Genres are cultural categories that surpass the boundaries of media texts and operate within industry, audience and cultural practice. You may choose to consider an overarching perspective raised across the weeks (media convergence, for example, or Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding model), or to delve into a specific week that interests you. Either way, you will draw from theoretical material in the readings, lectures, and tutorials to consider the "big picture" of television at our exciting juncture. Your essay should show that you have a good grasp on the main concepts of the course and can synthesize these into a coherent argument on the given topic. Make sure you include a clear expression of your research question in the first paragraph and relate your argument to concrete examples of shows/content from television and/or new media

Your aim will be to write an essay that offers an elegant

response to your research question. You must engage

explicitly in your paper with five scholarly readings: at

least three of these must be selected from the required

readings in the course reader, and an additional two

may come from the reader, additional suggested

readings, or another scholarly source (check with us if

you are unclear what a “scholarly source” is). Be sure

that your use of all the readings is sustained and

relevant (not simply a quote from a powerpoint slide).

You may also draw on ideas from the lectures and

tutorials, but these need to be backed up by concrete

examples from shows or scholarly texts.

Much of the success of the paper will depend on

formulating an original, interesting, and answerable

research question. We recommend you discuss this

with your tutor at the earliest opportunity in order to

help you to focus your reading, find media sources, and

formulate a rich analysis and argument in the final

paper.