An explosion caused by two bombs created chaos in Hyderabad, Southern India and killed 13 people. The New York Times and NBC News both reported the incident but used very different pictures to accompany the story. The New York Times used the picture below of some people in the area after the attack and one person with a dog to help discover any more bombs.

 NBC News used the picture below of a man in a hospital covered in bandages after being injured during the explosion.

The picture used by the New York Times has a caption that explains the situation but without reading the caption the picture could be of any dirty street in India. The image is at the beginning of the article but it does not draw the reader into the story. If the article did not have the headline of “Deadly Bombings Hit Southern Indian City” I would assume the story were about pollution or pets or perhaps the effects of poverty on animals in third world countries. The picture is not significant enough to the story to make me relate to the picture. The position of the picture suggests that it is very important to the story but that is not the case. The article describes the tragic event well but if I were judging the article by the picture I would not necessarily want to read it. The picture does not hone in on the subject well enough. However, this picture does not affect the story once you have read the article. It simply has very little effect before the article is read. On the other hand, NBC News uses a picture that clearly relates to the story without reading the headline. Anything could have happened to put the man in a hospital but just by looking at the picture the reader knows that something tragic has happened and people have been injured. However, unlike the New York Times article the picture is not placed at the beginning of the article; it is in the middle of the article, off centre, and small. The picture shows you how badly the civilians were injured and makes you sympathize with them. The placement of this picture makes the reader realise the depth of the situation. The picture is halfway through the article so they already know that there was a bombing and people were killed and injured. However, when they see the picture they are actually looking at someone who was injured in the bombing and the story becomes that much more real and emotional. The picture enhances the story and heightens the emotional response to the story. NBC chose the picture well so that it would add depth to their story. If the picture were positioned at the beginning of the article it would have a greater effect because the reader would have already had an emotional reaction before they even read the article. Because of the initial emotions provided by the picture, if it were at the top, the reader would want to keep reading to find out what happened.

NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/22/world/asia/deadly-bombings-hit-southern-india-city.html?ref=asia

NBCNews: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/21/17044448-11-killed-as-blasts-rock-shopping-area-in-hyderabad-india?lite

Photographs in and out of context

Errol Morris, in his column Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire, discusses the relationship between words or stories and pictures. He describes that when we look at a picture of an unknown person or object we cannot create “true” beliefs about the picture without a caption or a story. He uses an example of a picture of The Lusitania. Without any knowledge of what it is we just perceive the picture as a boat. When we look at the picture with a caption stating that it is The Lusitania we can remember what we know about the liner and its impact on history, specifically the U.S. involvement in World War I. He suggests that pictures cannot be fully understood without words. If I looked at a family photo of a random Vietnamese family I would not have any thoughts about the family other than the fact that they look Vietnamese, or even more vague Asian. However, I could make conjectures in my mind of what emotions they have and the relationships within that family. I agree to certain degree with Morris. I believe that a picture means more to us if we know what is happening in the picture or who is in the picture. Also, I agree that without the words we are just guessing as to what the picture is. With the words we can know what the truth about the photo is. This photo is not from a news site or a blog but without a context it does not mean much. It appears to be a road that only covers half of the hill. Without context you might be questioning if it is in the process of being fully built. Just from the picture you cannot tell where it was taken or any other defining factor about it. 

However, if I were to add the caption “My Group’s Community Service Project for an Elementary School in Vietnam” you would start to create some other ideas about the picture. You now know that the picture was taken in Vietnam, the road was built for an elementary school as a community service picture. This caption still does not describe why we built the road or the gruelling process that went into building it. However, after the caption is added you can still know a lot about the picture and you know the context and can start thinking whether or not it is “true or false”.

Taking an Approach

            Harris discusses his idea of “taking an approach” in his book Rewriting. He describes this as when an author will write something with the style or ideas of another writer. Taking an approach can be explained as a rewriting of a text but instead of just rewriting the original piece you take the ideas of the author and the style of the author and make it your own. Harris used a good example in how a movie producer or director will take a book and use the story and the author’s style to make a movie that is his own interpretation of the same story. Taking an approach can be both weak and strong. An example of a weak approach would be when an author uses quotes from the original author to form their own story. A strong approach would be when an author does not use the quotes of the original author but their ideas and style. If an author makes a strong approach they have incorporated the authors ideas into their own work.

