Chapter 7: Making Your Own Argument
Your Turn!
Activity
Now that you’ve watched the video, go to Occupy Wall Street’s Facebook page and do a close reading of the page and select another post with active comments. Gather a list of as many patterns, key words, new words, or contrasts you can identify. You should also answer the following questions to gather observations about the medium of the Facebook page:
- What specific language is unique to the medium being used? How is your specific user using this language? (“Like,” “Shares,” “Group”)
- What mechanics are UNIQUE to the SPECIFIC central document – i.e. a word limit, a focus on photographs, the image disappears after a set amount of time etc.
- What numbers are present on the page? What actions of documents are the numbers related to? How large are the numbers?
- What is the most common action on this page? Posting text? Posting photos? Commenting?
- How active is this page? How frequent is user activity?