…and goodnight!
13 May 2012 2 Comments
To my fellow classmates:
It’s been fun learning about Rhetorical Theory with you all. Now I can say that I have skyped and blogged! I’ve turned in my final paper and am relieved to have that complete. The topic of my final paper was print versus online rhetoric. I compared the Microsoft Word format to the HTML format. Currently, I do not have experience in coding HTML, but I believe it is the way to go and am looking for ways to learn how. If anyone has any advice on where I could pick up some HTML coding skills, I would appreciate it.
Thanks for sharing and learning with me. It’s been a pleasure!
Goodnight!
Lisa
Website Credibility and Persuasion
12 May 2012 Leave a Comment
Website viewers utilize four main techniques to rate the credibility of the sites they visit: design style, navigation and information design, content professionalism, and website motive. These items are reviewed and credibility calculated in mere seconds, while the viewer is either clicking for further information or back to the search engine page for the competition’s website. At the same time, the website being viewed is attempting to persuade the viewer. Whether this persuasion is to motivate the user to accept information or purchase a product, persuasion is at play just the same.
My final paper reviewed art center websites and their success and failures at achieving credibility with their viewers and then persuading them. Art center websites share similar desired actions from their viewers: visit the venue, review offered information, and/or purchase a membership. By first achieving a perceived credibility with the audience, these websites are best suited to further persuade them.
Being that credibility and persuasion are so closely related the intention of this paper is to answer the following question: Are art center websites successfully utilizing tools to demonstrate credibility as well as persuade their audiences to visit their venue? The resulting answer to this question is as individualized as the websites themselves, as some succeed in certain areas but yet dim in comparison to other sites in relation to other criteria. No one art center site seems to be best capturing both credibility and persuasion at their fullest.
Establishing a credible and persuasive website is more art than science. Viewers take in the design elements, information structure, content and website motives quickly and frequently as they browse site to site. An art center website must gain and hold viewer interest without appearing overly-commercialized, present a depth of relevant, well-written information and simultaneously promote a user-focused, educational agenda. However, even the most polished art center website with each of these issues well-tended, will loose the occasional viewer upon deciding that a more credible website is but a quick, Google-search away.
Thanks to all for a very interesting first semester and a Happy Mother’s Day too!
Is that a “Country charmer that needs TLC” or “Built on a swamp and vandalized prior to foreclosure?”
12 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Advertising, Disciplinarity and Fields of Knowledge, Public Sphere, Real World Applications
I get regular emails from Trulia and other real estate sites with homes for sale and other information. Today’s email was so appropriate for our own look into rhetoric in technical communications that I had to share. The entire article can be found here:
Because of the intricacies of home-ownership and buying not to mention the legal issues involved, I would consider Real Estate to be within the bailiwick of technical communications. I would also tend to think that there is an enormous opportunity for ethical fudging as well. Take my own experiences for example. Last June, we visited Texas to get a feel for the areas we wanted to move to and see how the people there lived. Our Realtor set up some showings for us in hopes of providing a baseline for what we could expect to see and what we could afford.
Let me first say that while I believe many of the homes we visited were mis-represented, there was an element of communication that did not fall within ethical guidelines. As I looked over some of the homes before our trip, I came across some terms that I was not familiar with:
Tank – This is not a container to hold things like I would have first thought. Instead it is a hole in the ground that fills up with water in good seasons (not dry) to help water livestock. A tank could be considered a small pond for us Northerners.
Fenced and cross-fenced – This means that there is not only a perimeter fence (most often with a gate) but also cross fencing for pasture rotation.
Where some listers fell short of, what I feel is an ethical listing are something like the following:
A pole barn in Wisconsin looks like the first image (my barn) – The second image was listed as a pole barn in a Texas Listing:
As you can see, there is a distinct difference – luckly, this one has sides – other “pole barns” listed were only poles and a metal top.
Of the houses we viewed, some were indeed nice. Others were nothing short of scams:
House 1. Charming older home, immaculately kept with beautiful views and a HUGE man cave.
In reality, it stunk like someone died and had been vacant so long that there were wasps living in the roof and front porch area. The inside was empty and vacuumed; however, the smell was so bad that I could not stay inside long. The view consisted of a virtual cliff that began 20 feet outside the back door. No one with children could live there. The man cave was a metal building with a lock on it. If it was nice, we drove 1700 miles and would never know.
House 2. Smaller home, with updated kitchen. Fenced and Cross-fenced bring your animals! Nice, stocked tank.
For a smaller house, it was in beautiful condition inside. It was just a LOT smaller than they indicated. The real disappointment was outside. The pond was almost dry and was covered in slime. The fencing was all pipe and very nice, but what was inside the fencing was the disappointment. On the 5 acres fenced, there had to have been 100 goats. The entire place was fenced including around the home as well and there was not ONE spot to walk that wasn’t inches deep in goat poopy.
