Why I Chose to Analyze STEM Blogs

I wanted to do some research on different STEM blogs to see what rhetorical devices they use and how they pull in readers and viewers. I chose “Teen Life Blog”…(https://www.teenlife.com/blogs/tags/stem/), a blog dedicated to the STEM life and opportunities of young kids and high schoolers. I also chose to analyze “It’s Ok to be Smart”…(https://www.itsokaytobesmart.com). I Chose this blog because they chose to format their blog with almost solely videos which I thought could be interesting to analyze. Using the 6 categories of rhetorical analysis and planning and 8 rhetorical features of science journalism, I wanted to go through what they writers of these blogs were thinking while constructing their blogs.

6 Categories of Rhetorical Analysis and Planning…

6 Categories of Rhetorical Analysis and Planning are purposes, audience, order of information, types of evidence, style/tone, and graphic presentation.

Purpose:a person’s reason for writing, such as to inform, entertain, explain, or persuade.

Audience: the person or persons for whom a writer writes, or composer composes for.

Order of Information: Choosing a Logical Order for Ideas.

Types of evidence: where is the information coming from.

Style/Tone: Style refers to the writer’s choice of diction, sentence structure, literary techniques, and use of rhythm. Tone, on the other hand, refers to the writer’s attitude toward his/her story and to the reader.

Graphic Presentation: is how the writer chooses to layout the design of a blog

8 Rhetorical Features of Science Journalism…

The 8 rhetorical features of science journalism include ethos, voice, argumentation, organization, and use of visual and aural media. Also purple, audience, and style/tone are part of this list as well

Ethos: is establishing credibility so that the reader can trust the writer and what they are reading.

Voice: is the individual style in which a certain author writes his or her works making it more personable to the reader

Argumentation: this is if the writer is trying to argue you on something or if their intentions are something else.

Organization: is how the writer chooses to layout their blog

Use of Media: this is obvious, how the writer chooses to add different media sources.

Rhetorical Analysis of “Teen life Blog”

In this teen life blog, some of these categories jump out at you. For example audience. Just from the title of the blog you can derive that the audience of this work is mostly going to be directed towards teens and younger adults. Headlines such as “Encouraging Teen Girls in Computer Science” and “STEM Majors for Students Who Want to Work with Animals“, easily show that this blog was designed for the aid of teenagers. I wanted to speak upon the Tone of this blog. Although their a different writers for each external link and story, all of the stories provided are more casual and for the average reader. This says a lot about the tone of the blog as it could have been much more scientific or straight forward rather than casual and less argumentative based. One huge thing that I believe this blog is missing is ETHOS. Some of the writers for the stories in this blog do no have any credibility as some are not even in the field of STEM. However, their use of evidence is pretty good. Each link to a different article contained some kind of external source as to where to fact check was they were saying therefore the evidence is strong. Finally I wanted to talk about the organization of the blog. This website was very well organized and was easy to navigate. Any one who wants to learn more about the opportunities and the world of STEM as a teenager or young adult would find success using this blog.

Rhetorical Analysis of “Its Okay to be Smart”

This site is much different than the first blog post I discussed. In this blog, many videos are available that are narrated and made by Joe Hanson. Each video discusses some kind of scientific phenomenon or crazy theory. I believe that the purpose of this blog is solely to inform. Every video is extremely rich with facts and ideas that most have not thought or have known about. He uses his videos as a way to teach his viewers about these such things. Voice is very important in this blog because it is the same guy speaking in every video. He is a pretty recognizable face and voice which in turn makes this blog have heavy amounts of ethos. As for organization, the site is broken down into different section such as a home page, a store, a contact page etc.. The site is once again very easy to navigate. This is because of the use of media. By filling the home page of the blog with a line of videos, the use of external video media links makes this site super essay too click, watch, and learn. There are a tremendous amount of interesting videos on this site venturing anywhere from space to human anatomy. I thought that this video in particular was very interesting… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g246c6Bv58&feature=emb_logo

My Plans for My blog

After viewing these two blogs and being able to rhetorically analyze them, I have came to conclusions about my own blog. I want my blog to be heavily impacted by visual media including youtube videos such as the second blog was. The reason for this is that more people are likely to watch a 5 minute video than to read a 5 minute story. Especially in my generation which is why I decided to use the audience of the first blog, teenagers. I want to create a blog where high schoolers and college students can find informative and interesting videos that may help them if they choose a STEM major or career. I would like my tone to be friendly and casual as I believe more people enjoy reading that form of writing over scientific and rigid. Finally since I most likely cannot establish Ethos greatly, I would want many outside references so the reader knows he or she is getting valuable trustworthy information.

Why This Analysis was Important to me

I enjoyed doing this analysis because it taught me what to search for in a blog when myself is the reader, but also helped me to understand how I would go about formatting my own blog. Without those rhetoric features such as tone, audience, voice, and organization, etc… most blogs would fail as they do not have the criteria to inform the reader and to reach out as well as others may be able to. In all, after analyzing these blogs and defining these rhetoric devices, I am excited to start my blog and hop that it is as well put together as the two that I Decided to take a look at.

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