- 1A) Summarize Thompson’s main claims in Public Thinking and “I’m So Totally Digitally Close to You“
- “Public thinking” is an article that explains how the concept of “public thinking” affects yourself and society. According this article, public thinking means curious minds could discover things at the same time; people who are writing and working at the same time often discover ideas at the same time. Thompson claims that the audience effect (the shift in our performance when we know people are watching) is true regarding a large or small audience. Studies have shown this through children, college students, and online. This article also claims that the myth, young college student’s writing is getting worse as time goes on- false. Stanford University English professor, Andrea Lunsford led this study to prove that the skills that young college students have aren’t affected by much. Since they writing argument-evidence based essays, this improves critical thinking and advanced rhetoric.
- “I’m So Totally Digitally Close to You” is an article that claims how the emergence of social media has had a shift in privacy over the years. At first, people using these platforms would be skeptical about their privacy but as time went on, they didn’t care as much due to how much they were missing out. This article also claims that ever since twitter, we’ve communicated in ways we never thought were possible; how people talk online vs. how they communicate in person, “… invisible dimension floating over our heads because you don’t talk to people like that face to face”.
- 2. Describe a claim from each text that connected most/least to your own experiences?
- In “public thinking,” the claim that relates most to me is the idea of the audience effect. I am not particular active on social media with my own person accounts, but I am with marketing my club. I run the website, email, and Instagram of SDSU Mock Trial, and I find myself trying to impress potential members with what our club has to offer. This means how I write updates and captions, which pictures I use, and how I design our flyers. Since I’m reaching out to an audience, I find myself contributing to the audience effect.
- In “I’m So Digitally Close to You,” I relate to the claim that I communicate differently online than in person. I find myself being more “bubbly” online than in person, I know from my personality I don’t talk the way I do online. I have a hard time deciphering this because typing online is not to any face, using tone, or articulation.
- 3. Note elements of the text you found most rhetorically interesting, or that you had questions about/wanted to know more about.
- In “Public Thinking,” I found Okolo Medea’s journey rhetorically interesting due to how the article described her surprise to a large following, how she didn’t expect many people to find her writings joyous. Though she was hesitance, she wrote a book due to the inspiration! “’ That was the first time I had a sense of the volume of it.’ Okolloh didn’t want to write a book, but in a sense, she already had.”
- 4. Identify a particular strength or weakness in Thompson’s arguments
- The main argument of Thompson’s article is that there are numerous benefits to online writing. He sticks to this argument throughout his entire article; he uses experts, professors, and studies. However, this is only it; he doesn’t talk about the negatives of online writing or anything to hint at that. I believe a weakness is not mentioning the negatives of online writings. I believe there should be both sides because there are experts and professors that most likely disagree with him. “I’m So Totally Digitally Close to You” mentions both sides of online use. That article uses personal testimonies of different experiences of how social media has negatively affected individual lives.
- 5. Where do you see Thompson addressing people who might disagree with him? How persuasive are Thompson’s rebuttals?
- I believe people will disagree about the notion of “hand waving.” According to Thompson, “In a panic, you try to describe how the gadget works, and you start waving your hands to illustrate it: hand waving. But nobody’s ever convinced. Hand waving means you’ve failed.” I believe not everyone will agree with this statement, even if hand waving is seen as frustration and improvising, it’s also used to emphasize or illustrate a point. Thompson pointed out that a threat of an audience produces hand waving. This is where he addresses the audience effect. I believe his rebuttals are persuasive because he backs it up with experts and professors in the field such as Andrea Lunsford; he used her studies to advocate for how public thinking encourages spontaneous young writers.