I actually have video of many of the homes we visited, the good- the bad and the very ugly (mint green kitchen cabinets?)
It was during this excursion that I made a decision to ONLY show accurate pictures and information for our own listing. Nothing is worse than being mislead and lied to.
Anyway, you get the picture. My point is that while a person or Realtor CAN embellish or stretch the truth in a listing, they do so at their peril.
**Edited for typos – PROOF READ!
Defining interactivity
02 Apr 2012 9 Comments
in Disciplinarity and Fields of Knowledge, Politics, Real World Applications
The beginning of the chapter discussed the conflicting definitions of interactivity. I think part of the problem was the goal of coming up with a single cohesive description that fits in all circumstances. Sally J. McMillan understood the limitation of a single description, and instead identified the following: user-to-system, user-to-user, and user-to-document.
- Most political sites utilize the user-to-system method because it implies a great deal of interactivity, but limits the user’s ability to manipulate or distort the content or message.
- User-to-user interactivity is something to be used very carefully. The book describes virtual town halls and chat rooms, but this can also be extended to comments to articles and forum posts. These present the user the opportunity to discuss or debate the message or points, but open the message up to distortion. Also, these forms must be policed to make sure that content is appropriate, and that users are behaving themselves and adhering to whatever terms of service might be in place.
- User-to-document is another option to be used carefully because it allows users to alter the content by adding pictures and posting questions to be answered by the site. Wikipedia would also appear to fall into this category.
Obviously the approach has to fit the purpose of the site, but this actually goes back to the previous readings on credibility. Political sites need to control their image to portray several things to their audience. If the site does not retain it’s organized and in-control appearance, it is a reflection on the candiate and how they would serve in office.
http://www.newt.org/ has a few very good examples of user-to-site interactivity and it is easy to see how it makes the user feel involved in the cause.
http://www.iwontbefooled.com/ is a site that is linked for Newt’s site. It has a mixture of user-to-user and user-to-system interactivity. I expected to see only positive things for Newt and anti-statements about Obama, but I was mistaken. That is probably why it is separate from the Newt site.
Edited the image size.
Online Interactivity: Moveon.org
01 Apr 2012 11 Comments
in Politics Tags: 2004 election, Moveon.org, Online Rhetoric
Warnick wrote online interactivity in the 2004 elections, siting that never before had blogs made such an impact on a campaign. Additionally, “presidential campaigns caught up with Web development and designed strategies to produce a complex form of online political communication” (77).
Specifically, Warnick named MoveOn.org as one of the sites used during the election. It was created by Wes Boyd and Jean Blades in 1998 at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal with the aim to create an online petition. The purpose of the petition was to call on “Congress to censure President Clinton and move to deal with the issues facing the nation” (78). The Web site has grown significantly since 2004 when it had 2.8 million members to 2005 when it had 3.3 million members.
I had personally never heard of MoveOn.org, so I wanted to visit the site to see what petitions were currently out there. On the front page of the site, the petition: “Wishing you could get Rush Limbaugh off of a Radio Station Near You?” It included a map of the current petitions throughout the United States.
I thought it was a smart move that Moveon.org used access to Facebook, Twitter and Email to reach potential members. And, if you believe in the cause, you have the option to post it to Facebook, which is a way for the Web site to go viral and reach more potential members.
Another petition that was promoted on this site was “Justice for Trayvon Martin.” Like the Rush Limbaugh petition, this one wasn’t divided out by state and had every state lumped into one petition. For each person who signed the petition – they currently had 542,106 signatures – they gave the date, location, signer and a comment section and people who visited the site could scroll through all the signees and read comments from those people. Obviously, the comments are very rhetorical in nature as the signees are very passionate about the cause.
I never knew a site like this existed and I was impressed at how organized it is. What do you guys think?
Intertextuality and Websites
01 Apr 2012 9 Comments
in Politics, Real World Applications Tags: Google, JibJab
Intertextuality is a topic that caught my attention in this week’s reading assignments. Perhaps it is because the word sounds a lot like intersexuality? It’s not just me, even Microsoft Word thinks ‘intertextuality’ should read as ‘intersexuality’.
