MC 451 Assignments

Every assignment in this course, grouped by phase, with what it asks for and when it is due.

Each assignment shows a short description. Open Full requirements for the detail: what to include, how long, and what earns full credit.

How to turn work in

Submit everything in Blackboard, under the assignment for that week. Keep your work in your course workspace and commit it to GitHub as usual for the backup and the history, but committing is not submitting – grading happens from the Blackboard submission. Two assignments also ask you to paste a GitHub link into the submission; the link goes in the submission, it does not replace it.

Everything is due at 11:59 PM on the Friday listed.

Submissions are unlimited. If you upload the wrong file, or want to revise before the deadline, submit again.

Every assignment is a part of the paper

Almost nothing here is submitted and then finished. Each assignment builds a component the next one consumes, and the White Paper is those components assembled and argued. That is why the workspace has the folders it has:

Folder	What accumulates there
`02_Literature/`	one file per source, named `author-year-slug.md`
`03_Project/01_Prospectus/`	the question, the design, the justification
`03_Project/02_Codebook/`	definitions, then the instrument itself
`03_Project/03_Data/`	the sampling plan, the pilot, the coded data, the scripts
`03_Project/04_Drafts/`	figures, drafts, and the White Paper

Each assignment below says where its artifact lives. Keeping it there is not bookkeeping: it is what makes the methods section writable in December, because by then the trail is already on disk.

Everything at a glance

Due	Assignment	Phase	Points
Friday, August 28	Syllabus Contract	Phase II	25
Friday, September 4	GitHub Profile	Phase II	25
Friday, September 11	Project Setup	Phase II	25
Friday, September 18	Librarian Visit Report	Phase II	50
Friday, September 25	CITI Ethics Certification	Phase III	25
Friday, September 25	Annotated Manuscript	Phase III	25
Friday, October 2	Topic Selection and Research Questions	Phase III	25
Friday, October 9	Project Prospectus	Phase III	25
Friday, October 16	Definitions Practice	Phase III	25
Friday, October 23	Codebook and Qualitative Memo	Phase III	50
Friday, November 6	Sampling Plan and Pilot	Phase III	75
Friday, November 6	Data Wrangling in R	Phase IV	50
Friday, November 13	Describing Data in R	Phase IV	75
Friday, November 20	Inferencing Data in R	Phase IV	100
Friday, December 18	White Paper	Phase V	250
Every week	Weekly reading journal, 14 entries	Phase I	140
End of term	Journal consistency	Phase I	10

Total: 1000 points.

Phase I: The Journalist

Foundation. The habit that runs the whole term. Phase page

Weekly reading journal

10 points each, 14 entries, plus 10 points for consistency. 150 points total. Due every Friday at 11:59 PM.

Each week, write a reflection on the assigned reading. Choose one of three thinking paths:

Full requirements, including length and the fourteen due dates

The Connector: link the reading to your project, other concepts, or real-world examples
The Troubleshooter: document a challenge you encountered and how you worked through it
The Critic: ask critical questions, challenge assumptions, or explore implications

MC 451 requirements

Length: 250 to 300 words per entry.

Write on the assigned chapter. You are not required to read outside the textbook for the journal.

Submission

Write your journal entry in your course workspace (01_Journal/) by copying the journal template (_templates/journal-entry.md) into that folder, then submit via Blackboard.

What Makes a Strong Entry

Depth over breadth: focus on one or two ideas rather than summarizing everything
Specificity: reference specific concepts, examples, or passages
Connection: link to your own project or to prior readings
Honesty: it is fine to be confused or skeptical, so document your thinking

If you used AI

If AI shaped any work you submit that week, note in the entry what you used it for and how you checked its output. This is required by the syllabus.

The fourteen entries

There is no Week 14 – that is Thanksgiving.

