Download Research Portfolio Assignment

Your research portfolio is an assignment that will help you keep a record of FOUR of your sources. At least
one entry must be a book or ebook. It aids in keeping track of interesting quotes, statistics, laws, and
perspectives, and practice responding to them. This assignment will assist you in building your paper from the
ground up and to critically evaluate your sources.
Your sources should primarily be from scholarly journals and books. You can access numerous scholarly
journals through the CSUB library home page
Occasionally, magazine articles can be useful when they are well-documented enough and are written by
experts in fields, but magazine articles are usually best for pointing you toward scholarly sources when they are
merely reporting on someone else's research. Do not use editorials or other opinion pieces, Wikipedia, or other
sources that do not document their assertions with details about relevant research. Sometimes information
found in newspaper or magazine articles that contain facts about laws, statistics, etc. may supply useful
supplemental information, but newspaper articles generally are not sufficient for portfolio entries. There are,
however, notable exceptions from careful investigative journalists who uncover important information.
Format your document according to MLA style. You do not, however, have to double space anything after the
works cited entry. Each entry should include these four sections, in the following order along with the source
card:
1. An MLA-style work cited entry in exactly the format that you will be using for your research
paper.
2. A rhetorical précis (sample found on class website), which contains a guideline of the basic
elements you should have (this includes identification and credentials of the author; major thesis,
theories, ideas; how does author develop argument; intended audience; significance).
3. The evaluation section has 3 components: objective evaluation, critique, application. In the
objective evaluation, you’ll use an objective source(s) and indicate what that objective source is.
This means that you are using reference guides, reviews, and so on to evaluate sources, not
giving me your opinion of the source. Cite in-text and include an MLA citation in a works cite
page for any sources you use to evaluate the original source. For help on evaluating sources, see
the section below, "Instructions for Evaluations." Remember, if you do not tell me where you got
the information, I will not give you credit for the evaluation. The critique component requires
you to critique the source based on the critical reading criteria discussed earlier in the term.
Review the powerpoint on the website.. In the application component, you will explain how you
will use the source in your paper using the BEAT criteria we discussed in class. Note that a
source can fulfill many uses such as argument and background.
4. Please note that the following section contains five notes, properly cited, containing information
from your source that you believe you will be able to use in your paper. The notes should be a
combination of summaries, paraphrases, direct quotations, or any combination of the three (They
cannot all be direct quotes). Just remember that the paper itself should contain around no more
than 15% to 20% direct quotations. You may, of course, use more information in your paper
from a particular source then what is included in your portfolio entry, but I only need to see five
notes in each entry.
Instructions for evaluations:

For books, you should summarize reviews taken from sources like Book Reviews Digest and
discuss the author's credentials and expertise with information from Contemporary Authors (go
to the BC Library page Evaluation of Print Sources). When you find information in BRD, please
indicate where BRD found the review. If you do not find a review in BRD, use Gale Expanded
Academic, EBSCOhost, or LexisNexis for reviews. Do not assume that the comments included
with a book itself are objective—people who are trying to sell books are not objective about their
products. If you can find no information except from the book itself, tell me where you looked
first (see above) and tell me that the information is from the book.

For periodicals, you can use Magazines for Libraries (MFL), which is available in the BC
library. This will give you the reputation of the periodical, including indicating if it is a scholarly
(peer-reviewed) journal. The BC Library page Evaluation of Print Sources can help you too.
You can also often find out information about scholarly journals online. A scholarly journal is,
by definition, peer-reviewed by specialists in the field, so that is relevant information for your
evaluation. If the journal has an online component, it probably has some kind of "about" section
that will give you more information about the journal.

