COM 340 UCLA Battles of Lexington and Concord Research Report

Assignment 1

When studying communication history or doing historical research about the mass media, it’s vital to be able to locate, read, and analyze original media documents. Not long ago, we would need to visit historical archives, museums and libraries around the country and the world in order to find and use these primary sources. Now, thanks to the Internet and the efforts of many librarians, researchers, and history buffs, millions of full-text media sources are readily available to anyone who has access to a computer.

One of the primary goals of the class assignments this quarter is to give you a sense of the historical treasures available online relating to the mass media. The second goal is to introduce you to original media throughout U.S. history and to show you how that media have evolved over the years because of social, political and technological changes. A third goal is to help you develop efficient research skills that you will be able to use whenever you want to fact check the validity of statements—often made for political reasons—about historical events. For example, BuzzFeed.com (Links to an external site.) reported that “Rand Paul’s First Two Books Are Full Of Fake Founding Fathers Quotes (Links to an external site.).” See also “Founding Fathers misquoted: Politicians could use refresher classes (Links to an external site.),” published in the Seattle Times.

Research Topic

For Assignment 1, you should find one original article about the Battles of Lexington and Concord published in a colonial newspaper around the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. Before you start your research, please read all of the instructions carefully and e-mail your instructor if you have any questions. Here’s a step-by-step plan describing how to complete this assignment.

Step #1: Prepare for Historical Research

1. Review the textbook readings and Lesson 1 to get a sense of what was happening in the colonies right before and during the American Revolutionary War.
2. Search explicitly for the date(s) when the research topic/event occurred. Feel free to check online secondary sources, including Wikipedia and the History Channel, for background information, but please don’t spend much time on the secondary research. There’s a lot available online and you could spend hours unnecessarily reviewing it. (Note: It is not necessary for you to have the Voices textbook to complete this assignment because you can find the necessary background information through the lessons and the secondary sources online.)
3. Listen (or read the transcript) to the National Public Radio (NPR) interview with Todd Andrlik (Links to an external site.), author of Reporting the American Revolutionary War: Before It Was History, It Was News. Andrlik offers valuable insights into colonial journalism and helpful advice about how to read stories published in colonial newspapers.
4. Plan your research strategies for finding an article published in a colonial newspaper about this topic. Write down the important dates, locations, potential keywords, and other methods that you might be able to use to focus your research. Take some time at this stage to tailor your research strategies, because it will save you a lot of time when you start your primary research.

Step #2: Locate and Save Newspaper Article

There are several online databases available through the UW Libraries’ website that you can use to find colonial newspapers. I’ve outlined three approaches below. Please experiment with all of these approaches before you select your article. This step will familiarize you with the some of the UW libraries’ online collections and will help you with future assignments in this class as well as in your other classes.

• Approach One: Go to UW Libraries’ home page (Links to an external site.) and click on Research GuidesLinks to an external site.; then click on History as the subject. Under History, click on History: American. Browse through this collection. You will be able to click on numerous historical resources including full-text newspapers and magazines organized by chronology, region, topic, and the like. Look for links to primary sources and then browse through the collections for news-related media sources. Consider the type of media you’re searching for and the correct time frame and try to determine which resource would be most appropriate for your research. Please take time to explore the holdings in order to get a sense of what’s available for future study.
• Approach Two: Return to the Research Guides and click Communication, then click News. Explore the options for future reference (including E-Newspapers) and then click on the category, “News by Date,” and select 1700–1850. Click and read “Analyzing a Colonial Newspaper.” Then explore the online colonial newspapers available and follow the same steps as described for the first approach.
• Approach Three: Go back to the UW Libraries’ home page, and click on ENewspapers, Media, Maps & More. Browse the list of holdings and click on ENewspapers & News. Take time to explore these listings because you will most likely be using this resource for other assignments. Pay attention to the different time periods, and click on the ones that look promising. Once you’ve made your selection, then you can search by date, keywords and the like.

Once you’ve selected your article, copy it into a readable Word or PDF file, take a readable screen shot of it, or save the hyperlink (URL) to the article to include with your assignment. There usually are e-mail and PDF options available in the heading above the item in the database. One way to see if the hyperlink will work is to e-mail the document to yourself, log out of the database and close your browser, then go to your e-mail account and click on the link that you e-mailed to see if it works. You must log out and close your browser; otherwise, the hyperlink will probably open to a temporary file from your work session, not to the original article in the database.

Your instructor will be clicking on the hyperlink to make sure that you found an original article so please make sure it will work before submitting your assignment. If the link doesn’t work, then the highest grade that you can earn on the assignment is a 3.0 on a 4.0 scale. If you have trouble getting the link to work, then please submit a readable copy of the article instead of bothering with the hyperlink.

If you have trouble finding an original newspaper article after following these steps, please email your instructor, or Jessica Albano, communication studies librarian at jalbano@uw.edu, or Theresa Mudrock, history librarian at mudrock@uw.edu at least 48 hours before the assignment is due.

Note: Lesson 1 has a link to a website that covers this time period. If you use this website or simply do a Google search to find original newspaper coverage, the highest grade that you will be able to earn for this assignment is a 2.0. That’s because one of the key objectives of this assignment is to introduce you to historical research using the UW Libraries, which means that you need to use UW library resources and to experiment with search strategies.

Step #3: Report Your Findings and Submit Your Assignment

Here’s what you need to do next to complete the assignment.

1. Create a Word document and enter your full name at the top of page.
2. Record the bibliographic citation to the article that you selected, using this citation style: author’s name (if listed); headline (if any); the newspaper’s name and location; the date of the article; the page number; the database that you used; and the date of your search. (Please don’t clutter the citation with other miscellaneous details.) Bibliographic information usually is found in the heading above the item in the database. For some databases, you’ll need to click on page images to see the original page of the publication and to find the page number. If bibliographic information is not available, then that’s an indication that it is a secondary source (not a primary historical source) and you’ll need to search again for an original article.
3. Explain briefly (one or two sentences) why you selected the article. Be specific. This step is designed to help you make sure that the article you selected fulfills the assignment’s requirements.
4. Analyze (three to four paragraphs) whether the article and the newspaper that you selected illustrate Andrlik’s ideas about colonial journalism. Be sure to browse through the full-text page images of the newspaper selected for examples to support your analysis. You do not need to summarize the article, but you do need to browse through the full issue of the newspaper in order to write the analysis.