Illinois State University Mass Media Law with the American Constitution Essay

Your final project will be to explore a topic in mass media law and policy in depth. You can investigate anything as long as it relates to a topic of media law that we have covered in class such as free speech and freedom of the press, defamation, copyright, privacy rights, etc. You can choose to analyze a landmark case and its ongoing effects, the legal issues surrounding a contemporary event (for instance, the Black Lives Matter protests), an emerging political-legal issue (Trump’s opinions on libel laws), or issues related to technological changes and the challenges they pose to current media law (like music streaming and the development of the Music Modernization Act). Whatever you choose, keep your focus on why this topic is relevant today and what it tells us about media law (how it has developed over time and how it continues to change and adapt to new circumstances). The most important dimension of this project is to move beyond consideration of the law as it is decided in the courtroom and to see media law as always changing in relation to the surrounding social and cultural context. To this end, it will be important to use additional primary (newspaper articles, legal opinions, transcripts) and secondary (law review articles, historical journal articles) sources to build your argument.

This paper should be 7-10 pages long (12-point font, double-spaced).

Please include citations for all your research. You may use any style (MLA, Chicago, etc. and footnotes or endnotes) that you are comfortable with as long as you are consistent throughout the paper. You should include a minimum of four (4) citations to secondary sources.