For websites, See the BC Library's page Evaluation of Websites. Also, you can follow UC
Berkeley’s guidelines

In some cases, you will not be able to find an evaluation for a source. When that happens, you
must still indicate where you looked and the steps that you followed in your attempt to evaluate
the source. Don't simply stop at a web search--I expect you to start with the library reference
materials. You need to do all this so as not to lose points. Offer some criticisms. Does it seem
like a reliable and current source? Why? Is the research biased or objective? Are the facts
well documented? Who is the author? Is she qualified in this subject? Is this source
scholarly, popular, some of both? How does this work compare or contrast with other
sources you have cited?
Ask the BC reference librarians for help when you need it. They are extremely knowledgeable and helpful and
will be happy to answer your questions. "Critical Evaluation of Sources" from the UC Berkeley Library may
also help you--it has useful information, explanations, and links to other material on source evaluation. If you
live in another city, seek help at the local public, university, or college library, and be sure to email me any
questions you have that are not answered in our texts and resources.
Research Portfolio Entry #1
Works Cited
Taylor, Philip M. Munitions of the Mind: War Propaganda from the Ancient World
to the Nuclear Age. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003. Print.
Annotation (Rhetorical Précis)
Philip M. Taylor, in his book Munitions of the Mind: War Propaganda from the Ancient World to the Nuclear
Age, argues that misguided wars are more easily launched and maintained when a single propaganda source
gains a monopoly over the information and images that shape people's thoughts. Taylor provides a history of
war propaganda from its earliest known instances, examines the psychological methods used to make a
country's people fight war and the methods used to try to get people on the other side to abstain from fighting,
and analyzes the role war propaganda plays today. His purpose is to help readers gain an understanding of both
the negative and the positive aspects of war propaganda in order to recognize when they are being manipulated
to support the military and political goals of forces in their own countries and to analyze the effects of
propaganda on other populations in the world. The book is useful for people interested in a serious analysis of
cultural history, military history, politics, and media and communications.
Evaluation
I could not find Dr. Taylor in CA, but I did find excerpts of reviews of this book in BRD. The journal History
called it a "classic work." The reviewer said that the book has an extraordinary range and offers an original and
cohesive analysis," making it "an ideal text for . . . media and communications studies, cultural history, military
history and politics." Using a search engine, I found an article on Dr. Taylor at SourceWatch, a wiki
encyclopedia "of people, issues, and groups shaping the public agenda" ("About." SourceWatch. Web. 14 Sept.
2009). According to SourceWatch, Dr. Taylor is a professor based at Leeds University (UK), and his research
interests are "Government-media relations, public and cultural diplomacy, propaganda, psychological
operations/warfare, information operations/warfare, military-media relations, international film, radio and
television (international communications), all in an historical or contemporaneous context."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Morgan 2
Note #1
According to Philip M. Taylor, a professor of International Communications in the Institute of Communications
Studies at the University of Leeds and an expert on propaganda, Goebbels was Hitler's "evil genius" of
propaganda, and he spent six years, starting in 1933, preparing the German population to accept the idea that
Germany should wage war against other European countries in order to achieve what Hitler and his followers
considered Germany's "rightful" place in the world. Goebbels was the head of Hitler's Ministry for Propaganda
and Public Enlightenment. It had twelve separate departments infiltrating every area of German life, such as
radio, press, theaters, film, and culture (Taylor 214).
Note #2
In Mein Kampf, Adolph Hitler wrote, "The psyche of the masses is not receptive to anything that is weak.
They are like a woman. whose psychic state has been determined less by abstract reason than by an emotional
longing for a strong force which will complement her nature. Likewise, the masses love a commander, and
despise a petitioner" (qtd. in Taylor 213-14).
Note #3
According to Hitler, propaganda consisted of "attracting the crowd, and not in educating those who are already
educated," and he saw the crowd as "brutal, violent, emotional, corrupt, and corruptible" (qtd. in Taylor 214).
Note #4
The medium that both Hitler and Goebbels were most interested in was film. They used newsreels more than
anything else to drive forward the "glory" of German military supremacy once the war started, with combat
footage skillfully edited so that the film footage shown German audience would be effective for propaganda.
The films were intended to make Germans believe that their armed forces were clearly superior to all others,
and that this was the natural consequence of their racial superiority and the leadership of Hitler (Taylor 218).
Note #5
The British recognized the value of censorship as "negative propaganda," that is, persuasion through the
restriction of information. The government tried to control access to information and prevent any information
from reaching the public that might damage morale and pro-war spirit. At the beginning of the war, cameramen
weren't even allowed to accompany troupes to France (Taylor 301).