In producing our campaign pieces we always keep in mind that our objective is to create awareness among the community on the subject of poverty and how this problem is happening to the people around us. We want this message to be circulated to among the community in order to have them get involved in movements or organizations that help those in need. We learned in class a lot about how to write for the public and how we are supposed to create a piece that is well design and could be accessed easily by everyone. However, considering that our campaign pieces might be recomposed and used by another party, it would be a little challenging. Here is where rhetorical velocity comes in play. We, as a group are producing 6 campaign pieces of different genres, 2 of which are posters, a brochure, a letter, a website and a video. In all of these pieces, different aspects were and to be considered in the process of creating them.
As Ridolfo and Devoss stated “…rhetorical velocity, as we deploy it in this web-text, means a conscious rhetorical concern for distance, travel, speed, and time, pertaining specifically to theorizing instances of strategic appropriation by a third party”. In creating our brochure we realized that it is one of the easiest medium to be distributed, especially among Pitt students. We could just stand at a corner anywhere on campus and distribute them. The brochure however, needs to have information that could be recomposed and repurposed. The information on the brochure is the most important aspect to be revised and strategically placed to encourage others to recompose it, so I included a few Pitt and local organizations that are actively involved in helping those in poverty. By doing this, the other parties could use this information and come out with their own documents.
In the brochure, I also included some statistical studies on poverty to grab the people’s attention on how serious the problem is. How would this actually encourage people to recompose the document? I believe that by giving out information that is easily understood and easily accessed through the brochure, it will definitely attract people to use the information that is just laid on a piece of documents instead of searching through several websites and research papers. It would just make their work easier and faster. By thinking about rhetorical velocity, I understand that some genres are easier to recomposed. I do not believe that a poster could be recomposed better than a brochure because the information could be limited and it is also not well distributed. We could post them somewhere that is very public and could be easily seen by anyone, but it would not be circulated as well as a brochure. A poster could work in promoting an event or a gathering, but not in conveying a message about a critical social issue such as poverty. A serious matter such as poverty should be addressed in a medium that could provide a lot of information and that could be circulated easily. A web site or a Facebook page are some good mediums to do this.
I really enjoyed your analysis on what makes something easily recomposed. If your goal is to have as many people as possible use your information in new media, then you want to make it as easy as possible for them to analyze your work and make it into something new. I agree that “it will definitely attract people to use the information that is just laid on a piece of documents instead of searching through several websites and research papers” as long as the sources that you used for your brochure are included in the brochure. Otherwise, the person reading it has no way to determine whether your information is accurate.
I also agree with your assessment that things that are easily circulated, like brochures or Facebook posts, would have a higher rhetorical velocity than, say, a poster. Since the information can be held on to by someone, they have more time to create media of their own based off of it. A poster would be less likely to be recomposed because the viewer will probably only look at it for a few seconds and move on.
Lastly, in this case it is probably best to have a high rhetorical velocity, but in general it is important to make sure people won’t be able to use information in your documents to compose a piece discrediting your work.
I liked your analysis on recomposing an already-existing piece. I find it very applicable to the real-world, where if you want to ensure your piece is read by a large majority of people, you have to make it readily accessible and comprehensive. Although my group will not be incorporating a brochure/pamphlet into our campaign, I have seen these specific pieces circulated rather quickly on Pitt’s campus. Many of times I have seen students distributing these mediums in front of the Cathedral of Learning, or randomly on Forbes Avenue. I agree that you want the piece to be flashy and informative, but also consider your physical approach when distributing the article. If you have an upbeat attitude and casual appearance, people would be more likely to take a look at your piece (which can then draw them in).
In addition, I agree that brochures and social media pieces circulate with a higher velocity compared to a poster or stationary piece. Upon thinking of a poster, I correlate the idea to a “science fair” or an advertisement for an upcoming event. It is stationary, and sometimes I may remember the information presented on it, and sometimes I may totally forget. However, with a brochure or online post, if I want to refer to it, I can simply pick it up or look it up online, and the information is right there. In addition, since your campaign focuses on poverty, I agree that you should try to circulate your information to as many people as possible – where many could interact/view people in distress on a daily basis and could potentially act positively on the information you present.
Wow this was a great read! It really made me think about my groups campaign to deploy our information and how to make it reusable if per say other organizations wanted to use it in their offices, or websites, or as handouts. I think maybe creating a website with the whole campaign and including your work with the ability to embed may be a really great way to make it recomposible as utilize the rhetorical velocity for prime time distribution.
This class has really showed me how hard writing for the public is. Before I came into class all I thought about was making it look nice, modern, and eye catching all while including to appropriate amount of info with the correct way of writing for your audience. That already seems like a lot but now we really need to think about accessibility, recomposing, and even rhetorical velocity when producing anything written with the intent to show the public or distribute. In the future when I (hopefully) have a decent job in my field, I will be writing a lot for the public and I even do now for my internship. These are awesome things to keep in mind while I produce these works!
Really enjoyed your exploration of a poster vs. a brochure! Loved to see you try to work that out as you wrote, about the merits of each in terms of rhetorical velocity. What about digital uses of posters vs. brochures? Or is there even such a thing as a “digital poster”…maybe more of a flyer? Using programs like Publisher, Photoshop, Pages, PowerPoint, etc. allows lots of people to take a file and recompose it…are there ways we can design a digital brochure or digital flyer with that in mind? Or, design a poster or brochure in such a way that it can work in both print and digital media, and thus, open up new possibilities for recomposition? What do you think?