For your Social Issues Blog Project, you will be writing blog posts about a soci

For your Social Issues Blog Project, you will be writing blog posts about a social issue of your choosing (click here to return to an overview of this project).
This assignment is to familiarize you with blog posts about sociological topics by having you explore the “There’s Research On That!” sociology blog. The TROT website is a sociology blog published by The Society Pages, which is “an open-access social science projectLinks to an external site. headquartered in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota.” As described on the website, the goal of TROTLinks to an external site. is to “[offer] up great research from across the social sciences that speak to the big events of the day.”
For this assignment you will explore the TROT site and get some practice reading and summarizing blog posts. This homework will also be a chance for you to start thinking of what contemporary social issue to focus on for your own project.
You will also be reviewing at least one classmate’s TROT summaries, so as to familiarize you with being an audience for your classmates’ writings.
Step 1: Submit your TROT Summaries
Your submissions for this step are worth 5 points and are due at 11:59pm on Th. 8/31/23
Because I would like you to do Step 2 for this assignment anonymously, I am having you submit your TROT summaries as an assignment rather than a discussion board. If you would like more information on what Canvas assignments are, click hereLinks to an external site..
For instructions on how to submit this assignment, scroll down to “Submitting Step 1 of this Assignment.”
After you have submitted your TROT summaries, you can move onto Step 2
You will select 2 blog posts on the “There’s Research On That!” (TROT) website and then summarize each of them.
To get started, do the following. Then answer the questions below.
Go to the TROT website at https://thesocietypages.org/trot/Links to an external site.
Scroll down to the “#TROTs by Topic” drop down menu on the right side of the page. Each topic selected in this drop down menu will display all the blog posts related to it. To make sure you go to the correct search box, I have shared below a screen shot of the TROT website — please take a look at it to see the red arrow labeled “CLICK HERE to search for topics” (make sure you do not click on the search box that I’ve labeled “NOT here”)
From this topic drop down menu, choose a topic/category area that interests you and you will see all the blog posts about that topic.
You can choose both blog posts from the same topic area, or one blog post from one topic area and another blog post from a different topic area.
Read the 2 blog posts you selected. Then summarize each of them by answering the questions below.
Questions
You can provide your answers to the following questions in numbered/lettered format as the questions are indicated, or you can answer all of these in paragraph format — it is up to you. But please make sure your write up is clearly answering each question.
Answer questions 1-5 for each post you selected and then answer question 6 for both posts together — in other words, you should answer questions 1-5 twice, and question 6 only once.
In 2-3 sentences, write what topic area you chose and explain why.
What is the title and author(s) of the article?
Copy and paste the link of the blog post. NOTE: to get the link, you need to first click on the title of the blog post itself.
What question does the research answer? The following is important information to help you answer this question: The blog posts reference scholarly research articles, or they may have links to posts/articles in There’s Research on That or Clippings, which themselves reference scholarly research articles. The author(s) of the TROT blog posts have referenced these scholarly articles in order to answer a question that they had about the social world. Thus, I am asking you here to identify what question the blog post’s author(s) are trying to answer with the research they cited/referenced. You should be able to answer this by just reading the blog post (you do not need to read the referenced scholarly articles!).
In 1-2 sentences, summarize how the referenced research answers the question you identified in question 4. Please note that you do not need to read the referenced research articles to answer this question — read only the blog post. The point here is that the author relied on referenced articles in order to find the information they needed to answer their research question. Thus, you just need to read the blog post to see what the author said about the referenced research articles in order to explain how those referenced research articles helped the author answer their research question (which you identified in question 4 in this prompt). So just summarize what the referenced research articles say, according to the blog post.
Choose 1 of the 2 posts you read and write a 2-3 sentence response to any of the following questions (you do not need to respond to them all, but you can respond to more than one or to all if you like, At minimum you should be answering 1 of them)Did anything you read in this blog post surprise you and, if so, why?
Does the research in the blog post contradict your own experience? If so, what might explain that? If not, why do you think that is the case?
What is sociological about the research?
Does the research propose any solutions that you think might work? If so, what are they?
Submitting Step 1 of this Assignment
To submit your answers for Step 1, click on the “Submit Assignment” box at the top right corner of this page. You will then see the option to type your answers into a text box or to upload a file with your typed answers. If you are uploading a file, it needs to be saved as either a pdf, doc or docx; you can also upload a google doc — but any other type of file I will not be able to access. Then, click “Submit Assignment”.
If you need additional help/instructions on how to submit this assignment, click here.
After you have submitted your answers for Step 1, move on to do Step 2.
n external sitStep 2: Anonymous Feedback to a Classmate
This portion of the assignment is worth 5 points.
This 2nd step of your HW 2 will be an anonymous peer-review of a classmate’s summaries. Because of this, it will be on Canvas as a separate assignment — to access the instructions for this Step 2, click here.