Tag: Jabr

In Ferris Jabr’s article, “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens”, he starts with a description of a video about a one-year old girl trying to use a magazine like an iPad. Starting the paper off like this shows how much technology has influenced our way of living. In his article, Jabr uses rhetoric to talk about how printed text and online reading are just about equal, but have differences. Ferris was a staff editor at the Scientific American which he is now just a contributing writer. He has also written for The New York Times, Outside, TheNewYorker.com, Slate, Wired, and many more. He has an MA in journalism from New York University and a Bachelors of Science from Tufts University. With his background in writing, I would believe him to be a credible source for this article; he has a background in science and a lot of experience in writing. He’s written for big, well known writing companies, which would make him pretty reliable.

Jabr’s audience are those interested in science, as he published this article on the Scientific American. He uses many experimental studies as evidence; studies that include college students in science. Primary audience would includes those who study science from about 19-30. Also, those who have at least graduated high school. This article includes a lot of vocabulary that someone in middle school probably wouldn’t be able to understand and involves a lot of studies and experiments from colleges. His secondary audience would be those who have an interest in science that are older and want to keep up to date on science things that do have some sort of background education in science.

The purpose of his article is to show the main differences between print texts and online texts. He includes studies that include different online and print texts where they then have to recall information form each. Differences in each would include navigation through the texts, distractions, etc. “Mangen thinks that students reading pdf files had a more difficult time finding particular information when referencing the texts,” (qtd. in Jabr). “Surveys indicate that screens and e-readers interfere with two other aspects of navigating texts: serendipity and a sense of control.” (Fabr, “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens) At the very end of his article he says, “ When it cones to intensively reading long pieces of plain text, paper and ink may still have the advantage. But text is not the only way to read.” (Jabr, “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens”).

His context of this article would include on the internet in Scientific American. Someone would read this for an assignment in school possibly for a science or literature class. Someone would also possibly want to read this if they wanted to research the differences between reading online and reading a paper version of a text. Someone else who might read this could just be curious about reading. Also, If I were someone who were to enjoy reading and wanted to see if reading online or a book was better.

His genre includes using hyperlinks to studies and important people. It’s in the Scientific American which can be found online on their website. There’s not very many pictures except for one which is a picture of two

ebook readers. He uses little subtitles to give an idea of what the next paragraph talks about; these include ‘Exhaustive Reading’, ‘Navigating Textual Landscapes’ and ‘Attitude Adjustments’. There’s also information about the author at the end and other works of his as well. Under the title of the article is a little sentence that gives an idea of what the article is about. There are some italics that are for the name of other texts and quotations as well. You can also share this article, which can be found at the top of the page in black and somewhat bold letters. You can also subscribe to the Scientific American which is found in a navy blue to grab your attention to get you to subscribe.

In his article, he doesn’t use much color, even the main focus of the picture is in black and white (Robert Drodz, Wikimedia Commons). The hyperlinks are in grey. His subtitles are in black and a little larger font so you can see what the next coming paragraphs are about. There are some other articles at the top of the page next to his first couple of paragraphs that kind of draw your attention to them. These articles can also be found at the bottom of the page at the end of the article.

Jabr’s use of rhetoric helps to persuade you to see his view on this topic. He uses a lot little subtle things to grab your attention and take his side on this discussion. Whether it be small or somewhat noticing, Jabr uses good rhetoric in his article.

The author of “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens”, is Ferris Jabr. According to his personal website “Ferrisjabr”, he is a writer from Portland, Oregon with a MA degree in journalism from New York University and a Bachelor of Science degree from Tufts University (“ABOUT”). He was a staff editor at Scientific American and he has written for other magazines, like New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Outside. He seems to have a great amount of knowledge in writing and science to be able to compose this kind of article. Something else that is compelling that makes him more credible is that he went to college with Maryanne Wolf and he cites her in his article.

He might have taken her class which brings me to believe that he has a passion for this topic of reading online versus paper. In an interview between Khalil Cassimally and Jabr, he states that his father was a physicist and would always answer his science questions about how the world works when he was younger (“An interview with Ferris Jabr”). His wonder for science started at a young age and, during the same interview, he later declares his mind was built for learning about and explaining science.

