So we all have different definitions of what a rough draft should look like...

I. INTRODUCTION

Aristotle said, “In political campaigns, every move is a form of communication. However, the art and act of campaigning is the most important way to communicate with voters. By successfully communicating and connecting with constituents, it is a surefire way to gain support and election. Politicians communicate in many ways. Taking a closer look, the goal politicians have in communicating is to persuade. “Campaigns are rhetorical exercises: attempts to persuade voters to view issues in the way the candidate wishes them to” (Riker, 4). All of us have seen successful and unsuccessful campaigns played out, no matter the magnitude. Whether it is a campaign for student body president, a local congressional campaign, or even a “most likely to succeed” nomination in the high school yearbook. Regardless of the size of the race, communication has an essential role in determining the success or failure of a race.

II. STAYING ON MESSAGE

Good communication in a campaign means staying on message. Knowing what to say no matter the question, no matter the source, no matter the crowd, is effective and winning communication.

            A. EXAMPLE

II. COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR

What supplements that is having a communications director

            B. EXAMPLE

III. ARE RHETORICS EVEN IMPORTANT IN POLITICS/CAMPAIGNS? 

             A. Example of phrasing of "fiscal cliff" 

IV. CONCLUSION 

11/11/13

 Anil Dash

Anil Dash’s concept of New Tools and Better Networks transforms institutions made me realize the importance of utilizing all that we have been fortunate to receive in life, to better the world around us. When Dash said, “If you have the ability to use these tools, we need to ask ourselves, what are we doing with them?” Think about it, we are all fortunate enough to be attending college right now. We are all used to using technology all day, every day, and often taking it for granted. If we all channeled our minds (however technology obsessed or technology scared we are) into building strong networks in meaningful ways, I really think we could not only help people all over the world that are less fortunate than us, but make things that were once impossible, possible. I know this wasn’t necessarily the point of his lecture, which I did find very interesting, but I think if we view tools and networks as positive stepping stones to help others, I think we could all be better off. For example, if we all thought about it for a minute, I’m sure we could all name a few people we know internationally, whether it is directly, or through family or friends. Maybe you studied abroad and have a host family Spain. Maybe your sister’s boyfriend just got a job in Shanghai, or maybe it is even a teacher’s connection with an old friend in Ecuador. Whatever the case may be, with the application of online networking, we could easily be in contact with all of them, within days. Now, imagine having a goal of say, all school children, around the world, having the ability to eat a healthy breakfast at school. Sure, it is definitely a huge goal, but with this new network of people around the globe, they are bound to know people, or to be interested in your cause, and willing to help. It’s grassroots advocacy but in a global, online capacity. And there’s no reason we shouldn’t take advantage of these privileges that the Internet has allowed us.

Chris Anderson

The Internet has caused social evolution that is really interesting to watch, and certainly could not be done before the Internet. Although Anderson focuses on this Light, Crowd, Desire system, I really enjoyed when he talked about the self-fueling concept of global innovation. It is based on individuals and group’s motivation and attitude towards learning and experimenting with new ideas. “Innovation emerges because of groups”, echoes my thoughts on Dash’s videos in terms of networks. With web videos, the ideas and knowledge of people around the world can be easily shared and accessed, which when watched, will spark other people’s imagination, as well as teach them things they wouldn’t necessarily go out and take a class in, write a thesis for, or even Google.

McGonigal

Now at first I was definitely reluctant to hear this “play more online/video games” idea. To generalize my views on video games, I will just say that I don’t think they are a very productive way to spend your time. I cringe at the thought of violent video games, already planning the talk I will one-day give my kids about how they are not allowed to play them. I think staring at a screen for long periods of time leads to eye problems, headaches, etc., and I certainly believe that kids sitting on their asses for hours on end undoubtedly isn’t helping to combat obesity.

But then McGonigal made good point after good point, and now my head is spinning.

