My Glog

My Glogster "Social Media and Politics" is fairly easy to navigate. It will include 2 multimedia sources that will be linked to on the Glogster. The blog is about how social media evolved to become a key component of news for Millennials, and how politicians use social media to reach the Millennials, and how these relate to the upcoming election. I then focus on each front candidate, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump. I then explain how Millennials use social media and how the issues discussed on the social media differs. I then intertwine my own opinions about current politicians and how I use social media to get my news. Also on my glog, I have links to Youtube videos that overview the current Democratic and Republican Debates. On the Glog you can read basic background information and be linked to key websites of current politicians. Then you can be linked to my Synthesis and how I came up with my ideas. Finally, my glog will try to educate the audience on policies of current politicians and candidates and how you can stay best informed about policies. There will also be a link to a quiz to see what candidate you should vote for based on your social media use.

Visual Rhetoric

Images draw the eyes attention immediately, it's often the first thing people notice on a page due to color, and because they are memorable. Readers generally remember images more than the text accompanying them, even if the image has a conflicting idea to the text.

You have to consider that if the image has a different meaning or conflicts with the text, people might have a different take away then was intended. You should also consider, if there are two or more sides to an issue and an image accompanies one side, readers will be more likely to align with the side and argument had a picture. Color also influences readers, bright colors grab attention and many colors evoke an emotional response.

For my "I Am a Millennial Project", I plan on using graphs and images of candidates. I also plan to use visual content such as links to social media pages for different candidates.

Midterm Reflection

Thinking rhetorically is key to understanding reading material because it then helps when writing about and summarizing the text. When thinking rhetorically one must consider the particular needs of the audience, the context of writing, and stance. These elements combine to allow for effective communication with understanding of other perspectives. It is relevant to myself to think rhetorically because it allows you to be confident about a subject which is then essential to effective writing. By having writing assignments every night on different subjects, I have learned how to write a well-structured piece that is easily comprehended by the target audience. Some points that have really been important and helpful in future writings, are the chunking assignments. They help dissect a piece of writing and work with it better than reading alone works. Thinking rhetorically will also definitely benefit my writing and help make persuasive and easily understandable writings. Another thing that has stuck with me, is the importance of writing shitty first drafts. Instead of just writing as well as possible the first time, write whatever pops into your head and have that as a first draft. Odds are you will have good ideas and some moments of talking about nothing, but the good ideas will then translate into a successful second draft.

This course has a heavy work load that doesn't allow me to focus as much as I would like on each question. I believe the quality of writing matters more than the quantity, but with large assignments due every day, I think my writing has suffered a bit.

Mid-term Version Vanishing Act

Vanishing Act - Final

I vaguely remember the sirens wailing in the background, or the hours spent in the tiniest room in the house. Eventually, I must have fallen asleep, because by the time they got home my eyes had fresh sand in the corners and my mouth tasted bitter.

I was 5, maybe 6 years old, when my brother and I decided to play a rousing game of Hide and Go Seek, a personal favorite. After game after game of being found almost instantly, probably due to my brother peeking, I came to the conclusion that I was going to win this time.

I grew up in a neighborhood in Montgomery County, Maryland,  with sprawling lawns and numerous woods. The houses were spread far enough for privacy and quick walks, supervised from the window by mom. My house and yard had more privacy than any other in the neighborhood, due to the fact that when we built the house when I was three, we also planted 100 evergreen trees surrounding the property. All of the other kids in the neighborhood were years older than me, leaving me to adventure by myself in the quiet woods.

Nothing bad had ever happened in my neighborhood. The most scandalous news was when my neighbor dozed off while driving back to her house and ran into a small tree. The younger tree that replaced it, always reminds me of how boring my neighborhood really is.

My mother never had to reveal her overprotective-self, because I was always visible from the abundance of windows in the house. There were no parks to walk to, no stores to get a snack from, nothing that I would need permission to go out and do. And that goes for games too.

My brother rarely wanted to play outside with me. He's two years older than me and way too mature to play kiddy games. But we both had a mutual love for Hide and Go Seek.

Whether it was late in the summer or already Fall, the season didn't matter. The evergreens that surrounded the lawn showed no sign of seasonal change, so the images in my mind don't match to a specific time of year.

As my brother began to count down from twenty, my eye was focused on the evergreens. As I ran away from my brother and towards the trees, I remember thinking, "There's no way he'll ever find me." And boy was I right.

The only house that is directly adjacent to my house is never locked. Ever since I can remember, either the garage or front door was open, even if no one was home. I guess I knew in the back of my mind as I ran away from my house, I would be able to hide in another. What I didn't expect, was for it to be so easy.

One of their cars was parked in the driveway underneath their basketball hoop, so as I snuck through their garage to the inside door, I expected to have to negotiate my way in. Something along the lines of "I need to win at Hide and Go Seek, and my brother would never look for me here," would suffice. But I didn't need it, because after waiting about 15 seconds at an unanswered door, I tried the handle. It opened and I was in. No need to explain why I was there. I could just hang out for a little while in their house, no big deal. Except, what if my brother was smart enough to come looking at the neighbor's house, then he'd find me. No, I had to hide in their house. I couldn't just be sitting at the door waiting to be found.

