Community Analysis Assignment | Online Assignment

Course: Disc 300
Instructor: Amir Barati
Community Analysis (3000 words essay)
In this essay, students will employ their knowledge gained from texts we have covered in our class on theories of community and discourse and apply them on one of the communities they have access to. The community can be of any kind, actual, virtual, social or discursive. The only point to consider while choosing the community is to have easy access to it. Students should have a suitable access to the community members and spaces the community share. They should be able to gather and record data (descriptive, audiovisual, interviews, etc.) from the way the community operate. Before starting to write the actual paper, students need to take two major steps to find enough information to write their papers: Observation and Analysis.
1- Observation: At this first step, students will choose a community that they are part of or have access to, observe how the community operates, try to scrutinize in the social and interpersonal relations in that community, and fully documents their observations. Documenting observations can include taking notes describing in detail, taking photos and audiovisual records, interviewing members, collecting their documents, and so on. Students can ask themselves: What is this community about? What is the unifying cause in this community? How are people gathered together? How are they interacting with each other? How are social and power relations in this community? How is this community helping each member? How open or close the community is? In what ways the community empower members? How is the community related to other communities? What are the benefits of this community for the larger society?
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What are the shared stories among the community members? Do they employ any specific discourse? And so on.
2- Analysis: In this second step, students will go back to the scholarship on the structure of community, refer to the articles we have so far read in class, choose at least three articles among them and try to make connections between the theories we read in those papers and their observations from their chosen community. Students are encouraged to utilize library’s resources to their best advantage and add more academic sources to their projects. The questions here would be: How compatible theories are with their observations? How theories can help to better understand the mechanisms and operations of their chosen communities? How your observations challenge the theories? Etc.
The outcome of these two steps will be written in a 3000-word research paper, MLA Format, which reflects the student’s power of making a research and writing a well-structured academic paper.
Before handing in the full draft of the paper, a proposal should be submitted in order to confirm the credibility of the subjects the students are going to address (For more information on how to write your proposals please refer to “Writing Academic Proposal” in Purdue’s Online Writing Lab: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/common_writing_assignments/academic_proposals/index.html). The 300-word proposal, outlines what you intend to examine, why you chose that subject, why you think it’s a reasonable topic to cover, and what you hope to find out through your research.
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This essay will go beyond a strict comparative analysis. The students are supposed to use their power of innovation and creations, find new insight into how communities operate and how significant their chosen community is. The research hopes to highlight the importance of community construction and communal action. Students are more than welcome to use other academic resources to back up their positions.
WHAT I WILL BE LOOKING FOR:
✓ An introduction that provides context for your subject and an arguable, focused, and revelatory thesis statement that will guide your paper
✓ An in-depth analysis of the topic you’ve chosen, as well as the larger implications of it
✓ Solid claims that are backed up with key details and effective incorporation of source information
✓ Logical organization that provides a clear argument and includes transitions that tie the material together
✓ A conclusion that brings the ideas together
✓ Sound sentence structure and grammar
✓ Use of YOUR OWN WORDS
A NOTE ON PLAGIARISM:
Plagiarism is the use—whether aware or unaware—of someone else’s work without citation or attribution, in an attempt to pass it off as your own. Plagiarism of any sort will not be tolerated and could result in an automatic ‘F’ grade in the course.
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FINAL NOTES:
I am here to help you if you need it. Ask for further elaborations, email me, or call me, ask for help and I am here to support you.