Rhetorical Analysis Pre-Writing Instructions

You must find it in one of the five
approved sources listed in the Week 3 discussion assignment, and it must have been published within the past two years.  

Using pp. 55-70 (“Rhetorical Situations: Purpose, Audience, Genre, Stance, and Media/Design”) of your Norton Field Guide to Writing, list the five elements of the rhetorical situation of your article (purpose, audience, genre, stance, and media/design). Re-read your article and then, next to each of the five elements, write as much as you can about how each applies to your article. (This is prewriting for your proctored essay exam, so good answers here should help you tremendously when you sit down to write your outline for your proctored exam.) You may find it very helpful to review this Rhetorical Analysis Toolkit. 
Identify the author’s argument by putting the thesis, or main claim of the article, into your own words. I am looking for you to identify the author’s stance on the issue s/he discusses in the article. If the author of your article appears to remain neutral on the argument s/he presents, state this fact. This part of your assignment should be a single sentence or two at the most. 
Explain the author’s purpose for writing the article in your own words. Who is the target audience? 
Identify the genre of your article, and discuss the media/design of the article. What is the layout of the information like? Are any pictures included with the text? Do the pictures heighten the overall effectiveness of the article? If included, explain how the included images engage a particular rhetorical appeal(s).   
Analyze the way the author engages different rhetorical appeals to support his or her claims. Please break down various uses of ethos (the credibility of the writer), logos (the internal logic of the article, i.e.- facts, figures, statistics, etc.), and pathos (the writer’s use of emotion, i.e.- emotionally charged diction, tone, etc.) Again, this activity is designed to help you come up with plenty of examples and support for your proctored critique essay, so coming up with lots of examples and ideas now will allow you to narrow and refine your thoughts later. 

You may complete this homework assignment in list form, as an outline or a series of bullet points, or short sentences or paragraphs. The goal for this assignment is to help you understand the article, generate ideas, and prepare you to write the critique essay.

My topic is “ The News effort to clean up it’s misinformation after the election”