Since Jabr wrote this article for a magazine called, Scientific American, it makes sense that he wishes to grab the attention of scientists and other people interested in science. He does this by backing up his claims with experiments. He uses Anne Mangen, a college professor from the University of Stravanger for an example. She conducted a study of seventy-two tenth grade students in which half of these students read a text online and the other half read the same text on paper. The conclusion was that the students who read the text on the computer performed worse on the comprehension test than the students who had a paper copy. Jabr also uses quotes from a credible source, psychologist and scientist, Maryanne Wolf. She says that she wishes to keep the traditional experiences of reading and somehow reflect that in digital reading (“The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens”). His audience would also be middle-aged, middle class, and has at least some college experience based off the advertisements in the margins.

This advertisement shows a program for starting your own website and for the most part, you need some college experience to start your own business and run it on your own. A secondary audience for Jabr’s article could be college students who are doing research. His article gives them explanations of his claim and provides many sources for them to do further research. College students want articles that are credible so that they can use them.  Jabr provides this.

There are also advertisements for college students. This one is promoting a program called Chegg which connects students to the textbooks they need for school (“Fact Sheet”).

Ferris Jabr’s main claim in this article is to compare the nature of reading online to reading in paper form. He states that he tries to explain how reading on screens is different from reading on paper and asks if we should be worried about dividing our attention between both mediums (“The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens”). Throughout his article he uses evidence to explain how both devices for reading affects us. One comparison Jabr makes is that on paper texts a reader can focus on a single page of the book while recognizing how much further there is to go in the whole text. Although, when reading on a screen the reader might be continually scrolling without knowing where they are in the entirety of the text (“The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens”). Jabr also claims later that we should embrace the advantages of both e-books and paper books. He states there have been successful articles online from the New York Times, Washington Post, and ESPN that rely on scrolling and could not have the same interaction with the reader in print. On the contrary, he projects that “When it comes to intensively reading long pieces of plain text, paper and ink may still have the advantage” (“The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens”).

This article is located in an online magazine called Scientific American. It is an award-winning, source of information about current discoveries and technological innovations (Scientific American). There are other scientific articles to the right of “The Reading Brain” under the tab called “Read This Next”.

Jabr possibly chose this medium because his whole article reflects reading online. It makes sense that he would post his article on the Web since online reading has become more popular in recent years. In addition, his article is not too long which goes along with his theory that people have a harder time comprehending texts online. Maybe he wanted to try to eliminate that by not making his article too long as to lose the readers interest. Jabr’s article was probably meant to be read a little more seriously, but it was not too difficult of a read that a person who studied fashion instead of science would have a problem.

“The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens” is mostly a scholarly article. More specific, it is a scientific article. It discusses a new perspective on an emerging theory which is online reading. It meets the reader’s expectations by backing his thoughts up with scientific experiments and quoting doctors and researchers.

Jabr’s article uses visual rhetoric to help get the audience thinking about reading and what devices we use to read. The picture you see when you first open the article is of two Kindles, one with a keyboard and one without. The image is black and white and that contributes to the overall scholarly theme. There are some distractions that can be noticed when reading his article. For instance, there is an advertisement that pops up on the right side of the article.

The ad changes between “Chegg” and “Squarespace” when you reload the article. It is very distracting at first, but when you scroll down far enough, you can no longer see the advertisement.

Jabr’s article persuaded me to grasp the concept that we can use both screens and paper to read so it was very successful. The examples he used are factual and honest. There was enough evidence to convince me that there are positives to both ways of reading and that we should use them interchangeably.

Works Cited

Cassimally, Khalil. “An Interview with Ferris Jabr.” Scitable, 16 Nov. 2010, https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/student-voices/interviewing_science_writers_ferris_jabr Accessed 26 Sep 2017.

Chegg. Chegg Inc, 2017, https://www.chegg.com/factsheet Accessed 26 Sep 2017.

DiBiaggio, John. “Meet the Team.” Tufts University, 2017, https://ase.tufts.edu/crlr/team/wolf.htm Accessed 26 Sep 2017.

Jabr, Ferris. “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens.” Scientific American, 11 Apr. 2013, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/ Accessed 26 Sep 2017.

Scientific American. Springer Nature, 2017, https://www.scientificamerican.com/page/about-scientific-american/ Accessed 26 Sep 2017.

Many people have different arguments about why or why not technology is beneficial for society.  One of the beliefs is that reading on a screen in not as valuable as reading from a print source.  In the article, “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper Versions,” the author shows his opinion on this topic.  Ferris Jabr is an author who grew up in Portland, Oregon.  Most of his writings are from the years 2000-2015.  These stories cover a variety of topics, such as science, nature, animals, and humans.  ScienceLine (About) states that he has a Bachelor’s degree from Tufts University where he studied psychology and English.  Most of his publications are from Scientific American and The New York Times.   He writes often about scientific research that has been done and his opinion or viewpoint on the controversial issues.