Week	Due
Week 1	Friday, August 28
Week 2	Friday, September 4
Week 3	Friday, September 11
Week 4	Friday, September 18
Week 5	Friday, September 25
Week 6	Friday, October 2
Week 7	Friday, October 9
Week 8	Friday, October 16
Week 9	Friday, October 23
Week 10	Friday, October 30
Week 11	Friday, November 6
Week 12	Friday, November 13
Week 13	Friday, November 20
Week 15	Friday, December 4

Phase II: The Architect

Planning. Get the tools working and the project pointed at something answerable. Phase page

Syllabus Contract

25 points. Due Friday, August 28, 11:59 PM. (Week 1)

Open the syllabus contract template in VS Code, fill in the acknowledgment fields, and render it to PDF. This confirms your software (R, VS Code, Quarto) is installed and working.

GitHub Profile

25 points. Due Friday, September 4, 11:59 PM. (Week 2)

Create a professional GitHub account with:

Full requirements

A professional username and profile photo
A profile README introducing yourself and your research interests

GitHub Setup Guide

Project Setup

25 points. Due Friday, September 11, 11:59 PM. (Week 3)

Create your course workspace from the class template, clone it onto your laptop, and push a commit back. This proves VS Code, GitHub, and git all work together.

Full requirements

On the course workspace template, click Use this template, then Create a new repository
Name it mc451-workspace and leave it Public
Clone it into VS Code: Ctrl+Shift+P (Cmd+Shift+P on a Mac), then Git: Clone, then paste your repository URL
Make a commit (“Initial workspace setup”) and push it
Submit your repository URL to Blackboard

From this point forward you commit and push your journal entries each week, building a git habit before R enters the picture.

Workspace Setup Guide

Librarian Visit Report

50 points. Due Friday, September 18, 11:59 PM. (Week 4)

Meet with a SIUE librarian to identify and evaluate a data archive for your research project. You arrange this meeting yourself; no librarian visits class. Go to Lovejoy Library and ask for the Mass Communications subject librarian by name. Write a report documenting:

Full requirements

The archive: name, type, scope
What you learned: date range, searchability, export options
Feasibility: can this source answer your research questions?
Librarian consultation: what did the librarian recommend?

Submit as PDF: Lastname_ArchivistReport.pdf

Phase III: The Builder

Operationalization. Turn concepts into an instrument a stranger could apply. Phase page

CITI Ethics Certification

25 points. Due Friday, September 25, 11:59 PM. (Week 5)

Complete the CITI Program’s Social and Behavioral Research training and submit your completion certificate. It is due early because it gates the human-subjects reasoning you apply for the rest of the term.

What you submit: one PDF, the completion certificate as CITI issues it. Do not retype it, screenshot it, or submit the completion report in place of the certificate.

Where it lives: 04_Resources/. The certificate is evidence you keep, not a component you build on.

Requirements

The course completed is Social and Behavioral Research, the student version. It is not Responsible Conduct of Research, which does not satisfy this.
The institution on the certificate reads Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
Your name on the certificate matches your enrolled name.
The completion date falls on or before the due date.
The certificate carries its verification ID.

How it is graded. 5 points per item above. It is a checklist, so a certificate that meets all five earns 25 and one that names the wrong course earns 0 on item 1 regardless of effort.

Where it comes from. Session 5 and Chapter 3. What it feeds: every later decision about what your data is and whether the people in it needed to consent.

How this loses points. Taking Responsible Conduct of Research by mistake is the single most common failure; it appears near the Social and Behavioral course in the CITI menu. Starting it the night before is the second: the modules take two to three hours and the site does not save partial quizzes indefinitely.

Annotated Manuscript

25 points. Due Friday, September 25, 11:59 PM. (Week 5)

Find and annotate one peer-reviewed research article related to your topic, then say what it means for your project.

What you submit: one PDF of the article carrying your highlights and comments, plus a one-page document holding the six items below. Two files, or one file if your annotations and notes are in the same PDF.

Where it lives: 02_Literature/, one file per source named author-year-slug.md, with the APA reference added to a running 02_Literature/references.md. Your literature review is written from this folder, and the paper’s reference list is that file.

