WRTG 391

Post 1

This discussion thread is designed to help you see how a synthesis of sources essay, or literature review, is organized. 

Please download the article, “Beyond Frequency: Perceived Realism and the CSI Effect,” by Evelyn Maeder and Richard Corbett.  The article is available in the e-reserves of your class.

On pages 84-85, the authors provide an introduction to the research study they conducted.   You can read this section if you would like to.  However, for this discussion thread, please read from page 85 “(“The CSI effect defined”) to page 94 (up to the section entitled “Method”).

Then answer the following questions:

1. In the first section (“The CSI effect defined”), do the authors ever give you their opinion on the CSI effect?  How do they support their definition and their expansion on the definition?  How many different sources do they cite in this section?

2. From pages 86-88, the authors discuss lawyers, police officers, judges, and community members.  In this section, do the authors ever give you their opinion on any of the issues discussed?

3.  Examine the section entitled “Verdicts” (pp. 90-92).  How do the results from the study by Shelton et al. differ from the results of the study by Kim, Barak, and Shelton?   How do the results of the study by Baskin and Sommers differ from the results of other studies?

4. As a result of having read this article, please write a few sentences about what you might have learned about a) synthesizing sources or b) the CSI effect.

Post 2

You have written a four-source essay and a six-source essay and are working toward the multiple-source essay.  Throughout the semester up to this point, you have integrated sources into your writing and have gleaned various strategies in using different ways of integrating sources.

As we conclude the course, please examine the following short paragraph on a hypothetical paper about cybersecurity and the Internet of Things.  The writer has made some errors in his integration of Shindell as a source. 

Please identify at least two errors.  Describe what the errors are in a sentence or two.  (You don’t have to re-write the paragraph.  You just need to describe what the errors are.)

One potential method of hacking into a hospital’s records is through a wearable device.  Often, wearable devices are used by health care institutions to monitor blood pressure or other health conditions.  However, such devices expose vulnerabilities in the system.  (Shindell, 2018) argues that hackers increasing integrate malware to infect such devices and then use them as foundations upon which to attack the health care institution’s IT systems.  Specifically, (Shindell, 2018) maintains that ransomware is especially pernicious.  “During an attack, victims will typically encounter a screen giving them directions for paying a ransom to retrieve their data…”   “More than half of hospitals surveyed were hit with ransomware in the previous 12 months.”