Tag: rhetorical analysis

The Esperanza Center is a nonprofit organization located in Baltimore, Maryland. The organization serves to improve the lives of immigrants by offering educational, legal, and compassionate services. Below we will review a rhetorical analysis that describes the audience, purpose, context, author, and genre pertaining to the Esperanza Center.

Audience

The Esperanza center primary target audience are individuals who value giving back to the community by donating money or volunteering. The writer appeals to the values of the primary audience by using a slideshow of visual modes on the volunteer page. In the images, a gestural mode is displayed through facial expressions and interactions between people to emphasize that “Serving people of all ages, we can help you find your place to make a difference”(“Esperanza Center”, n.d.)

The secondary audience, are individuals who are seeking to find immediate help, members of Catholic communities in Maryland, someone looking for employment, and competitors interested in developing a nonprofit. The values the secondary audience are diverse. Some individuals desire a company that will help in career development, where others are looking for a specific program for a loved one. The writer appeals to the secondary audience through spatial mode. Readers can easily access the information they are looking for through the organization of paragraphs, and Z shaped page layout.

Purpose

The overall intention of the Catholic charities website is to improve the lives of the community. On the display page of the website, the writers wrote in big white text “We are a movement to improve lives, join us”(“Esperanza Center,” n.d.). Executive director, Bill Mccarthy wrote, the organization aspires to “touch the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals and families each year”(“About Us,” n.d.). With that being said, the purpose of the Esperanza center is to specifically cater to immigrant families. The center assists in offering educational services, health services, legal services, reunification services, and human trafficking services. The secondary intention of this website is to publicize the positive impact Catholic churches have on the community. This is shown on the homepage through video media, news, stories, and testimonials.

Context

The medium is executed through a website. The writer chose a website because the organization is able to communicate their services and mission to a large demographic of people at a low cost. In addition, many organizations feel that individuals prefer to access information through the internet rather than a newspaper or brochure because technology is easily accessible.  Readers are able to interact with this text via tablet, phone, desktop, or laptop. Esperanza’s website is multimodal. The writer communicates information through various modes such as words, pictures, videos, bullet points, colors, shapes, and paragraph spacing. One does not have to sit down to understand the message the writer is trying to convey. The physical arrangement of the website is organized for readers to obtain the information they need by reading the large fonts and clicking the headings.

Author

I believe the writer or writers of this website are the employees that handle the media and content creation for the organization. Bill McCarthy, who is the executive director for the organization is the only staff member whose name is attached to the content on the website. I do not believe he is solely responsible for all the media within the website. However, he is responsible for many articles that are written on the company’s blog. The anonymous writer or writers have established credibility in the website by highlighting the competing organizations that recognized them for their impact of the community. The writer includes data such as annual reports for donors to view where assets are being used in the organization. Also, the media on the website are pictures of volunteers working at events, and the videos contain interviews by staff members that currently work in the organization.

Genre

The genre of this website is a nonprofit organization. Esperanza center’s website spatial mode is arranged in a template format thats similar to other nonprofits websites such as the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Both websites contain the standard donate page, about us page, events page, news page, contact information, search engine, and the organization’s name in the top header. Both websites feature compelling images that bring awareness to the cause. A more specific genre that demonstrates the website’s genre is a message board/ weblog/ directory styled website. The home page is one message for the masses. The weblog features articles for readers to interact with the organization. The directory allows readers to examine information with ease.   

 

References

“Esperanza Center.” Catholic Charities of Baltimore, www.catholiccharities-md.org/services/esperanza-center/.

MCcarthy , Bill. “About Us.” Catholic Charities of Baltimore, www.catholiccharities-md.org/about-us/.

Rawan Mahmoud

Dr. Licastro

Eng 256 OM 1S

11 February 2019

The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS) work with refugees, migrants, and children to make sure that not only are they welcomed into their new communities throughout America, but to also ensure that they are protected, and have a safe transition into America. Their services and advocacy fall into four different categories: protection, stabilization, integration, and the long welcome. Protection provides them with access to legal and physical support and protection of human rights. Stabilization provides them with access to resources and information. Integration provides them with opportunities to engage in their new communities. The long welcome is a project that provides them with successful integration.

