I need help poster

Final Poster

Guidelines
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Final Poster Guidelines
The following guidelines are prepared for preparation of the final poster.

Poster Format
You do not need to submit a hardcopy. I need a digital file. Please send your poster in a
readable digital format such as Powerpoint or PDF. The digital file should resemble an
academic poster board such as the ones that you can find in the many samples online
or the one I posted. It can be a large resolution file, I can zoom through the different
areas. While you can use PowerPoint as your canvas, do not turn in a slideshow.

I strongly recommend you visit this very comprehensive poster resource page:

Links to an external site.

Google “academic posters” and you will get many results. If you click “images” you will
see many examples.

You can find advice on design and links to templates. Please make sure to go
over all information on academic posters on this website. It will make your work a
lot easier and most likely a lot better.

Please do not think of the poster as the “easy way out” instead of a term paper. You will
need to provide depth, theory, academic sources, etc. just like in a termpaper. Your
presentation will rely more on visual aid. You will need to demonstrate that you are
mastering the topic you chose. Be analytical and clear!

Overall be creative. In a poster you need to present the same amount of information
from a paper in a different way. Tables, diagrams, pictures, illustrations can replace text.
Short paragraphs are fine, some bullet point lists are fine, but make sure to really make
the visuals work. In other words, don’t write an abbreviated termpaper and copy and
paste it onto a poster board. Images should add to the analysis, not just add decorative
elements – I often see the scale of justice, hands shacking, an image of the declaration
of independence, etc. those images don’t add anything.

For example if there are relationships between conflicting parties, then you might outline
those by using arrows and explaining the relationships on the arrows. If there is conflict
that entails geographic aspects, a map helps, etc. Conflict timelines are very useful.

Possible Outline Poster
1) Introduction

● Purpose of the poster
● How information was gathered

2) Theory

● A lens from which to view an event
● Presentation of one theory from the Intro to CR Psychology course
● How does the theory explain the phenomena of this conflict
● References to readings and other sources

3) Social context

● Background of conflict – there is no social vacuum
● Historical
● Environment of the conflict
● Culture

4) Analysis/Main part

● SPITCEROW or other analytical framework (does theory impact the analysis)
OR how does the theory explain a conflict situation (e.g. structural violence
and native Americans)

● Be very specific – that’s the whole idea of conflict mapping. For the parties, be
careful with broad generalizations like “middle class” vs. impoverished
classes. Try working with the actual conflicting parties rather than with
“scientific community”, “nonprofits”. In an conflict analysis case study you
want to work with specifics.

5) Summary and conclusion

● Summary: what was the purpose, framework, social context, findings
● Conclusion: Statement that reveals the understanding of how to analyze

conflict and integrate course material regarding constructive conflict
transformation.

6) Bibliography

● APA style (it is your responsibility to familiarize yourself with APA style) or
other accepted format (e.g. Chicago Style, MLA)

● Some academic sources in addition to non-academic information
● Primary sources: newspapers, reports, court cases, interviews, documentary,

films
● Secondary sources: books, essays, journals

On Academic Sources
On this poster you are required to cite academic sources. See the lecture notes and the
recommended readings on the syllabus, there are a lot of references. You can and
should use those readings to frame your poster. They are not related to your topic but
provide some general information on social conflict, why it should be studied and how it
is studied.

Obviously more academic sources are perfectly acceptable and will most likely improve
your overall strength of the poster. Look at the recommended readings on the syllabus,
they should help you. Also, when you read scholarly articles, you can get a nice idea
how to work with other sources. You see how authors use the ideas of others in their
work.

Your academic sources for the poster do not necessarily have to relate to the conflict as
such. It is more likely that you will use them for your theoretical framework. See my
example at the bottom where I connected an urban conflict scenario with two theories.

Consult with me if you have difficulties. Do it early, I will not be able to help you out last
minute when you decide you help with your poster.

Your academic sources will either be academic books or journal articles that you find at
the library or in the online databases. Websites as academic sources are not acceptable
(articles that you retrieve via the PSU databases online are perfectly fine; usually they
are PDF files of the printed journal). You must not use Wikipedia as a source in any
academic paper or poster.

In your analysis (SPITCEROW or other analytical framework) you most likely will have
to resort to non-academic sources (newspaper archives, news magazines, credible
websites, etc.). That is fine. Theory, however, cannot be approached that way. When
you frame your conflict you might come across numbers and facts. Be careful with that.
A fact for one person/group might not be the same fact for another one. If you use
“facts”, make sure you state “according to…” (or something similar). Be critical, only
because it is written down somewhere, it is not necessarily good/correct/true/…

Make sure to cite all ideas that are not your own. If you write down the work of someone
else without indicating you did so, that is called plagiarism. We are here in this class to
learn together. Nobody will be punished for mistakes or problems with interpreting the
work of others. Plagiarism, however, is unacceptable.

