Instructions: You will locate a minimum of two news articles about two different, but related, psychological concepts or ideas and answer the following questions about them. Your answers should be submitted in paragraph form, using APA style for formatting, references, and in-text citations. Your answers to these questions should take you about 2-3 double-spaced pages. The general topic for the articles you select are up to you. You are strongly encouraged to read and find articles about a topic that interests you.
Acceptable Sources: You MUST find your articles in the following sources. These sources have been selected because they are reputable news agencies without any ties to scientific organizations. Sources that are explicitly polarized politically have been excluded from this list (though, you will be asked to evaluate the article for potential bias). You can access most of these sources at no charge and social media is a great place to start!
- NPR
- FiveThirtyEight
- The Washington Post
- BBC News
- CSPAN
- Reuters
- The Associated Press
Questions: You must respond to ALL of these issues in paragraph form.
- Summarize each article and whatever study/topic they’ve covered.
- Describe the connections and differences between the articles.
- Make an evaluation of why this article was written. In other words, why was this publication or reporter drawn to write about this topic, as opposed to any other topic they could have written about? Feel free to make an educated guess here.
- Evaluate the sources (this would be the publication, the reporter, the audience, anyone who was interviewed for the piece, etc.) for any potential bias in reporting. Give a justification for your responses here.
- Did the journalist or publication provide any scientific citations or links to published studies? If not, how does this affect your judgment of the reporting?
- How would reading this article make a layperson (someone without any knowledge of psychology) feel about our discipline? In your opinion, would that perception be accurate or inaccurate? Why?
- Based on the articles you found, is psychology more likely to be mis-reported and/or misunderstood than other disciplines? Why or why not?
- After completing this activity, would you encourage people interested in psychology to read news reports about psychology? If not, where would you direct them for more information?
Grading and Evaluation:
- This paper is worth 20% of your final grade in this course
- The grading rubric is attached along with these guidelines in Canvas. In general, you will be evaluated on the extent to which you follow the directions outlined in the assignment and the extent to which you give thoughtful, educated responses to the questions asked
- You will lose 5% for each day this assignment is submitted late and assignments will not be accepted more than 7 days past the due date
*I am an international student, please do not use strong grammar*
