Salon.com utilizes their multimodal affordances in some interesting ways for their article on Grand Theft Auto IV. For starters, when you first go to the page to read, you are not shown the entire text immediately. If you pay attention, there are a few paragraphs displayed at first, then once you scroll down to a certain point, the rest of the text becomes available to view. Perhaps this is to make those first few paragraphs serve as more of an "intro" to the rest of the article, though the effectiveness of this is highly dependent on the reader's method of reading. It will not really matter much to someone who brings the text they are reading to the top of the page, for example.
The article also uses a picture of the game (repeated, for some reason) with the main character, Niko Bellic, walking away from a car, presumably one he was just driving, as the driver-side door is open, parked with its wheel on top of another person. This is done to elucidate the dark, bleak nature of the game for the readers.
Additionally, hyperlinks/anchor texts are used extensively throughout the first half of the article, mainly to help explain some of their more "joke"-ish lines and to prove points that they make about setting sales records and other points. However, I did notice that--at least for me--the hyperlinks that redirected back to another salon.com page did not work properly, while the rest worked fine. I am unsure what the reasoning for this is, but it is problematic nonetheless.
All of these affordances have potential to be helpful to the text, though they can also harm it--or at least have minimal effect. For the hyperlinks to be utilized to their full potential, it would be ideal to make sure that the on-site redirects work correctly. The image would probably be more impactful if used just once, rather than twice in a row for no good reason. The "appearing text" gimmick is a neat one, but not useful for much aside from added flashiness to the site.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Monday, March 4, 2013
Make-up Blog
1) What are the three main components of a podcast script?
The opening (intro, overview, etc.), the content (the "meat" of the presentation, all the details of the speaker's topic), and the closing (outro, review, etc.).
2) What does the speaker have to say about ethos, logos, pathos and public speaking? Summarize.
Aristotle is one of the greatest contributors to the field of public speaking due to his explanations of the concepts of logos, ethos and pathos. Logos (a logic/reasoning-based appeal), was what Aristotle wished could be the only necessary appeal to effectively reach humankind, but due to humans' natural "weakness", had to be supplemented by the two other appeals. Ethos is an appeal based on the integrity of the speaker's character, a show of how credible the speaker truly is, and is characterized by the speaker's knowledge and benevolence regarding the subject. Pathos is an emotion-based appeal that is too complex to fully explain in a general-purpose podcast. Studies show that badly-organized public speeches/presentations are not effective at delivering their messages properly, as the audiences' minds have a tendency to wander. An effective way to remedy this is to use a mixture of both textual and visual information in presentations. Preparation and practice are vital to preventing mistakes and stage fright in public speaking.
3) Find a podcast on the Internet. After you find one, post the link to the podcast and then summarize the content here.
The most recent episode of Luke's English Podcast discuss's Luke (the speaker)'s history of video gaming and many common questions/issues surrounding computer/video games.
4) Who is the audience for the podcast you found? Purpose? How did you know? Point out examples of ethos, logos, pathos.
The audience is primarily directed toward people learning English to help their acclimatization to the English language in a natural, fun way. The audience is explicated by the summary provided at the top right of Luke's main page. While he does give his credentials as an English teacher on this page, if you take the podcast itself as a separate entity, the fact that he does not specifically mention what sources he gets the "research" he mentions from may hurt his ethos somewhat. His description of Pong, however, is extremely accurate, and quite helpful for those who have never heard of or seen the game before. Knowledge of this is helpful for his ethos, though it is questionable how many people are unfamiliar with the game at all in this day and age. He provides similarly sufficient descriptions of other games and game devices, further aiding this appeal. His personal approach toward these explanations are also helpful in aiding his pathos, as it provides a less clinical, more approachable listen. He does mention RAM in one description, though he refers to it as "Random Assisted Memory". Knowing it is actually "Random Access Memory", this slip-up hurts his credibility somewhat.
5) Listen for the tone and intonation of the speaker in the podcast, in addition to any sources to which the speaker made reference. How does the tone, intonation and sources used affect the audience (relate these aspects to ethos, logos, and pathos). If you don’t think these aspects had an effect in this particular podcast, explain why.
The speaker's tone lent very well to his purpose. His intonation was interesting (which, admittedly, may be a personal bias I have of a preference for English accents) which kept me hooked into listening, and his tone was personal and engaging for his audience, quite adept for keeping a listener entertained and listening.
The opening (intro, overview, etc.), the content (the "meat" of the presentation, all the details of the speaker's topic), and the closing (outro, review, etc.).
2) What does the speaker have to say about ethos, logos, pathos and public speaking? Summarize.
Aristotle is one of the greatest contributors to the field of public speaking due to his explanations of the concepts of logos, ethos and pathos. Logos (a logic/reasoning-based appeal), was what Aristotle wished could be the only necessary appeal to effectively reach humankind, but due to humans' natural "weakness", had to be supplemented by the two other appeals. Ethos is an appeal based on the integrity of the speaker's character, a show of how credible the speaker truly is, and is characterized by the speaker's knowledge and benevolence regarding the subject. Pathos is an emotion-based appeal that is too complex to fully explain in a general-purpose podcast. Studies show that badly-organized public speeches/presentations are not effective at delivering their messages properly, as the audiences' minds have a tendency to wander. An effective way to remedy this is to use a mixture of both textual and visual information in presentations. Preparation and practice are vital to preventing mistakes and stage fright in public speaking.
3) Find a podcast on the Internet. After you find one, post the link to the podcast and then summarize the content here.
The most recent episode of Luke's English Podcast discuss's Luke (the speaker)'s history of video gaming and many common questions/issues surrounding computer/video games.
4) Who is the audience for the podcast you found? Purpose? How did you know? Point out examples of ethos, logos, pathos.
The audience is primarily directed toward people learning English to help their acclimatization to the English language in a natural, fun way. The audience is explicated by the summary provided at the top right of Luke's main page. While he does give his credentials as an English teacher on this page, if you take the podcast itself as a separate entity, the fact that he does not specifically mention what sources he gets the "research" he mentions from may hurt his ethos somewhat. His description of Pong, however, is extremely accurate, and quite helpful for those who have never heard of or seen the game before. Knowledge of this is helpful for his ethos, though it is questionable how many people are unfamiliar with the game at all in this day and age. He provides similarly sufficient descriptions of other games and game devices, further aiding this appeal. His personal approach toward these explanations are also helpful in aiding his pathos, as it provides a less clinical, more approachable listen. He does mention RAM in one description, though he refers to it as "Random Assisted Memory". Knowing it is actually "Random Access Memory", this slip-up hurts his credibility somewhat.
5) Listen for the tone and intonation of the speaker in the podcast, in addition to any sources to which the speaker made reference. How does the tone, intonation and sources used affect the audience (relate these aspects to ethos, logos, and pathos). If you don’t think these aspects had an effect in this particular podcast, explain why.
The speaker's tone lent very well to his purpose. His intonation was interesting (which, admittedly, may be a personal bias I have of a preference for English accents) which kept me hooked into listening, and his tone was personal and engaging for his audience, quite adept for keeping a listener entertained and listening.
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