Requirements

The article is peer reviewed and reports original research. A trade piece, a magazine feature, or a literature review with no data of its own does not qualify.
The gap the authors claim, in one or two sentences: what they say was missing before their study.
The theoretical framework, named. If the article uses none, write that it uses none, which is itself a finding.
The method, with the unit of analysis, the sample and how the key construct was measured.
The finding, in one sentence, with the effect size and the sample size if the article reports them. If it reports neither, say so.
The limitation the authors admit, and one they do not.
A connection statement, 100 to 150 words: what this article gives your project, and what it leaves for you to do.
A full APA 7 reference for the article.

How it is graded. Items 2 through 6 are 3 points each. The connection statement is 5. The reference and the peer-reviewed requirement are 5 between them.

Where it comes from. Session 7 and Chapter 4. What it feeds: the Project Prospectus, which rests on gaps you can only name from articles you have read this way.

How this loses points. Summarizing the article instead of extracting these six things is the usual one: a good summary that never names the gap scores low. Choosing an article because it shares your topic rather than your design is the other; a survey about streaming helps you less than a content analysis of anything.

Topic Selection and Research Questions

25 points. Due Friday, October 2, 11:59 PM. (Week 6)

Commit to a topic and write the questions your study will answer.

What you submit: one document, roughly one page.

Where it lives: 03_Project/01_Prospectus/. These questions are the ones the paper answers, so they are edited in place rather than rewritten each time.

Requirements

A topic statement of two to three sentences naming the phenomenon, the population and the context.
One to three research questions, numbered, each written as a question. Three is a maximum, not a target.
Hypotheses where you have a directional prediction, each labeled H1, H2, and stated as a relationship between two variables. If your questions are descriptive, write that you have no hypotheses and why.
A variable preview: for each question, name what you would measure and on which unit. Two columns is enough.
A justification, 100 to 150 words, of why the answer would matter to someone who is not you.
The five-criteria check, applied in writing to each question. One line per criterion per question.

How it is graded. Topic 3, questions 6, hypotheses or the reasoned absence of them 3, variable preview 5, justification 4, five-criteria check 4.

The five criteria, in full

Run every question past these before you submit it:

Specific. Name the platform, specify the outcome, bound the population. “How does social media influence politics?” leaves all three undefined.
Measurable. Some concepts resist operationalization. “Do authentic streamers build better communities?” cannot be studied until authentic and better become something you can record.
Answerable within your constraints. Decades of data or hundreds of interviews is not a semester project.
Not already answered. Your literature review tells you whether the question is genuinely open.
It matters. A question can be answerable and still be trivia.

Two of these you can check yourself. Not already answered and it matters are judgments you make from your reading, and the check asks you to state the judgment, not to prove it.

Where it comes from. Sessions 9 and 10, Chapters 5 and 6. What it feeds: the Prospectus a week later, which is these questions with a method attached.

How this loses points. Submitting a topic where a question was asked is the most common failure: “parasocial interaction on Twitch” is a subject, not a question. Writing five questions is the next, because it usually means none of them has been chosen.

Full requirements

Run every question past the five criteria before you submit it:

Specific. Name the platform, specify the outcome, bound the population. “How does social media influence politics?” leaves all three undefined.
Measurable. Some concepts resist operationalization. “Do authentic streamers build better communities?” cannot be studied until authentic and better become something you can record.
Answerable within your constraints. Decades of data or hundreds of interviews is not a semester project.
Not already answered. Your literature review tells you whether the question is genuinely open.
It matters. A question can be answerable and still be trivia.

Project Prospectus

25 points. Due Friday, October 9, 11:59 PM. (Week 7)

Put the whole study on one page.

What you submit: one document, about one page, roughly 250 to 400 words. Six headed sections.

Where it lives: 03_Project/01_Prospectus/. This is the first draft of the paper’s introduction, not a separate document. In December you revise it; you do not start it again.

Requirements

A descriptive title that hints at your key variables.
Research questions or hypotheses, one to three, carried over from last week and revised if the reading changed them.
A theoretical framework, two to three sentences: which lens, and what it predicts you will see.
The gap, two to three sentences, resting on the sources you annotated rather than on an assertion that nobody has studied this.
A method overview, three to four sentences: unit of analysis, where the data comes from, roughly how much of it, and how you will measure the key construct.
The expected contribution, one to two sentences.
A rough timeline to the end of term, by assignment rather than by week.

