Author Statement
John Carroll / Hometown: Poulsbo, WA / Major: Undecided
Overall as a student, author, and thinker I’m not entirely sure what I care about. Most of this is due to the fact my collective knowledge is very miniscule. I am tempted to formulate an opinion based off the information we gathered and learned in class but it would be premature to to conjure up such a conclusion based off some surveys and reading about rhetoric. Overall what I’ve observed from this class is quantity of knowledge you obtain is only as useful as the quality of context you support it with. The process of organizing and presenting data is just as important as the actual data itself. How you present your information can influence an audience just as much as the actual content within it.
Hence how the media enjoys throwing the bleeding headlines at us while trimming the actual story because it’s not entertaining. Our goal is inverted to the Media’s yet in and of itself the same. We want to deliver information without boring the audience whilst also informing to a degree of some legitimacy. Striking a balance between (informing /entertaining) is important because people are busy and attention spans don’t last long.
Whether it’s Kairos, Ethos, Lagos, Pathos reasoning through literacy demands context. My skills in providing such context definitely need improving. Summarizing a large sample of literacy is not my cup tea. When it’s time to present my findings I always find it difficult to summarize. The nice part about this project is that we don’t have develop a case for one exact thing. Instead our poster and webtext allows us to present a large swath of information and allow the audience to draw our own conclusion. Our project helped us sort and arrange the information we gathered so we could could bundle it into an effective piece of literacy.
Challenges we faced completing this project was narrowing down our thesis statement. Fear + media is by no means a narrow topic. Not confining the topic would make the researching an excessive workload, and the nobody would want to read that much information. Once we established our research topic the sailing was much smoother and we were able to establish the overall direction we wanted our project to go in.
Overall with our project we didn’t want to drown the reader with words. More is not always better. By visual aid through videos, and photos, along with aesthetic design we hope the reader enjoys our website. We intended to make the site easy to navigate and professional looking as to promote “legitimacy.” We also added little distractions because you need a little break after staring at hundreds of English 101 projects.
Overall this class has helped me a lot in seeing the bigger picture in the potential of literacy and the rhetoric incorporated within it. English 101 seems very broad and I think that is intentional. Literacy expands way beyond an essay and book and it’s important to see the power of the written word when paired with other forms of information.
The research done in this class helped me see that that fear is an extremely effective weapon when woven into literacy. Pouncing on the emotions the people through the press allows for the legitimization of bias, and blurs the line between the exaggerated and reality. Our survey responses showed that most people recognize there is bias and fear mongering in the media. But sheer amount we see everyday has desensitized us to our resistance and vigilance against it. Almost everyone can see the fear backed bias that occurs but most remain complacent to it’s impact. Were we to continue and expand on this project, I would want to look into what this means for the future and how does our attitude towards the media influences those who run it. Rather than fear monger about fear mongering we would have to research the relationship between the media and it’s audience. We would have to analyze the modern day expectations both sides impose on each-other. Is the relationship truly that sinister like some would believe? Or is it simply an adaptation of what society desires from those who inform it?
And with that I leave you this powerful quote…
The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force. – Adolf Hitler