The idea that gamers are the best versions of themselves when playing is so interesting. There is nothing they are too afraid to try, they quickly lend a helping hand and they are constantly getting this feedback that we just don’t get in the real world. It makes them keep going, it makes them feel good, and it makes them want to win (excuse me if I am wrong in saying that is the ultimate goal in video games). These four pillars: urgent optimism, epic meaning, blissful productivity, and social fabric are all really great, but when outside of the gaming world, I don’t know if they can be utilized. Someone might be a ferociously good gamer, an extremely talented basketball player/teammate, or a great painter, all things that may offer lots of benefits neurologically and maybe even socially. However, I don’t know if I’m ready to invest in those people in hopes that they are going to be able to combat hunger, poverty, obesity, climate change, etc. Now, maybe this is a stark contrast to my previous paragraphs on the hopefulness I am feeling towards the possibilities of the Internet and these networks and tools, but I am not yet convinced. However, if I am going to stick with the thinking of my previous paragraphs, I need to at least give this possibility a chance. Like networks, tools, web videos, and alas, gaming, the opportunity is there to improve society, to alleviate suffering through technology, if used accordingly. I like the idea of these games garnering a great amount of meaning, optimism and productivity. But to believe that those people that game 22 hours a week will then be productive in other, more meaningful areas in their life, is something I have a difficult time with. I would love to see how this can be made possible; how these skills and qualities can be capitalized on in the “real” world, to combat the problems of today’s world.

Priebatsch

Immediately, I connect with Priebatsch’s “game layer” concept in terms of influencing people’s behaviors. This is what McGonigal aims to do with gaming, but didn’t explicitly say it. With this game layer, the goal is to influence behavior. This TED talk really had me thinking that every part of our lives is a game in one way or another. School, as Priebatsch describes, is just a poorly designed one. But take dieting for example, the concept of Weight Watchers, where every item of food is given a point. You are only allowed a certain amount of points each day depending on your weight loss goals. Fruits and vegetables are zero points, whereas say cake, or pizza might be seven. This system of points is what makes Weight Watchers a really good option for a lot of people. Even with dating, the phrase “he/she plays games” is often used as a means to describe the “should I call him even though he didn’t call me last night?” fiasco.

Maybe McGonigal’s suggestion that we need to play more video games isn’t quite the solution. Maybe it is that we are already playing all these games. We win, by losing weight, by getting the guy to call you before you have to call him, by getting straight As. But if these little games are the things that get us through life, what is the “epic win” that McGonigal speaks of? And more importantly, what do we lose, or what are the trade-offs? We win an epic win, but at the expense of who, or what? 

A blog post dedicated to Zeke and Mary

Wysocki

First of all, when she states, "When I experience pleasure and offense so mixed, I know I have a good opening into critical work--no matter where it leads me or how strange." I really like how she articulates this, I think it is so true. Often I find myself not sure whether I should be, or I am, hugely offended by something or hugely curious/infatuated by something. I usually sit on this conflicted feeling for a while, just as she is saying she has a good opening into critical work. I just wanted to mention this because although we all probably experience it frequently, she has been the first to articulate this in a meaningful way.

Doctorow

"We copy like we breath" Cory Doctorow states, and I have to agree with him. He goes on further to discuss that when discussing copyright, it is not whether we like it or not, but which rules we want. "Copyright should serve as an inventive to creativity" I think largely it does. Without this looming gray cloud of copyright above us, we would viciously (even more than we already do) copy everything and anything, poorly attempting to reinvent the wheel rather than create new ideas. But should copyright be seen as this gray cloud? I don't really think it should. I think it should be seen as a supporter to creators, rather than a nuisance or roadblock.

The See-Through CEO

I think this is a brilliant idea. Honesty and transparency are such crucial qualities but so easily dismissed in today's world. No matter the profession or the field, honesty and transparency equates to trust. Of course, all companies want their customers to trust them. But, they have been learning ways to cut corners and assume a trustworthy facade and a lot of the times it works. "Online is where reputations are made now," says Leslie Gaines Ross, chief reputation strategist said. However, daunting, this is true, and businesses, people, and politicians must act accordingly. Bloggers now clog up so much of google searches, and although so much of blogging is questionable in its credibility, people still read it. Rumors, facts, and ideas go viral and people read and react. 

