Multimedia Argument

Overview.  Compose a well-researched ethical or political argument about some aspect of the human/animal relationship that uses text, images, and video to make its case and is published on your Google Sites website. Here is a quick and dirty (5 minute, not very pretty) example of what you can do with a google sites website.

Specifics:

  • Audience: Your classmates and UT students more generally
  • Forum: This is a blog post—a long one—posted on a Google sites website you will create for this purpose. It will therefore take the form of a textual post with embedded images and video, all of which works together to make your case.
  • Claim: Your claim, which is not simply a “topic,” should be either ethical or political: that is, it will focus on what we, as human beings, should think, feel, or do about something in particular, right now, that relates to our relationship to animal species. You must get your claim approved by me ahead of time.
  • Length: Roughly equivalent to a 4-5 double-spaced page paper
  • Research: Must effectively and accurately cite and document a minimum of 4 reliable sources. Inside your text, use direct links to the sources where possible; for print sources use parenthetical citation. At the end, include a Works Cited list. For images, for all images you can call up in a google search that do not explictly ask you not to use them, we’ll call on fair use for this educational presentation: simply link to the image source under the image.
  • Content: Your content, in addition to offering compelling evidence for your claim, should be fascinating to your audience, telling them something they don’t already know. It should also be insightful—don’t simply relay information you’ve discovered but interpret its significance for us. It should be composed with eloquence and grace, and it should aim to move your audience to an ethical or political act or attitude.

Steps:

  1. Create a Google site.
  2. Research your topic and formulate a claim you can prove in 4-5 pages with text, images, and video.
  3. Find proof for your claim in those various formats (text, images, video, etc.)
  4. Compose an introduction that introduces your claim and the context for that claim to your audience. This is where you make it clear that there is an ethical or political problem that needs to be addressed and that your audience should care about it, that it is important to them and why.
  5. Compose the body of your text as points of evidence for your claim, including embedded images, video, etc. It’s tempting to plop in multimedia elements as if they make the case on their own, but you will need to frame and explain the significance of each multimedia element—that is, make it clear how this is a piece of evidence for YOUR claim.
  6. Conclude with an appeal to your audience to make certain changes in their behavior or attitude as a result of this evidence.
  7. Publish your argument on your Google site and submit the URL to Canvas under the Multimedia Argument Assignment for peer review by 1pm on November 29.

Resource:

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