A Week of Sad Visual Rhetoric

          This week has been terrible as far as Americans are concerned. Countless times this week we have been faced with images of sheer sadness, whether it was about the Boston Marathon bombing or the fertilizer explosion in West Texas. However, the visual rhetoric in these news article images is quite amazing. Looking at a display of images on the homepage of USA Today pictured below, you see several different images that lead to articles and or video footage regarding the particular news story. Starting with the image of the Boston streets looking deserted, the picture gives the appeal that something strange is happening. It looks strange because everything is in place for a major metropolitan city except the people are missing. This image and title is much bigger and bolder on the page suggesting with visual rhetoric that it is a more important story to the audience then maybe some of the other articles. Next, The picture of the police officer on the top right gives the appeal of honor because the officer’s facial expressions look proud, but serious. The position of this picture in the top right quickly shows the audience that it is of greater importance than the picture below it. However, there is the most visual rhetoric in this bottom image. First, you see an image of a red cross universally symbolizing medical aid. Then, you see government officials moving an injured person to the ambulance to seek medical aid. The audience is unable to clearly see any faces of the people in this image which gives off the feeling of remorse to the audience.

          Altogether the visual rhetoric of these images suggests that they must be related in some way because they all share the same rectangle on the very front space of the USA Today’s website. Visual rhetoric continues to evolve with the availability of software to the public. An art form like visual rhetoric must evolve with experimentation. By making graphic software more available to the general public, more experimentation is able to be conducted thus creating new innovative ways to use visual rhetoric in expressing the ideas of the creator to the audience. In what ways have you experimented with software to evolve visual rhetoric? What software did you use? Do you think you were successful in portraying your point to your audience?

Evolution of the Research Process

          I remember when I was back in about 1^st grade and learned about how the library is organized in order to find the books you need quickly. I believe my grade school and middle school library used a system called the Dewey Decimal System. The way it worked was there was a shelving unit in the library called the card catalog. The shelving unit had probably about 50 or so different draws that pulled out of the unit containing index cards for all the books in the library. Some were classified alphabetically by author’s last name or a subject heading. This made it a difficult task for me, at least when I was in the first grade, to find what I was looking for because you really had to know how to alphabetize well in order to find what you were looking for. It wasn’t until I was in the fifth grade that my school’s library went electronic. In fact, I was one of the first students to get to search using the computer card catalog system.

          This week I have been finding sources for my research project that is coming up. Quite contrary to my early years of doing research, I was able to do it from the comfort of my own bedroom while sitting at my desk with my computer on the internet. It was amazing to find all the information I could learn over my topic by just a few keyword searches. It was neat that after reading one article I got a better idea for a search term to find even more articles related to my topic all in the matter of a few minutes. I remember when I did research projects back in grade school, before the computerized system in the library, it would have taken me days to find the quality of sources that I was able to find in several minutes. The internet has truly revolutionized the way students and professors do research toady. However, you do have to know what a credible source looks and reads like. A great way in helping find credible sources is to use an online database that will search for only credible sources –however, you still have to be careful. It is amazing how the internet has shaped our culture in so many different ways including in the research field. I am interested in what your experience has been how the research process has changed. Has it changed for the better? Please comment below!

Should Public Sector Unions be Gotten Rid of?

          Following up from last week’s post about labor unions and how they are decreasing, I want to focus on some of the negative effects that public sector labor unions have on the U.S. Economy. In an article published in the Washington Post by Amy Gardner, she tries to take on multiple perspectives of what people think when they hear public sector labor unions. She talks about the retirement age of ER nurses and firefighters and their retirement packages in order to personify her opinion that private sector workers believe public sector workers retire early and make private sector workers support them with the taxes they pay.

          She later goes on to talk about how Ohio’s Governor John Kasich believes that the taxpayers are underrepresented and that in the long run in order to keep the government running they must reduce money spent to public sector salaries and retirement packages. She has several counter arguments of public sector workers saying that they are not rich and that their work benefits are based off of the longevity. In order to keep their long term work benefits, the public sector workers rely on their unions and their collective bargaining. However, Kasich supports the Right to Work legislation, which will limit the union’s ability to collective bargain for public sector wages. What do you think about this? Do you agree that retirement pensions of public sector workers should be cut in order to keep local governments running?
 http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-04-18/politics/35231264_1_union-workers-embrees-public-workers