welcome to draw on other parts of the text, but in no way required to.) “Why We Believe Lies” by Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall. (This article was published in Scientific American but is locked behind a paywall if you try to google the article. I suggest using the Academic Search Complete database, which has the HTML version of the article. It was published in the September 2019 edition.) “YouTube, The Great Radicalizer” by Zeynep Tufekci from The New York Times “Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning” the executive summary published by the Stanford History Education Group in 2016. “Misinformation Telephone” by Renee Diresta from Slate Background: Current events have driven home yet again that the infras.

1. ENGL 301B Sections 12 & 15
Prof. Guzik Spring 2020
Assignment #2: Mis and Dis
Purpose and Logistics:
Normally, as we work on assignment #2 in ENGL 301B we
would be revisiting key structural elements of essays more
advanced than the Five-Paragraph-Style (FPS) Essay. However,
many of the lessons that I usually use for this assignment to
focus on global organization are activities that (despite my best
efforts) are activities that I don’t have an easy fix for to convert
them to activities that can be done at home or online. So this is
going to be a bit awkward.
Instead, we’ll drill down on paragraph development and
strategies for introductory paragraphs and concluding
paragraphs.
Moreover, since many (but not all) of you are taking the class
C/NC instead of for a letter grade, some of you will only plan to
write two out of class essays instead of all three.
This assignment topic should be completed by all students
taking the class who DO NOT plan to use A1 in the final
portfolio. It’s another argumentative, thesis-driven essay, and
every passing portfolio should have one. A3 is a more narrative
topic (although it does involve some heavy-duty analysis.)
However, I am mindful that even though this assignment has
two topic options, both of them may be close enough to current
events that students who either struggle with issues of anxiety
or who are easily distracted by news in our current study and
work environments might find this assignment hard to complete,
even if you choose to focus on political mis and dis instead of

2. public health mis and dis. (Those terms will make sense soon.)
To that end, I am posting the materials for A2 and A3 at the
same time and asking students to make the choices that work
best for them when selecting which assignment to work on next.
When we hold online classes, we may divide up into A2 and A3
groups to discuss the topics. Stay tuned for details.
Readings:
Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of
Facts and Analysis in American Public Life by Jennifer
Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich (you are only required to read
the summary and the introduction of this book-length report. If
you choose to use this as a reading for your essay, you are
welcome to draw on other parts of the text, but in no way
required to.)
“Why We Believe Lies” by Cailin O’Connor and James Owen
Weatherall. (This article was published in Scientific American
but is locked behind a paywall if you try to google the article. I
suggest using the Academic Search Complete database, which
has the HTML version of the article. It was published in the
September 2019 edition.)
“YouTube, The Great Radicalizer” by Zeynep Tufekci from The
New York Times
“Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online
Reasoning” the executive summary published by the Stanford
History Education Group in 2016.
“Misinformation Telephone” by Renee Diresta from Slate

3. Background:
Current events have driven home yet again that the
infrastructure of information in the 21st century has allowed for
very old human tendencies to move faster than they could when
our information was delivered through different media.
That is to say, in the days of newspapers but before telephones
and telegraphs (let alone radio and television), news arrived in
print, for those who could read and could afford to subscribe to
or buy, daily newspapers.
Radio brought information into the home for anyone who could
understand the spoken word, and television brought moving
images of the news into homes. (We should note that television
became a center for the American home after WWII).
However, television news did not mean for the first four or so
decades of the medium what it has come to mean to us today.
Prior to the early 1990s, television was a primary source of
news for many Americans, but news was generally confined to a
few broadcast periods a day—once in the morning, once in the
early evening, and sometimes another round late at night.
It was only with the first Gulf War in the early 1990 (a time,
oddly enough, that your current instructor did not have much
access to television since she was completing her undergraduate
degree) that the first all-news cable network began broadcasting
news around the clock. (That network was CNN, which stands
for Cable News Network).
These days, and I count myself as guilty of this as the next
person, if I drive by a police car with lights on on my way home
from somewhere, I find myself supremely frustrated if the local
newspaper does not have a story on the likely minor incident I
passed on the way home. And yet, I remember the days when
news that was important enough to merit a “breaking news”

4. incursion into regular television programming tended to flood
me with adrenaline because I knew, even as a child, that
anything that meant that the news people were going to speak to
me from the television when cartoons or soap operas should
have been on, could not possibly be good news.
One of the hallmarks of the internet and its associated
technological developments is a premium on speed. That is to
say, we expect to be able to get what we want instantly—
whether that is a delivery of a food item that we’ve had outside
our region but crave once we get home delivered to our door in
a matter of days if not hours or an answer to a persistent
question about why the police shut a busy street down,
interrupting our commute home from the airport after a long trip
home. Beyond the technical aspects, it’s also become a point of
pride in many electronic discourse communities (e.g., the desire
to be the first to comment or retweet).
However, as with many technological developments, the
information infrastructure related to the rise of the internet
means that technology may have gotten ahead of what our
brains can actually process—and may have unintended
consequences.
The internet has, in many positive ways, been a great
democratizer when it comes to the spread of information. The
gatekeepers of old media—journalistic standards, editors and
producers who made sure that stories that ran or aired met those
standards—had the potential to recreate certain biases. Voices
of groups that were marginalized were sometimes marginalized
again in terms of the stories that the American public heard.
However, while democratization can be a benefit, if the
information that circulates is inaccurate, the consequences can
be dire. If the structures of the internet that we think of as
neutral themselves have biases built into them, those