How it is graded. Four points each for questions, theory, gap and method. Three each for title and contribution. Three for the timeline.

Where it comes from. Session 11 and Chapter 6. What it feeds: everything. The Definitions Practice operationalizes the constructs named here, and the codebook implements them.

How this loses points. Writing more than a page is the commonest, and it is a diagnostic rather than a formatting complaint: if you cannot state the project on one page you do not yet understand it well enough to begin. Naming a theory in the framework section and never using it again is the other.

Full requirements

What a prospectus is. Roughly one page: what you are studying, why it matters, and how you will do it. The model prospectus in Chapter 6 runs about 250 words. It is a diagnostic, not busywork – if you cannot state the project clearly on one page, you do not yet understand it well enough to begin.

The six components, with the length each should run:

Component	Length
Descriptive title hinting at key variables	one line
Research questions or hypotheses	1 to 3, not 10
Theoretical framework	2 to 3 sentences
Gap in the literature	2 to 3 sentences
Method overview	3 to 4 sentences
Expected contribution	1 to 2 sentences

Draft all six, even badly, then cut.

Definitions Practice

25 points. Due Friday, October 16, 11:59 PM. (Week 8)

Turn your constructs into things a stranger could measure.

What you submit: one document, one entry per variable, at least four variables.

Where it lives: 03_Project/02_Codebook/. Each entry is pasted into the codebook next week, so write them in the form the codebook needs.

Requirements. Each variable carries all five of these:

A conceptual definition: what the variable means in the abstract, in one or two sentences.
An operational definition: exactly what a coder does to assign a value. Detailed enough that someone who has not met you could follow it.
The level of measurement, named: nominal, ordinal, interval or ratio.
The coded values, listed in full, with what each one means.
At least two edge-case decision rules, each written as a rule rather than an intention. “Emote-only messages are coded 0” is a rule. “Be careful with emotes” is not.

How it is graded. Five points per variable across the five elements, with the operational definition and the edge cases carrying most of the weight. More than four variables earns no extra credit; four done properly is the assignment.

Where it comes from. Sessions 14 and 15, Chapter 8. What it feeds: the codebook, which is this document plus examples and a unit of analysis.

How this loses points. Restating the conceptual definition in the operational slot, in slightly different words, is the failure this assignment exists to catch. If your operational definition does not contain a verb a coder performs, it is not one yet.

Full requirements

Each variable needs both kinds of definition, written side by side.

A conceptual definition says what the variable means in the abstract: what is this meant to capture? An operational definition is the recipe – exactly what a coder does to assign a value, detailed enough that a stranger could follow it and measure the same thing you measured.

Conceptual tells you what the variable is for. Operational tells you what counts as evidence. A conceptual definition with no operational definition is an idea you cannot measure; an operational definition with no conceptual definition is a procedure that has lost track of why it exists. That is how a study ends up precisely measuring something nobody wanted to know.

Codebook and Qualitative Memo

50 points. Due Friday, October 23, 11:59 PM. (Week 9)

Build the instrument, and write down what watching taught you.

What you submit: two documents, or one with two headed parts. The codebook, and the qualitative memo.

Where it lives: 03_Project/02_Codebook/, starting from _templates/codebook.md. The codebook goes into the paper as an appendix and the memo becomes the qualitative half of the results.

The codebook carries five parts

Study overview, three to four sentences: the question, the corpus, the period.
The unit of analysis, stated exactly. One message, one stream, one channel-day. This is the single most consequential line in the document.
Every variable, carrying the five elements from Definitions Practice.
Decision rules for cases that do not sort themselves, written as rules.
Two or three prototypical examples per category, taken from your actual corpus, not invented.

The memo is 200 to 300 words describing the patterns you saw during immersion, and it has one job: explain why the codebook has the categories it has. A category you cannot trace back to something you saw is a category you guessed.