Audience: 

According to Writer/Designer, an audience is the intended reader of a text (Arola, Sheppard & Ball, 2018). The intended primary audience for LIRS would be donors, migrants, refugees, and children. The secondary intended audience would be volunteers, human rights advocates, Lutherans, and refugees or migrants that are seeking loans. Donors would be their primary intended audience because their donate button happens to be one of the main buttons that stands out, all throughout their website. Since the donate button happens to be highlighted, anyone that comes across this website, the first thing that will capture their attention would be the donate button. Refugee’s, migrants, and children also happen to be the primary audience because this website was made for the sole reason to reach out to any migrants, refugees or children that may need help. This author also happens to be reaching out to volunteers, human rights advocates, Lutherans, and loan seekers. Next to the donate button also happens to be a “take action” category, which has volunteers and advocates listed within it and on the right top corner is where migrants and refugees can find the loan button. Lutherans would be drawn to this website because they would want to provide help or bring awareness to their fellow Lutherans. People are drawn to this website because if they are looking for ways to help migrants or refugees, the author knows that the website provides them with everything they need to help out.

Purpose: 

The purpose is the intention of the text. The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services purpose is to make sure that refugees, migrants, and children have all the resources that they may need in order for them to transition into their new lives as seamless as possible. LIRS’ purpose is to also ensure their safety and protection. They provide viewers with this information on their home page. Their home page also includes how many volunteers they happen to have and how many migrants and refugees they have welcomed into their care.

Context:

Writer/Designer describes context as “where the text is located, how it is meant to be read, or what surrounds it” (Arola, Sheppard & Ball, 2018). This medium is considered a website and the author most likely chose this as their medium because they wanted to inform and to reach out to as many people as they can. If the author had simply posted an ad in the newspaper or written a report about it, not everyone would have access to it. But because this information was posted online, almost everyone would have access to it. Someone can argue that not every migrant, refugee, or child has internet access but almost every library provides people with free access to the internet. This text is meant to be read virtually anywhere that has internet. It can be read on a computer or it can be read on a phone. Within the website, there are links news reports that surround the text. The news that is linked within the website discuss topics that are related to migrants, refugees, and children.

Author: 

When it comes to a non-profit website, such as LIRS, the website tends to have more than one author because the role of running an organization like LIRS tends to be a lot for just one person. When it comes to websites, one of the first main thing that a person should do is to see if it is a credible source or not. Looking at the author will help determine if the source is credible or not. When it comes to the author/s for this website, the website itself provides a list of who is exactly on the board and the committee.

Genre: 

According to Writer/Designer, genre is to, “help us recognize how to group similar texts and understand their communicative purpose” (Arola, Sheppard & Ball, 2018). For this website, it is clear that the website is a non-profit website because all of the donations that they receive goes directly to the migrants, refugees, and children. This website also happens to be an informative yet religious website. The website provides information on who the organization is, who the leaders are, how someone can help, and much more. They also happen to be a religious website because they have several sources on their website that discusses religious events that they can attend.

Modes of Communication:

Throughout the website, there are multiple forms of linguistic modes, which happens to refer to the use of language.

The website provides multiple different linguistic modes, one of them being about information on how they can volunteer and help out.

With visual mode, the website has plenty of visual all throughout. The website includes various of different pictures and it even features a video. The color scheme of the website is generally the same, which is blue, white, and an orange almost red color. I believe that the author purposely made the donate button orange because it’s the color that stands out the most. It makes the reader’s eyes go straight to the donate button.

With aural mode, which focuses on sound. The website provides the viewer with two different videos that they can view. One of the videos discusses immigration detention, which is “the process of detaining non-citizens in prison-like settings while their immigration case is processed” (LIRS). The other video, which also happens to feature the  CEO of LIRS, discusses refugees, migrants, and children and the reasons why they flea their countries. 

Spatial mode, which is the arrangement of the website. When a person visits LIRS, the home page prompts the reader to scroll down. Although there isn’t an arrow that directly points down, the way that the author designed the layout is that they had a word the was cut off, which forces the viewer to scroll down to see the rest. The home page also prompts the viewer to click on their “read the stories” button, which allows the viewer to get more invested in the website.

