Page 69 - ISLA 240 REVIEW PACKET

widest net possible, then it needs to utilize as many different types of media as possible, because each one appeals to a certain audience more effectively than the others.
2. I already touched on this question briefly in my previous answer, but I think that the blog posts were most effective at informing people. After all, we literally called our mini- articles “Fast Facts.” Of course, that’s not the only thing our blogs accomplished – the analysis portions of our posts encouraged our audience to think critically about the information that was being presented to them. That’s also not to say that the other teams weren’t promoting their own informative media as well; for instance, Alejandra’s first game taught me a lot about Cal Poly’s history. But they also had to worry about engaging their audience and entertaining them with their game. Though the blogging team tried to appeal to our audience through other rhetorical strategies besides logic and facts, I feel like these strategies were in service to our main objective of educating our audience, whereas in Alejandra’s case entertaining and engaging their audience was an equally important goal as educating their audience, rather than a means to that end.
3. I think my answer to the first question touches on this idea as well, but I can think of more ways that the blogging medium influenced our message beyond making it more logic-driven. One of the things that fascinate me about text is that the user has full control over how they engage with it. When a person goes out to watch a movie for the first time, they have no way of knowing what’s to come in the movie or if they’ll even like the plot without either sitting through the movie and finding out or relying on an external piece of media to tell them about the movie. They also can’t get through a movie any quicker or slower than anyone else; the movie requires the same time commitment from every viewer due to its set length. However, this is not the case with text, especially shorter pieces of text like a blog post or an article. A person can skim through them quickly, take their time to retain and ponder on the information, or skip around to the parts that are most interesting to them.
Our blog posts took advantage of this unique aspect of text by providing reader with elements of the article that can allow them to choose how they want to read the articles. For those who wanted to get just the main ideas of the article by skimming, we had blown up quotes and images that could quickly convey the message to the reader. We also had links to external sources for readers who were more invested in the topic and want to get more in-depth with their understanding of it. If it weren’t for the text medium, we wouldn’t have been able to give our readers those options for how to engage with our content.
4.
I thought that I was particularly good at conducting research on the topics I covered in my posts and providing resources for readers that can further educate them on the subject. Credibility was a major concern of mine, and I wanted to be absolutely sure that I was providing our readership with accurate information. I thought I also was effective in evaluating both sides of each issue equally in my work. I think that after what happened during spring quarter, a lot of people – myself included – felt frustrated towards the administration, as we felt like they were ignoring the problem and not doing anything. But as I conducted research for my articles, I realized the limitations that the school was operating under when it came to issues like diversity. I still fully understood the students’ aggravation at the situation, as the school can definitely do better in terms of transparency, but I found that the more I learned about the issues, I got less angry and started to think about actual solutions to the problems, rather than pointing fingers at