20 practical, difficulty-rated ways Media & Society students at Hobart and William Smith Colleges can use AI — each naming the exact tutorial it links to and what you’ll take away. Click any card to watch it.
Before you use these on graded work: check your professor’s policy on AI.
It differs by course, and these examples are study aids — not permission.
Easy
Summarize a McLuhan reading
Condense a dense media theory chapter into plain takeaways. The linked tutorial covers MacMost's copy-paste method — pull an article into reader view, paste it into ChatGPT after 'summarize this:', then ask for a set word count or a 10-bullet version; also how to grab a YouTube transcript to summarise a video.
What you'll take awayHow to compress a long reading or video into a summary of the exact length you need, and why pasting the source keeps it accurate.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Summarize a McLuhan reading — Condense a dense media theory chapter into plain takeaways.
Give me (1) a three-sentence summary, (2) five bullet-point key claims, and (3) anything the author asserts without supporting evidence. Text below:
[PASTE THE TEXT HERE]
Definitions anchored to a recent news example for each. The linked tutorial covers ChatGPT's Study Mode (type /study), an interactive tutor that guides you with questions step by step instead of just handing over the answer.
What you'll take awayHow to switch ChatGPT into tutor mode so it drills you on terms and ideas rather than doing the thinking for you.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Define hegemony, framing, and agenda-setting — Definitions anchored to a recent news example for each.
Define each term in one clear sentence, then give a concrete example of each in context. Once I've read them, quiz me on them one at a time and tell me what I got wrong and why.
Brainstorm essay topics on streaming culture and surveillance
Generate angles on streaming culture or social media surveillance. The linked tutorial covers three brainstorming methods in ChatGPT — a reusable custom-instructions 'brainstorm paradigm', an AI-diagram tree that fans one topic into dozens of branches, and a SWOT prompt to pressure-test an idea.
What you'll take awayThree prompt patterns you can reuse to go from a blank page to a categorised list of options, plus a way to stress-test the one you pick.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Brainstorm essay topics on streaming culture and surveillance — Generate angles on streaming culture or social media surveillance.
Give me 10 options grouped into 3 themes, then mark the 3 most original and explain what makes them stronger.
Create questions for a source on local news decline. The linked tutorial covers designing a study end-to-end in ChatGPT — research questions, hypotheses, survey items, sample size and sampling method, R code for the analysis, then implications and titles.
What you'll take awayA full research-design workflow, including how to answer a reviewer who says your sample is too small.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Draft interview questions — Create questions for a source on local news decline.
Propose a research question, hypotheses, method, sample and sampling strategy, and the analysis plan. Then critique the weaknesses of your own design.
Clarify cultivation theory using current television examples. The linked tutorial covers a 10-step ChatGPT prompt system — standard definition, an explain-it-to-a-10-year-old version, real-life analogies, a simple diagram, then a comparison table — that you aim at any concept you're stuck on.
What you'll take awayA repeatable prompt sequence that turns a confusing idea into a definition, an analogy and a diagram you can check against your course notes.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Explain a media effects theory — Clarify cultivation theory using current television examples.
Start with a one-sentence definition, then explain it as if I'm 10, then give a real-world analogy. Finish by flagging anything scholars genuinely disagree about — and tell me what you're unsure of.
Produce five framings of one event to show bias. The linked tutorial covers three proofreading prompts run over the same document in ChatGPT — 'suggestions for improvement', 'proofread for clarity', then 'proofread for punctuation' — before editing in your own word processor.
What you'll take awayThree targeted passes that catch different problems, and the habit of applying the edits yourself rather than pasting output wholesale.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Rewrite a headline — Produce five framings of one event to show bias.
Do three passes: (1) clarity, (2) grammar and punctuation, (3) concision. Show every change as a list with a reason — don't silently rewrite. Text below:
[PASTE YOUR TEXT HERE]
Write an outreach email to a podcast producer for internship. The linked tutorial covers drafting an email in ChatGPT and improving it through conversation — the first draft is deliberately generic, then detail is added turn by turn — plus what not to paste in for privacy.
