Hypothetical Situation: After graduation, you have leveraged your communication degree to become a consultant for organizations, especially focused on their messaging strategies. An organization that works on behalf of a real social movement has hired you to help them better get their message across. You have to prepare a consultant report for them, reviewing who they are, the current moment in which they are operating, their current messaging, and making recommendations for strengthening it based on everything you've learned. You will further demonstrate your expertise in this topic by citing credible sources to help them know where the information about them came from, and why you've developed the suggestions you have.
Actual Assignment: You are crafting a final report for members of the social movement organization that hired you as a communications consultant. It is not an academic paper, it is an industry report. In this report, you'll need to address the background, mission, history, constituents and leadership of the social movement. You will make specific recommendations to the social movement organization about new or altered strategies they can use to further their mission. All of the details of this are contained in the template file, below.
Please note that you may not select to represent organizations listed as "hate groups" by the SPLC. (Links to an external site.)
You'll also be explaining your process of researching this issue for them and how you reached the recommendations that you did. All will be written up in a highly organized and regimented format as if you were representing a company. The template and requirements you are using for this assignment are developed from real examples.
In footnotes on each page you will include citations that explain where you gathered your information from, demonstrating your credibility to your client. You may also explain in the body of the report from where you got your sources. Minimum 15 credible sources, at least 5 of which are scholarly. Preferred citation style: Chicago (Author-Date), APA, MLA.
The template is FULL of "how to's" for effectively organizing, using headings for organization, how to insert footnotes and details for what information goes in each section.
Here is a brief video overview of the project:
*This assignment used with permission from Christy-Dale Mauer, University of Colorado Boulder Department of Communication