Journal #2

A common piece of writing in my average life is the BBC news app.  Its regular posting and frequent article updates make it a quick news check, and I also appreciate using a more global-focused news source (it’s especially great to see how US American situations are perceived outside of the country).  Using a multimedia approach to reporting by utilizing videos, photo stories, and the like, the app also allows for further user tailoring by offering the option for customization of topic tabs so readers can receive pop-up notifications for some tabs (Latin America, Women’s Rights, and etcetera) while only viewing other tabs in the Top Stories section of the app.

Edbauer:

Edbauer would appreciate the usage of writing through news apps.  Rather than directly purporting articles to be written for specified audiences (aside from the basic audience of newsreaders), the app platform creates an option for public, yet individual, usage.  By this, a network arises on two levels.  One is the generalized tie between members of the population who simply use the app: they all have it downloaded, therefore they are all connected.  Second is the customized network: based on the customized updates, this is a stronger connection which connects based on specific interests rather than a generalized tool.  These networks then form the rhetorical situations.  The first is a broader situation, while the second is perhaps a more fixed “situs.”

Bitzer:

“Rhetorical situation may be defined as a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence (Bitzer, 6).”

News exists as a response to exigence.  News is then technically itself a rhetorical situation.  The method of an app simply extends Bitzer’s words.  In this case, the non-rhetorical exigence is that readers want a simple method for keeping up with global knowledge.  In the rhetorical situation of this, the app is the “discourse” to solve this problem.

I believe Edbauer and Bitzer would be able to accurately apply their individual researches; however, I do not think they would necessarily agree on one another’s interpretations simply because their connotations of rhetorical situations are so distinct from one another.