Writing 310 blog post 18

Purpose Statement: This blog post will list sources that will help find a solution for the problem addressed in my groups white paper in order to work toward drafting a solution.

Heasman, Chris. “The 6 Best and 6 Worst Fast Food Chains to Work For.” Mashed.com, Mashed, 11 Jan.             2021, https://www.mashed.com/250093/the-6-best-and-6-worst-fast-food-chains-to-work-for/.

Johnson, Simone. “12 Tips for Happy Employees (without Boosting Pay).” Business News Daily, 13 Dec. 2021, https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6084-employee-happiness-without-raise.html.

“Key Economic Indicators in the Time of COVID-19.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://data.bls.gov/apps/covid-dashboard/home.htm.

Parker, Kim, et al. “Unemployed Americans Are Feeling the Emotional Strain of Job Loss; Most Have Considered Changing Occupations.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 10 Feb. 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/02/10/unemployed-americans-are-feeling-the-emotional-strain-of-job-loss-most-have-considered-changing-occupations/.

“A Silenced Workforce: Four in Five Employees Feel Colleagues Aren't Heard Equally, Says Research from the Workforce Institute at UKG.” UKG, 22 June 2021, https://www.ukg.com/about-us/newsroom/silenced-workforce-four-in-five-employees-feel-colleagues-arent-heard-equally-says-research-workforce-institute-ukg.

Writing 310 Blog Post 15

Purpose statement: This blog post will analyze a white paper using the elements of the rhetorical situation in order to guide my own white paper.

For this assignment, I chose this white paper. It's horribly out-of-date, as it was written in 2007, but it's nevertheless an interesting example.

General Observations

This white paper addresses the issue of how people creating virtual online spaces for children can better serve the needs of children and make their products more acceptable for parents. The solution is offered in the form of a set of seven guiding principles organized along Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The audience is presumably the coders, artists, and other creatives involved in making these "virtual worlds," as the paper calls them. The stakeholders could include those people whose jobs depend on their products' success and any shareholders for the companies, as well as the kids who engage in these spaces and their parents.

The organization of priorities seems logical, and the author ties it in with the Hierarchy of Needs in a way that demonstrates the underlying logic. 

Logos 

The author includes lots of statistics, but also general logical reasoning, as much of the advice is subjective to some degree. 

Ethos

It's clear that the author's perspective is one that is oriented toward the well-being of children in passages like "The next most basic human need is for safety, including security of body, family, health, and property. Any responsible parent wants to be sure all these elements of their child’s well-being will be safeguarded in any virtual world they visit." This is obvious, but stating it makes it clear that the author empathizes with the position of parents who are concerned for their children. This may be in part motivated by the possibility of parents being a secondary audience and stakeholder for the paper.

Pathos

The third point in the paper is labeled "Fun, Fun, Fun!" This section, and also the paper more broadly, shows that the author is invested in the emotional appeal of these online spaces. This also provides an appeal to emotion to those creating these digital spaces, reminding them that their main goal should be to let kids have fun.

Telos

The apparent goal of this white paper is to guide those creating virtual spaces for kids to make them safe and fun, but also to convince parents of the safety in particular.

Kairos

The most important setting to keep in mind here is the time. As mentioned in the intro, this was a time at which products like Webkinz and Club Penguin were dramatically rising in popularity, whereas they might now be seen as outdated (Club Penguin, in fact, is now defunct, though fan-made mirrors exist.) I don't know a ton about these kinds of games, since I was never a part of them, but they seem to be less popular now than they were in 2007.

Writing 310 Blog Post 14

 Purpose Statement: This blog post will analyze a white paper titled "The Rise of Women's Sports" in order to gain insight for my own white paper that I'll be working on in the coming weeks.

This white paper is very well-designed, with a cohesive graphic style that integrates graphics, statistics, and images with text to make it easier to read. The persistent inclusion of statistics and sources also gives credibility to the message. However, it didn't communicate very well what the problem or solution was—it seemed that these aspects of the white paper were articulated subtextually, which I don't think was a great choice.

From the subtitle ("Identifying and Maximizing the Opportunity") and the later pages of the white paper focusing of partnerships with brands, I think the point of this white paper is to show women's sports as an emerging opportunity for companies to invest in via sponsorships or other deals. However, that wasn't very apparent throughout the paper, with only a few sentences and phrases clueing me in. I'm not an expert in white papers just yet, but I think that being more explicit about the purpose would narrow the focus of the target audience, and make the entire reading experience more oriented toward that purpose.

Despite this drawback, the white paper overall worked very well toward its purpose, if I'm right about what the purpose is. The emphasis throughout the paper, in the writing and statistics, is on the progress that women's sports have made. It keeps a positive tone and, while acknowledging that discrepancies still exist between women's sports and men's, doesn't dwell on it. This focus is useful to attract companies with financial interests in investing in sports by implying that growth will continue and women's sports are a profitable and untapped market.

The evidence that the author(s) use to prove this point is mostly statistics about public perceptions of women's sports and how close they're drawing to men's—even, in some cases, surpassing them. There are also statistics, particularly toward the end, about the increase in deals made with female athletes. 

WRIT 310 Blog Post 13

Purpose Statement: This blog post will describe and explain the group charter that we've developed, which will guide our behavior and expectations of one another as we work on our group white paper.

For this group project, we set a couple specific guidelines on how the group will function:

• Designate a group editor to maintain specific style.

• Discuss out of class meetings while in class/in person.

• Agree on and understand individual responsibilities within the group.

We also came up with a list of principles we'd like to follow:

• Maintain good communication through text or in person.

• Be receptive to ideas from others.

• We can only thrive if we act like a team.

• Present ideas and feedback in a constructive and gracious manner.

• Ensure individual responsibility and respect each other’s roles.

Finally, we developed a plan for dealing with lack of adherence to the rest of the charter:

• Reach out again to a person who hasn’t responded to any communication. Ask the person in person/in class if they saw the text or email. Then, if the problem persists, ask Melanie to reach out to the person.

• If a member of the group cannot maintain the charter and the problem persists after Melanie has talked to the person, we will each do a group evaluation on each member and submit it to Melanie so we can be graded according to the effort we put in and how well we maintained this charter.

• If other problems arise, talk to the group with honesty and openness and resolve the problem in person or in class. If the problem is unable to resolve, have a team discussion with Melanie moderating.

The middle section is probably the most important and also the most abstract. We came up with these principles by discussing what could go wrong in the group and how we can pre-empt those problems.

The first section is more administrative, making sure that we agree that people will have different roles (including a group editor, which I think is a great idea to give the project a consistent and unified tone.)

The third section was designed to resolve conflict among ourselves if possible, but also use our professor as a resource to help in mediation. It's also very focused on open communication, which is one of the principles we want to keep.