First … for small groups. For your abstract, take each week of content and (very) briefly discuss how it related to social problems (using the questions where helpful). This will re-familiarize you with the content and prepare you to answer questions in small groups in class. 

The following should be helpful, both for doing your abstract for small groups, and especially preparing for the exam. It’s harder for me to help you if you come unprepared (we will have a chance to discuss at the beginning of class the day after small groups as well). Link to questions.

This is a guide, not a blueprint.

There are four basic areas we’ve touched on in this first unit:

1. Social problems,
2. the media (we discussed media bias, ownership, filtering pressures, etc.),
3. climate change/global warming and
4. depletion of the world’s resources (population growth and consumption).
5. link to lecture material by week

Warning: the links are provided as an aid–there is other material within the readings and lecture material, and if you’ve taken class notes, they will just reinforce the learning–if you can’t ‘triangulate’ with all these three sources, start early. But don’t be overwhelmed–this content is here to help you prepare, you don’t need to re-read it all under a microscope. But you do need to understand the big points we’ve discussed in class.

Also, remember how the exam is structured.

Social problems

• How can social problems be viewed as structural versus individual, and their causes and effects as structural, versus individuals’ problems or character flaws? I’ll expect you can come up with examples on your own.
• How can social problems be viewed as socially constructed? We’ve discussed the struggle to define or ‘frame’ social problems in the public arena. How does this happen? Who has the power to define social problems, and how do they use it? Whose perspectives are likely to be excluded from mainstream discourse? Do people or groups or other entities (industries, organizations …) seek to frame issues in ways that may benefit them, and lead to certain proposed ways of addressing them?
• Social problems questions to ask. Lots of material on this in the lecture material from week 1. Go here for a briefer list.
• And here are the specific pages, if you want to see how you might think about answering those questions:
  • Causes
  • Consequences
  • Who benefits?
  • How are problems framed, and by whom?
  • What to do?

Media, money and politics

• Check out readings and lecture material from week two, and week three’s group assignment might be helpful to think about this (but I wouldn’t ask questions that we hadn’t discussed in week 2).
• Understand how bias operates (week 2 lecture material), we discussed the whole red state-blue state, Coke-Pepsi, Republican-Democrat, Liberal-Conservative, Fox-CNN idea of ‘disambiguation–how does that serve as ‘bait’ for an audience, and why and how do news media seek to increase audience size (lecture video)?
• Know what the news filters are, and how they operate to reduce the range of ‘acceptable’ stories (video). Does the filtering process vary, depending on how a news outlet makes its money?
• What is the relationship between elected politicians, the media, corporations, and consumers?
• How do commercial news media benefit from elections and campaigns?

Are humans causing climate change?

• Greenhouse effect, greenhouse gases
• Global warming, and what can be done
• Causes, consequences–what are some of the driving social forces and ecological processes?
• Social problem(s)?–who’s causally/politically responsible? Who has the power and influence and access to media to frame the debate? Who benefits from warming (in the short run, in the long run, but think this through–it’s not just the oil and gas industry, is it?)? What should or could be done?

What’s happening to the world’s resources?

• What are natural resources anyway, and how do societies use them?
• Garrett Hardin and the tragedy of the commons. This is a good example of how a social problem can be framed in two pretty different ways (outline).
• What is carrying capacity, and why is it important for humans? Have we possibly ‘overshot’ carrying capacity? If so, why haven’t we ‘felt’ it yet?
• Still wrapping your head around the underexamination of consumption? 

Keep in mind-this is a social problems class. Yes, I’m interested in you grasping the content we discuss. But I’m more focused on you learning to think about social problems, and developing the ability to gather information and think through the issues on your own, applying your learning. The content we’re just using for examples, though I have put a bit of time and thought into the problems I’ve chosen and their gravity.

The exam

Test will be about 20% multiple choice, 15% matching, with the rest as short answer and essay. You will have choices on the essay and short answer (e.g., I might ask you to answer 5 of 7 questions). Also, keep in mind that we’ll be doing the exam over two days. The first day you’ll take it for an individual score, the second day in small groups (you can self-select).

You’ll have three options the second day: take the test in a group, decline to re-take the test (and settle for whatever grade you get on the first day), or take it as an individual. In any case, the second day can only improve your grade (it’s worth 25% of your adjusted grade). I’ll toss out group scores that lower a student’s grade.

Strategy for studying

If you just try to memorize facts, you’ll struggle to finish the exam. So come up with a more thoughtful strategy. My advice? Think of this like a story, in this case, the story of social problems. What are they (the questions n’all)? How do we learn about them (think about the role of media in informing and framing)? Week 5 definitely looks at different ways to frame depletion of natural resources. Week 4 is a good way to think about how even environmental issues like climate change are driven by societies and their patterns of activity (especially industrial). You can go through those questions and create a narrative, which will help you stick ideas in more places, and that’s a good retrieval strategy. So if you’re studying thinking about telling a story, and not stopping to memorize one fact after another, you’re likely to have a greater command of the information.

