Now it is time to compose a rhetorical analysis for a professional website. These will serve as models for our final project – a redesign of Stevenson’s literary magazine. Pay careful attention to elements of these websites that you would like to emulate or avoid when designing our literary magazine. Remember, your analysis needs to start with a strong thesis statement that presents an argument about the site, and then all of your supporting evidence needs to reflect and connect back to that thesis. Please use the OWL at Purdue “Organizing your Analysis” guide to structure your essay spatially, chronologically, or by persuasive appeals.
Here are your choices:
- First, you need to choose one website to focus on. Then, you need to determine the audience, purpose, context, and genre using chapters 1 and 2 in Writer/Designer (like we did in class). You should address each of these topics thoroughly with direct evidence from the site and your research. You must use MLA citations for any information you summarize, paraphrase, or quote from any website or textbook.
- Next, you should include a thorough visual analysis of the the site you have selected. You should provide an analysis of the interface – in other words the platform the text is published on – and how that interface affects your experience of the text. When analyzing the interface consider the modes and affordances, including: color, font, media, information architecture, and user experience. You should analyze how the visualizations look, and what argument the visuals are making (in other words, what is the purpose of the images, videos, etc).
- You should write out a script using the evidence you gathered and the organize the script in a way that is easy to navigate visually. This script will be included in the post.
- Then, you will use screen captured videos (I suggest Quicktime, Screencast-o-matic, or LiceCAP), or another tool of your choosing with permission from your professor, to record your analysis. The idea is to walk your audience through your analysis aurally, visually, spatially, gesturally, and linguistically. Aim for 2-3 minutes.
- You must post this to our WordPress site with the media in the appropriate places. To share the video you can save it to Dropbox, Google Drive, or YouTube and provide a link in the post. Then, put the script underneath the video.
This is due by noon on 2/14. It should be posted as category “blog” and tag “rhetorical analysis” plus your section number.
Students must assent to and to uphold the University Honor Pledge:
“I pledge on my honor that I have neither given nor received
unauthorized assistance on this assignment/exam.”