Blog #4 let's goo

Me reading all the articles for the blog...

Good afternoon and (not so) happy Sunday! (Since I have pushed off all my homework until today..)

Not sure if you guys know this, but goldfish have a higher attention span than we do (well a lot of us, including me) so you can just imagine how long it took me to read through all the articles even though they weren't even that long...  

Okay, now on to the important stuff... 

I started off reading the JSTOR Daily articles and then went into the op-eds which was definitely a mistake. The JSTOR daily's were really well-written, well-supported, and were filled with information and evidence. Moving on to the op-eds, they were very opinion-oriented and lacked proper support. I, like many of you will probably agree, tend to search for hard facts to convince me of something. Op-eds tend to omit that, and so they were hard to fully get in to. While both fall under the "article" genre, JSTOR daily articles and op-eds have very different strategies to engage the reader. Op-eds rely on emotional appeals, which the Editorial Board of "Donald Trump's bet: We are all Chumps" definitely did in their article. Discussing how far Trump has come, despite the fact that he has not released his medical or tax records, they include a statement from Trump's son Eric who points out that even if Trump supplied his tax records, they would be released to an audience that has little to no knowledge about what they mean. He says they would look for anything in the record to discredit Trump. The article then follows this statement stating, "he means us dumb voters," which works to get us fired up by the use of pathos. 

Throwback to my last blog 

Sooooo, on to JSTOR Daily articles! (I know you all are on the edge of your seat right now..)

Although a bit longer, JSTOR Daily articles were definitely the ones that held my attention for longer. Hard facts, I like those. These articles were filled with facts, logic, and all that good stuff. They work to minimize doubt by presenting a view with sufficient evidence to back it up. 

One of the articles that really intrigued me was "How Does the Language of Headlines Work? The Answer May Surprise You." by Chi Luu. As a computational linguist, with advanced degrees in Theoretical Linguistics and Literature, I can already tell that the article will be very well-researched. Her article focuses on headlines, and how much power a group of words can be. When deciding which 6 articles to read, the titles/headlines were what brought me in, and made me want to learn more about the topic. Headlines are the first thing to grab your attention, and are aimed to make you want to keep reading. Headlines are meant to lure us in with their mysterious titles. She references a 2015 study, where researchers discussed the technique of forward referencing. This is where the pronoun is placed before what they are referencing. The example she gives is, "She did it, she read a book," which is an effective way to engage readers. With the inclusion of a case study, I am more likely to stay engaged and it might even work to cause me to agree with what the writer is discussing.  

So, as you can tell I prefer JSTOR articles over op-eds. They just seem to be more effective and engaging. 

Are you tired of me using this little guy yet?? 

Okay that's all I got! Now time for some tacos :P