Blog title: Final Project Proposal

This is a collaborative blog post with Mary Kenefake. We will be working together on our final civic media project. Our final project will be a 15-25 page paper accompanied by a 5-7 minute long video that reflects our paper’s arguments. In this sense, we are producing civic media that provides awareness of minority trends in Boston TV news industry.

Our Working Title: Minority Representation in the Boston Television News Industry

Summarized description of paper:
This paper analyzes the racial demographic trends in Boston television news industry from the past 15 years in comparison to United States racial census data of the Boston area. We seek to discover whether the racial trends in the television news industry are accurately representative of the Boston population and whether this representation has an effect on minorities’ participation in democracy. Research will focus on demographic trends within Boston and the greater suburban areas. This includes exploration on both the ownership and participation of television media. Three points we plan to consider are:

ethnic media as alternative outlet to lack of minority representation in mainstream media stations
census issues due to lack of awareness among minorities–ethnic media outlets as a solution to offset this disparity
economic difficulties test media capabilities to accurately reflect their diverse audience

For our supplementary video, we are developing a list potential interviewees in Boston television media and from the census as well as developing interview questions.

Here is our project timeline:

10/17- 10/24 Brainstorm topics for paper
10/18 We will post preliminary calendar with goals for tasks and the project objective
Blog post 10/24: Generate list of questions we will ask those interviewed
10/26: Present and workshop final project proposals
10/28: Complete Paper Outline
Blog Post 10/31:Generate list of interviewees-potential and confirmed and provide a general outline of our paper’s arguments
Blog Post 11/7: Revised research questions, discuss preparations for project presentation
10/24- 11/7: Contact interviewees to arrange interview times; conduct interviews
11/16: Complete first draft of paper
11/22: Complete interviews
11/22-11/30: Transcribe interviews
11/25: Complete transcript for video
11/29 Complete video editing
11/30: Final Project Lab
12/5: Complete Paper
12/7: Final Project Lab
12/12: Final project presentations & discussion
12/14: Final project presentations & discussion