Representing Computing

Chosen Profession: Programmer

 

Overview: 

This assignment asks you to identify several popular sources of media such as newspapers, magazines, internet blogs, and even podcasts that talk about one of these professions in the context of the current problem facing the world. As you look for and review your chosen sources, look at who the texts include as sources/interviewees and how they are described. Look at how the writers, and their quoted sources, present “data.” In order to focus your analysis, and in keeping with our course theme of social impacts, you’ll want to examine your selected media sources to see how they discuss engineering, science, or technology in regards to the specific problem that you have chosen to explore.

 

As an exercise to help you brainstorm your topics this week, consider the following questions. How is my discipline’s attention to solving the problem I have selected being described that:

 

• promote or undermine social harmony such as fairness, gender equity, or racial equity?

 

ʉۢ demonstrate support for facts, the scientific method, and the value of disciplinary expertise?

 

ʉۢ reflect a particular world view or present a scientific idea as being part of a political agenda?

 

Considerations as you plan your assignment:

• First step is probably to figure out how these disciplines/professions appear in whatever media you choose to examine. What characteristics do they have? Are they presented as experts, villains, heroes, innovators… Look at the words used to describe them. Notice the images (if any) that are associated with them or with the kind of work they do. Pay attention to who is quoted and how they provide evidence or ‘data.’

 

• Second step is to then draw some conclusions about what is happening in the different media. Are these professional communities being characterized in any particular way? Pay attention to the words used to describe them and the words/images used to describe the people or sources who work within those professions.

 

• Third step is to then to ask yourself if these examples all add up to a similar way of characterizing the community of professionals that you are focusing on. Do the examples consistently paint a picture of that profession as having particular credibility or reliability? How do these ways of talking about a profession shape your impression as a reader of the professional community’s willingness to address the problem you have selected or is the discipline/profession being represented as part of the problem?

 

Finally, use that summary from step 3 to build an outline for your essay. What overarching idea do you want to convey? What examples from your chosen media analysis support that idea? What will you need to explain about your profession for your main idea to make sense to a reader who comes from a different discipline?