What you'll take awayWhy the first draft always reads like AI, how to iterate it into your own voice, and to keep real names out of the prompt.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Draft a pitch email — Write an outreach email to a podcast producer for internship.
Keep it under 150 words: polite, specific, with one clear ask. Give me two versions — one formal, one warmer. Don't include real names, ID numbers, or anything private.
Structure slides on representation in advertising campaigns. The linked tutorial covers using ChatGPT across the research-paper workflow — finding a topic where a genuine gap exists, then structuring the paper around it.
What you'll take awayHow to pick a defensible topic and lay out the sections before you start writing.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Outline a presentation — Structure slides on representation in advertising campaigns.
Give a topic-sentence outline only — not full prose. For each section, state the argument it makes and the evidence it would need.
Break down persuasion tactics in a political ad transcript. The linked tutorial covers a 10-step ChatGPT prompt system — standard definition, an explain-it-to-a-10-year-old version, real-life analogies, a simple diagram, then a comparison table — that you aim at any concept you're stuck on.
What you'll take awayA repeatable prompt sequence that turns a confusing idea into a definition, an analogy and a diagram you can check against your course notes.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Explain propaganda techniques — Break down persuasion tactics in a political ad transcript.
Start with a one-sentence definition, then explain it as if I'm 10, then give a real-world analogy. Finish by flagging anything scholars genuinely disagree about — and tell me what you're unsure of.
List rebuttals to a claim about media echo chambers. The linked tutorial covers three brainstorming methods in ChatGPT — a reusable custom-instructions 'brainstorm paradigm', an AI-diagram tree that fans one topic into dozens of branches, and a SWOT prompt to pressure-test an idea.
What you'll take awayThree prompt patterns you can reuse to go from a blank page to a categorised list of options, plus a way to stress-test the one you pick.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Suggest counterarguments — List rebuttals to a claim about media echo chambers.
Give me 10 options grouped into 3 themes, then mark the 3 most original and explain what makes them stronger.
Contrast Hall and Adorno on audience reception and culture industry. The linked tutorial covers a compare-and-contrast prompt in ChatGPT (demonstrated on Buddhism vs Hinduism) that asks for similarities and differences, then expands any point you want more depth on.
What you'll take awayA prompt for structured comparisons, and how to push ChatGPT to elaborate on the specific dimension you care about.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Compare two theorists — Contrast Hall and Adorno on audience reception and culture industry.
Give me a table of the key similarities and differences, then one short paragraph on which difference matters most and why.
Explore media consumption survey responses and summarize demographic patterns. The linked tutorial covers dragging a dataset straight into ChatGPT and prompting it to describe the data, produce descriptive statistics per column, and chart the columns you care about.
What you'll take awayHow to interrogate a spreadsheet conversationally, and why the 'analyzing' step means it ran real code rather than guessing.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Analyze a media-consumption survey dataset — Explore media consumption survey responses and summarize demographic patterns.
I'm uploading my dataset. First describe what's in it and flag any data-quality problems, then answer my question, and show the code you ran so I can check it myself.
Synthesize eight sources on misinformation into structured summaries. The linked tutorial covers prompting ChatGPT for an annotated bibliography entry for a specific source, then checking it against APA, MLA or Chicago requirements.
What you'll take awayHow to draft summary-plus-evaluation annotations, and why you must verify every citation detail it produces.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Build an annotated bibliography — Synthesize eight sources on misinformation into structured summaries.
For each source below write a 150-word annotation: what it argues, its method, and how it supports or complicates my argument. Use [APA / MLA / Chicago]. Then remind me to check every citation detail against the original — you can get these wrong.
