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Unit 7: World Regions
A. Read the following selections from the Margin Notes by clicking on each link.
B. Watch these presentations. When you click on one of the links below, a new screen will pop up. Use the scrollbar on the side of the new screen to navigate.
You need Adobe Reader to view PDF files.
C. (Optional) Read the following chapters from the textbook.
Review Chapters 03 - 14
The following Optional
Links will help you do better in your course but they are not required.
Activity #4: Comparing Regions with Content
Analysis (10 points)
Think back to the beginning of the semester. The margin notes
identified two ways to study human geography – by theme or by region.
Until this point in the semester, we've studied five themes – physical geography, culture, demographics (or population), politics and economics. Now we're going to look at the world's geographic regions using some of those themes.
Of the 12 regions you are studying, I'd like you to concentrate on 3 for this activity – Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and South America – and I encourage you to review your margin notes and power point presentations on those three regions. You'll find it easier to complete your activity if you are familiar with the areas you'll be analyzing.
1. COUNTRY CHOICE: Choose one country from
Southeast Asia, one country from
Sub-Saharan Africa and one country from
CHOICE: You can find the newspapers you need through two sites that offer comparative international news.
(If you need help navigating these two sites, see the How-To Examples
box below.) Starting on the
World Press Online Country Maps
and Profiles page or the
News Link Newspapers page, find your first country and its list of newspaper links. Most countries have at least one English-language newspaper and many of them are online. Just look for links that have English titles or that are identified as English-language.
Try out several links until you find a paper that looks interesting to you.
ANALYSIS: Analyze your paper's content by concentrating on three themes – culture, politics and economics.
a. Culture – Look specifically for examples of cultural traits and what they indicate about the culture as a whole.
(For example, I skimmed an article in a Pakistani paper about female healthcare workers and it was an interesting look at that culture's view of gender roles.) Develop a general view of the country's culture based on the cultural traits you can indentify
by analyzing your paper.
b. Politics – Look specifically for examples of political conflict or cooperation – centripetal forces, centrifugal forces and etc. Again, don't write only that the paper talked about politics. Instead, what can you infer about that country's political landscape from what you read?
c. Economics – Look for examples of several things – views on global trade, level of governmental involvement in the economy (and even the public's view of that), economic activities and indicators of economic development.
Spend a minimum of thirty minutes looking at as many features, stories and advertisements as you can. When you finish, you should be able to say a number of things about your first country's cultural, political and economic characteristics based on the newspaper's content. (If the newspaper had nothing about one or all of your themes,
you need to choose another newspaper.)
REPEAT steps 1-3 for your second country and then for your third.
Once you've completed the process for all three of your countries, summarize your
findings in a brief analysis that includes the 6 points below. Your answers should be thorough, specific, include relevant
concepts from the course material and be free of spelling and grammar errors.
For each country, what is the name of the newspaper you analyzed?
For each country, what cultural traits were you able to identify and what general impression do you have of that country's culture?
From your limited perspective how do those countries’ cultures differ from ours?
For each country, what examples of political conflict or cooperation did you find?
How much coverage did your papers give to political issues? Was that content positive
or negative in tone? How politically involved does the country's population seem to be?
For each country, offer a conclusion regarding that country's level of development. What did you read (or not read) that led you to that conclusion? What impression did your analysis of the newspapers' contents give you of how well or poorly individuals are fairing in that country's economy?
To what extent did you find newspapers – as examples of material culture – indicative of their producing societies’ cultures?
Make specific and detailed connections to relevant course content.
Always include course concepts in
your work. If you're reading your margin notes and watching the
presentations, you'll have plenty of material from which to choose on
Activity Submission Instructions
By the deadline shown in the Course Schedule on the main page of the syllabus:
Send your analysis containing the
6 points listed above in the body of a new email to
Put only your name and Activity #4 at the beginning of your email.
Be careful to use the correct subject line.
Late analyses will loose one point per day late, including weekends and holidays.
World Press Online.
On the main page, scroll down to get a sense of the range of current
news stories from newspapers and magazines around the world. Find
the Features heading in the menu items in the far left
column. Under the Features heading, click on Country Maps
and Profiles. In the center column on that page you will see
country links in alphabetic order. Scroll almost to the bottom of
the column and click on the link for the United Kingdom.
As you scroll down the UK page, you will see the country's map and
profile. Take a moment to skim through the rather detailed profile.
Next you will see the Press heading, under which is a list of
98 media outlets in the UK. Some of the titles are links to online
editions (and are underlined) while some of the titles do not have
Next go to
News Link and click on the Newspapers tab at the top of the page.
Look for two headings – The Americas and Other Countries.
Using the links under those two headings will take you to the
country lists. Click on the Europe link. Scroll to the bottom
and click on the United Kingdom link. You'll see a
list of about two dozen newspapers.
I don't find News
Link anywhere near as useful as World Press Online.
WPO's country profiles are very helpful and the number of press
links are normally greater. Too, News Link's site has a
distracting level of advertising, loads slower and has more broken
links. However, I wanted you to have the option of using more than
one source and News Link often has links to foreign media
outlets that are difficult to find elsewhere.
One word of caution: Any newspaper link you use from either of the above sites will
take you to that newspaper's site. There's no way I can monitor all
of those links, all of the time. You will be visiting any number of
papers from around the world and it's possible you will land on a
site with content you consider offensive. If so, just shut it down and
try another one.