ENG2100: Writing 1 F23

Adapted by Zach Muhlbauer

Original by Mark McBeth

Reflective Annotated Bibliography Directions 

The reflective annotated bibliography works as a research device, having been adapted from  the traditional academic document called an annotated bibliography. While the conventional  form only includes a bibliographic entry and a précis, this adapted annotated bibliography adds a terminology/key word list, a reflection component, and a quotables section. These  additional sections help you as a writer differentiate between “objective” reporting of the  author’s ideas from your “subjective” editorial remarks about the reading (aka, your opinions, speculations, counter-arguments, questions). It also acts as a mnemonic device to help you retain terminologies, key terms and phrases, and an author’s memorable quotes. While  this reflective annotated bibliography could conceivably help you review for exams or store  information for future pieces of research scholarship, you can also use it to help you formulate paragraphs for an essay.

Part 1: Bibliographic Entry: This section gives the publication information: author, date,  title, book or journal, vol., page numbers, print or web. 

“Television Shows That Glamourise Wealth.” London School of Economics and Political Science, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1 Aug. 2018, www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2018/08-Aug-2018/Television-shows-that-glamourise-wealth. 

Part 2: Terminology/Keywords: This section lists keywords that the author uses that indicate a relationship to a disciplinary discourse community. You may also use this section to list unfamiliar vocabulary. Notice the differentiation that I make between  “vocabulary” (general words) and terminology/key terms, which entails vocabulary used within a particular, sometimes specialized discourse community.

Materialistic Media

Anti-welfare

Part 3: Précis: This section articulates an objective summary of the reading. It should only convey  exactly what the author states in the article without including your opinions. (1) It should  state the author’s primary claim and subclaims. What argument does the author want  to assert? (2) It should acknowledge the types of evidence the author uses to support this  claim. What data/facts/evidence does the author use to justify the claims of the article? (3)  It should reveal the interpretations that this author arrives at through the claims and evidence. What point or conclusion does the author surmise? 

The author argues that materialistic media transforms people’s welfare stances from pro to anti. The research finds–through experimentation–that brief exposure to MMM and materialistic reading and television influences attitudes towards welfare. The research also finds that exposure to MMM shapes cognitive and emotional responses which leads to the development of materialistic values and attitudes. The author’s home country of England experienced a decline in welfare support most likely from MMM.

Part 4: Reflection: This section reveals your opinion about what the author has stated. Do you agree or disagree?  What speculations do you want to make about this author’s methods of research? What questions do you  have? What don’t you understand? What other information do you need to look up to better understand  this article? This unconventional section puts forward your ideas. This section should be italicized.

I agree that MMM shapes cognitive and emotional response which leads to the development of materialistic values and attitudes, but the researcher presented nothing convincing enough that MMM changed England, or that MMM turns people against welfare. Most likely the research forgot the presence of cognitive biases e.g. confirmation bias and logical fallacies like failing to recognize epiphenomena. 

Part 5: Quotables: This section directly quotes one to three statements that the author made in the  article that you feel really exemplify its claims or interpretations. Or, you will choose a sentence that you feel the author expressed exceptionally well. Include page number(s) where  you find the quote. Place quotation marks around the chosen phrase and make sure you cite the phrase verbatim. 

“The Apprentice, Keeping Up With The Kardashians and X-Factor are replete with MMMs that are engineered to absorb audiences into the glamorous world of wealth and celebrities and thus have a strong potential to function as cultivators of materialistic values and attitudes.

“Humans are inherently materialistic but also very social and communal. The way this is expressed depends on our culture. If there is more emphasis on materialism as a way to be happy, this makes us more inclined to be selfish and anti-social, and therefore unsympathetic to people less fortunate.

“Results suggest that momentary exposure to and regular consumption of materialistic media messages (MMMs) induces stronger materialism and anti-welfare attitudes.

Du Bois The Comet‘s similarity to Twilight Zone’s episode “Time Enough At Last” chills anyone familiar with both. Stories of irony and satire usually resonate with me especially, but the two aforementioned stories’ poignancy deserves special attention. The Library of Babel followed the Twilight Zone plot very well as protagonists face unlimited information. The idea of getting what one wishes for feels like the most important message in both stories, and its beautifully told. Well done to Du Bois and Twilight Zone.

Carr makes an amazingly great illustration of how clocks and the internet molded humans and how technology tends to facilitate this molding. The fact there is no real technological advance between Google and GPT is often not realized today. This ignorance leads to confusion about GPT molding humans. GPT is to Google what Command+F is to a website. It simply acts as a magnifying glass on whatever is thought of as pertinent information. Many people forget that the distinction between pertinent and impertinent cannot be made without a deep analysis of the text. GPT and Google necessarily bring analysis minus the depth. Carr cited Socrates and Plato’s eloquently translated prediction of the consequences of writing “‘[people would] receive a quantity of information without proper instruction… [and] be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant'” (12). GPT will almost certainly bring more of the ignominious type Socrates referred to, but there is no real technological or literary advancements in GPT, and thus there will be no real molding as a result of GPT.

Gee underlines three principles in What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning & Literacy that were crucial to my understanding of how making a killer Powerpoint: 1. Active, Critical Learning Principle, 2. Situated Meaning Principle, and 3. Multimodal Principle. I moved away from typing boring paragraphs and reading slides verbatim when I finally realized that a Powerpoint–and all forms of learning, as explained by Gee–is not meant to help someone memorize the content, but is instead meant to help someone understand the content. This meant only having a few bullet points to facilitate deep understanding, and my use of the second principle: forcing people to think to understand the bullet points. I employed cryptic language, overt metaphors, and accentuation. Gee describes my preceding tactic in the text when he describes good games “Good games—and the games get better in this respect all the time—are crafted in ways that encourage and facilitate active and critical learning and thinking” (46). The final principle that Gee mentions, and that I identified I used in my quest for Powerpoint kingship is: multimodality. I stripped the blandness from my presentations and infused each slides with images, pictures, text, or a blend of all three. My intention was to facilitate all three principles in doing so. I sometimes employed only images in the first few slides that by themselves would be meaningless. This eliminated the option of passively considering the slides. I found my own application of Gee’s principles in a domain other than video games, but I would not have know I applied them until I understood Gee’s definitions. This in it of itself is an example of both principles one and two.