Rhet Analysis

Project 2 Com­po­nent / Exercise

Rhetor­i­cal Analy­sis: Web-based Pub­li­ca­tion (Pro­fes­sional or Scholarly)

  • 10 points; due S 14-Mar
  • 500–700 words (of analy­sis dis­cus­sion; omit­ting process)
  • media: include visual instance (one min­i­mum) to sup­port — for exam­ple screen-capture image or “screen­cast” video
    → rec­om­mended for show­ing any unique design ele­ments and/or fea­ture that might be inef­fi­cient to describe in text (avoid summary)

 

Goal: Extend rhetor­i­cal knowl­edge and gen­er­ate insights about dis­course com­mu­ni­ties, specif­i­cally a visual arts dis­ci­pline evi­dent and main­tained through con­ven­tions of com­mu­ni­ca­tion — like your prac­tice of curat­ing with the group’s “edi­to­r­ial vision” (schol­arly and/or professional)

 
Task: Exam­ine a Web-based “pub­li­ca­tion” pro­fes­sional and/or schol­arly, con­sid­er­ing the rhetor­i­cal aspects demon­strated, dis­played, and sug­gested.
Present the results of your analy­sis using effec­tive and effi­cient prose, with crit­i­cal ideas sup­ported by spe­cific exam­ples; avoid sum­mary, descrip­tion, and gen­er­al­iza­tion in favor of pre­sent­ing your insights.
 
The main ques­tion for this exer­cise con­cerns audi­ence — imag­ined, con­structed, sug­gested, actual — (“dis­course com­mu­ni­ties”) and the con­nec­tion to dis­ci­pli­nary con­ven­tions that you rec­og­nize.
You might also con­sider, con­nect, and address any aspects of the rhetor­i­cal sit­u­a­tion tra­di­tion­ally defined:
— Con­text, Pur­pose, Tim­ing, “Sender/Receiver,” Media, Deliv­ery, Means/Methods (Style? Genre?), Mes­sage, Mode(s)

 
From your obser­va­tions and insights about the pub­li­ca­tion ana­lyzed, work with induc­tive rea­son­ing toward a con­clu­sion about con­ven­tions of the field evi­dent and implied, as well as the rela­tion to audi­ence (imagined/envisioned) and/or com­mu­ni­ca­tion of scholarly/professional dis­course — par­tic­u­larly in net­worked media ecol­ogy. (The con­clu­sion can be brief and spec­u­la­tive, and it should go beyond the rhetor­i­cal analy­sis — pre­sent­ing what you’ve learned from this exercise.)

 
 
— Review guide/questions from “warm-up” class activ­i­ties & prompts

 
» Screen­cast apps/sites: