Assignment Description
This essay is a description of a rhetorical form/situation explored in three examples of that form/situation as evidence. Your task is to make a claim about what these three essays represent. You will notice that the Online Readings Folder contains sets of essays that focus on two general topics: (1) ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence and (2) Social Media Influencers.
Your first step in this assignment is to read/skim the essays in the Online Readings Folder and determine whether you want to write about the ChatGPT essays or the Social Media Influencer essays.
Once you have made your choice, your task now is to demonstrate what these three examples have in common, and how they are representative of a type of journalistic or media form. That is, it is not enough simply to point out that there are common elements, topics, or issues in each essay; you also have to say something about what those elements are doing and why they matter.
That is what makes this essay an analysis rather than just summary. What do you think are the specific or broad concerns that inform each essay? Do the essays respond to the topics in similar ways, or do they have differences of opinion? Do they have similar or different strategies for how they address their topics?
For this essay, organization is a challenge. You might find yourself wanting to write a paragraph about each essay. If you organize your essay this way, you will find yourself in two difficulties. The first will be an almost overwhelming tendency to have five paragraphs. We don’t want that. The second is that it will be very hard to move from summary into interesting analysis.
Rather than thinking about each example on its own and writing it up in a separate paragraph, you should instead think in terms of common features of the form as demonstrated by your examples. For instance, you might consider developing your essay’s body paragraphs so that they describe common issues or concerns in each essay. Maybe one body paragraph addresses common features in all three essays, while another body paragraph discusses a fundamental difference between the essays’ responses to their topic.
You are describing a rhetorical form or event/issue, so you will naturally focus on commonalities. However, if one of your examples has elements that are different, you can pursue those as well. Just make sure that you have a reason for discussing it.
You might consult a GenAI tool to help you complete this work. If you do, please include a short note in your essay about how you incorporated GenAI. Did you have GenAI proofread your work? Did you ask it to organize your response? Did you ask it for some ideas on how to get started with the writing process? Remember that I am GenAI-positive so I don’t mind if you use GenAi to help you write. You just need to be transparent and honest about how you incorporated the tool into your writing. Also, if you use GenAI, I will provide feedback based on Dr. Phillipa Hardman’s AI Learning Taxonomy. This feedback will help guide you as you develop your GenAI skills.
Please indicate at the conclusion of your essay how much feedback you would like. I will send instructions for what I mean by the different types of feedback.
Assignment Requirements
For this essay you must include the following:
- Cite three of the sources provided in the Online Readings Folder.
- Read your sources and determine what rhetorical form and situation they represent.
- Write an approximately 750-word essay that explains your reasoning.
- Organize your paragraphs in a format that makes sense for your thesis and your essay.
- Cite your sources using MLA or APA formatting accurately.
- Create an MLA Works Cited or APA References page.
