OVERVIEW
You will write an informative piece about a contemporary issue in feminist technology for an online audience.
The total amount of writing should be approximately 600-800 words.
Purpose:
To practice writing for an online audience, in ways that are engaging, informative, and convince your audience to care about your topic;
To identify and carry out an introductory exploration of a course-related topic that is of interest to you, which you can continue to explore in subsequent assignments.
EVALUATION
Your blog will be evaluated according to the following:
Writing for genre: The assignment demonstrates a strong understanding of the genre, including its technical features and communication norms. You make innovative use of the form.
Connection to gender and technology. The feminist stakes of the topic are clearly explained.
Research: Your assignment puts forward a strong understanding of the topic. Any facts or claims you make are backed up through links, quotes, or another form of citation appropriate to the online genre you have chosen. Your assignment shares information that is interesting and engaging for an audience who may not have much knowledge of the topic.
Style: Your assignment is well written and presents minimal spelling and grammar mistakes. It is the right length. The argument is structured logically and is easy to follow.
Details and Suggestions
Choose a contemporary issue related to feminist technology that you would like to write about. Ideally, you will choose a topic you can continue to work on across the other two writing assignments. It’s fine to write on topics discussed in the course but feel free to explore.
Blogs have a long history from the early days of the Internet and there are many ways to write them. Keep things simple and stick to blogs such as what might be written for an online magazine since these are usually edited and moderated even if they aren’t peer-reviewed.
The primary goal of your writing should be to inform and engage. If you want to incorporate a feminist agenda, you will also have to consider if you want to include any calls to actions.
Note on Citation (set up direct link to the source)
You should cite any sources you draw on using the citation style that is common for this genre. Blogs written for online magazines typically feature links to sources when possible, or attribute facts within a sentence; example:
“According to the Guinness Book of world records, the giraffe with the greatest number of Twitter followers is @ApriltheGiraffe Links to an external site.with more than 40,000 followers Links to an external site..”
For this assignment, you should not use in-text citations, such as what you may have used for previous scholarly assignments. This is because this isn’t a scholarly paper but an online piece for the general public. However, that said, you should still check and credit your sources. This is because as journalists, we are accountable for the credibility of our writing which is partially based on our responsible use of researched sources. Also, we will likely click through the links in your blog just because we want to find out more about your topic.