 Gestural mode refers to facial expressions, hand gestures, body language, and interaction between people. Just by having the two videos up on their website, it is clear that there is a gestural mode throughout the website. Not only does the website include videos, but there are also plenty of pictures that depict emotion.

References:

Arola, K. L., Sheppard, J., & Ball, C. E. (2018). Writer/Designer: A guide to making multimodal projects.

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. (2019, February 06). Retrieved February 10, 2019, from https://www.lirs.org/

The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (“LIRS”) is a nonprofit organization that helps refugees, migrants, and those seeking asylum become integrated within United States communities by using a rhetorical situation. Writer Designer describes a rhetorical situation as a set of circumstances in which an author creates a text (Writer/Designer 21). In order to create a useful text, one must focus on the audience, purpose, context, and genre and apply it correctly (Writer/Designer 21). LIRS uses a website in order to effectively persuade their audience to direct change regarding immigration in the United States through thoughtful incorporation of audience, purpose, context, author, and genre into their website (Writer/Designer 21).

Audience

Rhetorical analysis of LIRS’s text demonstrates that the intended primary audience is for refugees, children, migrants, and those seeking asylum in United States communities. A secondary audience for LIRS may be those who are becoming familiar with the political climate regarding immigration and are inquiring information. Additionally, a secondary audience may also be those who are interested in volunteering for an immigration detention center, those willing to contact their local congressperson to impact legislative efforts and policy changes, and others who desire to donate to the organization. The values that the primary and secondary audiences hold is most likely in accordance with the same opinions of LIRS because the audiences may be trying to advance LIRS’s position in taking action and helping refugees and migrants.

Purpose

The purpose of LIRS’s text is to explain their efforts in helping refugees, migrants, and those seeking asylum because the text lists how LIRS has welcomed more than 500,000 newcomers. LIRS states that they help the newcomers as they are in the process of coming into the United States and will continue to help them once they arrive.

A secondary intention of the website is to obtain new volunteers and donations to contribute to the organization. The menu bar button states “Take Action,” which gives the audience an option of advocating, hosting an event, volunteering, and giving to the organization. In fact, the “Donate” button in the screenshot above is surrounded by bright orange, unlike the other menu buttons. This is intended to stand out for users, which makes it more likely for them to donate to the organization. The color of the Donate button represents a visual mode because of its ability for the audience to likely notice the button, and it also represents spatial mode because the author carefully places the button on the right-hand corner so the audience can easily donate without any difficulty and have a good user experience. Additionally, another secondary intention may be those seeking information about the political controversy regarding immigration by referring to the “Blog” button. The text provides published blog posts that discuss different categories regarding advocacy, community engagement, immigration detention, etc. The audience may choose which topic they wish to read about after clicking on the drop-down bar. The audience may even choose to leave their own comment on the blog posts themselves to provide their own feedback. This drop-down bar is easily accessible to navigate, and it helps LIRS communicate their call for action.

Context

LIRS uses the medium of their text as a website, which can be found using the text’s URL (https://www.lirs.org/). The author chose this medium because almost every organization creates a website in order to attract more recognition and gain success as a business. If LIRS did not have a website, they would not be able to collect online donations and publish as much information for users. The social and cultural connotations within the text are that it allows users to have easy access to the LIRS organization, by using blog posts, bold and colorful font, and pictures.

Readers can interact with the text through computer, phone, and tablet. The view of the text on a phone is easily accessible and looks just as good as it does on a computer. The phone view provides all of the same functions as a computer view. The organization and alignment of the phone view are thoughtfully arranged, and the audience should have little difficulty in navigating around the website. Therefore, LIRS allows its audience to easily access their information and resources, which help persuade their organization’s message to its users.

Author

The author of the text is Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which was founded in 1939 by Lutheran churches in the United States that initially served to help newcomers in the United States during World War II. While the actual author is unknown, it most likely is either a group of people within the organization or a contractor for the organization who designed the website to help establish their call to action. On the face of the website, the organization seems credible and trustworthy due to its large amount of information and well-designed website. Below, the author identifies leadership positions within the company in bright, bold font in order to emphasize credibility among leaders, which will ultimately help persuade the audience to believe that LIRS has a good reputation.

