Cari Rusk – Page 2 – Introduction to Digital Publishing

Rhetorical Analysis of Guernica Magazine

https://youtu.be/Fsf28dQOzJc

Script for Rhetorical Analysis

Start off on home page of screen

Hello everyone and welcome to Guernica’s home page. Guernica is a well-organized website that incorporates all of the modes of communication to provide a user-friendly experience for an audience interested in politics and global affairs.

The purpose of the website is to combine arts and politics on a global scale to feature different perspectives on the issues we come across in our world today. You are able to find different authors speaking on different issues across the world. These issues are incorporated in the many different literary works on the site. Scroll down on homepage to show the different article topics.

Following the purpose, the primary audience of the site would be those interested in global affairs and/or politics. This is because the main ideas of the magazine focus more on global issues and politics. The secondary audience would be fans of literature, as there is an abundance of literary works on the site that combine these more intense topics.

The context of the site is an online literary magazine. The magazine was founded 15 years ago, but has done a nice job of updating their materials and site so that it is more user-friendly. The site functions well on a computer, tablet, or phone and is easy to navigate through each device with no big changes to the formatting.

Therefore, the genre would be an online literary magazine with a twist. The magazine is taking a radical approach by focusing more specifically on the politic and global affairs subjects.

The colors of the site are black, white, and shades of grey with hints of red. The black/white/grey are standard colors for professional websites and it makes the text easier to read. It gives the feeling of more of a news blog than a literary magazine, but it works with the magazine’s purpose. This contrasts the color scheme of The Paris Review greatly, where instead you have a lot of pink and white, attracting a more feminine audience. The pop of red color that appears when you click on something click on a category header highlights what section of the website you are in. This allows the user to easily see exactly what page they are on.

The font is pretty standard as well, which is what you would expect on a literary website. The size and type of font makes the articles easy to read. The big, bold block letters of the title also back up the idea of more of a professional news site than a literary magazine. Switch to an article The titles of the articles are larger than the articles themselves with the tagline in italics. It is easy to separate the title from the rest of the article because of the font size.

Switch to more tab There are lots of different kinds of media on the site. Articles, videos, audio clips of some content, photographs, and videos can all be found. This provides the user with an abundance of content to interact with. The audio clips can be found on a lot of poetry entries switch to a poetry entry for audio This allows the poet to read their work exactly as they want it to sound, which provides a more enriching experience for the audience. This is much like The Paris Review website, which also has many different forms of media.

Back to home screen The information architecture of the site is split into categories for easy navigation by the user. There is a search bar to find exactly what you are looking for. The categories across the top include arts & culture, politic, bodies & nature, lives, fiction, poetry, social, more. Switch to more tab Under the more category, they are broken down even further into types of media, topics, and specials. Compared to the Tin House literary magazine site where there are very few categories to choose from, the Guernica site has a way for their audience to find what they are looking for in an easier manner.

For the user experience, it is easy to find what you need or are looking for with the categories and break downs. A lot of the poetry entries can be listened to. Back to home The tags on all of the articles tell you exactly what category it is in.

In conclusion, Guernica is a well-designed and organized site that allows a user-friendly experience for those interested on literary works mainly focusing on politics, arts, or global affairs.

MLA Citations

Bazzet, Michael. “The Empty City.” Guernica, 10 Jan. 2020, https://www.guernicamag.com/the-empty-city/.

“Guernica – A Magazine of Global Arts & Politics.” Guernica, https://www.guernicamag.com/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2020.

“Paris Review – Writers, Quotes, Biography, Interviews, Artists.” The Paris Review, https://www.theparisreview.org/video. Accessed 12 Feb. 2020.

“Home.” Tin House, https://tinhouse.com/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2020.

Yi-seol, Kim. “Thirteen.” Guernica, 30 Jan. 2020, https://www.guernicamag.com/thirteen/.

Visual Rhetorical Analysis Practice of the Villager Website

Thesis:

The Villager is, in general, a user-friendly site that allows the user to find content they are looking for easily and effectively. However, there are some modes that the site is lacking in which can make it hard for some users to find and appreciate the content.

Visual – The overall visual content of the website is simple, but effective. All of the pictures within the articles have captions that explain the photo. Overall, there is not a lot of color with the website. It is mostly black and white with the main title of the website green, which is the color associated with Stevenson University. This lack of color conveys a professional tone seen with a lot of other major news sites. The pictures themselves are in color, which helps the reader hold interest. If the main page of the site was all black and white, the reader could become bored or uninterested with the site. The headlines and category names are all the same font while the font of the bodies of the articles are consistent. The category titles are bold and large so that they stand out and are easy to see. The headlines are also bold and larger than the bodies of the articles. This makes their content easy to navigate and find for users.

Linguistic – The overall word choices and delivery of the text is professional. The articles are what you would find in any major news site. The tone is intentional because the site is mimicking what an actual news site would look and read like so that they have professional experience in journalism. The only time the voice of the students writing the articles really come through are in the op/eds, which is exactly what journalism is supposed to be like. There are also subtitles on the sports videos, which helps the communication of the site with users who may have hearing impairments.

Aural – This is one mode that the site is lacking. The only sound seems to be the videos that they post that are sports related. There is no way for a blind person to navigate this site easily. There is no option for the article to be read aloud.

Spatial – The organization of the website is easy for the user to follow, as the articles are organized into categories. There is a convenient sidebar where the categories of articles are listed and a list of the most recent posts for easy navigation. By organizing the website this way, users are easily able to find the content that they are looking for. Across the top of the website are tabs that are split into categories. Some of the categories are “Sports,” “Reviews,” and “Features.” The home page of the site is split into the same categories with the most recent articles available to view. By doing this, the user is able to find the most recent news in the category they are looking for, but can also find older news if they wish to do so.

Gestural – This is another mode that is a bit lacking. The only gestures within the site are in videos, which only are sports related, and if the user has a touch computer screen or are on their phones scrolling through the content. This makes the website less interactive in the physical sense. If there were more videos to go with articles, this would improve the site’s level of interactive.

Conclusion:

For the majority of users, the modes of the site and their affordances are able to communicate effectively. However, there are some users that would find it difficult to enjoy the content of the site because of the lack of modes used. For example, there are very little aural elements. It would be helpful to have the ability to listen to the article as opposed to only being able to read it to get the content. More videos linked with articles would also make the site more interactive for users. Overall, the majority of the audience would find this site easy to navigate and would appreciate the content The Villager publishes.

Commuter Life

If teachers could send emails before leaving for class THAT'D BE GREAT — https://i.pinimg.com/236x/bf/e2/df/bfe2dff9643c4b614652e3d457d0c4fd–office-spaces-office-space-meme.jpg

“In My Case, before I Take a Bus and Get Stranded Downtown All Day for Nothing. | Humor, Hilarious, Funny Pictures.” Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.com/pin/529454499916159561/. Accessed 27 Jan. 2020.

I commute about thirty minutes to get to Stevenson and sometimes it is only for one class. I relate to this meme because this has happened to me several times throughout my college career. When I attended Howard Community College, also about thirty minutes from my home, I had a teacher email us ten minutes before class started that she was cancelling class. Last semester, I drove here for one class on Greenspring and the professor did not show up. Not only is it a big waste of time for me to drive here and back for nothing, it also eats up gas in my car. I feel like a lot of professors just assume that all students in their class live on campus. It was my choice to commute, but it still would be nice if more professors took that into consideration when planning or cancelling their classes.