Proposal (1 paragraph): Include answers to the following questions:

Proposal (1 paragraph): Include answers to the following questions:

What overall website and/or fact will you be analyzing?

Why did you choose this website and fact?

What are the major appeals you see being used in the source?

Tell me something about the organization responsible for the source/website (do some research).

Thesis statement: No longer than 3 sentences.

Outline: Including ideas for Intro – Body – Conclusions.

For this first report, you will use Chapter 8 of the course textbook, as well as other complementary material, as the basis for researching, exploring, and analyzing written communication that is designed to inform, i.e., present “factual” information. Your focus of study will be a website with either a .org or .gov designation devoted to providing and presenting such factual information, for example www.cdc.gov (the Center for Disease Control), www.adl.org (the Anti-Defamation League), https://www.who.int/ (the World Health Organization), www.az.gov (Arizona State Government), https://www.census.gov/ (U.S. Bureau of Census), https://www.habitat.org/ (Habitat for Humanity) and so forth. You can also use News Sites, but these have to be approved by the instructor.

Use the following methodology for approaching this project:

First, before you search for a website, write detailed notes about what sort of informative websites you expect to look at and what your expectations are for those sites (consider sites that are generally unfamiliar to you). For example, suppose you are going to look at the CDC site. What are your feelings, perceptions, and personal knowledge about world health issues, government-funded health research, disease prevention, and federal government organizations? Based on your preconceptions, what would you expect the CDC’s official website to look like? What sorts of factual information would you expect to see presented on this site? How would you expect these facts to be presented and communicated?

Then, when you go to the website, write detailed notes about your first impressions. What do you see? What kinds of facts are offered? Pictures? Lists? Statistics? Testimonials? Anecdotes? Quoted and cited sources? How are visuals organized and presented on the website? What purpose do these visuals serve? What are your initial reactions to the factual arguments that are presented? What facts are you skeptical about? Why? What facts seem reasonable and sensible to you? Why? What facts are new to you? Do they seem relevant or important to you? Why? Why not? To whom would these facts be relevant or important? Who might challenge or disagree with these facts? Why? How?

After your initial examination, read the information on the website more closely to see what additional observations you can make about the facts presented, and note your reactions to them. Follow links and take note of information presented on the associated and affiliated websites and their relationships to the original site. Finally, write a report of your observations and findings about arguments of fact.

Please note that you are not being asked to summarize, evaluate, or critique the website. You are asked to explore, observe, analyze, and present your findings.