The author comes across as knowledgeable in the steps that LIRS takes in helping migrants and refugees, and the text works to supports this reputation because of the vast information provided such as numbers and blog posts. To better understand LIRS, Wikipedia provides some detail by stating that LIRS has 103 employees, $50.4 million in revenue for 2013, and it is a faith-based organization that is rooted in three national Lutheran denominations (“Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service”). By being in business since 1939 and acquiring such a large revenue for 2013, this helps users better understand LIRS’s good reputation.

Genre

The genre of the text is an informational website in which users can obtain resources, get involved, and donate to the organization. The ways in which the text is similar to texts for other organizations, like Esperanza Center and Maryland Immigration Rights Coalition, is that each has buttons provided for users to access resources on how to get involved by donating and volunteering. Additionally, each website provides contact information for their organizations and search buttons to help users find what they are looking for within their websites. Each provides news archives that discuss current events regarding immigration. LIRS follows similar genre conventions that other nonprofit organizations follow in order to satisfy audience expectations.

Rhetorical Analysis of the audience, purpose, context, author, and genre of LIRS’s text demonstrates it to be an effective website that provides useful information regarding its work for immigrants and refugees, while also reaching out to those who may be interested in participating in LIRS’s call for action. The easily accessible website has been thoughtfully constructed for the audience to understand LIR’s message. The website could be better by providing real-life stories of migrants and refugees who were successfully integrated into the United States with the help of LIRS directly on the landing page.

Works Cited

Arola, Kristin L., et al. Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014.

“Esperanza Center.” Catholic Charities of Baltimore, www.catholiccharities-md.org/services/esperanza-center/.

“Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.” LIRS, 6 Feb. 2019, www.lirs.org/.

Maryland Immigrant Rights Coalition, marylandimmigrantrightscoalition.org/.

Wikipedia contributors. “Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 7 Feb. 2019. Web. 11 Feb. 2019.

 

Adonte Langston

Professor Licastro

ENG 256

2/11/19

Introduction

The Maryland Immigrant Rights Coalition is a non-profit organization that gives aid to refugees. They help create legislation and open new programs for refugees and give them a sense of community. They use their website to give information on current immigration policies and to try and get people to donate. The websites use of type and basic design helps the website get straight to the point and helps them achieve their goal of receiving donations / volunteers.

When you land on Maryland Immigrant Rights Coalition’s homepage you are greeted with the “MIRC’s” logo. Underneath the logo is an image of people from multiple races putting their hands together symbolizing their unity. This is the first thing you see when landing on their website. Underneath of this, is the websites menu bar. The menu includes the “Home”, “Resource”, “Get involved”, “Join MIRC”, “Donate”, “Past Event’s” buttons and a search bar. Each of these buttons takes you to different locations on the websites in order to give you more information.

The primary audience are people that are willing to donate (doners) and also volunteer workers seeking to help refugees. The secondary audience are other refugees seeking information on the organization and the aid that might be available to them. The second button on the menu is the “resource button”. This button brings down a sub-menu that includes different resources that are useful for refugees. You can click on these to gain more information on the different resources. For example, if you click on the “Immigration 101” button it takes you to a page with a Youtube video of the MIRC president giving basics on immigration.

As you go across the menu bar, you get to the buttons “Get Involved”, “Join MIRC”, and “Donate”. This indicates that the purpose of this website is to raise money and awareness on refugees and this organization. Even though these buttons do not stand out much from the rest and the website does not follow tradition non-profit templates, their main goal is still to give users information to make them want to donate to this cause. The “Get Involved” page gives general information and locations of other organizations that need volunteers and interpreters in Maryland.

Overall, the website is pretty dull. It’s very basic and just seems to be delivering information. It doesn’t do anything inviting in terms of design, font, or color scheme. The most common modes on this website are the use of type to tell information and videos. There are also some images, but not many.

