English composition.

This assignment is worth 25% of your Project 1 grade. Therefore, you need to take a little more care with this assignment and take the time to do it carefully. Please see the assignment sheet if you have questions.

When we are interested in a topic, we are often attracted to social media posts about the topic. While there is a lot of misinformation and disinformation on social media, social media can be used for our research—particularly as a starting point.

This activity has two main goals that are intended to improve your research and rhetorical skills. First, you will practice fact-checking a social media post. Second, you will practice using that social media post as a starting point for finding more information.

Step 1: Find a social media post or text about your approved research topic. ( Use of social media at early age) In this case, social media will be defined as any interactive site (one that allows you to comment, like, or share). Try to pick a post that is relevant to the part of your topic you are most interested in. For example, if I’m interested in gun control, specifically as it relates to mass shootings on school campuses, then I would want to find a post about guns, mass shootings, and schools. (Note: if it’s a series of posts—such as a threaded Tweet or a Tik Tok with multiple parts, you may discuss the entire series.)

Step 2: Share a link or screenshot of your chosen social media post and then analyze this text or series of texts. Please write at least 250 words. I have provided some guiding questions for you, in order to help you write an effective analysis on the Guiding Questions for Researching Rhetorically 2 page.

Guiding Questions for Researching Rhetorically 2:

• Analyze the genre, purpose, and audience of the text you’ve chosen. Where is this text published or made public? Who is the specific intended audience? What is the purpose of this text?

• Rhetorically analyze the text you’ve chosen: What stylistic choices do they make? What content choices? What choices regarding images, layout, etc? How do such choices relate to their rhetorical purpose/s? How are they trying to affect change, attract participants, etc.?

• Based on the social media post(s) you’re analyzing, how does this social media platform seem to impact the rhetorical aspects of this text? In other words, how does the fact that this text is on social media impact the way that this text engages with its audience and/or achieves its purpose? How does this compare to the other texts you discussed in Researching Rhetorically 1?

• How does the message in this text align or not align with the texts about your topic? In other words, what are some connections you notice between this social media text and the ones you analyzed in Researching Rhetorically 1?

• How does this source use evidence? Is it reliable? Why or why not? What kind of information is given?

• How does this source participate in a larger conversation with the other sources you looked at?

• What did you learn from this source that you did not know from the previous sources? Did you learn something new about your movement or organization? In what ways does this source build on or contradict the other sources? How does the genre/medium affect the source’s argument?

Step 3: Pick a few claims (facts, statistics, arguments) made in the social media text and fact check that information. Find a reliable source that either confirms or disproves that information. Use the following checklist to help you make sure that your source is reliable.

(Links to an external site.)

A) Share the link to the text you found as a result of your investigation (not the social media post, but the source or sources you used to fact-checked the claims). Following the checklist above, discuss at least one detail from your source that establishes each of the following: Authority; Purpose; Accuracy and Verifiability; Currency and Relevance. If you can't establish all four of these criteria, consider using a different source.

B) Then explain what you found. Use the Guiding Questions for Researching Rhetorically 2 page for help.