A Guide to DoItYourSelfFacebook Responses

In class

Pin up the work around the room. Then circulate with some paper (There's plenty in the recycling box near the printers). Review all the work. Get in close. Stand back. Write on the rhetor's wall. Talk. Circulate some more.

Everyone comment on each work, in two parts:

Part 1

Write down what points/concerns/ideas about Facebook the work brings out, what it illustrates or illuminates about Facebook - and how you know that. That is, on what are you grounding your observation about the work? Is it something visual? A tone or rhetorical stance towards the subject or viewer? Humor? Design? This is an exercise in description and analysis. Watch for patterns. Take the balcony view. Focus on how the message works rather than the rhetor.

Part 2

After your consideration of the object, give your gut reaction to the work. Use one or two select adjectives and a star rating out of 5 to record your reaction. Think instant movie review.

Sign your comment sheet and leave it near the work.

After hours

Rhetor: Take the comments with you. These responses are your notes. Analyze them (refer to chap 3, pp 32ff, and chap 5). Compose a fairly detailed response to the responses and the work based on your analysis to be handed in to me (word processed on paper). Here's what to focus on:

Compose your observations about the work and responses to the work, based these questions.

• What did viewers interpret as the point of the message?
• How do those interpretations line up with the point(s) you were making?

• What aspect or feature of the work stood out for viewers?
• How did that aspect or feature seem to shape how viewers interpreted the work?
• What aspects were overlooked? Why, do you think?

• What expectations did viewers bring to their looking, expectations that seemed to shape how they responded to the work?

Don't just focus on what most readers saw in your analysis. Look at the range and the variety of responses, and what seems to lead viewers to their way of seeing. Meaning is not settled by majority rule, and I'm asking you to take a balcony view.

You don't need to defend the work or make an argument why I should give at a particular grade. Take a balcony view of the entire affair.

500 - 750 words, in enough detail to do yourself, your viewers, and your work justice.

Submit

Turn in the comments and your response to me for review. I'll record a point score taking into consideration what others have written about the work.

One criteria I'm looking at is depth of insight. A simple observation is good. A simple observation done well is better. But a work that reveals - illuminates - something about Facebook with depth and insight is even better. Typically, the responses from others help me see insights that I might have missed.