QRGs: the Genre

To figure out what the convention of the genre are, I started with what we did in class on Tuesday. I then looked at the conventions to answer the rest of the questions about how they are used.


1. What are the conventions of the genre? 

All five of the articles use images and graphics to help illustrate their topics. While the more scientific e-cigarette article used mostly graphics, the article on the Sochi olympics used images to describe what parts of the opening ceremony they were analyzing. The Bernie article even uses screenshots of tweets to give the article more real-world context.

The articles all follow a format similar to blogging. The paragraphs are short, and there are subheadings and categories to help increase readability. They also include hyperlinks to help readers get more information on the topic or learn about a different aspect of the controversy.

2. How are those conventions defined by the author's formatting and design choices? 

Each author took the conventions and adapted them. The debt crisis and e-cigarette articles used graphs and other representations of data, the Bernie article used tweets, the Sochi article used images, and the Gamergate article used a mix of images and tweets.

The formatting of the subheadings differs as well. Some are phrased as questions while others are statements or phrases.

3. What does the purpose of a QRG seem to be?

QRGs are good for introducing readers to the topic. None of them expect their readers to be experts in the topic at hand. All of the articles include some sort of mention to the start of the controversy, or at least they introduce the main points and people on either side of the argument.

Because the paragraphs are brief, they are scannable for someone who is interested in learning what the controversy is, but maybe doesn't need to know every single detail of it.

Image by Livia, Christina. "typewriter". Uploaded 3/31/09 via Flickr.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic. 

4. Who is the intended audience?

QRGs aren't scholarly sources, so they are not specifically targeted at someone who is knowledgable about the subject. However, some of the examples go much more in-depth than others. The Sochi article is the most frivolous, and Gamergate isn't as interesting to people who aren't involved with gaming. The other articles are written about current controversial topics that are affecting our everyday lives.

5. How do QRGs use images and why?

While the types of images/graphics differs between the articles, they are all relevant to the topic that is being discussed. Some are used to illustrate the data, and others are used to show the situation. The Greece article has charts to show the concrete evidence of the country's debt and photographs to show the people that are being affected. Images are sometimes used to evoke emotion, and they all help to break up the text.


I read Jessica, Brandon,  and Jayni's posts. We all had similar answers (probably because of the in-class discussion), but we all presented it in different ways. Jessica and I used a paragraph to answer each question, Brandon used bullet points on a couple of his answers, and Jayni kept her information brief and relied heavily on the examples to help support her claims.