Now that you have spent some time finding the best and most
relevant research about your topic and have begun to think about
how your sources “speak to” each other, it is time to think about
what you have learned from your research and take a stance.
This project serves as the link between thinking about your
sources as separate texts and moving to think about them in a
more integrated way, as voices in a research conversation that
work together to advocate a particular perspective or
perspectives. This project allows you to demonstrate your growing
knowledge around your topic and show that you can use this
knowledge to argue a particular position for a specific audience.
Task:
This project asks you to write a persuasive web article that makes
an argument about your topic to a specific audience, using the
research you’ve gathered (from Unit 2 and the additional sources
you will gather in Unit 3). In total, you are required to use at least
8 sources. A web article is a broad genre of text that
encompasses many different purposes, audiences and platforms.
For example, you might look at Example 1
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or Example 2
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or Example 3
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. I’m also including this student example
Actions
. Your web article can take any shape you want as long as 1) it
can be distributed digitally, and 2) it includes digital links and
visuals components. For example, you might choose to create
your project on a website such as Wix.com, a blog such as
Wordpress.com, a Word Document, or a PDF.
• Audience: You’ll want to select an audience that makes
sense for your particular research topic, the research you
have conducted, and the stance you are taking. For example,
if your web article is arguing for policy change relevant to a
particular topic, then your specific audience should be a
group who has the ability to impact policy. Or, if you believe
that your topic requires action from a specific demographic,
such as people your age, you should keep that audience in
mind.
• Purpose: Your persuasive web article has three goals: 1)
inform your specific audience on important background
context and information they need to understand your topic,
2) take a stance on the topic/issue you’ve researched, and 3)
persuade your audience to agree with your stance. You’ll also
want to use research effectively enough that you are
convincing your secondary audience, your teacher, that you
are making this argument based on the research that you
have done.
• Genre: A web article is a very broad genre that includes
essentially any article on the internet. For example, a
newspaper article, a blog, and a magazine article all qualify
as example web articles (see the links I included above).
Therefore, it’ll be your responsibility in this project to make
the best decisions about what kind of article you want to
write–but you will have to keep your audience and purpose in
mind when making these decisions. You’ll see that one thing
all the sources have in common is the way they synthesize
sources to present the argument to writers: in other words,
the writers of these texts don’t organize the writing by
discussing one source, then the next, then the next. Instead,
the writers what they want to argue and then use sources to
back their explanations. Your web article should be at least
1000 words long and will be created as a digital text (also
called a web text). A web text or digital text is a text that is
meant to be consumed by a public audience on the internet
(rather than in print form) and so it’s designed very differently
than a traditional essay.
What makes a web article different from composing a
traditional essay?
• Visual rhetoric: Since this is a web article, you should take
advantage of the digital nature of this genre including visual
elements besides the written text. You can choose if these
elements will be photos, illustrations, charts, graphs, or
something else.
• Page design: As you plan your article, think carefully about
your audience’s reading experience. This means considering
page layout, use of color throughout the article, and
formatting. When you are creating a web text, you not only
have more opportunities to think about page design–
effective page design is an important part of the genre.
Effective page design for a web text helps establish your
ethos as a writer and help your audience read more easily.
• Citation: In web sources, like online reports and articles,
sources are referenced through hyperlinks. I recommend
that you review this resource, created by FIU’s Digital Writing
Studio: Digital Writing and CitationLinks to an external site.
. The entire video is incredibly useful for this project, but you
can see the section on hyperlinking starting around 6:55.
You can also scroll down and read the section on web
articles. You can also see two real world examples of
hyperlink citation by viewing Example 1Links to an external
site.
and Example 2Links to an external site.
.
You may also consult Chicago Bridge – How to Write a Web
Article
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which gives some advice to writers. There’s also 9 Simple Tips for
Writing Persuasive Web Content
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. Importantly, the advice in these sources is not universally true of
all web articles, because–again–your choices will be informed by
your audience and purpose. However, these sources do help give
you a sense of some of the decisions you might make while
composing.