 

The article has a variety of audiences that it is trying to reach.  One group could be researchers.  The article discusses many experimental trials.  For example, “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper Versus Screens” states that “research suggests that reading on paper still boasts unique advantages” versus reading on a screen (Jabr).  This information would be interesting and informative for science professionals, because they may be intrigued by having research to back up an opinion.  The publication, Scientific American, is known for having articles beneficial for scientists.  In addition to the publication proving this article is meant for science professionals, the advertisements throughout the article provide evidence that the type of people interested in “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper Versus Screens,” would also be interested in other educational opportunities.  For example, one of the advertisements is trying to get the readers to subscribe to their magazine.

This shows that this article targets people that would be likely to read more about science.  The second, is an advertisement that will help elementary students learn more.  It shows each grade level and has a link to fun games that improve learning.  This advertisement is appropriate for this article, because they both appeal to the same people.  The type of people that will be interested in educational aids for students will most likely also be interested in an informative science article about technology.  One possibility that would be interested in both may be parents of young children.  There is also a particular age group for Jabr’s article.  It would not be appropriate for young children because it might be hard for them to understand the advanced language.  Jabr has a very specific audience that he wants to target in this article.

 

The article posted on Scientific American has a main claim throughout.  The purpose of Jabr’s writing is to persuade the readers to agree with his ideas about how technology is impacting intelligence.  Jabr argues that reading on a screen is not as valuable as reading on paper.  He believes that having a piece of paper in front of you is easier and more productive than reading digitally (Jabr). He believes that people do not remember as much as when they are not physically flipping the pages. He uses specific examples from research done by consumer reports to conclude that reading on a screen is not as clear for readers (Jabr).  He goes on to explain that people are not as focused when reading digitally.  His purpose on writing this article, is to provide evidence for his opinion about reading on a screen.

 

Jabr’s article was written in the current period.  He published “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper Versus Screens” in 2013.  Around that time, technology was just beginning to be popular.  His article discusses multiple times the use of iPads.  He talks about the impact of reading on screens versus on paper.  He uses scientific examples to support his opinion.  This explains why it is appropriate for the publisher to be Scientific American.  Most people who would be interested in reading his article would also be likely to visit the website Scientific American.  In addition to the publisher, the form of writing is important for an author and the audience.  This article is mostly viewed on the web.  It may also be available in a magazine made specifically for science professionals.  The context in Jabr’s writing allows the appropriate audience to view his writing.

 

The genre of this article is an online publication.  Readers who are interested in this article may be expecting hyperlinks for more details about Jabr’s specific examples.  For example, there is a link to click on that brings you to the video Jabr is talking about in the first paragraph.  Another thing that is usually associated with websites are advertisements.  The content of the article is related to the advertisements that are shown.  This makes the readers more likely to be influenced by the advertisements that pop up.  Another convenience that goes along with online articles is the search function.  When a reader can search on a website, the author does not have to include each detail.  For example, different articles may be linked together because they are about the same topic.  This makes it easier for the audience as well as the author when reading or writing something that is a popular argumentative topic.

 

Color is a sense that most people don’t think about when looking at something, such as an educational article, like the one written by Jabr.  The website Scientific American uses mostly black and white.  The background does not have any color, other than white.  The font also looks more sophisticated, because the letters are very uniform and they do not have many curves.  The article looks like a newspaper.  It has larger bolded headings, with smaller text undeath it.  The text is also lined up on the left side of the page.

It is very narrow, which makes the article appear longer than it is.  This is another way the author made his writing more educational and informative, rather than just opinionated.  Lastly, the author did not write this article to try and excite children.  This is shown by his use of very few pictures throughout the text.  This is another way that the appearance can help a reader to understand the authors purpose in writing.

 

Jabr’s article was informative and entertaining to read.  His explanations were convincing, which made me think about my opinion of reading on paper versus reading on screens.   The facts that he used to back up his main idea were helpful in establishing background knowledge on this particular topic.  By the end, I was convinced that most people support his opinion, although I still believe that technology has greatly increased intelligence.  I would likely cite Jabr’s article in a school-related paper about the use of technology in classrooms.  The specific details Jabr uses would be helpful to back up the opinion that online reading is not as beneficial as reading the print version.  Jabr’s article was successful in proving his opinion.