Jamieson

The book I am currently reading, "Full Frontal Feminism" by Jessica Valenti, states "what are the worst things you can call a guy? Fag, girl, bitch, pussy. I've even heard the term "mangina." Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Being a woman is the ultimate insult" (Valenti, 5). This goes with Jamieson's notion that "to call a woman manly is to praise her." All of this bullshit about a manly voice equating to persuasion and a feminine voice equating to pleasure is unfortunately still ultra-present, and, excuse me again, but I am going to use politics as an example.  

When female politicians make speeches, the media most often critiques their appearance before critiquing the content of the speech and its messaging. Comments mentioning a new haircut, a new designer outfit, etc., are explicitly directed at women and not at men. When the media turns the attention to physical appearance when describing physical appearance, it turns out it really hurts their chances of winning.

"Name It. Change It. released a study showing that when the media focuses on a female politician’s appearance, voters actually vacate her in droves. This spring, the organization staged a “hypothetical congressional contest between female candidate Jane Smith and male candidate Dan Jones,” presented a series of fake news stories about each candidate to 1,500 likely U.S. voters, then asked participants how they’d cast their vote. Voters who heard a pair of mundane stories that detailed Jane and Dan’s responses to an education bill split their votes pretty evenly between the two candidates. But when voters heard stories that sneaked in references to Jane’s physical appearance, Jane lost serious ground to Dan." http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/04/08/pretty_politics_female_politicians_can_lose_elections_when_the_media_focuses.html

Again, the importance of women running in the first place can not be forgotten. Seeing female leaders in business, politics, or otherwise, is hugely importantly to dismantling these stereotypes.  

10/28/13

Kohl

"Besides the generally perceived new possibilities of searching (and finding) as well as the distribution of information, the World Wide Web (WWW) opens new possibilities for the construction of knowledge (166)". I agree with this quote that with the internet and the advancement of technology the way we learn and the possibilities in which we gain new information has completely been revolutionized. We no longer need to stand over an encyclopedia and flip through the pages to find information on a word/idea.

We now put the word in google and find hundreds of thousands of articles, many peer reviewed and many are not, on this concept. New information is now in the palm of our hand, but having this information so readily available can definitely make it less credible. Now, we needs to hone in on the skill of being able to separate (essentially) bullshit from actual correct and legitimate information. Whereas years ago, students and other people never really needed to do that, nor did they have a means to.

Society appreciates interactive programs and that is what makes Wiki systems successful. Everyone is allowed to participate in this simple program. It provides people a way to be an active learner and teacher, too. Wiki systems provide a history of a continued, unfinished learning continuum like no other encyclopedia forum before.

Johnson-Eilola

The problem with Wiki systems is found in the first paragraph of this piece. We are comfortable with an unreliable narrative. By using Wikipedia, we are not sure what we are going to get, but yet we use it anyway. Johnson-Eilola goes further to say "we're at ease with Postmodernism." I, for one, am certainly not at ease with this, but I do think that is an accurate generalization.

Meaning is nothing without connection. We wouldn't know what anything meant if someone showed it to us 200 years ago. We would have to be taught, for example, that a pen is something you use on paper to write with. We would then have to be taught what paper is, and how it is made. I definitely agree that contemporary intellectual property law is catching up to postmodernism. A few years ago, my parents and I were at a flea market in DC and my dad took a picture of a booth in which a vender had cool photos in frames. The vender proceeded to freak out at my dad for taking the photos, yelling about my dad about not knowing/respecting the importance of intellectual property. Well, turns out (my Dad knew this) the photos were not even originally his. They were famous photos that he had just reprinted. Clearly, the spirit of IP had been tattered.

