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 It's horribly out-of-date, as it was written in 2007, but it's nevertheless an interesting example.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.