Wiki 5-fact check in practice

II) 

The article I chose is the Wikipedia page of “Twitterature.” The sources for this page were mostly articles from other trusted sources, such as The New Yorker, and The New York Times blog. I feel like the sources are not necessarily reliable, because they include personal blogs, meaning lots of bias and opinions, as well as an entry from Urban Dictionary. Urban Dictionary does translate “slang” terms, but a lot of times it is a bit profane, and it exaggerated. I trust the sources from the New Yorker and New York Times. Those are both well-respected publications and reliable.

After doing the 5-fact check, the five that I checked were reported thoroughly and correctly.  It includes the different genres of Twitterature, such as Twitter novels, literary classics retold, collaborative works, and fan fiction. These were all stated in the sources.

I think the information is generally reliable. Since the term in the article, “Twitterature,” is a slang term, and new to this generation, we must assume the the blogs and other sources are correct, since it is probably the only information available about this new term. It is not a historical event or person, which would have much more factual information available. This kind of thing is a bit subjective, as since it is new and was born with the ride of social media, a set-in-stone definition for it has not yet been decided on or achieved.

There is not much detail, simply because of the fact that, like I said, it is a new term. There is not yet much to work with or many examples to give. However, even so, the article goes into the different forms of Twitterature, a bit of the history, and even some examples. In this particular case, the lack of details does not translate into lack of reliability. There is simply not enough information out or fully established yet for the article to be super-detailed. 

Analysis

Wikipedia has always been fascinating to me. This is mostly because I've grown up being told that Wikipedia is not reliable and that one should never use it in a research paper, but if I am being honest, Wikipedia has not failed me once. The information I find is always precise, complete and elaborate, withe even more details than I was originally searching for. However, after Part 1 of this short assignment, I've began to understand where my teachers were coming from. Although Wikipedia does only accept information from "reliable" sources, their definition of "reliable" is loose. Blogs fall under the "reliable" category just because the speaker has prior knowledge, but sometimes, prior knowledge is not enough to produce a reliable, encyclopedia-worthy entry on a certain subject. 

In Handa's The Multimediated Rhetoric of the Internet, she talks about how the internet has affected culture, and this concept was visible in my choice of article: Twitterature. "Twitterature" is a new form of literature that has come about because of the ways the Internet has influences out culture. This can be tied into kairos, and Kilingsworth's Appeals to Time. My specific Wikipedia entry is time-dependent. A few years back, Twitterature was not "a thing," and in a few years, it might not be "a thing" again. Right now is when it is, and an appeal to time in this case is very time-sensitive and appropriate. 

Rainy day calls for bloggin' from home

1. In Corbett and Eberly’s chapter about citizen criticism, they say that in a democracy, the function of rhetoric depends on whether citizens see themselves as having some sort of power, or none at all within their society. Though I think all of the terms introduced in Lazare’s essay can align with Corbett and Eberly’s text, the ones that do so the most explicitly are:

-partisan viewpoint: a viewpoint that sides with a particular party or ideology (Lazare 125).

-primary certitude: a psychological term for the midset of people who are fixed in absolute beliefs so dogmatically, without recognizing their own bias, that they cannot bear to have their beliefs questioned (Lazare 126).

-stack the deck: presenting only arguments in support of your own position, while ignoring or distorting arguments on the other side” (Lazare 130).

The case/resolution I chose is Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow,” as it is the one I am most familiar and comfortable with. The terms from Lazare can be found in this article, since it is about the idea that racism is still very much present in our lives, but now as a caste system, instead of how it was in the Civil War era. The development of the article was visible in Lazare’s terms because they displayed the viewpoint of a particular person, or groups of people, within the same side or “party.” They cannot see the bias in their viewpoint, and presented only their side of the spectrum.

3. With plenty of readings related to citizen criticism, by now I have a fairly good idea of what it menas to be a citizen critic. Nonetheless, Corbett and Eberly’s The Elements of Reasoning; Becoming a Citizen Critic informs us of citizen criticism, and how it can affect the public sphere of discourse. In their words, “becoming a citizen critic is a matter of habit; like reasoning itself, it is a matter of habitual practice” (Corbett/Eberly 122). The article further goes on to inform us how to actually be a citizen critic, without necessarily attacking the author, or relying on the Ad Hominem phenomenon to criticize. The article discusses the idea of “pandering” which can be summarized into using “emotional appeals as diversionary tactics or scare tactics” (Corbett/Eberly 127).