Infographic

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-9W7Sk_kutMNVVuQjBDTGFQQkk/edit?usp=sharing

10-14

Kress

With Kress’ opening question, as I read the first page of this article, I came with the understanding and belief that genre is a category that applies to all forms of representation and communication. Before reading this article, genre has always been an ‘umbrella’ term. My goal by the end of this article is to be able to decide if genre should be a term used for areas other than linguistic subjects.

I agree that distortions can be caused when terms that are mode-specific be transported into different fields. You lose the origin of the theory when it is used in different fields that can be vastly different. By using the term, ‘genre’ in other fields, are we assuming that these other subjects have linguistic undertones or origins? For example, with photography, don’t we take photos to tell a story that the written word cannot in the same light?

If Genre is a category which realizes the social relations of the participants involved in the text as interaction, than surely we can use the term genre to cover an array of modes because each mode that uses genre has in some way, social relations.

 Bernhardt

I work part-time at a law firm, so when Bernhardt states “Legal writing also displays a “tendency to make more and more use of layout and other graphitic and grapholigical devices as a means of revealing structure, content, and logical progression.” I definitely agree with this, as most of my job is consumed of typing out briefs and other legal documents. My boss is a stickler to keeping a format in which there is a lot of paragraph breaks. Every few sentences I make a new paragraph, and after having this job for over three years, this rule has crept into my classroom writing.

For me, I now like writing with a paragraph break every 3-4 sentences. I think it is clear, and encouraging to read, rather than getting muddled in a huge paragraph with little awareness of what you are reading or the significance of it. When a lawyer spends a week on one, 40-page brief for example, they really want the judge and counsel to read every word of the brief. By breaking it up into small paragraphs, it is a way in which to not make it too overwhelming or visually too intense so that everyone reads every single word.

Wysocki

Wysocki states that “visual arrangements do some of the work of the genre.” I agree with this, because usually the visual element of the work is what can set it apart from another work. For example, it probably takes less than 5 seconds for our brains to distinguish a comic strip from a research paper, an advertisement to a news story, etc. So much study and analyzing goes in to the many facets of lay out; font size, font type, organization of page, etc. 

I would argue we are becoming a more appearance-obsessed society and that goes a lot farther than people and places. Teams of people are in charge of designing apps, blogs, online stores, social media layouts, etc. and the appearance of those things is of high importance to us. How this came to be I am not sure, but a well-thought out, visually stimulating presence is what can make or break your online persona, and thus, your persona as a whole (as sad and scary as that is). 

10/7

This piece makes me question what the real definition of observation. If many early philosophers had a problem with the microscope as a way to observe, than surely we must look closer at what observation really means. To me, there has to be a point in which two people look at something and see the exact same thing. For example, if a book is on the table, and nothing else. Two people should be able to say exactly that. However, images are often the way we identify so many things in our lives, yet if we observe them incorrectly from day one, we are often unable to thing of them any differently. My example for this is a traditional world map. There is distortion involved when looking and creating a 2D map. Whether they are emphasizing or exaggerating certain areas or landscapes we are manipulated in believing areas to look how they are in the map, size-wise and in location to other areas. Here is a good article on whether maps create or represent reality:

http://geography.about.com/library/misc/ucmaps.htm

When we think of science, pictures/illustrations might not come to mind. Often I think of data, charts, and hypotheses. However, when thinking back to my geology 101 text book, I remember a lot of illustrations, at least one per page. As McLuhan says, “The art of making pictorial statements in a precise and repeatable form is one that has long been taken granted for in the West.” Without these things, modern science and technology wouldn’t exist. We as a society are lucky we can rely on images to more simply and easily understand often complex issues. However, the way we perceive plate tectonics for example, is based on the images we have seen in textbooks. These pictures are turned into an artistic image that are not exactly natural. With that, students should understand that, but know that with every different image, plate tectonics will appear different, even if it is just by a little bit.