3 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2018
    1. My second supplemental text is another tweet from Trump -- . The tone in which Trump chooses to discuss the issue of illegal immigration is that of disrespect and vilification. Phrases like "total catastrophe", "deadly catch-and-release", and frequent use of capitalization both visual and linguistic modes creates a narrative of aggression, and from the way that he chose to deliver this message, it becomes easy to identify his audience (anger anti-immigration advocates). The visual mode aspect of this tweet aims to draw attention to certain words, drawing more attention to those specific ideas. This supplemental text helps me connect my understanding of the usage of linguistic and visual modes to create an effective way to communicate (in this case, this tweet did its job, making me pretty agitated).

    2. Donald Trump has quickly become the king of multimodal communication-- specifically on Twitter. The supplemental texts I chose were a couple of tweets from Trump's page. In this tweet, he is addressing the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school in a way that his other presidential predecessors have not; through a crudely manufactured tweet with a picture of him holding a thumps-up with the victims in the hospital. However, this raises a question-- was it appropriate to address such sensitive matter in this mode? Twitter was designed to be a social media outlet with easily consumable tweets, limited to 180 characters or less (now 280). In the linguistic mode, Trump seemed to be lacking the "development and coherency of individual words and ideas", watering down a topic of great significance to a couple bytes of information on the internet. This tweet and its subsequent response parallels with the criticism received by Carl-Henric Svanberg, where his choice of words let to a severe backlash from the public. This time, Trump's choice of delivery caused a wave of infuriated responses, linking Svanberg and Trump in a group of "We Can't Get Our Point Across Appropriately Club).

      The link--https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/964724390637244417

  2. Jan 2018
  3. spring2018.robinwharton.net spring2018.robinwharton.net
    1. In his eponymous how-to, Prownian analysis aims to create guided conversations stemming from the object at hand to examine the significance of an object and any implications that arise. The article “A Terminal Condition: The Cathode Ray Tube’s Strange Afterlife," utilizes this methodology to explore not only the cathode ray tube's importance as an invention itself, but more importantly of its cultural and technological impact that shot far beyond its initial scope of practice. Almost two centuries later, J.J Thompson's invention of the CRT gave birth to another fantastic idea-- the telly! CRT's in televisions spread in a pandemic fashion, and a box could be found in every other home. However, as technology advances, the cycle of "in with the new" certainly did not ignore its counterpart: "out with the old". As flat screens replaced the boxy old things, the hazardous waste that it comprised were thrown out with no other viable salvation in sight. But the focus of the article was to use the CRT as an example for the endless cycle of iconic objects thrown to waste.