Corbett, Edward P. J., and Rosa A. Eberly. The Elements of Reasoning. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000. Print.

Lazere, Donald. “Viewpoint, Bias, and Fairness: From Cocksure Ignorance to Thoughtful Uncertainty.” In Reading and Writing for Civic Literacy: The Critical Citizen’s Guide to Argumentative Rhetoric. Boulder, CO: Paradigm P, 2005. 125-38. Print.

Response to Blog

Response to "It's time to talk about remediation, folks"

                In Jimmie Killingsworth chapter "Appeals to Time" in Appeals in Modern Rhetoric, the discussion of having a conscious of time when you are creating a rhetorical situation is carried out. Personally, I'm not sure why "time" in and of itself is not one of the five constituents of a rhetorical situation, as I believe it is the single most important thing in any situation, and especially in a rhetorical situation. For example, what good is it to post about the US Navy capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden years after it happened? Or how funny is a remediation of the famous Ellen DeGeneres Oscar selfie with so many celebrities months after the Oscars? 

              I really believe it's all about timing. Timing is what determines the relevance of an argument. To a lesser scale, there is a term in French called "L'esprit de l'escalier," which refers to the phenomenon of thinking of something to reply after the moment has passed, or after the conversation is over. I think the same idea applies here. The appeal to time is the fine line that determines whether something stays relevant. I agree with the blog I am responding to in that a writer's "contribution will be most effective if it appeals to time to ensure that what is said is being brought to the table at the best possible time for it accomplish what it’s meant to."

              In Carolyn Handa's The Multimediated Rhetoric of the Internet, she explained to us how the Internet is a remediated text. "By both reacting to how the Internet has affected culture and suggesting analysis for this shift, Handa molded further scholarly discussion of a vast concept that will make her discourse important for the now, as well as for the later." This was a good way to tie in the concept of time and kairos along with that of remediation among intertexts. I agree that Handa's text becomes timeless because of the way in which she discusses intertext so thoroughly. 

Handa, Carolyn. The Mediated Rhetoric of the Internet. New York: Taylor and Francis Group. Web. 

Killingsworth, Jimmie M. "Appeals to Time." 38-51. Web. 

Why I did what I did

            For this editing assignment, I decided to edit the article on why Wikipedia is unreliable. It was a bigger challenge than I thought it would be, simply because I did not feel comfortable tampering with an original work, that had its own defined voice and purpose. What I felt was the biggest issue with this article, though, was the lack of elaboration of some points. Also, there were parts in which the article was not clear, and I attempted to change that.

            First, though I did notice the numbering on the list of reasons why Wikipedia is unreliable went from 10 to 1 instead of from 1 to 10, I decided I liked that. I felt like this gave suspense leasing up to reason number 1. The other 9 reasons were very good points, so it kept me wondering what would be the biggest reason why we should not rely on Wikipedia, and when I reached it, I was not disappointed. I feel like if “it says so on Wikipedia” was number one, it would have given the article away within the first sentence. Holding that reason until the very end kept things fresh and interesting for the reader, so I kept it.

            I used the checklist in Working with Words to check my clarity. There were several points in the original article that I do not think were clear. For example, on reason number 4, which read “the number of active Wikipedia editors has flatlined,” I felt it was extremely unclear. On top of that, the explanation was one sentence long, and basically repeated the reason itself. I elaborated on this, to the best of my understanding, and attempted to give the reader more of an insight as to what the article was referring.

            I also used the idea that when writing, you should write something as if you are writing to yourself. In other words, I attempted to make the text clear enough, so that I would understand it if I had not written it. There were parts where the author seemed to have written it absentmindedly. For example, there is a section where he mentions he is about to give three reasons for something, yet goes on to only name two. I am not sure if this was a careless mistake, or a typo, but I made sure to correct that, just so everything was in agreement.