http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2011/02/24/gen-misconduct/

1. Do you think that the United States should stop playing "big brother" to other countries and start to focus on their own problems? Why?

2. If the war in Iraq and Afghanistan , and all other wars, have been in the paper for so long, why do people still want to read about it? Don't we always want to hear about the new, more exciting things going on in our country and throughout the world?

YSU Shooting

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/02/06/2011-02-06_frat_party_shooting_at_youngstown_state_university_kills_1_wounds_11_including_6.html

Commonplace Stories

Going Green: Just Another Act?
Barracking the Vote: Celebrities In Politics
It's Our Illegal Right
Conspiracy, Casualties, and Coca-Cola

Use the "Comments" button to post the titles of the four Commonplace essays you read in class.

Crisis in Egypt

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/02/03/133458627/live-blog-latest-on-crisis-in-egypt?ft=1&f=1001&refresh=true

WEAK THESIS STATEMENTS

Type 1: The Thesis Makes No Claim.
Type 2: The Thesis is Obviously True or is a Statement of Fact.
Type 3: The Thesis Restates Conventional Wisdom.
Type 4: The Thesis Offers Personal Conviction as the Basis for the Claim.
Type 5: The Thesis Makes An Overly Broad Claim.


Groups of five (you have to work with at least three people you have never worked with before)



INDIVIDUAL: Between your group members, decide who will work on generating which type of weak thesis statement. Each of you will come up with one example of a weak thesis statement corresponding to the five types; remember a weak thesis statement can have more than one type of problem, but as long as you weak thesis example fulfills the type of weak thesis statement your group has tasked you with, you're good. Take six to eight minutes to come up with your individual weak thesis statement.

Generating ideas for weak thesis statements: The best place to begin generating ideas is looking in your SSI assignments. You may use any idea/claim in the paper (not necessarily your central one since that may already be sufficiently strong) that fits with the weak thesis statement type you are assigned. The purpose of this exercise is to help you get a sense of how to refine your own thesis statement, so if you are aware that your current thesis idea has a particular problem, feel free to use that as an example. Other place to generate ideas for this weak thesis statement construction is to use our thematic readings or an idea from either of your secondary sources. This can be a completely invented weak thesis statement. The only limitation for this exercise is: it has to be within the confines of our course theme: representations of disaster in the mass media.



GROUP: Now as a group, create a "New Post" and type your five weak thesis statements in order (clearly stating the type of weak thesis statement it falls into). Your task as a group is to spend the next half hour crafting these five weak thesis statements into five strong thesis statements. Post the five weak thesis statements and the five revised thesis statements (which should not fall into any of the five types of faults) as a New Post on the blog along with your group members' names. *Do not divide the labor up here and decide to fix one thesis statement each; that defeats the purpose of this exercise. The point is to do the five together so you can learn how to identify any of the five main problems associated with writing thesis statements.

Floods in Australia

http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/01/04/a-tale-of-two-floods-shows-the-disaster-gap-between-rich-and-poor/

Class Exercise - part a.

Identify the central arguments in both thematic readings. Articulate these in complete sentences using both the tools of quotation and paraphrase, making sure that you identify the source clearly when you quote/paraphrase. Produce at least two sizable paragraphs (one for each source) that identify their central arguments.

Post your arguments using the "Comments" button and remember to include the names of all your group members.

Class Exercise - part b.

(See p. 223 of Writing Analytically) As a group, select one argument from either thematic reading that you would like to develop further, and cite it in its entirety. As the authors of Writing Analytically advise, “if you are citing a source to frame the discussion, the more reasonable move is both to agree and disagree with it. First, identify shared premises; give the source some credit. Then distinguish the part of what you have cited that you intend to develop or complicate or dispute” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 223). Produce a sizable paragraph developing your argument.

Class Exercise - part c.

c. Using the movie poster from Aftershock, discuss how you would use one of Ken Feil's arguments in "From Camp to Kitsch" as a lens to analyze this image. One sizable paragraph.

Post your group response using the "Comments" function and remember to include the names of all your group members.

The Gulf Coast Oil Spill

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/category/gulf-coast-oil-spill/

New York Times: The Caucus on the Arizona Shootings

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/live-blog-latest-developments-on-arizona-shooting/


The attached is a blog on the daily developments of the recent Arizona shooting disaster. It is a live feed and is updated as new information is processed. We chose this blog because it is the most current disaster in the United States' media, and it gives a fresh new look on how the media reports events in these new times.

The question that arises is this: How will this current situation affect our current policy and procedures (gun control, political security procedures, and state and federal laws...)?

challenger explosion

I chose this because it was a major disaster in US history because it happened live in front of millions of people.

This video clip was from the movie Deja Vu. This video gives the viewer the perception of what a boat explosion would look like, and gives the viewer the sence of how devistating it would be for the victim and there families.

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/images/holocaust4.jpg

This could be used as a great primary source because it shows how the photographer chose to portray the suffering of Holocaust victims. The extreme starvation that these people went through is shown through the picture and it shows that the Holocaust was a huge tragedy.

PB Oil Spill

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2007202-1,00.html

I think this is a good resource because it has a lot of useful information about the topic.