            I am not quite sure if the New York Times takes an approach when they write their articles because they are just trying to get the news out there. They are not taking the ideas from someone else but are just taking the facts from the situation and putting them to paper. However, The New York Times might take an approach when it quotes other sources or other people but this would be an example of a weak approach. This is not a writing example but an example of taking approach would be fashion. Someone who does not have the money to buy designer clothes will use the ideas and styles of a famous designer and create their own outfits out of clothes they can afford.

Short Essay 1

Article Rewrite

I rewrote the New York Times article about the horsemeat scandal in Europe. The original article explains the scandal involving horsemeat being found in products that should contain beef. This is occurring throughout many European countries but the original source of the meat is not completely known. I am rewriting the article as if I was a mother living in the U.K. writing a blog. The audience for this blog would be other parents, who probably live in the U.K. or Europe, so when rewriting this article I added some concerns that a parent would have. I did not include all of the details about the whole scandal because the parents reading this blog are most likely more concerned with the consequences for their family. I also added a lot more of ‘my’ personal opinion because as a parent writing a blog I would want my readers to know my opinion on the subject. Also, the other parents reading the blog aren’t interested in the small details about what section of the government are doing the tests but are more interested in the details about the tests actually happening, how it could affect their child, or how they can avoid the scandal.

Are we feeding our children horsemeat?

Last week I had a birthday party for my five-year-old son and we made burgers for the kids. Now I am worried that I unintentionally fed all my son’s friends horsemeat burgers instead of beef burgers. The government has stated that they have found horsemeat in a lot of frozen products that should contain beef. Not only is it bad enough that these products contain horsemeat but also that they can’t pinpoint where the fraud is starting. This scandal is happening throughout Europe in countries such as England, Ireland, France, Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Luxembourg. If I travel with my family and buy food at a local store do I need to worry about what I am feeding my family? Also, horses are treated with different drugs to horses. What if some of the horsemeat that was found in these products had some drug in it that reacted with our bodies and made us sick. The amount of the drug might not affect me as an adult but my little five-year-old son might have an issue because he is so small! They have found a processing plant in Ireland that has been supplying England with products containing horsemeat. Another company in a different country was supplying the meat found in Ireland but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other processing plants with horsemeat. Maybe if I lived in Ukraine I might expect this but living in Surrey I expect the meat I buy at the store to be what it says it is. Maybe this is my fault for buying frozen foods instead of fresh foods but I should also be able to trust that beef is actually beef. As parents, throwing parties for our children can be expensive so of course we all want to save some money but maybe we should start buying only fresh meat. The companies are recalling products that might contain horsemeat but will that solve the problem? Are the companies going to recall these products but continue to use horsemeat because it is cheaper? We would all like to believe that our governments or the companies themselves should test products before they are packaged and put on the shelves but apparently they don’t already do that. The government is more worried about these companies misleading the buyers than the health and safety concerns. As a mother I am concerned about both sides but more so with the health and safety. Yes I would love to know what is in the products we are buying. However, I am also concerned with the health and safety side because imagine if I were throwing my son a party and was serving these burgers that contain horsemeat and one of the kids at the party is allergic to horsemeat. A kid having an allergic reaction at your child’s party is a huge concern to all of us as parents. I shouldn’t have to worry about giving my son, who has a peanut allergy, something containing almonds that might actually have peanuts in it because they are cheaper to produce. My advice to other parents: throw away frozen beef products that you have bought recently and start to consider buying more fresh meat!

 

The original article is from The New York Times and is titled: “Horse Meat in Food Stirs a Furor in the British Isles”. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/world/europe/horse-meat-in-food-stirs-furor-in-british-isles.html?hpw&_r=0

Countering

Harris, in his book Rewriting, discusses the concept of “countering”. He describes this concept as the adding of original ideas to a text. When “countering” something, according to Harris, you are looking at the text as a whole and commenting on what it lacks, “uncovering the values”. “Countering” is not necessarily an argument because you can agree with something but still believe that it is limited. However, “countering” can also be “arguing the other side”. The other part of “countering” that Harris discusses is “dissenting” where someone agrees with the ideas of the author but adds his/her own idea to the topic.

