Week 12

Genre

Introduction

This week, we will be helping our peers take their research from the academic realm into the public realm. For our final project this semester, we will use the research we've gathered and the argument that we made in our academic papers and make them suitable for a public audience. Our first step is to help our peers brainstorm possibilities.

Our reading this week is "An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing" by Melanie Gagich. In this essay, Gagich gives a full overview of multimodal composing: what it is, why to do it, and how to do it. The essay also gives us a good refresher on the rhetorical situation, which is important because thinking about the full context of our message can help us narrow our decisions as we create our final project.

Your assignment this week is to read the final papers of your peers and think about the rhetorical situations in which they are writing. At this point, we are just spitballing ideas to help each other seen the potential options for our final projects. There are no wrong answers here. You will choose two peers to present ideas to in the form of Gagich's breakdown of the rhetorical situation that your peer could use as they try to get their message out to a public audience.

Due Monday, November 13

Read

"An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing" by Melanie Gagich

Respond

Comment on your peers' final academic papers below. Each comment that presents a full possible rhetorical situation will be worth 5 points. It is recommended that you offer two of your peers ideas about their future projects. Use the guided questions below.

Brainstorm a rhetorical situation for your peer's message to reach a public audience. Use Gagich's 5 parts of the rhetorical situation to outline your idea.

The Message: What is your peer's message? What is their thesis? Give a one sentence summary as you understand it.
The Audience: What audience might be able to take some action on the message? For example, if your peer is writing about sustainable fishing practices, audiences that might be able to take action are: people who fish, tribal authorities, politicians, people who eat fish, etc. Choose an audience that your peer might target to take action on their message.
The Author: Given the message and the audience, how should the author present themself?
The Genre: What is the best way to reach this audience with this message? Think broadly about this given Gagich's discussion of what multimodal means. Memes, posters, infographics, podcasts, videos, presentations, letters to the newspaper or to politicians can all be multimodal.
The Medium: How might your peer distribute what they create? For example, a series of infographics aimed at people who fish might be shared to local Facebook groups or a powerpoint presentation might be shared at a local city council meeting. How might your peer make sure that their audience sees what they create?

Respond to your peers' academic papers in the Google Drive folder below.

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