Target Audience Analysis

Here’s the thing about arguments and blogs: you have to not only talk to your audience, but you have to also create your audience.  Blogs are fickle creatures; top of the list one day and in archives the next.  Your audience makes or breaks you.  Corbett and Eberly, on page 132 of their Citizen Critic essay, explain this rather perfectly: “In order to use reasoning to get readers or listeners to imagine themselves as the kinds of people who can rise to the occasion to judge and act in ways that can make further reasoning productive, we must invoke as well as address democratic audiences.” This may seem like a daunting task, but remember it all has to do with how the text is phrased.

For example, earlier in the semester our class read Gawker’s “Police Brutality…” piece.  This presentation was posted online (a.k.a. the place of the seat of the spectator culture).  The responses to this post were numerous and passionate.  This is an example of engaging and invoking the audience done well.  Even though the argument was mediated through the internet sphere, the author was able to properly invoke his audience with such a volatile issue. The responses included over-generalization and even a bit of scapegoating, but the original text itself attempted to stay clear of these diversions of reasoning.

Corbett and Eberly definitely expand upon Killingsworth’s Transformations piece.  Transformations deals a lot with the issue of news vs. public interest.  It is necessary for authors to be careful when giving (especially political) arguments, to uphold the public’s interest without straying from the truth.  Corbett and Eberly gives thorough examples of what should not be used in their section ‘Diversions of Reasoning,” with everything from the red herring argument to using scapegoats to over-generalization.  The key is to not use any of these in the argument, otherwise the author’s ethos is in danger. The posts given on Gawker’s piece use some of the fallacies, including begging the question and personal attacks, but that is to be expected with the general audience.

Responses to other student's posts:

• http://jordyherbst.blogspot.com/2014/10/citizen-critic.html?showComment=1413316609339#c4832312717649882100