TheDragoBlogs

 For this week’s topic on online arguments, I chose the abortion debate on Reddit because I think it has a good mix of people who love arguing on the internet. Here’s the link:  https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/   Of course, my POV in this post will be biased because I believe woman have the right to decide what they want to do with their bodies, as having a child is a life-changing course of events. Pregnancy and childbirth changes a woman’s body forever, and I’m not bound by religion or morals to care about when life begins. The entire argument seems very hypocritical to me because I believe the issue is control over women’s bodies, and that if we really cared about the lives of children we would focus more on improving the lives of existing ones.  This Reddit threat is a bit challenging because, obviously, it is all opinion-based so there’s not always going to be data to back it up. Making abortion illegal is obviously detrimental to women but the emotional...

  The Toulmin Argument is an argumentation style that breaks it down into different components: claim, grounds, warrant, qualifier, rebuttal, and backing.  The claim is the main argument, something you are trying to prove to your audience. The grounds are evidence to help support your claim, while the warrant is an assumption that links the two. The qualifier is something you may add to give it some leeway since the claim may not always be correct. Backing provides extra support to the warrant, such as using specific examples, and the rebuttal essentially validates a different point of view.  These can successfully be applied to online arguments or discussions to show a reasonable exchange of information and facilitate productive discourse. Many online arguments are fueled by emotions, especially around the current political state of our world. The Toulmin argument offers a better way of communication. For example, instead of just saying “Trump is awful” or “Israel sucks”...

  “Social media platforms have become powerful battlegrounds where various individuals, organizations, and even governments engage in the battle for public opinion. Considering the rapid dissemination of information and the ability for anyone to voice their perspectives, how has this online landscape transformed the dynamics of public opinion formation and communication strategies?” With the explosion of social media, we are now able to voice our opinions about anything, almost instantly. We are creating a digital memory of every thought we have, every issue, every inconvenience we want to talk about. I never really understood the human urge to spill everything online, to push and cry and be the loudest in the room — in a situation where that is almost impossible to do so (ignore the blatant cognitive dissidence). This has transformed the online landscape into a frenzy of opinion-dumping, cancel culture when you say the wrong thing, and the usage of social media by companies and go...

 For week 5, we will be reviewing Prose, the all-natural hair care company! https://prose.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoqkkNhT8YaKcBXpeHImun-rcBElMPHoRZOtYFvcaPNpbtcNDZjf I chose this company because I think they do a great job communicating online and promoting their main message — custom hair care is beneficial to cater to individuals different hair needs. Their website and social media is colorful, with visuals of healthy hair and visually appealing bottles of shampoo displaying natural ingredients. The website is organized by putting quick links at the top, media and products in the middle, and ingredient information at the bottom. I think they have it organized this way for easy flow of information, visual appeal, and easy access to information. This makes their website effective. The business seems to portray an online identity of being a leading progressive clean product company. Their goal is to offer the least amount of chemical and rely on quality products instead. They offer good i...

 This week we will be looking at two articles and answering questions about them.  According to Prensky, what is the immigrant/native divide, and how has it affected how students learn? The first article by Marc Prensky,  https://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf  — talks about what exactly digital natives and digital immigrants are. There terms were coined to differentiate learning styles and attention spans of young generations that grew up with the digital world vs older generations who grew up pre-internet.   Younger generations are having learning differences because their minds work in a different way compared to how material is being taught. There is also a divide caused by knowledge to use online resources or not.  Here is the second article  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0742051X16306692  by Paul Kirschner.  Kirschner some of the myths associat...

 It’s week 3, and our topic is Knapp’s relationship model.  Knapp’s relationship model pictured above (source:  https://evolveinc.io/self-improvement/motivation/knapps-relationship-model/ ) is a communication theory based on the stages of growth or deterioration that people go through in their relationships. The image does a great job displaying the definitions, so I will be referring to it for this week’s post where we have to discuss a current relationship.  Looking back at my own relationship, the initiating and experimenting phases were fun progressions where my boyfriend and I had the “friends to lovers” trope. We became closer and went hiking in the Smoky Mountains, where we went from watching a meteor shower to talking about a future together. Once we started dating our communication styles evolved, along with our friend group + workplace dynamics. The intensifying and integrating stages, as it relates to Knapp’s model, paved out our goals/expectations on how ...