How it is graded. Codebook 35, split across the five parts with the unit of analysis and the decision rules weighted heaviest. Memo 15.

Where it comes from. Sessions 12, 13 and 16, Chapters 7 and 8. What it feeds: the pilot, which puts this instrument on trial.

How this loses points. A codebook with no examples is the usual one. Examples are what make a rule usable by somebody who was not in your head when you wrote it.

Full requirements

The two parts are graded together as one 50-point assignment.

The qualitative memo is 200 to 300 words describing the patterns you observed during immersion. It is the written record of what your Chapter 7 watching actually taught you, and it explains why your codebook has the categories it has.

Sampling Plan and Pilot

75 points. Due Friday, November 6, 11:59 PM. (Week 11)

Decide what you will code, then prove the codebook survives contact with it.

What you submit: one document with two parts, plus your coded pilot data as a spreadsheet or CSV.

Where it lives: 03_Project/03_Data/, with the coded pilot beside the plan. The plan becomes the methods section, in past tense.

The sampling plan

The population, defined: everything your claim will cover.
The sampling frame, and how it differs from the population. It always differs.
The method, named: census, simple random, stratified, systematic or purposive, with the reason you chose it.
The size, with the arithmetic behind it. Coding minutes per item times items is the number that decides this, and it belongs in the document.
The date range and any filters, stated as rules someone else could apply.

The pilot

Ten to twenty items coded with your own codebook, submitted as data.
Every edge case you hit, listed, with the decision you made.
The revisions the pilot forced, with before and after. A pilot that changed nothing almost always means the pilot was too easy.

How it is graded. Plan 35, pilot data 15, edge cases 10, revisions 15.

Where it comes from. Sessions 19 and 20, Chapter 10. What it feeds: the full coding run, and the methods section of the White Paper, which is this document rewritten in past tense.

How this loses points. A size with no arithmetic behind it. “About 200 messages” is a wish; 200 items at 90 seconds each is five hours, and that is a plan.

Note. This is due the same day as Data Wrangling. Draft it during Week 10.

Phase IV: The Analyst

Execution. Draw the sample, wrangle the data, and describe what is there. Phase page

Data Wrangling in R

50 points. Due Friday, November 6, 11:59 PM. (Week 11)

Build the analysis-ready table from the raw one.

What you submit: your script, and the exported dataset. Name the script wrangling.R or wrangling.qmd, and the dataset exactly twitch_analysis.RDS.

Where it lives: 03_Project/03_Data/. The script stays there and the paper runs it; twitch_analysis.RDS is read by both remaining assignments.

Requirements

Hand-code one variable for a 30-message sample drawn with sample_messages(), using your own codebook.
Load the chat and stream tables from the v2v package.
Convert the timestamps from epoch milliseconds to a real date-time. Divide by 1,000 first.
Derive message length as a new column.
Join the stream-level information onto the chat messages, and say in a comment which key you joined on.
Handle missing values explicitly. Report how many rows carry them and what you did. Dropping them silently is the error.
Export as twitch_analysis.RDS.
Every step is in the script. Nothing done by hand in the console and left undocumented.

How it is graded. Six points per numbered step above, plus two for a script that runs start to finish in a clean session.

Where it comes from. Sessions 21 and 22, Chapter 11. What it feeds: both remaining R assignments read this file.

How this loses points. A script that only runs because of something still in your environment. Restart R, run it top to bottom, and see what breaks before you submit.

Describing Data in R

75 points. Due Friday, November 13, 11:59 PM. (Week 12)

Say what is in the data before you test anything.

What you submit: your script or Quarto document, and the rendered output carrying the figures.

Where it lives: 03_Project/03_Data/ for the script, and the figures are written to 03_Project/04_Drafts/figures/ by the code that makes them. The White Paper renders those figures rather than re-creating them, so a figure produced only inside a submission has to be built twice.

