Politics of Developing Countries

Essay 1: Accessing, Using and Evaluating Development Websites

Your paper should include a full page describing a website or news sources that you have accessed in order to complete the assignment. This page should answer the following questions: Where is the site based? When was it founded? Who owns it? Can you identify a theory of development (modernization, dependency or critique) with which the site leans? Is this a reliable source of information, why or why not? The remaining pages of the paper should be devoted to reporting on a development topic or issue which you have researched using the online sources of your choice. The item you choose to report on should be directly related to development, meaning the issue is clearly a development issue. In your report you should include a critical commentary on the way in which the issue is covered by the source of your choosing. You may use other websources to assist you in doing so, just be sure to include them in your bibliography.

Guidelines: Your paper should be 3-5 pages long, NO LONGER THAN FIVE PAGES (including the page of website evaluation), typed and double spaced in Times New Roman font with margins no larger than 1 inch all around on 8 X 11 ½ inch paper with pages and your name on the first page (please do not include a title page, if you title the paper include your title on the 1st page.).

Your work should focus on online websites, the webpages of international organizations or non-governmental organizations or the websites of multi-national corporations or trade related sites which provide full article length commentaries, the following is a suggested list of news sources that meet this criteria.

UNDP

WTO

IMF and World Bank

ILO

USAID

IADB