Today’s Plan:
- (Brief) Review of Argumentation
- Close Reading: Banning Alex Jones
- Homework
Brief Review of Argumentation
This semester I’m going to ask you to read and write arguments. To do this well, you need to be familiar with the fundamental parts of an argument. Knowledge of argumentation is called “rhetoric” (more on this often maligned term later in the semester). Some of you might already be familiar with this terminology–logos, ethos, and pathos. If so, great. If not, no worries–that’s what we’re here for. Let’s get started.
Rhetorical Analysis Questions
As an introduction to rhetorical analysis (or how arguments are perceived and treated by audiences), I want you to think about the following questions as we read different articles today.
- What is the central claim the author makes? What does it want me to believe? What does it want to change? What does this article make us want to do differently?
- What evidence does the article offer to support its claim? What kinds of evidence (statistics, experiments, testimony, hypotheticals, deductive reasoning, anecdotes, etc)?
Are there any claims in the piece that are unsupported? - Who does this article believe “we” (the writer and her audience) are? What kind of people? What do we value? What values must be in place for us to accept the claim and its evidence?
In technical terms, the first two questions above concern logos, or how we offer rational arguments. The third question gets at ethos, or how the intellectual, social, and spiritual communities to which we belong inform how we perceive arguments and influences what we consider evidence. Or, put more simply, who we are affects what we hear and think. When we are done, I have one more question:
- if you could ask the author one follow up question, what would you ask?
Alex Jones, Social Media, and When Free Speech Becomes Hate Speech
Before we start reading, I have a quick image to share.
I have three things for us to read today:
- Roose, Kevin. (2018).“Facebook Banned Alex Jones. Now What?”
- French, David. (2018). “A Better Way to Ban Alex Jones”
- Southern Poverty Law Center. (2018). “Alliance Defending Freedom.”
I’ll give you four minutes to read to yourself, and then five minutes to talk in groups.
Then we will talk for five minutes.
Homework
For homework read one article found in the green or yellow box of the media chart above concerning Alex Jones, social media, and free speech. Write a 250 word response to that article. Put the new article you have read in conversation with one of the articles we read in class today–assume that your audience hasn’t read either article (and so you have to provide very short summaries, what we call context, for them). Use a template from They Say, I Say in your post. Post your response to Canvas–there is a pinned discussion forum..
Remember that our next class will MEET IN ROSS 1240 COMPUTER LAB.
