Rhetorical Situation Tyler Katie Logan

Rhetorical Situation

• Who (Author, Audience)
  • Author is Suzanne LaBarre. She is the online content director for Popular Science
  • The public, or anyone who reads the magazine
  • Adults, less educated people than who wrote the magazine, maybe only a high school deploma. The readers could be bias based on what their beliefs are and their experiences
• What and How
  • "Comments can be bad for science."
  • She talks about how it wasn't a decision that they made lightly. She also says that the comments that people made could really sway peoples ideas about the topic
  • There are paragraphs that separate the article
  • There were a lot of links to show examples of the bad comments on their site.
  • She was published on Popular Science
  • She has a scholarly tone to her article. She sounds like she really knows what she is talking about
  • She makes a comment that, "even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story.
  • The design element that is used is more formal
  • At the beginning of the article there is a picture of something scientific
• When and Where
  • The published on September 24, 2013
  • The domain is .com, which is a commercial based website
• Why
  • The purpose of this article is to show how bad comments can affect readers thoughts about a subject. Also the purpose could be to explain their reasoning why they are not allowing comments anymore
  • This topic is important because it affects a lot of people with the comments that are made. A lot of times it can even completely jump to a different topic.