Week 9-Post 2-Group Assignment # 1: News and Politics

Well the first group assignment was critical thinking in news and politics. My group met in the library and we decided on an editorial called, “Video Games and Free Speech” which talks about when California made it illegal to sell video games to minors in 2005 which violated the first amendment of free speech. Below is the link of the editorial that our group analyzed. Well this firs group assignment was useful because it made you critically analyze the editorial by using all the subjects we have learned by reading the small group communication text, Epstein text, and by doing all these blogs. For instance I analyzed the major claim in the editorial so from what I learned from reading the two books I wrote about the major claim. For example, I stated that the major claim of this editorial is “California lawmakers may have been right when they decided that video games in which players kill and maim are not the most socially beneficial form of expression. The Constitution, however, does not require speech to be ideal for it to be protected” (NY times editorial). From what the concepts I learned from reading the books I was able to determine the major claim and explain why this is the major claim of the editorial. The reason that this is the major claim is clearly because this is clearly the opinion of the editor and what he will claim for the rest of the editorial. From there I was able to analyze the article more because clearly the author agreed with California lawmakers to ban the sale of illegal games to minors even though it violated the first amendment. So this first group assignment was useful because it made me critically use all the new concepts learn in this class to analyze this editorial as a group and it was useful using some of the concepts learn in this class to get the get the assignment done.