(3,500 words)


 


Introduction


This assignment continues the work begun in the first assignment (proposal- see the attached proposal in the end). Students will expand and develop the material outlined in their proposal into a substantive paper.


Your paper will be marked according to how well it:




  • Outlines and justifies the issue to be researched




  • Contextualises the issue in relation to underlying theoretical and philosophical considerations




  • Tackles issues of technical and legal constraints and possibilities




  • Forecasts possible policy and regulation direction




What to Do:


When preparing your research / issues paper, it may help to ‘imagine’ that you are conducting the research for a specific organisation – whether it be for a government department, independent organisation/ interest group, or private company.
Remember that you are not required to draft policy or regulatory measures as such: rather, your paper should provide a clear, informed and balanced overview of your issue that would enable someone else to then prepare policy or regulatory / governance measures.


Thus, when preparing your research / issues paper, keep in mind the following questions:




  • What are the key factors that should be considered in an issues paper?




  • How might an issues paper differ from a policy document?




A good way to get a sense of what research / issues papers entail is to have a look at some ‘real world’ examples. Some starting points are below – you should be able to find many more online in your own particular area of interest. (Keep in mind however that many examples will be on a much bigger scope than your issues paper, and remember these are examples only, not templates to follow)


Examples:


Issues Paper – Jurisdiction and Procedures’ The Copyright Law Review Committee (CLRC) (Look also at the main site to see how the issues paper informs the committee’s final report and also other submissions received)


Electronic Froniers Australia Submission to review of ‘digital agenda’ amendments to copyright act. 30/9/2003


Submission on draft cybercrime code of practice


Suggested Key headings


You don’t have to have exactly these titles, or in precisely this order (although obviously the summary or abstract needs to come first!) but your paper should cover these kinds of areas:


• Abstract / Executive Summary
• Introduction (Importance / justification)
• Background
• Context: social / political / international / technical etc
• Solutions / available models (political / technical)
• Future directions / problems
• Recommendations


Other sections you may want or need to include:


• Actors / jurisdictions
• Legal / social / technical constraints
• Implementation considerations
• Glossary / Definitions
• Appendices


 



Structuring your paper:


Looking at how other issues papers are structured can help give you a sense of how to structure your own paper – you might want to try finding government or official reports in your area of interest as a starting point.


  Some advises to get high marks.   Clear Objective Every paper needs a clear, singular objective. I also refer to this sometimes as a “core problem.” This is tied in part to successfully describing the significance of your topic; doing so means describing some existing conflict or controversy, and your project should be aiming to resolve that conflict or controversy in some way. What many people had trouble with was isolating that “way” in which they would address the problem. Instead, they simply said, “Issue X is a problem because of so-and-so, so I am going to examine Issue X.” The question, then, is, What *specifically* are you going to examine about Issue X? The scope of Issue X is near infinite, because it can be tied to all sorts of external circumstances, possible solutions, and other related issues. Moreover, there are usually numerous conflicts within Issue X — whether that be an imbalance of rights between parties, or ineffective regulation, or international disagreement, or technological problems, or general moral panic. You can’t cover everything that is problematic about spam, or censorship, or DRM, or what-have-you in a 3500 word research paper. You have to focus on *one particular thing* that’s wrong. Someone managed to narrow down the wide range of possibilities, but still had two or three specific objectives — which gets really confusing. You are, of course, expected to explore multiple issues — but there has to be one, particular umbrella issue into which they are all conceptually grouped.   Cohesive Subtopics And on that note, it’s important that the issues you present are clearly tied to that primary objective. A very common problem was presenting a list of issues, with no explanation as to how they were chosen. In some cases, the connections were intuitively clear, but even then brief explanation is required. In some cases, the choice of issues seemed to be random, which turned the proposal into a sort of “general overview” of the topic. However, as I stated above, a general overview isn’t appropriate. A good way to develop cohesive subtopics is to create a roadmap for your report… starting with your objective, write down all your subtopics on paper, and draw lines where they connect, along with labels on the lines explaining the connections. Then, starting from the objective, trace those connections outward. This is the order in which you should be presenting the subtopics, expanding upon each line label as an explanation as you go.   Critical Analysis Keep in mind that these papers are intended to be of use in developing policy or performing governance. In general, however, facts are not particularly useful in and of themselves. You’ll never find a report like this that simply provides information; they also provide insights regarding that information. Providing insights — or “critically analyzing,” in the parlance of academic work — basically means asking a lot “why” and “what does this mean” questions. “Why are people arguing about this? Why had no effective policy been developed? What does it mean if we rely on self-regulation? What does it mean if we acknowledge this right?” See the comment below on Analytical Resources.   Organization Any paper you write should always have a clear train of thought to it. That is to say, even if you do include section headings, one should be able to remove those headings and still be able to read the paper properly. This is simply a matter of telling the reader what you’re going to do before you do it. Similarly, if you do use certain sections, you should have a clear idea of what they mean — or else don’t use them. A very common problem was the use of “Background” sections or “Other Considerations” sections that didn’t include content that was truly “background” or “other considerations” — these just served as arbitrary divisions between thoughts (what made certain ideas “main considerations” and other ideas “other considerations”?) People weren’t generally penalized for this because the guidance for this assignment in the unit outline wasn’t very helpful.   Proofread This is a fairly common problem for many students — they write phases or sentences that simply don’t make sense, or make grammatical gaffes. These aren’t just stylistic problems, they make your ideas genuinely harder to understand. If I noted this is a problem for you, I cannot stress enough the value of simple proofreading. Just reading your own words 24 hours after you’ve written them can highlight a lot of problems. Really think about how your writing sounds, and whether it says what you want it to say. Getting someone else to read it is even better (although I know how hard that can be!)   Scholarly Resources Part of the problem with doing an online unit is, of course, lack of access to resources. However, it’s important to note that whatever your topic is, chances are good that someone has written a detailed analytical report on it. I’m not just talking about news commentaries, or government briefs here — I’m talking about genuine academic essays that do pretty much exactly what you’re trying to do. You need to find these. Don’t forget that via the Curtin library website, you have access to a great many online journals. Don’t forget about Google Scholar. If you do come across journal articles while searching or following up on bibliographies, and the journal website says a subscription is required, then try logging into the Curtin library site and see if that journal is available through there.   Analytical Resources Similarly, it’s important that you examine more than just the facts of the topic. As discussed above, you need to critically analyze, and in order to do that effectively, you need to review literature that does the same. Facts are good — court cases, legal documents, news reports, etc. But you need to augment those with resources that provide commentary on those facts, preferably from a variety of perspectives.   Policy, Regulation and Governance Finally, remember what unit you’re in. Whatever your topic is, you need to keep in mind the core issues to explore are the ones related to policy, regulation and governance. This doesn’t simply mean using the words. In fact, these aren’t three distinct concepts, as we’ve seen throughout the unit so far. I’m using them here only as a rhetorical device. The key concept is really control: its methods and its effects. Fundamentally, all objectives should basically beak down to “How should X be controlled?” or “What are the effects of controlling X?” Of course, control is an abstract concept and it in practice it works out to mixtures of policies, regulations, and governance — so you should use those terms where appropriate, but you must use them properly. For a refresher on what they (ideally) mean, reread the intro to the unit.  

 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 



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