Even now, in our neighborhood, people rarely visit each others' houses. We don't have barbecue block parties, nor do we have a tight-knit community. The only time my neighbors come over is when their dogs have run into our lawn.

So there I was, walking through the house, looking for a perfect spot to hide, as if my brother was counting in the other room and not the other backyard.

The first room in the house when entering from the garage is the kitchen. I originally passed over it, thinking it didn't have any place large enough to hide in. But then, I heard my stomach rumble, and my brain switched momentarily, from hiding, to snacking.

My mother is the most crunchy granola person I know, she even makes her own granola just to reinforce the point. Every day she either goes for a 6-mile run or does one of her hundreds of workout videos. Her healthy lifestyle doesn't end with her workouts she has been a vegan for the past 25 years. My father, on the other hand, was raised on red-meat. Every year our freezer is refilled with the meat of a cow we got at auction. My parents are total opposites. But one thing they agree on is that we can never have junk food in the house. The closest thing I ever got to junk food was the organic version of goldfish kept in the back of the pantry. We have never had white bread in the house, or anything processed or chemically enhanced. Basically, a child's nightmare.

But I must have known that I would find the equivalent of "Wonderland" inside my neighbor's pantry. It left me feeling like Alice: chocolate, chips, real goldfish, gummy bears, nutella, cheetos, gushers, you name it, the pantry had it. All of the foods my parents forbid in our house were beckoning me. I didn't even stop to think that my brother hadn't ventured over to the neighbor's house to find me.

Hours later, footsteps nearby woke me. Since the pantry door was closed, I had drifted asleep in the darkness. My neighbors were shocked, but relieved to find me curled in their petite pantry. I didn't understand why until they walked me back over to my yard.

Police were swarming around my house, trailing out into the woods. Search and rescue helicopters were hovering above the vast woods behind my house. My parents were speaking with the authorities when my neighbor tapped them on the shoulder and gestured below to me. Apparently I had chocolate covering my face, but my neighbor reassured my health-nut mother that when she found me, surrounded by wrappers galore, there was a banana peel too.

According to journalist, Hanna Rosin, author of the Atlantic article "The Overprotected Kid," parents have become more and more involved in their children's lives. Rosin states that "parents these days have little tolerance for children’s wandering on their own," and this rings true for my parents especially. The woods I had previously independently explored, became an activity that required permission. My parents’ tolerance disappeared when I did. Within one day my freedom vanished. I was barely gone more than a few hours, yet my parents were too panicked and worried to trust me being on my own outside the house.

Years later, on spring break in New York City with my family, I got separated again. I had been on the subway and my navigational brother had mentioned that we were on the wrong subway. Being the youngest, I was used to always being last. So as the doors to the subway were closing, I jumped through them to the other side. My parents screamed and banged on the doors begging them to be reopened.

Obviously, it was a bit more serious than when I went missing when I was little. But I had always been overprotected, shielded from most of the dangers in the world. As I sat on the subway platform, crying, I remember thinking how mad my parents would be that I had disobeyed them. Rosin observes that most children "take it for granted that they are always being watched." Without my parents watching over me in a swarming subway station, I migrated towards the nearest police officer, standing near an emergency station. She noticed the tears streaming from my eyes immediately, and held my hand for almost two hours until my parents returned from the other side of Hudson river.

Without my family, I didn't know what to do in a public space. The only instinct I had was to look for a mother with children or a police officer, personnel my mother had told me to find in case of emergency. I rarely had moments of freedom, and although I was nervous and scared, I was also unlimited. My parents instilled a sense of protected-ness from a young age. Like Rosin said, I took it for granted that I was always being watched. After the "Hide and Go Seek" game gone wrong, I had never ventured too far from the yard. But being in a crowded subway platform, without anyone looking for me, part of me felt relieved. My parents returned over an hour later, hysterical even though Rosin states that “all available evidence suggests that children have about the same (very slim) chance of being abducted by a stranger as they did a generation ago.”

Now that I'm older, I think about how different my parents would have raised me if I hadn't disappeared that day. My brother was granted more freedoms than I ever had, I wasn't allowed a Facebook until I was 17, whereas my brother made one when he was 13. My parents seemed to treat me as if I was always going to vanish, keeping me home and out of danger. According to Rosin, my over-protective parents hindered my development and I missed out on many experiences. Sometimes it feels like that, but I know my parents weren't being over-protective to hurt me, they used their over-protectiveness to keep me safe from dangers that didn’t really exist.