Requirements

Frequency tables for your key categorical variables.
Three numbers for every continuous variable you report: mean, median and standard deviation. Not the mean alone.
At least two figures built with ggplot2, each with axis labels, a title and a caption.
A cross-tabulation of two variables.
Alt text on every figure, describing what the figure shows rather than repeating its caption.
Two to three sentences interpreting each output, naming what it shows and what it does not.
One sentence per figure disclosing a choice you made: a bin width, a cap on an axis, a category you collapsed.

How it is graded. Tables 15, the three numbers 15, figures 20, cross-tab 10, alt text 5, interpretation 10.

Where it comes from. Sessions 23 and 24, Chapter 12. What it feeds: the Results section, and the test you choose next week.

How this loses points. Reporting a mean whose median disagrees with it, and not noticing. When those two part company the distribution is telling you something, and the figure is how you hear it.

Inferencing Data in R

100 points. Due Friday, November 20, 11:59 PM. (Week 13)

Test the relationship, and report how big it is.

What you submit: your script or Quarto document, and the rendered output.

Where it lives: 03_Project/03_Data/. The paper calls this script for its numbers, which is what makes a pasted statistic impossible to keep in sync.

Requirements

State the hypothesis in plain English before any code appears.
Choose the test from your variable types, and say in one sentence why that test and not another. Two categorical variables take a chi-square test of independence; one two-group categorical against one continuous takes an independent t-test; two continuous take a Pearson correlation.
Run it in R.
Report it in APA format, with the test statistic, the degrees of freedom, the p-value and the n.
Report the effect size, and say what it means in the units of your data rather than only as a label.
Interpret the result in plain English, in three to four sentences.
One sentence on what the result does not license. A significant test on your sample is not a claim about Twitch.

How it is graded. Hypothesis 10, test selection with its justification 20, execution 15, APA reporting 20, effect size 20, interpretation 10, the limit 5.

Where it comes from. Sessions 25 and 26, Chapter 13. What it feeds: the Results and Discussion sections.

How this loses points. Reporting p and stopping. The effect size is worth twice the test statistic here, on purpose: a p-value says something happened, and only the effect size says whether it matters.

Phase V: The Publisher

Inference and Publication. Test the relationship and publish the result. Phase page

White Paper

250 points. Due Friday, December 18, 11:59 PM.

The final deliverable: your study written up in IMRaD, rendered to PDF and published to the web.

What you submit: two things, both required. A PDF renamed Lastname_WhitePaper.pdf, and the live URL of your GitHub Pages site. One without the other is incomplete.

Where it lives: 03_Project/04_Drafts/. By now every section has a source file somewhere above, and writing is mostly assembly and argument.

Requirements

Introduction and framing, stating the question and why it is worth asking, situated in the literature rather than gesturing at it.
Methods, repeatable in detail: unit of analysis, sampling plan as executed, the codebook and how it was built, and what you did about the cases that did not sort themselves.
Results, reported without interpretation, carrying the descriptive numbers, the test, the effect size and the figures.
Discussion, interpreting the findings, distinguishing statistical significance from practical size, and stating the limits honestly.
Abstract, summarizing all four sections in 150 to 250 words.
References in APA 7, complete, with every in-text citation appearing in the list and the reverse.
It renders from source with no pasted numbers. Every figure and every statistic in the text comes from the code that produced it.
It is live at a public address.

How it is graded. The rubric is on the Phase V page and the section weights there govern.

Where it comes from. Sessions 27 and 28, Chapter 14. Most of it you have already written, in pieces, since Week 6.

How this loses points. Pasting a number into the prose that the code no longer produces. It is the one error this whole course is built to make impossible, and it happens when someone edits a figure the night before and does not re-render.

Full requirements and what to submit

Submission (MC 451)

Submit both to Blackboard by Friday, December 18, 2026 at 11:59 PM:

PDF file, renamed to Lastname_WhitePaper.pdf
Live URL, your GitHub Pages link

Important: Both must be present for the submission to be considered complete.

The full rubric, the project structure, and the recommended writing order are on the Phase V page.

Anything here that disagrees with the syllabus is a mistake. Tell me and I will fix it: the syllabus is the contract of record.