Connecting theory to a case
analysis
How do we start? We just need to go back to the meaning of ‘theory’. In its most basic
form, a theory should explain a phenomenon. In other words, it should explain why
something happens the way it does. When we look at a form or specific case of conflict
we need to think about an explanation.

Let’s look at an example to see how we can connect a case to a theoretical
explanation.

A recurring phenomenon of social conflict is that of collective urban violence. Collective
urban violence is a phenomenon known to humanity since ancient times. The Nika
revolt of the year 532 in Constantinople (today’s city of Istanbul in Turkey) was one of
the earliest documented urban riots in history. Throughout the centuries, and especially
in the Twentieth Century, urban areas have been affected by innumerous uprisings.

During the fall of 2005, urban riots were once again brought into the international
spotlight. This time the city of Paris was struck – not for the first time – by violent civic
unrest. As many other riots, they took place in specific social surroundings. Similar to
the 1992 riots in Los Angeles, which hit the very poor neighborhood of South Central
L.A rather than the prosperous area of Beverly Hills, the Paris riots took place in the so
called banlieues.

The social situation in these French suburbs is complex, but basically the roots of these
riots can be traced back to the perceived inequality of the have-nots with respect to the
haves. We are looking at societies with dominant cultures, each wishing to maintain the
status quo. The racial inequalities reflect to some degree the racial/ethnic differences
existing throughout France in general, where tensions exist between the dominantly
white, Christian, French society and mainly Muslim immigrants of African origin. The
historical aspects, with which we are dealing, have their roots in the complex
development of contemporary French urban society.

Two main theoretical concepts, namely relative deprivation and collective violence, can
be used to explain the conflict(s). Relative Deprivation is defined as a perceived
discrepancy between people’s value expectations and their value capabilities (Gurr,
1970). Collective violence causes immediate physical damage, is committed by two or
more participants and has at least partly coordination among perpetrators (Tilly, 2003).

So what does that mean in the situation urban riots in France?

The eruption of violence in France can be considered as the expression of long
accumulated anger, which can be attributed to experienced relative deprivation in young
people – a deprivation of participation in society. Ongoing social deprivation,
manifesting itself in both overt and covert factors such as poverty, racism, mass
unemployment, uncertain identity, and dim prospects for the future has contributed to
the accumulation of this anger. Although officially given the French nationality, these
young people have been integrated into the French society only on a bureaucratic level.
Along with this pseudo-integration, the value expectations of these youths adapt to the
values inherent to the French society; however, the future value potential provided to
them within the society remains very low. Amidst limited societal opportunities many of
these individuals perceive themselves to be in a situation of deprivation, particularly
exhibiting the pattern of aspirational deprivation developed by Gurr (1970).

The French riots can clearly be interpreted in terms of Tilly’s (2003) theory of collective
violence, given the fact that the rioting groups were made up of numerous participants –
partly acting as gangs – and that they were coordinated to a certain extent in their
actions against police forces.

Let’s stop here for now and break it down again.

The conflict:

● Urban riots in France

Theoretical concepts:

● Collective Violence
● Relative Deprivation

We cannot come up with complete list of theoretical concepts related to social conflict.
However, in order to be able to think about the conflicts we are examining in this course,
here are some of the more prevalent ones:

Selected theoretical approaches toward understanding social conflict:

Globalization

● Collective Violence
● Power
● Human Needs
● Identity
● Belonging
● Resources
● Environment
● Prejudice
● Worldviews
● Assimilation
● Structural Violence
● Competition
● Social Control

…

You can find theorists on all those concepts by searching academic literature. Let’s take
look at structural violence, a concept which we discussed quite extensively:

“According to Galtung (1969), structural violence is the ongoing and institutionalized
harm done to individuals by preventing them from meeting their basic needs for survival,
well-being, identity and freedom. Structural violence is embedded into the structures of
social order and the institutional arrangements of power on a constant basis (Barak,
2003). As aptly defined by Bornstein “structural violence is built into everyday life, into
the economy, a political system, and into the landscape” (2002, p. 6). We might also talk
about ‘symbolic’ or ‘soft’ violence.”

This conceptualization then will allow you to connect it to cases of social conflict.
Essentially that’s it. You look at a conflict case, you find a theory to explain the
phenomenon and you analyze it

Other Advice

● Look at journal articles and see how they are written.
● Be very tedious in checking for spelling and grammatical errors; with today’s

word processing programs typos and grammatical errors can be avoided.
Your posters will be marked down for avoidable errors.

● Familiarize yourself with APA (
● Links to an external site.
● or MLA (
● Links to an external site.
● style of format for your writing and citing. This is expected and will not be

covered in the course. All writing must be submitted by consistently following
one of the format and citation styles. Your posters will be marked down if
you do not follow the format guidelines with respect to correct citations.

● There is a reason why I added a list of “recommended readings” – they are
helpful for your poster.

● A trip to the library and/or being familiar with the online databases is
inevitable for the successful completion of the poster.

● Have someone proof-read your work before you submit it
● Don’t wait until the last minute