[PASTE YOUR SOURCES HERE]
Design an interactive session teaching teens to spot fake news. The linked tutorial covers ChatGPT Projects as a workspace — turning a rough idea into a full plan with timelines, task assignments and a risk assessment that stays organised across sessions.
What you'll take awayHow to go from a vague goal to a structured plan with milestones and risks, kept in one persistent workspace.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Plan a media literacy workshop — Design an interactive session teaching teens to spot fake news.
Break this into phases with milestones, working backwards from [DUE DATE]. Include the top 3 risks and how I'd mitigate each.
Code interview transcripts about news trust into recurring themes. The linked tutorial covers designing a study end-to-end in ChatGPT — research questions, hypotheses, survey items, sample size and sampling method, R code for the analysis, then implications and titles.
What you'll take awayA full research-design workflow, including how to answer a reviewer who says your sample is too small.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Conduct thematic coding — Code interview transcripts about news trust into recurring themes.
Propose a research question, hypotheses, method, sample and sampling strategy, and the analysis plan. Then critique the weaknesses of your own design.
Build a framework decoding signs in magazine advertisements. The linked tutorial covers ChatGPT's Study Mode (type /study), an interactive tutor that guides you with questions step by step instead of just handing over the answer.
What you'll take awayHow to switch ChatGPT into tutor mode so it drills you on terms and ideas rather than doing the thinking for you.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Create a semiotic analysis guide — Build a framework decoding signs in magazine advertisements.
Define each term in one clear sentence, then give a concrete example of each in context. Once I've read them, quiz me on them one at a time and tell me what I got wrong and why.
Write Python to classify sentiment across thousands of tweets. The linked tutorial covers pasting a broken snippet into ChatGPT with the prompt 'scan the following code for potential problems' — it finds the bug (a divide-by-zero), explains why it happens and returns a fixed version.
What you'll take awayA debugging prompt formula, plus the habit of re-running the fixed code to confirm the error is actually gone.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Run computational content analysis — Write Python to classify sentiment across thousands of tweets.
Tell me what's wrong, explain why it happens, then give the corrected version. Walk through the fixed code line by line with a concrete input.
[PASTE YOUR CODE AND THE ERROR HERE]
Design an experiment on framing effects and political opinion
Specify conditions, measures, and how you would rule out confounds. The linked tutorial covers designing a study end-to-end in ChatGPT — research questions, hypotheses, survey items, sample size and sampling method, R code for the analysis, then implications and titles.
What you'll take awayA full research-design workflow, including how to answer a reviewer who says your sample is too small.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Design an experiment on framing effects and political opinion — Specify conditions, measures, and how you would rule out confounds.
Propose a research question, hypotheses, method, sample and sampling strategy, and the analysis plan. Then critique the weaknesses of your own design.
Create a GPT tracking narrative shifts across news outlets. The linked tutorial covers building a Custom GPT from scratch in ChatGPT and feeding it your own past writing so its output sounds like you rather than generic AI.
What you'll take awayHow to set up a reusable assistant with your instructions baked in, so you stop re-explaining context every session.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Build a custom media-monitoring GPT — Create a GPT tracking narrative shifts across news outlets.
Draft the name, description, instructions and 4 conversation starters for this Custom GPT. The instructions should tell it to ask clarifying questions and to admit when it doesn't know.
Script collection of headlines and compare outlet coverage statistically. The linked tutorial covers pasting a broken snippet into ChatGPT with the prompt 'scan the following code for potential problems' — it finds the bug (a divide-by-zero), explains why it happens and returns a fixed version.
What you'll take awayA debugging prompt formula, plus the habit of re-running the fixed code to confirm the error is actually gone.
Starter prompt — paste into ChatGPT
I'm a Media & Society student at HWS. My task: Scrape and analyze headlines — Script collection of headlines and compare outlet coverage statistically.
Tell me what's wrong, explain why it happens, then give the corrected version. Walk through the fixed code line by line with a concrete input.
[PASTE YOUR CODE AND THE ERROR HERE]