Summary and Synthesis with Steven Johnson

Harwood Eng 96Spring 13 Paper #3: Summary and Synthesis with Steven Johnson Your third High Stakes Writing Assignment comes in two parts. The first asks you to summarize and the second asks you to employ some of Johnson’s concepts to collect data of your own. Part 1: Summary For this part, write a 1 to 2 page summary of Johnson’s Television section, covering Multiple Threading and as much of Flashing Arrows and Social Networking as you are able. Focus mainly on his ideas, but be sure to give some indication of his evidence and how it’s presented. What shows does he use to support his ideas?

How does he make his points? Your summary should start with a paragraph about Johnson’s thesis and then use paragraphs of ideas and supporting evidence from the book to round out the content you cover. Remember CABIN. Part II: Synthesis Use Johnson’s concepts of Multiple Threading and Social Networking (see p. 110-112) in television to compare two similar shows of your own choosing (they must be separated by at least 20 years). Your main assignment for this part is to visually represent your research using charts similar to those Johnson uses on p. 0 and 112. Write two pages describing your findings and whether you 1. support (agree with) Johnson’s idea that multiple threading and social networking are on the rise – and that TV is therefore becoming more challenging and complex. OR 2. refute Johnson’s claims based on findings different from those he sees in his analysis. 1 or 2 here should lead directly to your thesis, which you’ll support by looking at paragraphs about multiple threading and social network schemes.

The writing portion of your synthesis should should answer the following question: Having looked at several examples of television shows yourself, do you see the same heightened complexity and challenge that Johnson claims in today’s television? For your synthesis, you will be graded on your charts and visual representation of your data as well as how you write it up. I’m looking at whether you understand Johnson’s methods and whether you can duplicate this analysis while critically watching TV yourself.