Journal 3

For this project, I have chosen ‘audience’ as my key term. My three artifacts are: a book, a video game, and a movie on Netflix. I find audience to be an interesting key term to focus on because many of the theorists that we have observed in this course have placed a placed a large amount of priority on to that term. The trend that I have come across is that many people like to focus on audience when discussing rhetoric. I believe that in order for an artifact to be rhetorical, it was incite some type of response from it’s intended audience.

            My artifacts are related to one another in the sense that they all engage the audience and require audience interaction in order to be valued. My first artifact is the novel Othello by William Shakespeare. My second artifact is the video game NBA 2k16. And lastly my third artifact is the movie The Little Rascals on Netflix. Each of these artifacts are unique in their own genre of entertainment, however they all contain a rhetoric of their own that applies to their audience.

            From Edbauer’s article, we can conclude that she focuses on the circulation of rhetorical situations. As opposed to Blitzer’s standard of the rhetorical situation, Edbauer believes that rhetorical context is always changing and cannot be isolated to one individual creator, text, or audience. I agree with Edbauer’s concept and I think it is clear when observing my own artifacts. These artifacts may be repurposed and changed by a new creator in order to apply to a new audience. From Wysocki’s article, we can conclude that design is a major focal point. Wysocki believes that design is meant to be persuasive as well as strategic. This concept can be related to the cover art of my novel, video game, and movie.

            My artifacts are all intended for uniuque audiences. Othello is catered towards a literary audience, NBA 2k16 is intended for all ages but predominantly basketball fans, and The Little Rascals is intended for all ages as well. Each artifact uses rhetoric in order to provoke a response from its audience through their own interaction with it.