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Communication and Cultural Industries and Practices essay writing services
Assignment 1 task description
You will prepare an analytical literature review that synthesises arguments
presented in the literature on the implications of an aspect of media convergence for a segment of the communication and cultural industries. You may refer to the subject readings but your essay must include additional academic articles that you have located yourself.
Word count: 2500 words
Criteria:
o clarity in explanation of the issue, its significance and key concepts;
o breadth of literature surveyed;
o depth of analysis and critique;
o effective and accurate use of academic writing conventions.
What is this assignment designed to achieve?
This assignment relates to the following learning objectives of the subject:
- Explain what communication and cultural industries are and their place
in society
- Analyse significant differences and similarities of communication
professional practices and how they evolved
- Critically evaluate existing practices in communication and cultural industries and imagine how they might change in response to dynamic conditions of today and in the future
The assignment asks you to explore these issues through identifying relevant literature, reading critically, and writing an essay which brings together diverse perspectives on the topic you focus on.
How do I choose an ‘aspect of media convergence’ and ‘a segment of the
communication and cultural industries’?
This assignment is an opportunity for you to investigate an aspect of the contemporary communications industry landscape that particularly interests you. If you’re not sure where to start, go back through the material presented in lectures and tutorials over the first few weeks of semester, and see if there is something there that appeals to you. Here are just some of the aspects of media convergence that are discussed in the first few weeks:
o types of content becoming available across multiple platforms, and devices
becoming capable of delivering diverse forms of content
o changing relationships between producers and consumers, such as
produsage, user-‐generated content, crowd-‐sourcing of content or funds,
active participation by users in the circulation of content, peer-‐to-‐peer media, viral media and ‘spreadability’
o multi-‐skilling of communications professionals and new digital skills needed in many areas
o traditional media corporations moving into new media forms
o impact of social media, Web 2.0
o branding across media formats and platforms
o changing business models and regulatory frameworks
o diversity in the media landscape
o accessibility and equity, digital divides
o adaptation to new technologies by existing industries
o ‘media convergence’ as an ideology, mediatisation and marketisation
o concentration of media ownership and democracy
o new ways of amassing audiences and expanding consumer markets
o changing views on authenticity and localness in the context of globalizing
of media forms
o the role of creativity and of geographical specificity in particular industries
This is not a complete list, you will find other aspects of media convergence discussed in the subject readings and the other resources listed for this subject in the Library catalogue.
You can choose any segment of the communication and cultural industries, selected from the same list as the one we will be using to create groups for the group assignment (Assignment 2): museums and galleries; libraries and archives; publishing; performing arts; music; radio; television; film; game development; advertising. How broadly or narrowly you focus on a segment of these industries is up to you but it will also depend on the kinds of references you find once you start doing your literature search. Make sure that what you narrow in on really is an industry, however, and not just a media form. ‘Social media’, for example, isn’t an industry. If you are in doubt about whether the segment you are looking at is an industry segment or not, check with your tutor.
Once you’ve got some initial ideas about the topic you want to research, start searching for literature on the topic. You will need to continue to refine and focus your topic in the light of the literature you read.
How do I prepare an analytical literature review?
A literature review requires you to demonstrate analytical research skills as you examine the work of others. You will have already written literature reviews as part of other essays, so the type of writing you will do for this assignment should be familiar to you. In many assignments you refer to relevant literature to support the points you are making. The difference for this assignment is just one of emphasis: in a literature review, the literature itself is the subject of the discussion. You will use paraphrase and selective quotation from the texts in your literature review, just as you do for other academic essays you write.
The principal source of literature for your essay must be academic sources. It’s a good idea to include some of the references from the subject reading list, but you must also include at least 6 other academic sources, such as journal articles and academic books, that you have located yourself. You may also include non-‐ academic sources such as newspaper articles, websites, government reports and so on if they are relevant to your topic.
Your submission will need to:
o demonstrate that you can find relevant literature on the topic you choose, and that you can analyse the relationships between what different authors have written about the topic
o summarise, paraphrase, synthesise, critically analyse, cite and reference the literature
o show an understanding of the key concepts, terminologies, ideas, theories and applications in the literature, and discuss the similarities and differences between them
o show that you understand the diversity of perspectives on the topic and
can make some critical judgments of your own about them, where there are
contrasting ideas and explanations
o be clearly structured, with an introduction and conclusion, and with the flow of ideas established through the use of appropriate sub-‐headings
o be proofread and well edited, and include a reference list which is correctly formatted in UTS Harvard style.
The objective of this assignment is for you to learn about how convergence is impacting on the communications and cultural industries by reading relevant literature and writing an essay which analyses the issues and differing perspectives on a part of the field. A literature review discusses the inter-‐ relationships amongst the individual references. Its structure and sequence is not based on describing the contents of the individual references one at a time, but rather on the analytical interpretation that you are making about the topic.
For an undergraduate subject like CCIP, the literature review is limited to covering what others have written about a particular topic. Being able to write a literature review is an important academic skill, however, that will become more and more useful to you as you advance in your studies. If you eventually go on to do Honours or a research higher degree (Masters or PhD), the capacity to conduct a literature review is essential to justifying that your research will make a worthwhile contribution to what is already known by extending on it.
How do I find relevant literature on the topic I’ve chosen?
A demonstration of strategies for literature searching will be given in the CCIP
lecture in week 3, and this will also be discussed in your tutorials.
Literature searching is an iterative process. As you start to find material that is relevant to your topic, these sources you’ve found will help you to refine your
search strategy and lead you to additional relevant material. Keeping a list of keywords and search terms that you are using to search for information is a good idea. Try to think of alternative terms that might be used to describe similar things. When you find material that is relevant, check to see if it lists keywords or uses different forms of phrasing that you might use to search for other sources.
Read and make notes on the texts you find as you locate them, because your developing understanding of the topic will help you to extend your search strategy. Most importantly, as you find material that is relevant to your topic, record the bibliographic information accurately, so that when you write your assignment, it’s easy to create the reference list.
Your literature search will be most effective if you use a combination of search strategies. The main search function on the Library’s website can now be used to search for scholarly articles and online resources, as well as items in the
Library’s collection: http://www.lib.uts.edu.au. Here are some other suggested
ways of finding material on your topic:
o Google scholar: http://scholar.google.com. If you’re off-‐campus it’s best to access Google Scholar via the Library website (since this will give you the best chance of accessing full-‐text versions of materials): http://ezproxy.lib.uts.edu.au/login?url=http://scholar.google.com.au/.
o Top communication databases on the UTS Library website:
http://www.lib.uts.edu.au/databases/search_databases.py?subcategory_id
=240.
o Follow up on items in the reference lists of items you’ve already found
o Look at the tables of contents of other issues of a journal when you find
articles that are particularly relevant to your topic
o If there is a particularly important text on your topic, you can find more recent articles which cite it by searching for it in Google Scholar and then clicking on the ‘Cited by’ link.
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