Tuesday, October 18 Lesson Plan

Logistics: Grade Boost Events + Conferences This Week (5-10 min)

Let’s quickly go over the two events you can go to and the work you have to do for a grade boost. Antigone is this week and the Memory and Sense lecture is on October 25.

Conferences this week: I am meeting with everyone for about 20-30 minutes. Here is the line up:

Tuesday, October 18

  • 12pm: Lewis
  • 12:30pm: Jasmin
  • 3:00pm: Star
  • 4:00pm: Bri
  • 4:30pm: Will
  • 5:30pm: Marcela

Wednesday, October 19

  • 9:30am: Jean
  • 12:30pm: Brian

Thursday, October 20:

  • 9:30am: Carlos
  • 10:00am: Alvi
  • 10:30am: Tahmid
  • 11:00am: Muhaimi
  • 1:30pm: Jeneice
  • 4:00pm: Fernando
  • 5:30pm: Rahim

Friday, October 21

  • 9:00am: Sehaj
  • 9:30am: Gangandeep
  • 5:30pm: Aisha

For your Journal Post this week, you will write a brief reflection about:

  • your goals going forward for what you want to work on in your writing
  • the texts and method you will use for your Information Analysis Argument assignment

Review: Information-as-Pattern Heuristic Questions Method + Lateral Reading Method (5-10 min)

Last class, we tried out Patrick Love’s information-as-pattern questions and Ellen Carillo and Alice Horning’s lateral reading method for evaluating and contextualizing information.

Love was really interested in how information was constructed and created from a patterning in data and then what the consequences of bringing to light that pattern was. He had 6 questions to ask to help users of the method to get a sense of that context for information:

  • What labor went in to making this pattern? (i.e., how was the data created to make such a pattern possible?)
  • What data was collected to contribute to this pattern? How was it collected? (i.e., the data for the interpretation was collected from something…what was it? Personal experience and reflections? Analyses of external records like language, visuals, or quantified data?)
  • What resources did this pattern consume? (i.e., what sort of money or other material goods allowed this to be possible?)
  • What resources will this pattern enable more consumption of? (i.e., will this pattern lead to more money or material goods to be directed at continuing this sort of pattern?)
  • Who will benefit from the continuation of this pattern? Who will suffer from the continuation of this pattern? (e.g., what sort of world is imagined from such a pattern and who is affected and how?)
  • Will this pattern align with patterns made elsewhere? (i.e., what else exists and how does this align with those other patterns?)

Carillo and Horning had three steps to take for reading laterally: get a sense of the controversy or consensus around the topic or text by going to other texts, learning more about the background of the author, learning more about the background of organization or website:

  • Does the text or the topic appear on fact-checking or hoax-busting sites? Any red flags here?
  • What can you find out about the author in other texts you can find (e.g., their expertise, other things they’ve written, affiliations they have with other groups or organizations)? What does this say about any possible biases or perspectives they have that might reveal motives that lead them to be more likely to interpret or analyze things a certain way above others?
  • What can you find out about the website or organization? Who sponsors or funds it? What is the purpose of the site based on some googling around about it and its topic? Is the site selling anything? Who is the audience of the site? Do answers to any of these questions suggest that the author may be influenced to reach certain kinds of goals, interpretations, or analytical conclusions?

In different ways, both Love and Carillo and Horning care about potential motives of information creation and circulation. For today, I want to do an activity to figure out what Cloud is doing that is both similar and different from Love and/or Carillo and Horning.

Frame Checking: Definition and Purpose (20-30 min)

Just like what we did with the two pieces by Love and Carillo and Horning, I want us to take some time to find two things from Cloud by reviewing the chapter and your annotations on it:

  • What is the meaning of the central concept? How do you know? Find pages and places in the reading that give you information that can help you define the concept of “frame checking.” Remember that you may need to go to multiple places and synthesize what you learn there…there may not be One True and Total Definition.
  • Why “frame checking”? What does it help with? Why do we need this concept? Look for places in the chapter that help give you some sense of why she feels the need to develop this concept.

Let’s highlight some spots on a clean PDF to help us come up with a definition and a purpose for the concept from Cloud’s point of view.

Definition(s) and Purpose(s)

Example frames from Cloud (content warning of abortion): monster frame, profiteer frame, scandal frame, realism frame

Let’s get some practice with frame checking…we will watch these two TikToks about student loan forgiveness.

First, we need to figure out what stasis each one is operating in.

Here are each of the four stases that Cloud refers to on pages 59-60:

  • Question of fact or conjecture: Does it exist? Did it happen? Who did it?
  • Question of definition: How can the act or event be defined?
  • Question of quality: What is the character of the act: right or wrong, good or bad? What characteristics might make us evaluate it differently?
  • Question of jurisdiction: Who has authority over this action? What should be done about it?

Second, where is our attention directed? How so? What are some of the images or ways things are presented that make us think about certain ideas and feel certain feelings?

Third, what is left out? Are there other perspectives that are not present here?

Fourth, add up the stuff from the first three: what is the story here? what would you call it? What would you “name” this frame(s) in each video?

TikTok 1: Find ‘student loans’ on TikTok | TikTok Search

TikTok 2: Find ‘student loans’ on TikTok | TikTok Search

So, how is frame checking similar to the other two methods but also different? Take one minute to think about it. Okay, let’s get some ideas out there on this Google Doc.

What does Cloud mean at the end of the chapter, do you think, about the truth being more complex than facts?

A lot of the times, we want a world that is coherent, but it is often contradictory. We don’t like that, and, maybe, can’t even think that way because what can we even really do if we don’t find some kind of meaning in something in order to do something with it? Thus, frames come in and it is unavoidable (at least according to Cloud). Being aware of framing can be helpful to make sense of competing frames that  make the most sense and, for Cloud, deal with values and the world we want to live in.

More Practice Applying Information Evaluation Methods (30-45 min)

What is the below person doing? Information-as-pattern heuristic questioning? Lateral reading? Frame checking? Some combination of two or all three of them? What do you think?

To figure that out, I’m going to split you up into groups and try to reverse engineer what this journalist is doing based on one of those assigned methods.

For your group, make your case! How is it doing one of those methods? Perhaps how is it not doing one of those methods? Make both cases on this Google Doc.

Each group will have a facilitator (directing questions and steering conversation forward), a note taker (the person writing in the Google Doc), and a presenter (the person who will talk to the large group about what their group discussed).

Information Analysis Argument Independent Work (10-20 min)

Let’s briefly go over the assignment again. Let’s get to work and I’ll come around to check-in.

Next Time (2-5 min)

-I’ll be meeting with each of you starting this morning and through Friday. We will talk about the drafts you turned in on October 11 and then we will think forward to this new assignment together. And just sort of check in more generally.

-Make sure you re-read the Cloud chapter just like you did for the Love article and add at least one more annotation to help revise your reading. Do this by Thursday.

-Make sure you update your logs by end of day on Thursday.

-There’s also a journal post due by end of day Saturday (instead of Thursday since still meeting people through Friday) that asks you to reflect about goals for your writing that you want to work on and your status with the analysis assignment due November 1.

-Keep working on the analysis assignment!