Arin Pederson

4/18/19

Source Articles:

• https://news.sky.com/story/notre-dame-fire-timeline-of-how-events-unfolded-11695107
• https://news.sky.com/story/notre-dame-macron-vows-to-rebuild-cathedral-in-five-years-as-eur700m-is-raised-11695462

I decided to analyze how the European media (specifically Sky News) decided to report the recent Notre Dame Cathedral fire. The theory of representation I decided to analysis these articles with is Aristotle’s Rhetoric. The reason I chose to use Aristotle’s theory to analyze the coverage is because of the tendency of “tragedy” reporting, news outlets tend to go to and appeal to the Pathos of the audience when covering worldwide tragedies. Sky News in this instance is no different. The first article is a timetable of the fire and a progression of the destruction. The article shows images of the blaze, the spire collapsing and speaks very objectively while presenting events as they unfolded. This article is the representation of Logos by simply stating what had happened, as well as showing polarizing images to solicit the emotions of readers. Showing a world landmark that many people have seen and been to destroyed will solicit emotion in people regardless of the worlds and captions being presented with the image. This article has a strong Logos and Pathos presence.

The second article in contrast is an article that tries to create a sense of hope and recovery and subliminally also goes after the emotions. The article talks about how the French elite have pledged hundreds of millions of pounds to restore and fix the damage dine by the fire. The article goes into the Ethos of these elite people and what the Cathedral means to these people as they’ve pledged so much money to the reconstruction. However again, the article uses images of the landmark burnt down soliciting Pathos and reactions. In addition the article tries to appeal to Pathos in its talk about reconstruction, creating a sense of hope among readers and how humans will come together to repair the timeless wonder of the world.

3/21/19

Source Article: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-needless-complexity-of-academic-writing

The article I decided to evaluate was posted to getpocket.com and attributed to The Atlantic. It was written by Victoria Clayton in 2015. While that may seem outdated, it actually makes it so the article can be judged as to how good its claims actually were. The article touches on experts in their field using complex language that most cannot comprehend in modern academic journals and its main premise is how ugly “academic language” can be in general. This main claim can be best described by Deborah S. Bosley, a former English professor at the University of North Carolina; “Academics, in general, don’t think about the public; they don’t think about the average person, and they don’t even think about their students when they write.”

The article cites many professors, institutions and other articles within itself. With the information presented, the article seems sound logically. All sources are relevant and do not have any potential influencing factors that would skew the information being reported. The whole idea of academic jargon being too complicated for the average reader or someone unfamiliar with the particular field of study is one that is more of a problem than it has ever been.

it appears that this is the last version of this article, so there really isn’t an easy way to determine if this article has aged well in its claim. However the article itself is very well written and supports its claims to create a pretty solid argument.

3/7/19

A Specific Interest of Mine: eSports in a public forum

The specific interest of mine I chose is professional gaming, or as the industry refers to itself: eSports (Electronic Sports). I’ve been playing video games my whole life and most of which have competitive online ladders to rank all the players who play them. Around 2014 I was introduced to professional League of Legends and immediately I was hooked on the concept of top level players competing on huge stages for massive amounts of money. Since 2014 eSports itself has grown across the world with the release of many new popularized games and eSports has used those games to put together events and leagues that draw millions of online viewers and hundreds of thousands of people who will pay to see them in person. The best part about the emergence of eSports is the community and discourse that appears in online forums. For any professional video game, there are a multitude of subreddits and twitter pages that allow you to interact with players, casters, coaches, journalists, and mainly other fans of said game. The public forum for eSports is massive and very involved. I personally coached mid tier League of Legends teams in the past and some of the most valuable insight I got was though public discussion and forums.

The mainstream media is still adapting to the idea of professional video gaming, its disheartening that they haven’t been able to embrace it yet. While these industries thrive, the online community will only get bigger. With more and more money going into eSports daily, I genuinely think that we have something very special and eSports is something the media should embrace.

2/14/19

The career I have chosen to research in the field of “media or communication” was an announcer. The reason being is I have been told by multiple people that I have a “good voice for broadcasting” and I was curious as to the prospects in that career. Announcers can be anything from sports casters to Public Address announcers at arenas. but typically you would work in radio or TV. The statistics of of field however are surprisingly very grim.. the projected decline over the next ten years is an eye-opening 9%. Which is loss of 4,500 jobs according to the site.

