How Selective News Avoidance Influences Democratic Elections

For this essay, you are tasked with writing an effective (Toulmin) argument which addresses a highly focused and very specific problem within the broad subject area of journalism/news media and your assessment of why or how it exists as it does.

The argument itself will need to be driven by a unique and focused claim statement you construct. This means it needs to be much more specific than the kinds of general comments and criticisms I made in the overview above. In other words, if all of your discussion refers to "media" or "journalism" in the same general sense I am using for a thematic overview on an assignment prompt, then your argument is not nearly focused enough! Your claim first needs to answer the generic claim question applied to any Toulmin argument, which is: "what are you trying to prove?" It then needs to be developed and focused into expressing something much more specific about what you are trying to prove as it pertains to journalism or news media. In other words, do not attempt to take on the entirety of journalism as a whole in one essay (the whole pie); just take one slice of the pie for this assignment, since doing justice to the whole pie would be writing a book! You need a specific issue.

To be clear, your unique claim can assert anything you wish to assert regarding the issue of journalism today. The emphasis on the word "today" assumes that every essay will incorporate, on some level, a degree of contrast between current examples of journalism and examples of journalism in the past. Now, with that said, you are naturally free to construct a claim that even challenges the premise of this assignment if you believe contemporary journalism does an effective job at objectively informing the public of actual news. However, in taking this route in support of journalism, be specific in your claim and examples just as those who take a critical stand against current journalism need their specificity.

The Toulmin Argument Structure Summarized: Six Key Elements

Whatever direction you take with content, the most important thing to remember is that your claim statement needs to be extremely focused and arguable (you should easily be able to imagine an audience who opposes it for any number of reasons). Surrounding the claim, there needs to be strong and relevant grounds to provide a context for the claim (this is the second Toulmin element). Embodying the claim and grounds needs to be a logical and relevant warrant (the third element) that may or may not be explicitly stated like the claim and grounds need to be explicitly stated. The warrant is essentially the principle, or moral, that gives justification to your claim and the grounds surrounding it. The next element (the fourth element) is the evidence/support for your argument, most of which comes from external sources. The purpose of this element is rather obvious, since convincing your audience of vital points in your argument will need to expand beyond your knowledge base; you need authority (ethos), and it will need to come from reliable, objective sources (by doing this, you're actually going a step ahead of most journalists today!) Moving on, you will need to include qualifiers (the fifth element) that provide safeguards (guardrails) for your argument so that your opponent's cannot try to discredit your claim by finding areas of it that you might not wish to include for whatever reason; with qualifiers, like the fine print in a contract, your goal is to address important aspects of the argument that might not take center stage and may not even be developed, but are nonetheless important (things you cannot afford to overlook). Finally, the last (sixth) element is that of rebuttals, which are nothing more than the arguments against your claim that opponents are likely to throw at it. The writer of an effective argument is first realistic about their own weaknesses in the argument (they do exist) and fully anticipates what opponents might say against not only their claim but against all of their supporting points and even sources.

The Basics

Minimum of 5-6 pages of text (not including the Works Cited page, which always needs to start on a new page); this means a minimum word count of around 1,600 words.

Strictly MLA format (essays not submitted with correct MLA format will automatically lose 20 points). This point-deduction policy does not apply to the citations of sources in MLA; naturally, you will need to make sure they are all cited in MLA, but I understand how errors in citations might occur, and I am not applying a blanket deduction policy to them like I am for document format which is simply a matter of following a template.

Minimum of SIX SOURCES (no more than eight). Remember the importance of creating a "tapestry" among your sources in terms of having a variety of EXPERTISE, OPINIONS, AND MEDIUMS (source types/formats). No ".com" source domains allowed! NOTE: a key part of the evaluation of the essay overall will be your collection of sources and how they are used in the essay.

Quoted content cannot exceed more than 20% of all the words in the essay (your own original words must consist of 80% of the essay). This means being very selective with your quotes and/or keeping them short!