RA Paper

My rhetorical analysis, "'Is Facebook Overrated?': Hamilton's generalizations about social networks" starts off by making a very concise and easy-to-read summary of the original article to get the audience on the same page. The title is very self-explanatory, giving idea of what is going to be analyzed and how. After the title and summary, the introduction of this paper ends up with a strong and straightforward thesis, stating all the tools and appeals the author of the original article relied on and the effectiveness of the argument to be analyzed. This gives field for the body paragraphs to start describing every tool specifically and updates the readers on what's coming next. The introduction captures the reader's attention quickly, and it doesn't give out many details to make him (the reader) become interested and read the whole paper. 

Each body paragraph starts identifying the topic or tool that will be analyzed, relating them to their type of appeal and how these are ineffective and why. The analysis does not look biased, however, because the author is given a chance and I analyze her intentions and why she believes her tools are effective to support her argument, and if they are, in fact. Fallacies are recognized and explained, and each strategy used is analyzed objectively and several quotes and paraphrases are presented in the body paragraphs to support the analysis.

The audience is analyzed too, giving the reader an idea of how the article is going to affect or not its audience. The language used throughout the analysis is fluent, easy to understand and there is certainly a voice present, giving the paper personality. The paragraphs are coherent, the sentences are related to each other and have a good flow when reading them, and grammar and punctuation are used correctly. MLA format rules are respected. 

The conclusion summarizes the analysis in a concise, fluent way, closing the paper very strongly. It doesn't get too long and it focuses the important points of the paper, mentioning the strategies and their appeals and wether they are effective or not and suggesting possible actions that could make a better opinion article. It makes a good conclusion because it is very straightforward and summarizes exactly what the introduction and body paragraphs say in a paragraph without neglecting any important pieces of the paper.

Audience Profile

The fact and main argument of the article talks about how the estimated price of Facebook is higher than it should be, but the author makes it look like it is directed towards a general public, which is not the best way to address the audience to such topic, considering that the ones who determine the prices of these companies are the big entrepreneurs who invest their money on them such as Microsoft (who actually owns part of Facebook), Apple, eBay, etc.

The author uses informal language to identify with her audience, which is in this case the users of these social networks and users of the Internet in general, as they might be interested in Facebook and will most likely be interested in reading this article. 

It would be much better if the author re-wrote the article again in a much more serious and formal way and addressed his audience to be entrepreneurs and companies at the level of Facebook, since public can’t do much about it.

Maybe the reason why this author addressed her audience towards the general public is that the public itself is what gives these social networks power. She might believe that users who read her article will be convinced that sites such as facebook will die sooner or later and this might help her argument somehow, as Facebook would lose users. At least that’s what I can infer of it, but other than that, the audience is not really well addressed. 

Mini Rhetorical Analysis of my article

"Is Facebook Overrated?" Is an ineffective argument that fails to convince the not well-addressed public to believe Facebok is overrated. It relies on metaphors, similes, devil terms and it appeals to logic, credibility and feelings in lower level.

The author makes an attempt at simile by comparing Facebook and nightclubs and how they are popular for periods of times, which totally fails to accomplish its purpose. It talks about how past social networking websites were what everyone would talk about but then they became boring. The author’s conclusion is that because of this event, Facebook will be another of these websites that will be forgotten with time. This is a sweeping generalization, as it is comparing Friendster to Facebook, two totally different social networks. After all, why would Mark Zuckenberg (Facebook CEO) follow the steps of another social network that didn’t succeed? If anything, he will learn from their mistakes and avoid ending up the same way. The situation is true for Friendster but not necessarily true for Facebook,

The author also uses the metaphor when comparing Facebook to gyms—a place where the author assumes people goes to flirt and gossip. He tries to make clear that Facebook is trying to morph from a gym-like site to a place where people do all kinds of activities. This is a failed attempt to support his arguments because it intends to tell the readers that so far, Facebook is not as effective as it should be and therefore is not worth the market values it had at the moment, but the author doesn’t connect this fact with her thesis, making it look rather boring and more of a useless paragraph.

Devil-terms are used not in one word, but in a whole sentence. There’s a paragraph that talks about how facebook has the “creepy prospect of turning your life into one big direct-mail campaign”. This gets to the reader as something bad as soon as it is read, appealing to Pathos, but again, it doesn’t seem like it is supporting the thesis. It seems like it is suggesting readers not to fall into facebook addiction more than convincing them of its overrated cost.

It can be said that the author himself looks a little confused about her argument, as the title of the article itself points to a question that seems to be left unanswered as you read through the article. It leaves the argument open to be interpreted by the reader more than establishing a straightforward argument and supporting it with ideas. The audience is also not well addressed, since the people who could really do something about the issue are the investors who finance these social networks and the informal language makes it look like the article is directed towards public in general.