Some sample multiple choice questions and questions sent to me by students (in prior terms):

Which of the following is an example of free riding (answers here)?

1. Marketing and selling passenger vehicles that weigh over 10,000 pounds and consume five times more gasoline than the average vehicle;
2. A nuclear power plant that produces energy so cheaply that it’s not even worth metering;
3. two suspects are tried for armed bank robbery, but their lawyer gets their charges reduced to shoplifting because the arresting police officer didn’t read them their rights before interrogating them.
4. one member of your group takes control of the assignment and alienates the rest of the group members, who decide to kick her out of their morning carpool;

How might conservatives and liberals differ over how to address gambling as a social problem?

1. Conservatives: gambling is a personal choice; liberals: protect problem gamblers from predatory practices and provide treatment programs;
2. Conservatives: support lottery and casino revenues as important funding sources for government programs; liberals: reduce the price of lottery tickets so that the less advantaged would have an equal opportunity to win;
3. Conservatives: pass a law increasing the lottery tax to fund treatment programs; liberals: seek to shut down gambling on moral and religious grounds;
4. Conservatives: regulate casino advertising that makes gambling seem glamorous and lucrative; liberals: remove all control and regulation from the industry and let the market decide who gambles.

The notion that social problems are socially constructed or defined means that

1. it takes a lot of people and different groups within a society to construct a social problem.
2. social problems are next to impossible to address without tearing down the existing power structure.
3. everyone agrees about what problem exist and how they should be addressed.
4. what we know about a social problem may be influenced by groups in society with the most access to and influence over mass media.

Questions (asked by students over the years):

Q: Can you explain news filters?

A: Check out this video lecture, and this lecture page, and see if they don’t help (it’s what I would have discussed in class).

Q: More detail, please?

A: Think of how a filter works. Some things pass through, others don’t. If news stories are getting ‘filtered’ out of the news cycle, they’re not passing through and making it to the public. One way they get filtered is through ownership. A large news network, for instance, might avoid stories that would upset their shareholders, or other companies they own, or even companies that advertise. In a smaller local newspaper, it might just be the local editor or publisher, but it’s the same idea–those who gather and report the news, and their editors, may feel pressure from their bosses to not take any risks or to report on stories, no matter how newsworthy, that might not be a boon to ratings. The bigger the corporation, the higher the stakes to control ratings and keep the news within some ‘safe’ margin.

Second, commercial news depends on advertising, so advertisers want to know who is watching or reading or listening to the news, and whether it’s a good audience for their products. If the news covers topics that cast their businesses or clients in a bad light, they could either take their ad money to another news organization, or put pressure on the organization to ‘tone down’ negative coverage. This was how the bovine growth hormone story was filtered out–Monsanto put pressure (flak) on the local Fox news affiliate (by threatening the Fox Network with removing their advertising), and the local station harassed the reporters (ownership filter) until they gave up and sued them (they won at trial, then lost on appeal).

Third, source filtering. We don’t always know where news stories are coming from. But think of the ‘sponsored news’ from the websites in the media paper. They’re portrayed as news, but they’re ‘sponsored,’ meaning that some company is behind them in some way. We don’t really know how. The news is being ‘filtered’ by some group that is not dedicated to journalism, yet the news site is selling it as ‘news’ of sorts.

Fourth, flak. That’s negative feedback. If I don’t like a story, I can write the editor a letter. If I am a talking head on a prime time network show, I can get a much bigger audience and even suggest they all write letters or send tweets or boycott. If a story casts doubt on something most Americans support, say our armed forces, it’s pretty easy to minimize the actual story and suggest that network is anti-American, for instance. That’s serious flak, and networks will try to avoid it.

Fifth, anti-communism or anti-terrorism. We will not get for the most part stories in the US that actually provide multiple perspectives on terrorism, especially international terrorism. Back to the patriotic thing–news organizations want to seem pro-American, so providing perspectives that show the complexity of terrorism, and how it is sometimes worsened by US foreign policy, can easily be twisted as ‘America bashing.’ That might lead to drops in ratings, boycotts, etc. As for anti-communism, governments around the world that are socialist or communist will probably receive more critical coverage from US news organizations. Why? Americans have a pretty one-dimensional understanding of socialism and communism (despite the fact we have plenty of ways in which Americans benefit from policies where wealth is redistributed as it might be in a socialist government). To suggest that for instance Cuba’s health and education systems are successful, that a communist country can get some things right, would invite people to call a news organization ‘communist sympathizers.’ Cuban Americans in Florida would sling flak, and in the age of social media, that might spread quickly, maybe even going viral.

Then there is the ‘filter bubble.’ The idea that our internet browsing history, or our phone data, are being collected, fed into algorithms, and spit back to us with more of what the algorithms think we want. So we may begin to think reality resembles our own belief and value systems, when what it really may resemble is our shrinking information bubble and our own information preferences.