Investigation Essay

Investigation Essay*

*This could also be labeled “immersion journalism,” which, according to Wikipedia, is a style of reporting in which “journalists immerse themselves in a situation and with the people involved. The final product tends to focus on the experience, not the writer.”

Find an internet subculture group that interests you (but not one you’re already a part of; it’s important that you be something of an “outsider” for this essay). You might begin by searching social media or other sites, such as Reddit.

You must incorporate two articles about your chosen subculture (minimum; you can use more if you like). Focus on valid sources, not random people’s blogs. Look for articles published in known magazines or news sites.

Find these articles *before* you begin writing your essay; it’s important that your reading and research inform your writing, not the other way around. This is how real writing is done; don’t fall into the high school trap of writing your whole essay and then finding research to insert into it to meet a requirement—that will look very amateur.

Your job as the writer of the essay is two-fold:

Educate your audience about what this subculture IS.

Engage in critical reflection to SAY something meaningful about it—to draw conclusions

about what it means or what it says about people or society, for example.

Here are some resources to help you:
Good explanation/tips on immersion journalism: https://medium.com/@ErikaHayasaki/finding-the-longform-idea-f673834b5006

Examples (note: these are investigation essays written pre-pandemic, when people could freely go places and do things and participate in things safely, so they will look slightly different than what you’ll end up writing, but I wanted to give you an idea of the style of this kind of writing. If you don’t find these helpful, don’t worry about it):

http://narrative.ly/sweaty-as-hell-and-staring-down-death/ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104755254 http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a26792/honesty0707/

Essay should be approximately 4-6 pages in length. You must incorporate at least two sources (see above). It must be in proper APA format.