Friday, December 7. 2018

Today's schedule is ABCD

A & D Blocks Human Geography - Today we will be going to the Library/Learning Commons for another day to work on your Inquiry Project. Remember...Inquiry is the process of being puzzled about something, generating your own questions about the subject, using information to satisfy your own interests and to develop your knowledge. What does it include? Planning, Research, Focus, Creating, Sharing, Evaluating and Reflecting. Within the context of Geography you've already started your inquiry process by asking/considering:

What is my broad area of inquiry?
How can I narrow down my focus...
Some possible inquiry questions are...

So today is another check in day. I'll need you to show me the research you've conducted connected to the question that you've narrowed your topic into. I will need you to develop a plan (road map) for your inquiry. What do you need to do? How do you plan to go about doing it? When do you plan on getting it done.  Don't forget this is an active research project and I expect you'll need to go out into the community to interview people so who do you need to talk to and when will you talk with them? So yeah...it's the day where you really need to engage in research because there's on 25 classes remaining in the semester.

B Block Criminology -You have some questions on the CBS 48 Hours Mystery "Highway of Tears" episode we finished yesterday:

1. What main story do you think Investigative Reporters Bob Friel and Peter Van Zant wanted to tell? How can you infer that? How much of the episode focused on the actual missing women from the Highway of Tears? (Check out Bob Friel's article The Vanishing at Outside magazine)
2. Why did the show focus on Madison Scott first, Loren Leslie next and then the victims along the Highway of Tears afterwards? (Maddie and Loren are not considered part of the overall scope of the Highway of Tears cases and were not part of the E-Pana investigations that are currently ongoing)
3. What audience do reality crime shows appeal to & why do you think so (think demographics - age or gender or social class or occupation - and Psychographics - personal attitudes and values like security or status or caring or exploration/growth) What can Uses and Gratification Theory do to help explain the audience for True Crime stories? What techniques did the editors and storytellers of the 48 Hours Mystery show use to get you invested in the story of the episode?
4. What "values" does the 48 Hours Mystery on the Highway of Tears communicate to its audience? Why do you think the producers and editors framed the story the way that they did?

FYI: The province of British Columbia has a higher number of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls than any other province or territory in Canada. British Columbia accounts for 160 cases, 28% of NWAC’s (Native Women’s Association of Canada) total database of 582 and is followed by Alberta with 93 cases, 16% of the total. NWAC has found that only 53% of murder cases involving indigenous women and girls have led to charges of homicide.This is dramatically different from the national clearance rate for homicides in Canada, which was last reported as 84%. (From Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in British Columbia, Canada)

Don't forget I put a tonne of links on the blog yesterday to help. You may also use the videos I posted on the blog (Wednesday) as well.

TV Insider (article) Why Viewers Love True-Crime Shows
Psychology Today (article) The Guilty Pleasure of True Crime TV True crime TV is addictive to viewers.
Martinis & Murder podcast Highway of Tears (Oxygen)
Oxygen True Crime TV Channel
Investigation Discovery True Crime TV Channel
Real Clear Life (article) The Current State of True Crime TV
Ad Age (article) You Are What You Watch, Market Data Suggests
What Your Taste in TV Says About You (interactive web)
Viacom (media company!) What's Most Important to Young Audiences
Viacom (media company!) Gen Z How Well do you Know Your Teen Audiences? (quiz)
CBC news (article) Highway of Tears murders probed by CBS '48 hours'
CBS 48 Hours Mystery "The Texas Killing Fields"...From Bustle "The Texas Killing Fields are part of a 50-mile stretch that runs along Interstate 45, between Houston and the Island city of Galveston, Texas, dubbed the “highway to hell.” There have been 30 bodies found in this haunted place since the early ‘70s" - This show aired the previous fall and again in the summer before the Highway of Tears was aired (on Nov 17, 2012)

AND...If you would like some academic reading check out "Theorizing Media and Crime" which is
chapter one of Media and Crime written by Yvonne Jewkes.

OR you could check out the video on Agenda Setting and Framing to help with question #4 above

AND I loved the show the Newsroom...more on it when we look at the portrayal of women in crime media...but here's a discussion on what is newsworthy