Think of this essay as both an organized summary and analysis of the material that constitutes this course. You will be assessed on your understanding of the topics you’ve studied, and more important, on your ability to identify major themes and key issues that re-emerge across multiple topics. Your objective should not be to fit every thing you learned into the paper. Rather, you should try to describe how one or two themes or issues has been addressed from multiple perspectives through the study of multiple topics.
Here are examples of “topics” or categories of media infrastructure:
Cell towers
Content Moderators
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=commpub
Mining of raw materials: Labor and supply chains
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/silicon-valley-full-superfund-sites/598531/
The depth of your understanding is assessed on the following. How clearly papers can articulate the course’s most important concepts How well papers can explain the major themes of the course How well versed papers are in the diversity of course content How precisely papers can cite sources in support of their arguments.