The information on the website is also biased. They only talk about and give information that supports their cause. You would never see anything on their website that goes against it. The organization also mentions how their beliefs go against those of Governor Hogan, using politics to support their cause. However, the website does do a good job at telling basic information on immigration and the current immigration policies in the US.

Underneath of the “Join MIRC” button is a drop menu that includes the board members of the organization. It lists the executive committee and all the board members.  The executive committee consists of the President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Secretary of the organization. The authors seem pretty credible due to their activity in the community and aid from other organizations.

The Genre of this website is a non-profit. However, it does not look how other non-profit websites look. Most non-profit websites are very inviting and have very large call to action buttons to grab users attention. The MIRC website was very dull and focused on being informative.

 conclusion

This non-profit organization has a very dull and boring website. It does not have much color to it and is not very interactive. You can click around the website through the menu, but the website sticks to type and some images to give information. I think the website does a good job of relaying information but they need to add more design aspects to make the website more enjoyable and not as boring.

Works Cited:

Maryland Immigrant Rights Coalition, 2017, marylandimmigrantrightscoalition.org/

The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is a nonprofit website that gives information about immigrants and refugees that are coming over and seeking assistance from LIRS. They also are trying to get people in the United States to help and give their time to help out and donate to help keep the organization running so they can help as many immigrants and refugees they can. This is a great website to a rhetorical analysis of. By doing a rhetorical analysis of this website, you get a better understanding of what the creator and authors wants the audience to understand and to take away from after visiting this site.

The primary audience that the author is trying to target is people that are looking or want to donate to help the LIRS, an audience that is looking to volunteer or help in any way that they can, and another primary audience that this website it trying to attract is people that are looking to adopt a child. A secondary audience that this website attracts is students that are doing research on refugees for projects. Some values and opinions that the primary audience holds are being compassionate and being kind hearted. These people want to make a difference is peoples lives and they can do so through this organization. The values and opinions of the secondary audience is that they are looking to achieve something. The author does appeal to these values and opinions because they are looking for money from the audience and they are also giving information to the audience.

People go this website for a certain purpose. This website was created for a purpose and the way that the website looks and what the website says tells and shows the purpose that was in mind for the audience. When thinking about the overall intention of this text, the mission statement tells the audience what the intention is. “We stand with and advocate for migrants and refugees, transforming communities through ministries of service and justice.” (“Mission & Vision”). Mission statements are meant to show what the organization is trying to do. This mission statement says that they are standing with and being advocates for migrants and refugees. They are also saying that they are helping the community by transforming the community through their work. The secondary intention would to be to get money from people to help immigrants that are coming over here and to pay for the expenses that they have to run this organization. I say this because they have a donate section for people to donate any amount of money that they are able to donate.

The medium of this is a website. The authors chose this because it is a super easy way to get all the information out to the public that they need to, and they can put any and all information that they want to. Also, with having technology being the way of the future, it just makes sense to put all of the information on the internet. Because this is a website that means that I was able to find this on the internet. The historical conventions for these types of text was over the phone calls, brochures, letters, and pamphlets. There are many ways for the reader to interact with this website. The reader will interact with this website over their phone, over a desktop computer, and over their laptop. This website is very easy to access, and it makes for easy use and it is very easy to move around in their website.

The way that the author writes the information really makes a difference in how the reader reads a text and it also helps get the reader to understand really what the author is trying to say. The authors establish personal creditability by showing the numbers of volunteers, how many people they have helped and how many partners they have working with them. The author wants to come across in a very accepting way. They do not want to force anything upon the reader. The author comes across as very informative. They just wanted you to know the information so you would donate or think about giving up some of your time to help them out and volunteer for them. I do not feel as if the author has a certain reputation to hold. I feel like that the authors really just wants to inform people about what is going on and I feel like they do a very good job at that. Since this website is a nonprofit organization, there are normally this many authors for the website. The authors include: Board Chair – The Rev. Michael Rinehart, Vice Chair – Mrs. Linda Stoterau, Board Treasurer – Mr. Dennis Wieckert, Board Secretary- Mr. Evan Moilan, Executive Member at Large – Ms. Judith Benke.

