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8.7.08
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Social
Networking Genre Project
Purpose
Genre is an important feature of the texts we compose; it helps the audience
read the text because once they recognize the type of text, the audience
will know what to expect. They will know what elements the text will feature and what purposes this text
should accomplish. If these expectations are not met, then an audience
may experience confusion or frustration. On the other hand, a writer who
wants to make a certain point may purposely alter the genre because the
genre is too constraining to support the writer’s point (thus the
short report grew out of the need to produce documents longer than a memo
and shorter than a full-length report) or the writer wants to draw attention
to the point being made (think Shrek’s play on fairy tales). Therefore,
as a writer it is important to understand genre and how to use it
to influence your reader’s response to a text. With this assignment
you will examine an emerging genre, social networking sites, and articulate
the genre for an audience of your peers as a way to think about how writers
use generic expectations to communicate meaning to their audiences.
Instructions-Research
How current
users compose on these social networking sites influences both how audiences
are reading (or experiencing) peoples’ profile pages and how new
users of these sites are choosing to compose their own sites. For this
project you and four other students (see groups below) will look at several
profile pages on different social networking sites and determine the patterns
that are emerging for this genre.
Groups |
Members |
1 |
Edd,
DeJaun, Kaitlin, Erin, Scott |
2 |
Paula,
Lauren, Spencer, Shaun, Mike |
3 |
Jacob,
Kenny, Kristen, Karyn, Eric |
4 |
Matt,
Ben, Dacia, Christina |
To determine
the generic features of social networking pages, you…
- Will
go to a social networking site. Facebook (facebook.com)
and MySpace (myspace.com)
are the two obvious places to begin. Also go to the clearinghouse of
social networking sites on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites).
You may need to click around to find backdoors to individual profiles.
- May
choose to register for one or more of these sites. While this will provide
access to more profiles, you can still do this assignment without being
a member of one of these sites. You should only register for those sites
you may be interested in participating on at a later date.
- And each
group member will be required to study at least five profiles, preferably
from at least two different social networking sites. You may not choose
your own profile or a group member’s, and you should study no
more than one friend’s profile (The purpose of the assignment
is to expand beyond your current knowledge).
- Will
examine the purpose of the site. Is it designed around a specific theme?
Or for a specific constituent? Keep this in mind as you examine the
specific profiles, this will influence what the people can do when they
compose their profiles, as well as the decisions they have made.
- Willl
study the profile you have chosen, take notes of the features that appear
on this site. As you are trying to determine patterns, ask questions
like…
- What
features appear on every site? (If you have registered to a social
network, look at the fields that are required)
- What
features are optional? Which of these optional features do people
tend to use? Assuming that the person in the profile is the person
who has posted the profile, what do you notice about who chooses
certain features over others?
- What
decisions are the composers of these profiles making about how they
talk about themselves?
- Will
regroup with your other members and share what you have learned. From
your twenty examples (minimum), determine the patterns that you see
emerging?
Instructions-Writing
To present
your findings, your group will compose a short report and give a slideware
presentation to the class. As you compose both of these texts, think about
your peers as your audience.
For the
report…
- Start
with a paragraph or two that explains the overall major patterns that
your group has found. At this point you want to be fairly general about
your findings. Then for each of your major findings briefly explain
to your audience how they should approach this feature and, using some
specific examples from your research, why they should make this decision.
The instructor will cover the genre of a short report.
- Write
1500-2000 words, so you will have to decide which patterns you think
are the most important and which ones to leave out. Also you will have
to carefully choose which examples to support your points.
- Include
a list of all of the URLS for the profile pages you visited. Catagorize
these according to the site where the file is located (such as Facebook,
CafeMom, Hi5). You do not have to do a formal APA or MLA citation for
these. This is not part of the word total.
For the
presentation…
- Develop
slides that reflect the report. You do not want to dump the report word-for-word
into your slide presentation. Instead you will want to briefly summarize
the points that you have made in the report. Again you will have to
make decisions about what is important. The instructor will cover the
genre of a slideware presentation.
- Compose
a 15 minute presentation in which each group member has a speaking role.
Criteria
Logistic:
- 1500-2000
words
- single-spaced
- Due September
29, 2008, at the end of your presentation
- Presentation
should be no longer than 15 minutes
- 100 points
In addition
to the general evaluation
criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...
- an understanding
of genre and how it applies to social networking profiles
- an understanding
of your peer audience. Do you write this so that they will understand
it? Do you write it so that they will not be frustrated trying to understand
what you have written (think grammatical errors)?
- an academic
or professional persona; this means you should adopt a professional
tone and publish a well-edited paper.
- an understanding
of the composing decisions that you made. Can your group explain the
decisions that you all made for the report and the presentation?
- patterns
that are well supported by evidence from actual profiles.
- genre
expectations that are reliable. Can your audience go to a series of
social network profiles and see these patterns?
- texts
that comply with the genre of a short report and slideware presentation,
respectively.
- collaboration;
did each group members contribute equally to the process?
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