Media and civics: A pedagogic strategy for integrating Internet research and writing skills

Information literacy and writing skills are widely represented by universities as generic attributes promoted through their undergraduate programs of study. By extension, postgraduate coursework students are assumed to have acquired these same skills. However, supporting the development of these skills through pedagogic practice is a challenging task in a communications environment where it is necessary to manage and evaluate expanding and diversified sources of information. Approaching this task from a particular disciplinary perspective, the paper shows how pedagogic strategies can promote the development of Internet research skills, in an area of communication studies concerned with the relations of media and civics. It describes a method for supporting that development, through which students can gain experience in managing resources with a measure of independence often reserved for higher level studies. The method links traditional techniques of rhetoric to uses of new information technologies and writing practice. A case study of a coursework module on the media and the Australian Commonwealth Government's Northern Territory Intervention in Indigenous communities illustrates how training in targeted Internet research helps students to write in informed ways about complex and contested social and political issues.