segment three packet fall 2021 ————————- segment three research W r i t i n g

SEGMENT THREE PACKET

Fall 2021

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SEGMENT THREE

Research for the Public Good: Writing Research for Milwaukee

Information Literacy Focus: Research for Situated Ethos and Audience Analysis

In the final Segment of this course, you are going to create a public-facing research product for a specific Milwaukee community that addresses a problem and fills a research need. You are going to do this by “re-mediating” and “remixing” your Segment Two white paper into a new genre that is written for a more specific audience, community, or stakeholder. You will develop the ethos necessary to reach your intended audience by engaging in new rounds of research to deepen your understanding of the problem and tighten your focus. At the end of the semester, you will have the opportunity to formally publish your research so that it is freely available to the greater public and your intended local audience.

Segment Three focuses on three main concepts, where rhetoric and information literacy overlap to help you undertake more rigorous academic research and to communicate your findings and new insight to real people who also care about the problem or issue.

Ethos: You need to establish your credibility with your intended audience in order to communicate ethically and authoritatively about the problem or issue you’ve chosen to focus on. One of the most important ways to “invent your ethos” is to “do your homework,” to research the problem exhaustively, to not settle for easy answers or superficial searches, to read, read, read about the issue so that you understand it from different angles and appreciate its complexity.

Audience: You need to understand your audience deeply. You need to know their values, perspectives and existing knowledge about problem or issue. You need to understand their assumptions—their logos—so that you can provide them with valuable information and insight. This requires research.

Genre: You need to compose in a genre that is meaningful to you and your audience. You need to match genre with both audience and purpose. You need to think critically about genre at this stage of the research process because your composition will become a valuable source type on an information cycle for other readers and researchers to use and learn from. The genre options for you to choose from include:

Podcast (scripted, delivered, recorded, and posted)

In-depth magazine article (long-form journalism; e.g., The Atlantic, National Geographic)

Scholarly article for a disciplinary academic journal

TED Talk (scripted, delivered, filmed, and posted)

Creative work (e.g., creative nonfiction, literary fiction, multigenre text)

By the end of Segment Three, you should be able to:

1. Develop “situated ethos” appropriate for your selected issue, audience, purpose and genre

Perform genre and audience analysis

Compose a usable information product for the public good

Understand research and use of sources as ethical, purposeful remixings

– Demonstrating Research: Within your projects, you should follow the conventions of the genre you’ve chosen for in-text citations, but you’ll also want to provide your sources to me so that I can see the work you’ve done. This must take the form of a bibliography in a citation style appropriate for your genre (not just a list of hyperlinks).