5. consequences can even go unnoticed unless, as a society, we do
something about those biases.
In this essay, you will be asked to see what a number of experts
have to say about the dangers of the spread of inaccurate
information. We’ll look at the distinction between
misinformation and disinformation. Then each of you will
choose one of two broad topics: inaccurate information about
public health during a pandemic or inaccurate information about
politics at a time of deep political polarization.
Your essay will, grounded both in the research I have provided
and in the experiences you have had with the topic you have
selected, write an essay that proposes one solution to a problem
that you have seen created by this situation.
Prompt:
Choose either inaccurate health information in the time of a
pandemic or inaccurate information in the time of strong
political polarization as the focus for your essay. You do not
need to limit your focus to the topic in the United States if you
have sufficient knowledge of a country outside the US on which
to speak intelligently. However, keep in mind that your
professor is pretty monolingual. (I also still have no idea what
is happening with portfolio readings, so you might be writing
for another instructor even more monolingual than I am.)
In an essay of at least 1250-1850 words, take a position on the
following question. Make sure that the response is thesis-
driven and well-supported with expository paragraphs that
balance the components of university-level paragraphs.
BASED ON THE INFORMATION GLEANED FROM THE
READINGS AND FROM YOUR OWN OBSERVATIONS AND
EXPEREINCES, ARGUE IN WHAT ONE OR TWO WAYS
SOCIETY OUGHT TO COMBAT INACCURATE

6. INFORMATION IF YOU THINK IT IS IMPORTANT FOR
SOCIETY TO DO SO. BE SURE TO EXPLAIN CLEARLY
WHAT THE CONSEQUENCES OF FAILING TO COMBAT
INACCURATE INFORMATION COULD BE.
See the daily schedule for revised due dates that differ from the
course syllabus due to the need to shift to alternative delivery
of instruction (ADI) due to the Great Pandemic Disruption.
2
3
SELECTING A TOPIC
Selecting a Topic
Professor Name
University Name
Running head: SELECTING A TOPIC
Running head: SELECTING A TOPIC

7. Abstract
You have read several journal articles at this point and may
have an idea for your dissertation topic feel free to align this
with your ideal dissertation topic. The topic must be related to
any topics covered thus far in the course. Use this template to
gather ideas.
2
SELECTING A TOPIC
Selecting a Topic
Choose a topic that interests you must be Information
Technology related, use and answer the following questions to
help generate a topic.
· Do you have a strong opinion on a current social or
cybersecurity controversy?
Ans
· Did you read or see a news story recently that has piqued your
interest?
Ans
· Do you have a personal issue, problem or interest that you
would like to know more about?
Ans
· Is there an aspect of a class that you are interested in learning
more about?
Ans
Identify Key Words
Write down any key words of concepts that are interesting to
you and related to your idea. These terms will be helpful to
form a more defined research topic. Avoid overusing ideas when
choosing a topic Ask the instructor for ideas if you feel stuck or
need additional guidance.
Key Words
Words
I chose this keyord because
Word 1

8. Word 2
Word 3
Word 4
Word 5
Article Related to Topic
Find an article that is very close if not the same idea/topic as
yours. Reading articles in the same subject area provides an
overview allowing you to see how your own ideas relate to the
topic. This will also help with finding more keywords that you
can add to the above section later.
Task
Identify 3 articles and provide a summary of each within 500 of
more words. Provide the articles in proper APA format and a
brief summary below it.
Article 1
Summary 1
Article 2
Summary 2
Article 3
Summary 3
Refining and Scope Topic

9. Keep the topic manageable, a topic can be very difficult to
research if it’s too broad, narrow and some cases little research
is available within your topic. One way is scoping the topic is
to provide limitations. Some common ways to limit a topic are
below which you need to answer for this assignment and moving
forward:
1. What is the geographical area of your research?
Example: What cybersecurity issues are most important in
Washington D.C.?
Ans:
2. Does your research topic involve a culture?
Example: How does the cybersecurity issues related to
Information technology specialists within public organizations.
Ans:
3. Does your research cover a specific time frame?
Example: What are the cybersecurity issues that are most
important in Washington DC over the last 5 years?
Ans:
Example: How or does the cybersecurity issues effect the
business practices of public organizations?
Ans:
4. Does your research area contain a population group?
Example: How does working as a network administrator in a
public organization affect a person’s mental state i.e. does the
cybersecurity issues create a stressful work environment?
Ans:
Note that if a topic is to recent there may not be books or
journal articles as of yet, but you may search within magazine,
newspapers and reputable websites.
Modify Topic
After completing the above exercises does your topic require

10. any modification. If so explain why?
Ans:
Topic as Research Question
So far you have a general idea of the topic with a focused aspect
of an area. What about your topic that you want to investigate
or know? Create 4 research questions to answer within your
research.
Question 1:
Question 2:
Question 3:
Question 3:
Read more in your research area to find answers to your
question, pay close attention of how the answers were created,
did the author use a survey, interviews or other methods. To
include was the article quantitative, qualitative or mixed
methods.
Chapter X
Using the exercises above, then transfer the information as it
applies to the chapter X section of the attachment in Week X.