This website is a nonprofit website. Which makes this text a hortatory because the author is trying to encourage the audience to either help them by volunteering or help them out by donating money. This website is similar to other websites in this genre because they are asking for help, meaning your time. They are also asking for you to make a donation. They give you sad information about the immigrants and the refugees to play to your feelings and your emotions to make you want to help. There are some key features that make it a hortatory. One feature that makes it a hortatory is the donate button at the top right-hand side of the website. Another feature that shows it’s a hortatory is the take action section in the middle at the top of the page.

Works Cited

“Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.” LIRS, https://www.lirs.org/. Accessed 11 Feb. 2019.

“Mission & Vision.” LIRS, https://www.lirs.org/mission-and-vision/. Accessed 11 Feb. 2019.

The Lutheran Immigration and Refugees Services (LIRS) has been around for almost 80 years. Their mission statement is, “As a witness to God’s love for all people, we stand with and advocate for migrants and refugees, transforming communities through ministries of service and justice” (LIRS). LIRS’s webpage is effective because it is organized in a way that is easy for viewers to navigate and understand.

The first thing to understand about this webpage is that its’ intended Audience is for Donors and supporters. There is a button of the word Donate that stands out from the rest of the words and buttons on the screen (LIRS).

There is also a tab under “our work” that says, “become a foster parents” (LIRS). So, this is also intended for people looking to help asylum children and become their foster parents. Furthermore, this website could possibly be for people doing research on asylum seekers or want to help. This is shown through the button for “take action” that pulls down different options like, “Advocate”, “Host an event”, “Volunteer,” or “Give”(LIRS). The people interested in this web page most likely support asylum seekers and wish to help make a difference for families who are seeking safety.

Overall, the purpose of the website is to get people to donate to this cause. As mentioned above, there is a Donate button that stands out from the rest to get people to support their cause. In addition to the donate button, there is a “give” button under the “take action” tab. A few other purposes for this webpage is to raise awareness for asylum seekers and persuade readers the importance of protecting and helping refugees.

The author of this website is the organization Lutheran Immigration and Refugees services. LIRS was founded in 1993 by churches that saw the need to provide asylum services during World War II (LIRS). They continue to this day to provide support and shelter for refugees, children, and migrants. In today’s world, most organization need a website to be known about. The context of this medium is a website off the internet. The author most likely used a website because when people are searching for information on asylums, they are more likely to use the internet or “google” to get more information on that topic.

Keeping this topic in mind, the genre of this text can be considered a current social justice issue. A more specific genre is support for asylum seekers. This is shown through the organizations logo of the statue of liberty’s burning torch (LIRS). The statue of liberty usually represents light to freedom. In context to asylum seekers, the statue of liberty could represent them trying to find the light to freedom.

LIRS website is also effective because it has strong affordances. Meaning, it has strong visual, linguistic, and spacial representation that are easy to understand. Visually the website is user friendly because it looks similar to other popular nonprofit websites that we see. For example, the website shown below is of the U.S Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI). Both LIRS and USCRI pages look similar. They both have their logos at the top left corner, different drop down menus, and a “Donate” button on the right hand side that stands out from the rest of the buttons.

Linguistically, this website is effective because it is inviting. The first few words you see are, “welcome”, or “introducing” (LIRS). The use of language is powerful in getting its message across and gaining support from viewers.  In addition to its powerful language, the way the website is organized is powerful. Considering this webpage resembles others, it is easy to maneuver. The pull down tabs are easy to follow. The different pull down tabs say, “About Us”, “Our Work”, “Take Action”, “Resources”, “Press Room”, “Blog”, and “Donate”(LIRS). A cool thing about this website is that if you click on one of these tabs, you can click back on the logo in the top left corner to go back to the home page.

To close, the creators of LIRS effectively displayed their website because it was easy to comprehend for viewers. Thus, allowing them to fulfill their greater purpose in gaining support and donors for asylum seekers.

Works Cited:

“Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.” LIRS, 6 Feb. 2019, www.lirs.org/.

“U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants”, 2017, refugees.org/.

