Final Projects

Your final project is a critical research-oriented investigation into some aspect of Arab media, civic activism, social justice and human rights.

You are free to choose your topic. The project should have (1) a text output that briefly discuss the topic and the problem dealt with, shows the analysis, and offers a proposal for civic action, and (2) a video/multimedia output that summarizes the project and its goals and solutions. The project must contain sufficiently researched and well-written and produced content. Your topic must relate to concepts that are brought up in the academy but be narrow and specific and relevant to the Arab world.

Essentially, you will be performing a critique on the topic of your choice, including both some sort of “literature review” and some original content you created, whether through the critiquing images or videos, or creating digital media pieces that help people become media literate about a topic. Your overarching goal is to champion or address a social justice issue with innovative solutions by combining previous literature/knowledge into a coherent package that provides a well-rounded explanation of the issues that surround your topic.

The digital squad will be able to help with technical production matters.

Guidelines:

• The Project must focus on a topic related to media in the Arab world and must champion or address a social justice issue with innovative solutions.
• Project must be clearly organized. Consider these elements as guidelines:
• What is – clearly – your issue, topic or point?
• What is the importance of your topic to Arab society and media?
• Discuss the background of this topic using other studies and resources.
• What is your evidence, data? Organize this to build a case or make your conclusions clear.
• Rely on your analysis of original material.
• What are your conclusions and solutions? Discuss not only what you found, but also what solutions you offer to resolve the problem or alleviate it?
• Be concise (videos should be limited to 3-4 minutes).
• Be creative.
• Offer solutions, a call for action and a push for civic activism.
• Remember: this is a media literacy project (not journalism).
• The project must be published online, distributed widely via social media with appropriate hashtags.

Deadlines and milestone:

• Saturday August 11: Final project introduced to students, division of groups, assignment of faculty and digital squad members to teams, and brainstorming about the topics.
• Monday August 13: Final project proposal and outline (write a one page abstract address the topic, cause, approach, solutions, multimedia to be produced, and division of work among team). Faculty supervisors will approve/revise topic today.
• Tuesday August 14: All analysis of content and review/summary of literature/knowledge about the issue must be completed. Collect data and conduct analysis of original content. Start the shooting.
• Wednesday August 15: Complete the shooting and analysis, and start editing/collating content and produce first version of the project.
• Thursday August 16: Final touches on the project editing and display.
• Friday August 17: Rehears and present project.