Thursday, October 22, 2015

Audience and Genre

My controversy for Project 3 is the debate over spanking. Below is my brainstorming about potential formats that I could use for Project 3.

Regardless of the genre, I am thinking I might do my project in the form of a personal narrative or personal opinion piece. While there are other personal stories on this topic, I think that each person who writes one provides a different perspective on the issue.

Audience 1: American Parents

Genre 1:  (This is probably the least user-friendly choice both for me and for my audience) Youtube Video where I interview my family. Because we don't all live in the same town anymore, it would have to either be recorded via Skype, or I would transcribe what was said and put it in moviemaker as slides of text.

  • Example 1: If I interviewed my grandma, my dad, and my sister, I could get a comprehensive idea of both how spanking was viewed in different generations and the effect that it had on each person (I am not sure if my grandma was spanked as a child, but my dad and sister were).
    • Here is an example of the interview style that I would do. Obviously this isn't perfect, but it shows one person interviewing multiple people at once, and that's probably how I would do it. Mine would be different because it wouldn't be in person. 
  • Example 2: I could do the same idea as I have outlined above, but have the transcribed text on the screen with some sort of instrumental in the background so it wasn't just silence. 
    • Here is an example of an interview where what is being said is shown in text on the screen, but my video wouldn't have the audio and visual from the actual interview. 

Genre 2: Personal narrative article written for Parenting Magazine.

  • Example 1: Here is an example of how a person's story could inform an audience of parents who are figuring out the best ways to parent their children. This would also be a good guide to follow to figure out how much emotion to use without being either too depressing or looking unprofessional. 
  • Example 2: This example is also about a controversial topic: divorce. It is a personal story that also includes citing experts to form a "how to" type article. If I did something similar, I could do a "how to find alternative ways to punish children". 
Image by Barbara. "week 16- Brainstorm." Uploaded 4/17/12 via Flickr.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license. 


Audience 2: StoryCorps listeners

Genre 1: Interview. Similar to genre 1 under the "American parents" audience, I could interview my family members. But here, the audience is different and the interview would just be recorded as audio. It could also be transcribed, as are the two examples that I found.

  • Example 1:   This story was recorded when the mom was diagnosed with a disorder that would eventually make her unable to speak. It is a interview/personal narrative that doesn't try to persuade anything, but it is a good example of the format that I could use if I choose this genre. 
  • Example 2:  These examples are personal stories, but their topics are on the once controversial issues of race relations and inter-racial marriages. 

Genre 2: Personal story/narrative. StoryCorps doesn't really do written pieces, but let's pretend that they do just for the purpose of figuring out what my audience and genre will be. To find examples, I had to go to other sites that publish op-ed pieces.

  • Example 1: Here is an example of a personal story that was published as an op-ed to an online state newspaper. This, however, may have a different audience that I would need to figure out if I chose this option. 
  • Example 2: This example is interesting because it provides a personal opinion as well as referencing statistics and experts. This mix could work, because I could give background information before I launch into my personal opinion based on my family and my story.

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