If we need, let’s think about the election week (2-20 min)
I’m not sure if you are getting this in other places or if you simply don’t want or need it, but just in case you do need it, I wanted to make space in today’s class to think about the election.
Sample questions:
- How are you doing this week? Tired from just media consumption?
- Anxious at all? Scared? Want to think out loud about it at all?
- Confused about anything? Want to know more about something? (e.g., a political issue you keep hearing about, how the electoral process works, why things might be the way they are)
Politics definition by political scientist Harold Lasswell: politics is “who gets what, when, and how.” That takes language and rhetoric to do that work.
Evidence, Claims, Rhetoric (15-20 min)
Turning back to research more specifically, a thing in the news right now is that President Trump is repeating claims about fraudulent voting that he has made the past few months. In particular, the target has been mail-in voting. So, I thought we would try to look at a few sources on voting fraud and try to apply what we learned through the Reflective Annotated Bibliography practice we did in process document last week.
Here are the sources:
A speech by President Trump on election night
Article on mail-in voter fraud from American Statistical Association
Daily Caller coverage of Biden votes increasing in swing states
Houston Chronicle on study of mail-in voter fraud
Look for the evidence, but even when there is evidence, look for the comments about it. What do you notice?
- Where is the claim?
- Where is the evidence?
- Where is the comment on the evidence that helps connect the evidence to the claim?
What can you do when you see things you don’t believe? Or, when you see things you *do believe*?
This Twitter thread has a good way of distinguishing between misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, media manipulation–all of which are problematic information. These terms developed from media historian Caroline Jack.
Tools we have is to Slooooooow Down to identify bad interpretations, outright lies, lies of omission, and playing to biases and ideological positions that are readily accepted that could be what dominate your interpretation if you look at something too quickly.
Reflective Annotated Bibliography (15-20 min)
Let’s go through some examples:
For 11/12, you will turn in a Reflective Annotated Bibliography for 2 additional sources you will use for your research-driven writing assignment.
Patterns I noticed:
- Think about publication and whether it is popular or academic
- Think about whether academic source is peer reviewed or not
- Think about how reputable or not a popular source is by doing research on the popular source (e.g., check out anyone else’s claims about that publication in a keyword search in a search engine, see what company owns the publication and learn more about that company, check out any political affiliations or economic interests that might color their interpretations of what they write)
- Don’t just paraphrase the abstract of an academic article. Read through it a bit! Get a sense of what is unique about it.
- In reflection, think not only about what you think about the argument of source but how it might fit into your own writing
Rhetorical Analysis Final Draft (5 min)
Submit to course website as blog post (like you do for QSR assignments), mark the “Rhetorical Analysis Final Draft” category.
As I noted in Weekly Announcement: if you need an extension, just let me know and we will work something out. All deadlines in course are negotiable as needed, especially for this term because there is just a lot going on for us all, all of the time.
Next Time
- “Using Sources” by Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz, p. 167-180 (textbook) and Reading Annotation on Slack by 3pm on Tuesday, November 10.
- “When Should I Quote, Paraphrase, or Summarize?” by Lisa Ede, p. 181-182 (textbook) and Reading Annotation on Slack by 3pm on Tuesday, November 10.
- Learning Module 7 by 5pm on Tuesday, November 10.
- Meeting with Group 3 at 3pm and Group 4 at 3:30pm on Tuesday, November 10.
- Also, work on Rhetorical Analysis (due tonight by 11:59pm unless otherwise noted), Reflective Annotated Bibliography (due November 12), and Research-Driven Writing Project (first draft due November 19)!!