After I read the entire Dr. Pepper’s “Classical
Rhetoric Up in Smoke,” this was my take away:
I felt that every generation has something that is new to them and that they think is “cool” or unique and/or different than previous generations. In the case of this document, they tried to use social media in a way that captures the audience visually to where when they use it they’ll think “this is cool” because it is something that they have never thought of using/doing before. Because they think it is cool or interesting, they’ll be provoked to use/interact with other people in a social environment and thus be persuaded to use it more.
After class today, I thought a bit more about discourse communities and the languages used within those. Because Dr. Pepper’s website had a creative web design targeted at adolescent smokers, he tried to provoke interaction with the users to get them to stop smoking, while at the same time making the adolescents believe that they are making the choice to abstain from smoking on their own. When we looked at Analisa’s page about marijuana usage, she seemed to be saying that the layout of the website was targeted at the adult audience in order to make marijuana usage “cool” in their eyes since it is already cool in the adolescents’ eyes.
It made me wonder if there are different types of “cool” with regards to technology and who the target audiences are. For example, if how we write can speak to a particular audience’s way of speaking, than how we present that information in a digital format can also be persuading and speak to a particular audience as well.
In Clive Thompson’s Public Thinking, I gave some thought to ethos and credibility. For example, why are we choosing to read what we read? When I read a tweet someone gave (or even a Facebook status) or a book someone wrote about a real life occurrence, which one am I most likely to believe? To be honest, I’m pretty gullible and so I like to believe that what people are saying on twitter is true because that website has a reputation (at least for me) for telling what happened in that moment. If I read a book about a real life occurrence, I’m thinking about issues regarding memory as the author is recollecting the memory to write the book.
Then that makes me wonder about why I am choosing to believe and think certain in ways about certain forms of modality and I think that the nature in discourse communities plays a part in this. I’m not sure what discourse community I am in to form that belief (perhaps the discourse of the twitter people?), but I wonder that if maybe forming that belief can also get me to react in certain ways as well. For example, if I am interested in pictures of fire, I will pick a tab or a button containing that information. Since I value those pictures, I will be prone to act that way.
I think a part of this class is playing into the values of discourse communities and predicting who will be likely to choose what action when they come in contact with a specific modality. When we set up a webpage, what is our rhetorical purpose? Who is our audience and what are their values? When we can pinpoint those, we can also figure out the elements within that digital modality to accommodate our target audience, while at the same time persuading them to act in the way that we want them to.
I felt that every generation has something that is new to them and that they think is “cool” or unique and/or different than previous generations. In the case of this document, they tried to use social media in a way that captures the audience visually to where when they use it they’ll think “this is cool” because it is something that they have never thought of using/doing before. Because they think it is cool or interesting, they’ll be provoked to use/interact with other people in a social environment and thus be persuaded to use it more.
After class today, I thought a bit more about discourse communities and the languages used within those. Because Dr. Pepper’s website had a creative web design targeted at adolescent smokers, he tried to provoke interaction with the users to get them to stop smoking, while at the same time making the adolescents believe that they are making the choice to abstain from smoking on their own. When we looked at Analisa’s page about marijuana usage, she seemed to be saying that the layout of the website was targeted at the adult audience in order to make marijuana usage “cool” in their eyes since it is already cool in the adolescents’ eyes.
It made me wonder if there are different types of “cool” with regards to technology and who the target audiences are. For example, if how we write can speak to a particular audience’s way of speaking, than how we present that information in a digital format can also be persuading and speak to a particular audience as well.
In Clive Thompson’s Public Thinking, I gave some thought to ethos and credibility. For example, why are we choosing to read what we read? When I read a tweet someone gave (or even a Facebook status) or a book someone wrote about a real life occurrence, which one am I most likely to believe? To be honest, I’m pretty gullible and so I like to believe that what people are saying on twitter is true because that website has a reputation (at least for me) for telling what happened in that moment. If I read a book about a real life occurrence, I’m thinking about issues regarding memory as the author is recollecting the memory to write the book.
Then that makes me wonder about why I am choosing to believe and think certain in ways about certain forms of modality and I think that the nature in discourse communities plays a part in this. I’m not sure what discourse community I am in to form that belief (perhaps the discourse of the twitter people?), but I wonder that if maybe forming that belief can also get me to react in certain ways as well. For example, if I am interested in pictures of fire, I will pick a tab or a button containing that information. Since I value those pictures, I will be prone to act that way.
I think a part of this class is playing into the values of discourse communities and predicting who will be likely to choose what action when they come in contact with a specific modality. When we set up a webpage, what is our rhetorical purpose? Who is our audience and what are their values? When we can pinpoint those, we can also figure out the elements within that digital modality to accommodate our target audience, while at the same time persuading them to act in the way that we want them to.
I think so, Kelly, and I think that the digital world is making very visible the rhetorical choices MAYBE we've had for a long time!
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