Bernard Madoff Scandal

http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/12/madoff-ponzi-hedge-pf-ii-in_rl_1212croesus_inl.html

I posted this link becuase the Bernard Madoff scandal was a ponzi scheme which people invested all their life savings in, which turned out to be fraud. This ponzi scheme affected hundreds of people leaving them with nothing to their name.

http://www.g-pop.net/images/schindlersList4.jpg

This picture is a still scene from Schindler's List. The movie is a way that the media showed how terrible the Holocaust was. People of all ages, incluing children, were taken into concentration camps, as shown above.

Natural Disaster Picture

http://www.greatdreams.com/weather/hurricane-ike7-surfside-beach.jpg

I picked this picture because it is a perfect example of a natural disaster and portrays the problems now faced by people living there.

New Zealand MIners

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AM75O20101124

This is an article covering the New Zealand miners trapped in the mine that got killed due to explosions. I think that the article illustrates the grief of the country and the families of the miners.

United 93

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz9BTKO_plI

I chose this as my primary source because I liked how the media portrayed the 9/11 terrosist attacks. This movie goes along with flight 93 from United Airlines and shows what happened on this day.

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20030721,00.html

The cover of this issue of Time magazine shows the corruption of the US government that many people may turn a blind eye to. Although it is not a natural disaster, corruption in a nations' government can cause or add to problems that are already existing in a country in a negative manner. I think that an extremely controversial part of the cover is that is says "IN GOD WE TRUST" across the top. Many people may be extremely offended by that in itself which can cause problems not even related to the main point of the cover. It also may have the effect of changing someones opinion of the topic depending on how strong their convictions are.

Offshore Drilling to resume

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576060122314549528.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_3

This article deals with resuming deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. This news is intriguing because of the harsh consequences that faced both the oil companies and the economy in the Gulf Coast. The possiblility of offshore drilling resuming serves as a sign of hope for the Gulf Coast's economy.

Dexter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-rs5hQ6gpM

The Showtime series "Dexter" follows a Miami cop who doubles as a serial killer. All of his victims are chosen for a reason, however, as Dexter kills only those who deserve it. Dexter is stuck in the balance between disaster and media because while he must satisfy his urge to kill, he must also keep the media off his trail.

This is the trailer for the movie "We are Marshall." This clip interests me because it is an entertaining movie, but a terrible disaster because of the deaths of an entire football team.

Disaster!

This movie is about a fabricated disaster. It's World War III because the Soviets have invaded Michigan...? The local teenagers battle the combatants. Success.

test run post

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnvqsWVluCE

The Day After Tomorrow is a great movie, partly because Jake Gyllenhall is a really good actor, but also because it a has a very good, dramatic, apocalyptic plot line. The trailer does a good job of setting the scene for the end of the world by showing multiple clips of storm action where cars are being flipped, people are scrambling for shelter, buildings are being torn apart, etc. This would be a perfect trailer to use for the analysis of a disaster.

Pearl Harbor Trailor

I chose the trailor from the movie Pearl Harbor. I know that movies portraying real life disasters often dramatize the event for our entertainment. However, if the viewer looks at the video at 1:30 and on, an intense scene about the actual attack on Pearl Harbor is displayed. The movie has great graphics and is interesting to watch. Along with that, it succesfully shows an idea of what happened in the event from various prospectives.

World War II: "Band of Brothers"

http://www.hbo.com/band-of-brothers/index.html

The "Band of Brothers" series deals with World War II and the Holocaust disaster. The show is based off of a true story of survivors from Easy Company. The series is a form of entertainment and factual media. It gives the audiance a visual aspect of World War II's disasters.

This movie portrays the conditions of the Polish-Jewish refugees during World War-II. I can have an insight on what the refugees have undergone during the holocaust.

Cloverfield

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufYF0f-zMgY
I liked this trailer because it's incredibly intriguing. You don't really know what's going on, it's just this group of people at a party and then everything becomes chaotic. You don't know what the "monster" is or anything about it, it's just the reactions of random citzens who are caught in the middle of it all that makes everything seem catastrophic. There are also scenes of desctruction that make you ponder what is going on and what is causing all of this. Again, a very intriguing trailer that definately attracted me to see this movies in theathers asap.

Class Blog

Disaster narratives make for powerful story-telling. This class blog will be an online forum for us to discuss and exchange ideas about representations of disaster in the mass media, including both fictional calamities as well as factual catastrophes in history. By analyzing the choices made by content producers in the way they frame disaster narratives, we will consider how mediated presentations of catastrophe affect us as audiences. Some research questions we can consider include: how do presentations of catastrophe in the mass media differ? How does such diversity of representation affect viewers or readers differently? How has tragedy been marketed (or even exploited) in contemporary culture? and so on.

Writing does not happen only in college papers and assignments, and research does not happen only in university libraries and science laboratories. The Class Blog Project offers you the chance to better understand blogging as a form of public writing as you join this online research community, which can give you invaluable insights when you begin to think about your Commonplace essays in Weeks 6 and 7. Engage in discussion with members of this community--your classmates and your instructor--and use this online forum as an open space where you can write about and think more deeply, critically, and reflectively about our course theme and your own research project.

You are welcome, at any time, to post any related links or information to our course theme on the class blog, or even to share a video link to your favorite disaster movie.