My parents use my disappearance story as an introduction for me nowadays. It's an embarrassment tactic, but I sometimes I can't help but think what would have happened if I had vanished. Would my brother have been raised like I was afterwards? Even now that I’m college, my mother will ask me where I’ll be each weekend, because she “likes to know where her children are.” I do wonder when the checking in will end, and whether my brother receives the same texts. Thankfully, I was found, but my mother never lets me forget about my binging on junk food. And after the story is done, I reassure her, I ate a banana too.

My Shitty Paragraph

As a child my brain works well. Well it worked differently. I chose to hide in my neighbor's house, why did I do that? I saw my brother counting, numbers were coming out of his mouth. They went backwards from 30, or was it 20. Who even knows. Someone asked me if I chose to hide in my neighbor's house because subconsciously I knew they wouldn't be home, but I had no clue at the time. Their garage was open and car was in the driveway, I thought they'd be inside. Why? How did I even come up with the idea to hide there instead of in the safety of my own yard. I'm pretty sure my brother and I had a rule that we couldn't leave the yard in the game. But I kept losing, and I didn't want to lose anymore. So I decided to make a strategic move and camp out in the neighbor's house. I'm not normally a very competitive person, but when it comes to my brother, it kills me when he wins, so I had to win. I guess that's why I chose to think outside the box and hide in the pantry of my neighbor's unoccupied house.

I Am A Millennial source summaries

Montgomery, Kathryn C.. Generation Digital : Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2007. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 12 October 2015.


The source Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet, by Kathryn Montgomery, is an in depth look at the influence social media and technology have on politics and political involvement. It begins at the central of a cultural storm, the cycle that millennials live in where their everyday lives revolve around technology. Although many people were trepidatious when first using the internet, "These heightened concerns over online dangers are in sharp contrast to widespread beliefs about the positive role of technology in children’s lives",  it has become a normal part of most people's lives. The chapter Peer-to-Peer Politics is most focused on the relationship technology plays in politics in the 21st century. "A growing number of advocacy groups, political parties, and youth organizations began going online to spread the word about youth voting." In each elections following 2000, social media has been a key role in the voting of millennials. The overall message of the book, and especially the two chapters mentioned, is that technology increases the awareness of millennial's idea of politics and aids them in seeking further knowledge about those politics.

Greenblatt, Alan. "Millennial Generation." CQ Researcher by CQ Press. N.p., 26 June 2015.
Web. 13 Oct. 2015. <http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2015062600>.

In the article, “Will Today’s Young Adults Change American Society,” social media is a key aspect of a millennials' everyday life. Millennials are more involved with political issues than they are with actual politics according author Alan Greenblatt, "Millennials are carrying the weight of cultural expectations, with some commentators looking to them to insist on less­ partisan politics and more serious efforts to address climate change." Conveying those important issues is equally as important, and social media has been within most millennials' reach. Not many millennials are budding politicians because they believe they don't have a real affect on politics as a whole. It is still unclear what the future of politics will look like now that almost all millennials are of voting age, but in the upcoming 2016 election, millennials will hopefully have more involvement of the way they want to see America. The overall idea of the article is that technology helps bind political ideas and elaborate upon them, and as more millennials become interested in politics, social media will be more and more useful. 

Millennials: We Suck and We're Sorry. Dir. Stephen Parkhurst. Perf. Sara Jonsson, Nick Schwartz, Ronnie Fleming, and Bridget Araujo. Youtube, 2013. Online Video. 

In the video, "Millennials: We Suck and We're Sorry," millennials use sarcasm to mock the faults of their generation that aren't caused by the millennials, but instead the older generations: Baby Boomers and Gen Y. The video begins focusing on the over education of millennials, how most went to college because their parents encourage them, only to have collected tons of student debt due to the high price of college. Then the video discusses how difficult it is to get a regular job, and how they should just go out and get one like their parents did. Then they discuss that they don't like hard work even though 90% of jobs created since 2000 are part time. More stereotypes of millennials are brought into question, only to be shot down with the reason they occur. Each topic discussed is also addressed in politics, especially for the upcoming elections. Each candidate has a specific stance on most issues discussed in the video such as climate change and higher education. 

Strategies for Arguing

Analogies can be used with certain intent to capture an audience's attention and relate ideas so they are understandable, one tactic in an arguing a point. President Obama used an analogy when he was inaugurated into office for his second term, "our destiny is stitched together like those 50 stars." The effectiveness of this analogy then comes from his interpretation of what he meant, that America became great because it was built together, not by a handful of individuals.
Another tactic to argue a point, is to use classification, sorting aspects of a topic into different categories to show the differences or similarities among them. An example of classification, is sorting animals depending on their relatedness to other species. In this case that is the class of the species, there are many different subcategories to this as well. Now would be a key time to define the word class and explain the Taxonomic Rank. When writing, if a term is used that is not known by the reader, the author should then supply the definition.
Another effective tactic is to use satire, like The Onion, to convey and discuss points. The humor is appropriate in that context, because the news source is always satirical. If the New York Times of Washington Post had an article on the rush of immigrants to Europe and used satire to argue for or against it, people would be up in arms because they are a factual news source.