I was looking through some blog posts and found this example of “countering”. In this post, Tyler Cowen quotes someone who misread his own article and made an incorrect judgement. Cowen adds a part of his original post showing what the other person misunderstood. He then adds his own thoughts to the situation and also adds some ideas that he left out of his original post. This is an example of countering because he shows the argument, whether it is incorrect, of both sides and he then “uncovers the values” by adding some more ideas about the topic. Something that is lost through “countering” is the full story. Someone might add some ideas that were left out of the original argument but the likelihood that they describe all of the original ideas is unlikely. If we read just the article with the new idea we do not see the full argument.

Forwarding

Joseph Harris, in his book Rewriting, describes a term he calls “forwarding”. He describes this as the process in which new ideas are being added to a text. I don’t mean that the text continues to grow in length but that every time someone analyzes that text they will add their own ideas or if someone is discussing a book in a literature class they will talk about what it means to them and then put those ideas in a paper. By responding to the articles we have been reading for this class we are forwarding all of the author’s ideas. We are looking at a quote and producing our own ideas about the idea that the author has already written about. Harris describes forwarding in relation to academic writing by saying that “the goal of such writing is not to have the final word on a subject...but to push it forward, to say something new, something that seems to call for further talk and writing”(35-36).

When I first thought about a blog post or news article that is an example of forwarding I thought about social media in general. Through Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter, people share personal experiences or the latest news story. What is lost in this process is perhaps the depth of the original story. We might read a status on Facebook about a shooting at a school and think that it is terrible but might not look it up and read an article about it. Social media sites shorten everything so with this kind of forwarding depth is lost.

Social media is not the best example of forwarding but is a very common version of it. I was looking through Andrew Sullivan’s blog The Dish and found a good example of forwarding. Sullivan is not bringing his own ideas into the argument but uses three different peoples ideas to get his own point across. Sullivan is using forwarding because he is adding to someone else’s idea. Here is the link to the blog post.

The "Press-Sphere"

Jeff Jarvis defines the “press-sphere” as the change in how news surfaces and how news is presented. Jarvis describes how the news today is full of links and references that were non-existent before. When reading a blog post or an article there are many different links to other websites that will provide more information about a similar topic. He comments on how we can link to government or company websites to add to our news stories. Reading this article made me think of Wikipedia. Before this new “press-sphere” and new technology you would look in an encyclopaedia or ask your parents about something. However, now we can go onto Wikipedia and answer our questions. What is written in an encyclopaedia is fact and cannot be changed without publishing a new edition. I could change a Wikipedia page with the click of the button. Everyone can add to a Wikipedia page and everyone can see the millions of links that are on Wikipedia to a random blog to an official government site. The confusing part of his model was that he almost just threw some ideas out there but did not necessarily organize them. Obviously, he organized them enough to create charts and make his point but at the same time the article almost felt too short to make his argument. It was confusing because I felt like the article was cut short before he made his full argument.

How My Classmates Get Their News

After reading my classmates posts about where they get their news I have noticed that a lot of us find out about the news through Facebook or word of mouth. Just like me, a lot of my classmates will find out about a news story on Facebook and then will look it up somewhere else, like The New York Times. We all vary in how much we read the news. Some of my classmates will try and read it daily but others will just read something if it pops up on Facebook or a friend tells them about it. After starting this class, however, a lot of us have started to read the news more because it is technically a requirement. I think that a lot of us appreciate this requirement though and want to start reading the news more as we grow up. Civic literacy and how it relates to how we get our news is a difficult topic because some might say that we are not civically literate because we don’t read the newspaper every day but others might argue that we are more civically literate because we know about what is going on in the world even though we might not read the news daily. We might not know every detail about what the government is doing right now but just by word of mouth or social media we know a lot more than we think we do. Hedges would be disgraced at the fact that we find out about the world through Facebook but is it really such a terrible thing where we get the information as long as we do get the information. Does it make a difference if I am reading an article on The New York Times because of a friend’s status on Facebook or if I am reading the newspaper because I read it every day? I think we are proving Sullivan’s point about how information spreads so quickly on the Internet and how when he blogs he might be responding to someone’s comment or might be looking up an article because someone recommended it to him via email.