Erin Stephey

Dr. Licastro

ENG256

10 February 2019

Empowered Nonprofit Through Mode and Affordance

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is a nonprofit organization that is working towards protecting and empowering migrants and refugees through their Lutheran faith. This organization has helped many migrants and refugees and will hopefully help hundreds of thousands more. Not only do you have the option to donate to help this organization, you can also volunteer or become a partner through your church, service, organization, etc. This nonprofit utilizes a website to reach their audience and clearly define their intended purpose.

When you first visit the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service website you see the navigation bar at the top, followed by a split hero image that takes up the majority of the homepage above the fold. Below you will see part of the hero image that is displayed on the homepage of the LIRS website.

On the left side of the hero image there is text that says “Asylum seeker. Immigrant. Refugee. Human.” Viewers that read this side of the hero image can see that the word “Human” is emphasized because of the linguistic and visual changes that are apparent with the word, such as the background blue color as well as the white font color.  By looking at this text as well as the rest of the website above the fold, you understand that the genre of this website is a nonprofit website. If you look at the websites of other nonprofit organizations you will see that many of them have a hero image that either has a picture of people in need or state a short blurb of how they wish to help others. Other nonprofit organizations also have a more eye catching tab for donations to be made or a tab for people to volunteer to help the organization.

LIRS is one of those nonprofit organizations that has a navigation bar with one tab that catches the eye of those visiting the site because the font of the text saying “DONATE” is white instead of blue, like the other options in the menu, and it has a large orange colored bubble around the text.

Because of this eye catching button, we can infer that the intended audience is towards donors as well as volunteers because of another tab labeled “TAKE ACTION”.

When taking a look at the “ABOUT US” tab it tells the viewers the background history of the nonprofit organization. This tab also has a dropdown menu that states the mission and vision statements, partners that work with and help LIRS, as well as the staff and leaders of the organization. The dropdown menu gestures improve the user experience by letting the viewers know when they hover over the tab, more options will fall underneath.

From these pages we get a sense of who the authors of this website are. There are multiple names listed under the “OUR LEADERSHIP” tab so this means that there is a large group of people contributing around the United States from California to Maryland and from Texas to New York. When looking at each name individually, the Board Chair is titled “The Reverend Michael Rinehart.” Because of this title people believe that his credibility is legitimate as well as the information included within the LIRS website. Also looking at the partners that LIRS has, this is a potential secondary audience because in this tab there is a place to fill out information to become a partner. Whether the partner is a church, a service, or a foundation, these potential partners can view the existing partners of LIRS in the “OUR PARTNERS” tab as well as at the bottom of any page, there is a button that says “Partner Login” where you can access specific information regarding becoming a partner.

Because of the sections labeled “HISTORY” and “OUR WORK” that describe what the organization has done and will continue to do, this website is very informative. Viewers can access previous efforts that have helped many migrants and refugees along with future efforts that LIRS is hopefully going to continue to work towards. Not only is the website informative, but it is engaging, inviting, and involved because of the noticeable call to action with the “DONATE” button and the sans-serif fonts used throughout the website.

Previously mentioned, this button is very eye catching so more people are inclined to visit that page and donate money to the nonprofit organization. The medium that the LIRS authors chose to use was web. I think the authors chose this particular medium over others because today more and more people access information through mobile devices since it is more convenient. People are able to look up information quickly, donate money easily, sign up for updates about situations occurring, become a partner with LIRS, share their own story, etc.

This is much more convenient and accessible than looking at a flyer posted somewhere that tells people to go to a website or send money to a specific address or come into a nearby office to sign up, etc.

I think that the main intention of LIRS is to receive money from donors as well as help from volunteers that can help the nonprofit organization reach their mission and vision statements. I also think the authors of LIRS intended for more awareness of the nonprofit organization as well as more awareness about these current situations occurring today.

After analyzing the website entirely it is clear that the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service organization utilizes their website to effectively communicate their mission to their intended audience of donors and volunteers. Because of all of the modes and affordances within the website, this makes the website that much stronger and user friendly.

References

LIRS. “Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.” LIRS, 6 Feb. 2019, www.lirs.org/.

IRC. “International Rescue Committee (IRC).” International Rescue Committee (IRC), 2019, www.rescue.org/.

