Journalism and Crime

Usher, B

doi:10.4324/9781003182429

Journalism and Crime

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Bethany Usher ORCiD

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Abstract

This assessment was a multimedia presentation including video, text, images as appropriate and peer review document. Your work was assessed against the following task specific criteria. First you were assessed on evidence of a theoretically and analytically rigorous definition of the topic, informed by engagement with and understanding of appropriate primary and secondary research. You did this well, although the theoretical underpinning and definition at the beginning would have benefitted from some context of the purpose against the presentation to explain that you were doing underpinning first and then in relation to news particularly. You engaged with reading about news images too and the broad background of the development of news images was really interesting. Secondly you were assessed on the demonstration of how the chosen research methods facilitate meaningful studies of media, journalism, culture and society. The demonstration of the method worked well in many places. The examination of it historically and some of the ways you considered it directly in relation to news theory and representational theory offered many different parameters. The two different case studies were detailed and the images well chosen. Thirdly you were assessed on the analysis of research methods in order to make meaningful conclusions about its strengths and weaknesses for studying media, journalism and communications. While you did discuss strengths and weaknesses of the method, this should have been expanded in the conclusion. The final summary audio file did some of this work and particularly what the semiotic analysis facilitated and why against the method itself. However, what were the limitations and how did you overcome them? You did do so – in reality you moved towards multimodal analysis in places. You just didn’t articulate in a meaningful conclusion how you did so. Finally, you were assessed on the coherence and structure of the presentation and critical analysis, including appropriate academic tone at postgraduate level and effective display of examples and analysis. The work would have benefitted from a proper introduction to the presentation itself at the beginning to create the narrative and set the scene. A simply video outlining the point of the presentation, the main narrative points/areas it would cover and why would have supported engagement with this work. This should have fed through into the conclusion where you considered your own experiences of using the method and its strengths and weaknesses more fully. Overall, this is a very good presentation which has some really fascinating moments of analysis and meaningful engagement with the method itself. Focusing on the narrative structure -an introduction to the presentation and an expanded conclusion about how you used the method and where it worked – would have lifted the overall mark for this work.