Reading The New York Times

Very rarely do I actually read a newspaper, in print or online, so it has been nice to have the requirement to read the New York Times. It is important for us to stay current on our world but unfortunately I don’t do that. As I said in my previous post, the only way I know what is happening is through word of mouth. For me, the assignment of having to read the New York Times has not been just another tedious homework assignment. I have enjoyed reading it and hopefully will continue to do so after this class. When I am looking through the headlines to decide what I want to read I think my focus goes to the stories about the rest of the world. I rarely look at the stories about the U.S. and especially the stories about the U.S. government. I am an international student and love to travel so I would much rather read about animal trafficking in Thailand than Obama’s deficit savings. I will look at the headlines of all the stories but to be honest I don’t read any articles about politics. I have very little interest in politics, which might stem from the fact that I grew up in Dubai where expats don’t have any control over the government or the laws. So I guess what I have missed because of what I focus on is actually what’s important to the country in which I live. I plan to continue to live in the U.S. after I graduate but somehow I still don’t think too much about the politics of this country. If anything has changed it would simply be the fact that I am reading the news more, whether it is the stories about animal trafficking or Lindsey Vonn’s knee injury and not politics…

How is Technology Affecting Our Literacy?

            Is technology affecting our literacy or is it just creating a new definition for literacy? Literacy is an ever-evolving concept that changes with new ways of reading and writing. Reading used to be only necessary in order to understand the Bible or other holy books but now we define a society by how much of its population can read or write. Literacy is definitely being changed by new technologies but whether it is a good or bad change I am not completely sure. Even if I had to pick one side I do not think I could because I believe that technology is neither a good or bad change for literacy but merely a change. Through this essay I will examine some articles we read and show how there are valid arguments to both sides but also attempt to show my own opinion. Some of the authors we have read discuss how technology is affecting their abilities to read long pieces of work. I have never really enjoyed reading that much so I cannot describe how technology is affecting my reading abilities but maybe it’s because of new technologies that I do not enjoy reading.

            Nicholas Carr writes in his essay Is Google Making Us Stupid? about how he struggles with reading longer pieces with new technologies, such as the Internet. Carr claims, “The Net seems to be…chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation”(Carr 2). He believes that the way information is portrayed on the Internet, in short snippets, is determining how our brain wants to get all of our information. I agree that the speed at which I can get information has rapidly changed and has affected my ability to research anything. If it isn’t in the first page of Google I most likely will change the wording of my search rather than press the dreaded next button. Also, the length of something on the Internet also determines whether or not I will put the effort into reading all of it. Obviously I will read something lengthy for class or if I am interested in the topic but if not I will just skim or completely ignore a long article or book.

            Even though I might skip the occasional long article I do not completely agree that the Internet is lowering our nations’ literacy rates. I do agree that it is changing what we read and how we read but I think that we are reading the same amount as we used to. Someone who read the newspaper every morning might still read the newspaper but might read the online version instead of the paper version. Maryanne Wolfe, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University, disagrees and believes “when we read online…we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged”(Carr 4). I agree that our reading habits change when reading online but I also think that it depends on what we are reading. If I am going through my newsfeed on Facebook I will be a “decoder of information” but if I am reading a National Geographic article online I believe that it would create the same “rich mental connections” as when I am reading the actual magazine.