My Rhetorical Analysis Article [Outline]

The article "Is Facebook Overrated?" talks about Facebook and it's overrated price. It's main argument suggests Facebook is going to be popular for some time but then, like other social networks, will drop because people will get bored of it. 

The topic is introduced by talking about what social networks are, and how online social networks (OSNs hereafter) attract so many people by taking the essence of social networking in the non-cybernetic world. 

After the introduction, the first paragraph starts by giving an estimate of the number of people that visited the two most famous OSNs--Facebook and MySpace-- in October 2007 and their profits.

On the second body paragraph, the author continues to talk about earnings of these OSNs and starts talking about their total market values. She talks about how Microsoft bought a 1.6% of Facebook, giving Facebook a rough value of $15 billion dollars. 

Third paragraph talks about Facebook's founder and how it all began. On the fourth paragraph the author supports her thesis by suggesting that Facebook may have the same faith of Friendster and die. She then compares OSNs with night clubs that are popular only for a short period of time and later on explains the CEOs of these OSNs are working to "morph these sites from the high school gym into one-stop entertainment destinations.".  The author then explains the methods these OSNs are using to attract advertisers and more users and make more and more money, like that of the free applications on Facebook profiles or the "intelligent" ads of Facebook and MySpace. 

After this, the author puts in doubt the effectiveness of these adverts that are the main source of income for the social networks. 

The conclusion ends up by questioning wether if Facebook is really worth 15 billion dollars or is going down like other social networks. 

Rhetorical Analysis

My issue topic talks about the globalization of social networks, so I picked an article on online privacy to make a rhetorical analysis of it. Even though I read most of the article, I’m only making an analysis on the first part of it (involving the overview, etc) due to its length.

The author of the article introduces it by talking about how millions of online users store their personal data on websites. He makes a good point by saying how websites people visit are tracked down by advertisers and more commonly by the government who uses this information for different purposes and investigations. The main concern or argument in the article is the effects of networking on the privacy. This is a good way to address his audience since it is clearly directed towards all of those Internet users who enter personal data on their daily activities to these servers.

The Kairos moment of this article is almost perfect: The rise in popularity of social networks like Facebook, Twitter and the use of internet over the last few years makes this an article that will concern a huge audience who is already aware of the dangers of the Internet.

Ethos is used fairly to establish some credibility. You can see paragraphs or examples and quotes of experts in privacy, government employees related to Internet security, professors of very respected universities, amongst other people who have authority in this topic. All of these authorities in the privacy area support the author’s idea or give examples of facts that have or can affect this audience somehow.

Pathos is also important to attract the audience in this article, especially because the author makes a smart move at the very beginning of it, in the first paragraph of the overview. He makes a question to start off his paragraph on a very engaging way: “What could happen to you?” This is no doubt the key sentence. After reading this, the audience feels curious about what’s next. The readers become concerned because they may be bound to suffer these consequences. By giving a couple of examples of negative consequences, he gets to the people’s feelings and attracts them to keep reading his article and support his argument.

Logos is established with facts. The author clearly does a lot of research and connects facts that sustain the weakness of privacy in this area and the flow between his sentences in every paragraph is good.

I hardly found fallacies in this article. Some of the consequences he mentions when appealing of pathos may be interpreted as Threat/Reward, but it isn’t really a consequence of not supporting the argument but a possibility that may happen for those who are part of the audience. It is very well written, the tone and language is semi-formal, the ideas are presented in a very concise way and the article is easy to understand. Some counter arguments may be ignored. I can think of the reason why the government controls these networks: national security. So the loss of privacy could mean more security, which is a little strange to say, but this could be a fair counter-argument to this article.  Other than that it’s a really well written article on privacy and it’s loss caused by the Internet and social networks.

Source of the article: http://library.cqpress.com.erl.lib.byu.edu/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2009110600&type=hitlist&num=16

Examples of Writing Fallacies

Examples of False Authority

1 – Try our latest deodorant Sweat-Control! It will keep you dry for 3 days with only one use, and you can forget about the disgusting scents! And if you don’t trust me, trust Shakill O’Neill! He uses it for every game and has confirmed that it’s better than any other! Get it now for a low price by calling 0800-12345.

2 – Industries that manufacture parts for the make Dodge lack good materials to make these cars more resistant. I have driven many Dodges and even owned one of them once, and it was clear that other cars are more resistant and last more time than Dodges.

3 – Parents shouldn’t buy kids cereals for children. These cereals have too much sugar and chemicals on them, and this is not only my opinion. My brother worked packing Cap’n Cruch cereal bags in their boxes for years and he has seen how they make this cereal, and according to him, the amount of sugar and chemicals in them is not healthy at all.

Examples of Oversimplification

1 – Speed driving is too dangerous. You shouldn’t drive over speed limits if you don’t want to end up crashing and having accidents.

2 – Manhattan always has traffic because of the amount of taxis on it’s streets.

3 – Global warming happens because of American Industries and factories polluting the oceans and the air.