The Lutheran Immigration and Refugees Services is a non-profit working to improve immigration policies and help immigrants and refugees. This organization has been around for almost 80 years. They are “a champion for refugees and migrants from around the globe”(LIRS.org). This essay will be a rhetorical analysis of their online website www.LIRS.org. The design and intentions of the author of this website serves a specific purpose to make the audience take action in their goals.

The genre of this text effects how the site is organized and how that will reach the audience. A broader genre would be that it’s a website, but a more specific description would be that is non-profit.  The structure of the text looks like the template most non-profits use with the links at the top and images taking up the whole length of the screen.

The website aims for a specific audience that the organization wants to attract. The intended audience for this website is people willing to donate to LIRS or for people looking to become more involved with refugee relief. The secondary audience may be people who are looking to raise their awareness on immigration issues. The values that these audiences hold would be acceptance and community. Their opinions would reflect wanting refugees and immigrants to have a better life in America with the help to the organization. This audience would be more open minded to accepting immigrants in the U.S. The author appeals to these values and opinions because of the information and access on the website such as the donate button and the take action section of the site.

The donate and take action links also lead to the intentions of this text. The overall intention for the text is to take donations and volunteers in for the organization. At the top of the website there is a donate button that is orange while the rest of the site is blue and white. The attention to this button serves an important part of their purpose. A second purpose is to spread awareness about immigration issues and what LIRS does. This is seen through the parts of the website such as the about us tab and the link to their blog. Providing these links will draw the audience towards the sites purpose.

Allowing for a medium to support the sites purpose is important. The medium of this text is the Web. I think the author chose this particular medium because it can hold a lot of information and be very easy to navigate. I also think the author took into account how important the internet is in today’s society and the access many people have to the Web. You can find this text through searching for non-profit immigration and refugee organizations and that will send you to the website. This website is filled with visual, spatial, and linguistical aspects that make the website successful. LIRS “was founded in 1939 by Lutheran churches in the united states to serve uprooted people during world war 2.2” (LIRS.org). This organization has been supporting people in need for generations and they have adapted to the type of people who need help in today’s political climate and adapt to new ways to spread their mission such as with this website. Old forms of spreading their mission existed through public speeches at national council meetings. The social and cultural connotations in this text relate to the current immigration problems including improving immigration policies. This is a big controversy within our culture. The colors used on the site are different shades of blues and orange. The word welcome is used throughout the website. On the home page there is a picture of the statue of liberty hand and torch.

There are also images of refugee children and families.

Readers will react with this text through the links and opportunities to donate and volunteer. Readers would access this text while on their phone or laptop however it is a site they would use while sitting down in order to focus on the content. It is a text that could be used in private or public settings.

The author has to consider many aspects while using this medium. They establish credibility through a tab on the website that leads to a board of directors, executive committee, staff leadership and at-large members with their names and positions. The site also states the board of director consists of 17 members who “have knowledge of and commitment to refugees and immigrants” (LIRS.org). Looking at the staff leadership someone can make a guess that a more specific author could be the director for marketing and communications, director for outreach, director for development, or director for advocacy because all these positions play a role in this website.

I trust this source because it is run directly by the organization. It is important to trust the source because if someone donates money, they need to know it is legitimate. The author comes across as a group of individuals working together for a social justice issue, they believe is important. They also have links to their church, service, and foundation partners. These relationships show the authors involvement with partners who work for people. The organization itself does not have a great reputation with leadership according to reviews on glassdoor.com however this would be done through research past the site text. The text does not support this reputation.

This website uses calming colors and easy to read fonts so that the audience can quickly and easily understand the purpose of the website. The architecture of the site is easy to navigate like most nonprofit websites so users can effectively use the site. All of this enhances the users experience and allows LIRS to carry out their mission with the public to a full extent.

References

Arola, Kristin L., Ball, Cheryl E., Sheppard, Jennifer. Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects. Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2014.

“Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service Reviews.” Glassdoor, www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Lutheran-Immigration-and-Refugee-Service-Reviews-E915690.htm.

“Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.” LIRS, 6 Feb. 2019, www.lirs.org/.