I also do not think that technology is decreasing our writing abilities. I do not believe that my writing has become worse because of my embarrassingly large amount use of Facebook or Tumblr. I know when certain types of writing are appropriate. Andrea Lunsford, in her essay Our Semi-Literate Youth? Not So Fast writes about the effect of new technologies on college students writing abilities. She talks about how we can easily change from levels of formalities whether we are writing a Facebook message to a friend, an email to a professor, or a research paper. Lunsford discusses the impact of new forms of writing (texting, Tweeting, Facebooking) and states that “rather than leading to a new illiteracy, these activities seemed to help them develop a range or repertoire of writing styles, tones, and formats along with a range of abilities”(Lunsford 1).  Because of technology, as Lunsford argues, we are becoming writers with a greater variety of style. We can write a Tweet that is limited to 160 characters or we can write a 1500 word essay. We are also able to quickly switch between styles. Whilst writing this paper I wrote a text message but it did not affect how I am writing this essay; after writing my text I know not to continue writing in shorthand for this essay because it would not be appropriate. Before the Internet and the new technologies associated with it, people would write letters, books, poems, or essays but not much else and now we can write a variety of different text mediums with all different styles.

            Not only is technology helping us to write in a variety of ways but it can also help someone read more often. Technology is helping the amount we read because of how readily available everything is through the Internet. We can find almost every essay, piece of literature, or article online. We also have access to this with the simple click of a button. With the ease of finding something to read online people can read much more frequently and easily. Also, if you just want to read a paragraph of a book you can do that much more easily now and a laptop is much more portable than a few books if you want to read one section from multiple books. Personally, I am much more likely to read something online than I am in a book, magazine, or newspaper. Chris Hedges, in his essay America the Illiterate, argues that majority of our population have become so absorbed by the Internet and how it displays its information that they are “informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés”(Hedges 1). It is true that when on the Internet we are more attracted to something that has appealing colours and pictures but that does not mean that we are only interested in websites based on their pictures. Just because someone spends a lot of time on the Internet does not mean that “childish narratives and clichés” are the only thing that they are interested in. Someone could spend hours online reading newspapers, articles, or academic papers. Technology might be affecting people the way Hedges believes but it might also be helping people that did not read before to start reading. People who were reading a lot before technology are still reading a lot with technology. However, someone might not have read a book before but will now read an article every now and then online because they have easy access to it.

            After analyzing these articles my opinion that technology is just changing the way we read and write rather than decreasing our literacy is still valid. Yes, maybe when we are reading something online our eyes might start to look at the colourful advertisement on the right but if we want to read the article we will continue to read it. The same thing can happen when you are reading the newspaper. You might be really involved in an article but something moves outside and grabs your attention but once you realise that whatever moved is not important you will continue to read the article. Within the youth of today we might be spending more time on Facebook or Twitter and less time reading but that does not mean that we cannot read with deep thoughts. This also does not mean that we cannot write as well as we used to before. Lunsford discusses the challenges we, as students, face with the new technologies and claims that “What students need in facing these challenges is not derision or dismissal but solid and informed instruction. And that’s where the real problem may lie—not with student semi-literacy but with that of their teachers”(Lunsford 3). So is it really the students’ problem that some people write ‘lyk dis’ or is it the lack of teaching? I believe that Lunsford’s argument was very harsh but it has some truth in it. It is both the students and the teachers’ problem. If a student is not willing to learn how to read and write effectively there is not much the teacher can do. However, if a teacher is not willing or literate enough to help their students then the fault is with them. Overall, I think the true answer to the debate whether technology is adversely affecting our reading and writing abilities is based on the individual. Literacy is a social achievement but the affect that technology has on that literacy is individual. If someone wants to read and write and learn how to do so at a higher level it is up to him or her. Personally, I want to be able to read and write at a college level and hopefully my time at DU will help me achieve that but this decision is my own and is not the same as every other seventeen year old.

My News Source

I would love to say that I read the news everyday but that would be a lie. I think it is important to be current with what is happening in the world but sadly I am not. I have been reading The New York Times for this class so for the past four weeks that is where I have been getting my news. The way I hear about news is either through someone telling me about something or reading about it on a social networking site. When going through my newsfeed on Facebook, if I find a status about a news article I will read it if the topic interests me but if not I will just continue going through my newsfeed. If something really big happens the news spreads so quickly that I wouldn’t be oblivious to what is happening but I cannot say that I am the person who would start the conversation about what is happening right now. I don’t watch any news channels on TV and I definitely don’t read newspapers. So when I do read the news I would most likely use the online version of The New York Times as my source. The sad truth is that at one point I didn’t even know who the Prime Minister of England was, and I am English… I now know that it is David Cameron.