Anyway…I’m not going to write about what Freud would say about that. LOL
I would like to write about Warnick’s Google example that she uses to discuss the rhetorical workings of intertextuality. I’ve always enjoyed Google’s use of images to intrigue Web searchers. I, like Warnick, think it is pretty clever of Google to embellish their plain G-o-o-g-l-e heading to remind repeat visitors of special events and happenings (2007, p. 91). After opening the Google homepage and finding an embellished G-o-o-g-l-e in place of the plain G-o-o-g-l-e, “With the exception of obvious holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, the user then is tempted to pause, suspending his or her search while figuring out what the intertextual reference might be” (Warnick, 2007, p. 91). As discussed earlier in this class blog, I don’t have a whole lot of patience. Instead of pausing, I usually hover my mouse cursor over the image for the explanation to appear. Thinking back, I’ve enjoyed the interactive logos especially. Thankfully, Google has a doodle archive of their clever logos that dates back to 1998 and I was able to find my favorite to share in this blog.
My favorite is the Google logo from June 9th, 2011 honoring Les Paul. The logo is an electric guitar that can be strummed using your mouse cursor. If only I knew how to play guitar, maybe I could play a little diddy. Check it out here and give your musical talents a try!
With Google’s rhetorical use of intertextuality, I now have learned about Les Paul. Prior to Google featuring his electric guitar on their homepage, I only knew of him through my workplace, where they honor him by using his name to name a conference room. Sadly though, my employer no longer features each person that the conference rooms are named after. Before a recent remodel, each conference rooms’ walls featured collages of the rooms’ namesakes. The collage illustrated their work and information in frames on the walls to decorate the rooms. However, those frames were removed when the building was redecorated. At that same time is when the Les Paul conference room was built and named. If it weren’t for Google, I wouldn’t have known any more about the Wisconsin born famous guitarist unless I had actually Googled his name myself. I appreciate Google’s use of intertextuality in their logo to educate people about history. It is quick little educational opportunities such as this that makes learning fun.
JibJab
Warnick also uses www.JibJab.com as an example of intertextuality at work. “In July 2004, the animation studio and Web site JibJab posted a short parody, “This Land,” intended to lampoon both the Bush and Kerry campaigns” (Warnick, 2007, p. 107). Prior to today’s blog post, I had been on JibJab’s Web site a few times before but never had seen the infamous “This Land” video. I think the video is hilarious and brilliantly uses intertextuality to exploit textual and contextual environments to hold users’ attention. The video influences the users’ thinking while providing entertainment and laughs.
In searching on JibJab, I see the Web site did another video in 2008 for the presidential campaigns, entitled “Time for Some Campaignin’“. However, I don’t think it was meant to influence users’ thinking as much as the first one, “This Land”. The first one poked more fun at the candidates (Bush and Kerry) in particular. “Time for Some Campaignin’” was more of an anthem about campaigning in general.
As the next presidential election gets closer, I’m looking forward to seeing the next JibJab video featuring the top candidates. Perhaps the videos intertextuality will influence my vote. Scary, I know. But with the news channels’ overwhelming coverage of the candidates, it is nice to view political comedy for a change of pace.
Interactivity and College Admissions in 2012
01 Apr 2012 8 Comments
“User to documents interactivity in a new media context occurs when recipients of the message contribute text and information that change the content of the site text” (Warnick, 2007, p. 76).
When reading through Warnick’s chapter on interactivity I immediately began thinking about the new first-year website our Admissions team launched for the incoming Class of 2016. Part of the undergraduate liberal arts college recruitment philosophy is the personalized and individual approach. Our admissions team began a new recruitment strategy that demonstrates the “user to documents” interactivity in Warnick’s chapter. The idea of the site is for prospective students to “Build Their Story” at McDaniel College.
http://www.mcdaniel.edu/11417.htm
As the student begins to answer questions, take polls and work through the website, the personalized answers change the website and provide insight into an experience that is different for each student based on their interests and needs.
“Interactivity appeared to function rhetorically to advance the agendas of political interests in a number of ways” (Warnick, 2007, p. 87). Though Warnick used politicial campaigns, rhetorically this website helps prospective students align their interests with our institution, and then allows them to participate and be involved in the recruitment process.
https://mcdaniel.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_bgwYbz17SmdFQWM
When a prospective student completes some of the various surveys on the Build Your Story site, like the example above, their personal pages change (presenting a rhetorical message that shows them how they would fit best at the College). Additionally, offices/departments/faculty receive direct contact with these students to further the rhetorical power of our brand “Build Your Story”. Each component of the process works to portray a very specific image of the undergraduate experience. This approach also allows us to emphasize the benefits we think these students will receive by attending our institution. Essentially we are like a political campaign in which we can “convey targeted messages to each of these groups that are well designed to appeal to their priorities and interests” (Warnick, 2007, p. 88).
Much like polticial elections, each year College/University Admissions Offices compete to be the “winning” institution and enroll the best possible class from the application pool. Interactivity allows for students create loyalty to the “campaign”/institution and thereby show that the “campaign”/instutition is responsive and the best choice for their decision.
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