Friday, October 30, 2015

Analyzing Context

In the following post I will answer questions regarding the big picture of my controversy.

Hoekwater, Taco. "The Unofficial ConTeXt logo" 4/22/2009 via Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 3.0 License. 

  1. What are the key perspectives or schools of thought on the debate that you are studying?
    1. With fracking the major schools of thought are that fracking is bad for the environment and that fracking is good for the environment because the natural gas collected is a cleaner burn energy than regular fossil fuels. 
  2. What are the major points of contention or major disagreements among these perspectives?
    1. The major points of disagreement between the two perspectives are what causes a bigger and worse impact on the environment. The pro-fracking side believes that the burning of fossil fuels causes the worst consequences for the environment where the side against fracking believes that the worst consequences stem from the fracking process. 
  3. What are the possible points of agreement, or the possible common ground between these perspectives?
    1. One possible point of agreement between the arguments is that both groups genuinely want a solution that will help the environment, the two sides just disagree on what would cause the best outcome for the environment. 
  4. What are the ideological differences, if any, between the perspectives? 
    1. The ideological differences could be what side of the political spectrum they associate with. The anti-fracking sides tends to be more liberal, whereas the side that supports fracking is by default more conservative. 
  5. What specific actions do their perspectives or texts ask their audience to take?
    1. The texts from both perspectives prompt their audiences to be more aware of the actions than to take action to fix the problem. 
  6. What perspectives are useful in supporting you own arguments about the issue? Why did you choose these?
    1. Perspectives that would be useful to help me support my argument are the perspectives that I know my audience will have. Because I will be targeting my text towards college students I have to make them care about my argument, by making the argument relevant to what they view. 
  7. What perspectives do you think will be the greatest threat to your argument? Why so?
    1. I think the biggest obstacle I will have to face is readers who have the perspective where they don't care about the fracking issue at all.  
Reflection: 
After reading Dylan and Savannah's blog posts where they analyzed the content of their controversies I realized that the topic of the argument plays a huge role in the context of the debate. 

For example, Savannah is also writing about a scientific topic and I found that like me her argument was very clear cut, with two distinct sides to the discussion. The articles about her topic were also like mine where they didn't explicitly prompt the reader to take action, they more wanted to inform the reader than rally a protest. 

However, Dylan's topic was different from mine as it was outside of the scientific field. His argument looked at the different types of film, which could be argued to be more subjective. Because of the nature of his subject personal stories appear to be very helpful to use as evidence whereas scientific fact is easier for me to use and make a convincing argument. 

3 comments:

  1. Like you, my issue has common ground between the two sides. My controversy is animal testing and neither side likes killing animals. I can see how both sides in your argument have common ground. I like how your argument is based on common ground between the two rather than the traditional fracking is bad for the environment vs. money. You'll be able to reach an audience that can relate to both sides. Good job!

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  2. Hello,
    I am glad you have some sort of common ground between the two positions you stated above. My issue has more of a vague idea that both sides agree with, but it will be difficult to explain such an idea under its current circumstances. I am surprised that you would take the more difficult argumentation strategy. I wouldn't feel comfortable supporting both sides of an issue because then I would support one side more than another, and give an uneven argument in terms of evidence or explanation.

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  3. I don't think that my controversy has the same amount of common ground as yours does. I think my controversy is more about people who don't really understand and more or less informing them on the correct information. Although there is a common ground in your argument I think that you should choose one side that you feel more strongly about and argue that side.

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