“Writing” an article
For the Introduction to Ethnic Studies course that I teach, I could not find an article that was of the appropriate reading level to introduce the propaganda lesson propaganda in the “Media & Society” unit. Articles that I did find and might have assigned for homework were either too short, too long, too dated, or too tangential for an Ethnic Studies course. Then I remembered the adage: “if you don’t like the news, make your own.” So I decided to write the article myself for students to read.
Of course I am a busy man and could use some help with the article, so I asked my friendly neighborhood generative AI to assist. My opening prompt was:
9th graders are studying propaganda for the first time in an Ethnic Studies course. Please define propaganda; and then in a paragraph each define (in just one sentence) and then discuss the following specific methods of propaganda: Name Calling, Glittering Generalities, Transfer Testimonial, Plain Folks, Card Stacking, and Bandwagon
I started by naming those specific techniques because our in-class activity for the following meeting asks small groups to describe and discuss an assigned technique and provide specific examples. That prompt for the framework, so I added:
connect propaganda to the biased development of racial stereotypes in america
This resulted in almost a finished product, I felt, so my next instruction was:
That is good. Create a title for that essay
I don’t know why I added “That is good,” as if the LLM needed an affirmation. On the one hand, I’m glad to see that my natural tendency is toward politeness, but I also want to consciously keep the AI separated from humanity, and continue to treat it like the tool it is.
In for a penny, in for a pound: why format the title myself?
Format that article title according to the APA format
Next, given the target audience of 9th graders, I felt the article needed a clearly identifiable thesis statement. For some reason I needed to clarify
create a thesis statement for the paper
by stating:
do it again but this time in just one sentence.
This gave me a finished product in terms of content. Reading through the article, checking for accuracy and clarity, I moved a paragraph to the end.