Week 1

Course resources: Thinking about social problems (these are here for your use throughout the course–you’ll understand why as we progress and discuss social problems and the ‘framework of questions’)

• Causes
• Consequences
• Who benefits?
• How are problems framed, and by whom?
• What to do?

Specific to week 1

• What is a social problem?
• More on social problems
• Structural and individual explanations
• Some basic questions to ask
• Outline / summary for the week

Week 2

• Are news media biased?  (left vs right stereotypes: comparisons)
• Individual vs structural explanations of bias
• How is news ‘filtered?’
• Some news sources
• Social problem here?
• Outline (videos: bias; filtering)

Week 3

• Money and politics (discussion)
• Media and politics (outline)
• Social problem?

Week 4

Video lectures

• Climate change (pt 1)
• Climate change (pt 2)

Lecture pages

• Is the earth warming?
• But is it a social problem?
• What is the greenhouse effect?
• What’s driving the changes?
• Outline: the case (summary)
• Outline: What to do? (summary)

Week 5

Video lectures

• The Earth’s resources and human population growth

Lecture pages

• Natural resources–a primer
• Who’s using up the world’s resources?
• Have humans overshot their carrying capacity?
• Americans’ relationship with stuff
• Outline