As far as training and education is concerned, there are two different paths the site outlines. If a radio announcer/sports caster is the goal, many companies require a bachelors degree in journalism or communications in addition to intern experience at a company or at the university level. However if you want to be a public address announcer, there is no higher education required and its more of a ‘learn on the job’ career.

If I were to try an join the field of announcing, My personal first step would be to start getting involved with eSports, seems weird but its a growing industry. I would switch my major to communications and do as many announcing related gigs as possible. trying to cast collegiate level eSports matches and get my name out there any way I could. I would also try to be a Public Address announcer during the summers. I would keep doing this until hopefully someone by chance sees the work i do and contacts regarding a professional level career..

1/24/19

Energy Saving on Laptop: Making all night study sessions without a charger way less risky

As a modern day university student, a personal computer is almost required in this day and age of internet, or at least a device that is comparable to a computer (i.e a tablet or a smartphone). My laptop is detrimental to my success and ability to do college course work. From notes to homework. I had to go without my laptop for three weeks during my first semester here at NDSU, I can tell you from personal experience that while not impossible, life becomes infinitely easier with a laptop.

As far as energy saving is concerned, my Dell laptop has many different ways to output less energy than advertised. Even the Dell official tech support website does not have very much as far as energy saving options presented. You have to dive into the settings but after about five minutes of digging in my settings and a very helpful online article from thesimpledollar.com I was able to find four switchable options that in total save a decent chunk of energy output from my PC:

1. Screen Brightness and Auto Brightness

2. Battery Saving Mode

3. Shutting Down Windows overnight

4. Reduce background applications while using the computer

Changing the brightness is just a matter of going into your computer settings lowering it or turning on auto brightness. In some computers, there is an energy saving mode that is turned off by default, going into your settings and simply turning it on will make a hug difference in how much battery power the computer uses on any task. The third is a little more complicated, but shutting off the Windows 10 client overnight can make a huge difference in the lifespan and passive power usage a computer will put out in sleep/standby mode. To summarize, you go into your task manager and set up a task that shuts down your windows at a specific time, it’s not quite that simple and I seriously recommend you take a look at the article from thesimpledollar.com (The address can be found below). Finally and probably easiest, when you’re using your computer for gaming, web browsing, trolling (If that is up your alley), just make sure nothing else is running in the background that could be using precious battery life. All these processes can be very beneficial to the energy output and lifespan of a laptop/personal computer.

Sources:

https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln297929/change-sleep-settings-or-create-modify-a-power-plan-in-windows-10?lang=en

https://www.thesimpledollar.com/8-ways-to-easily-reduce-the-energy-consumption-of-your-computer-and-save-big-money/

1/17/19

My own Personal Digital Footprint

This assignment has seriously made me reconsider how dependent I am on technology and social media in order to communicate with others. After a five minute glance at my phone usage over the past week. I have spent an average of four hours and fifty-one minutes using my phone per day. However that number is actually misleading because the current day is not over quite yet as of writing this. The mean time from the last 6 days prior to today is just a tad under five and a half hours per day. During class I tend to use my computer for notes and class related activities. Which puts my educated estimate of over seven hours per weekday on just those two devices alone. Even more alarming is that only 2.6% of the daily phone notifications I receive are school based (43/1,641). With social media related notifications taking an exorbitant 83% (1,378/1,641).

After analyzing and interpreting these numbers, I realize that my phone and other devices are vitally important to my current state of being. So understanding where my iPhone was manufactured and what kind of environmental impact my singular phone was something I was curious of.
Parts of iPhones are manufactured all over the world by a variety of different companies in many different places. According to the environmental report of the iPhone 7 from Apple itself, The iPhone 7 manufacturing process is responsible for 78% of all the CO2 emissions during the lifespan of an iPhone 7. The materials come from many countries and are made by many people all over the globe. After researching this it is more than fair to claim that my phone has a greater impact on my own life and the life of the planet than I originally thought possible.

• Sources:
• https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPhone_7_PER_sept2016.pdf
• https://www.lifewire.com/where-is-the-iphone-made-1999503

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