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Visual Tech Literacy Narrative
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Semiotic Domains: FOX News vs. MSNBC
In a chapter titled “Semiotic Domains: Is Playing Video Games a ‘Waste of Time’?” author James Paul Gee begins a discussion on the topic of semiotic domains through a unique viewpoint that centers itself around the use of video games in our current society. He begins by explaining that the term “literacy” is so commonly associated with reading and writing that it fails to include the broader aspects of social interaction within a medium, the ability to translate a multimodal text, and the inclusion of visual symbols – such as images, graphs, and diagrams – that have become so important to our evolving definition of literacy today. He emphasizes the fact that in any specific domain, literacy can become practically useless if the person within the domain is uneducated on the social practices of which that type of literacy revolves around; rather than simply viewing literacy as a means of interpretation or decoding, Gee uses the example of video games to point out the importance of active participation. This type of participation – referred to as “active learning” – centers itself around the principles of “experiencing the world in new ways, forming new affiliations, and preparation for future learning” (Gee 24). Because each domain has its own particular set of social rules and unspoken requirements, learning actively (rather than passively) is extremely important, especially in the virtual world of video games that Gee bases his second chapter on. Two important components of active learning include recognizing the internal and external design grammar of the domain: the internal design grammar can be characterized as the principles and patterns that define that specific domain – also giving examples of appropriate or expected content or behavior within in – while the external design grammar can be characterized by the personal recognition of the correct ways to behave and interact with others within that domain; in other words, a recognition of what is valued in the domain.
While Gee uses the prevalent example of video games to showcase his ideas on semiotic domains – inherently making the claim that video games aren’t a waste of time – I want to use the example of two contrasting political websites to explore the differences in their individual semiotic domains: Fox News and MSNBC. Although the written portrayal of their content is published in ways that clearly show a sense of bias toward one political opinion or the other, the design elements of their websites are also completely different and show a noticeably different interpretation of their personal definitions of patriotism.
With a simple white background and headlines outlines in blue, the MSNBC logo immediately stands out above a symbol made up of a variety of colors; some may automatically associate this collection of colors with a symbol for gay pride, pointing to an initial sense of equality being projected from the website, as well as MSNBC’s undoubtedly more liberal standpoint in politics.
Made up of a scrolling list of captioned images and easily accessible videos, the website seems to have been purposefully designed in a way that allows its viewers to watch the provided videos and form their opinions based on the additional evidence of the footage rather than centering their focus on large headlines and the written articles that comply with someone else’s potentially biased synopsis. MSNBC relies on their visuals – which appear large and in the center of the page along with smaller captions that provide a brief explanation of the footage – that seem to add more credibility to their corresponding written reports.
This format may have been chosen a way of allowing the viewers of the website so feel like they have the chance to form an opinion based on footage alone, rather than articles based on the opinions of someone else.
Fox News, on the other hand, immediately provides a color scheme evocative of a different form of patriotism; the bolded title “FOX NEWS” stands out above a navy blue background.
Unlike MSNBC, Fox seems to rely more on the textual aspects of their website, providing smaller examples of accessible videos on the side of their page but mainly focusing on the larger titled articles and following list of headlines that take up the majority of the page below them. Although Fox seems more organized in their overall design of the website, they also include a number of seemingly random articles – including celebrity news, pop culture references, articles about health, and advertisements – that almost seem to weaken the foundation of its political structure. Because of its multi-faceted design, it could be argued that Fox News may be incorporating these alternate visuals and unrelated articles to cater to a younger generation.
In terms of active learning, both Fox News and MSNBC offer a plethora of clickable social media icons on the upper right hand corner of their websites, encouraging the people on their websites to take to social media in order to express their opinions and potentially influence others. Both political websites, although not considered to be the most highly interactive sites, both give the option for social interaction and active learning. In order to share opinions or ideas about their websites, one would have to know how to use each specific social media domain, as well as the social requirements and general expectations of each domain; according to whichever domain someone chose to share their political opinions on, the ways in which they published those opinions would be completely different. By using the elements of the internal design grammar, which include the color scheme, the format, and the combined use of various brands of literacy (both written and visual media) viewers of both websites can learn to interpret the intentions of the website, and therefore become more educated on the purpose of the domain itself. The prevalence of the social media portals on each website emphasizes the desire of each website to share their political opinions in order to inform others; those who are familiar with the aspects of a variety of social media portals – most importantly the ones listed on the websites – serve as the largest form of proof of the importance of active learning within a domain. Therefore, both Fox News and MCNBC depend on Gee’s defined brand of active learning from their viewers to help spread the influence of their websites.
Works Cited
Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
www.foxnews.com
www.msnbc.com
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Contrasting News: 2/22/17
Fox News vs. MSNBC
In regards to the recent topic of rising anti-Semitic threats following Donald Trump’s election, both Fox News and MSNBC reported on the latest developments in Trump’s response to the problem. However, the headline, choice of words, and overall tone of each article is drastically different. Fox’s article, titled, “Trump speaks out on ‘horrible’ anti-Semitic threats,” focuses on Trump’s comments about the importance of religious tolerance, and even mentions the fact that his daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism before marrying her Orthodox husband. MSNBC took a different approach, which was noticeable in the headline, “Following a week of pressure, Trump denounces rise in anti-Semitism.” The article begins with a description of the moment when Trump ignored a reporter who asked about the growing problem, and instead mentioned how impressed he was with the electoral votes he had received in the election; as a second example, the article includes another instance in which Trump told a different reporter that it was an “unfair question” and was apparently too offended to even give a response. The article goes on to point out the hypocrisy of his belated response to a question that had been asked several times, and concludes by acknowledging the fact that while Trump had finally spoken out against anti-Semitism, he had still mentioned no plan of action in response to the prevalent threats aimed at Jewish communities.
Although both articles by Fox News and MSNBC have the same premise, the language and the points of focus in each is clearly different. While Fox News credits Trump for condemning anti-Semitism and barely mentions any of his negative interactions with the reporters who initiated the overall conversation, MSNBC built the foundation for their article on the fact that it took a “week of pressure” for Trump to speak out, and emphasized the fact that he still doesn’t seem to have any kind of concrete plan to bring the anti-Semitic threats to a halt. Fox News seems to be attempting to justify Trump’s actions – even mentioning his daughters conversion to Judaism as a potential way of making him seem more personally invested in the topic – while MSNBC shines a brighter light on Trump’s mishandling of the entire problem as a whole.
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Reflective Assessment: 2/20/17
My project timeline, which evolved over the course of the past couple weeks, involved learning about the overall process of remediation in class and online, forming an idea of what I wanted to do for my personal project, doing basic online research, finding images and tweets that corresponded with one another, creating a project proposal and grading rubric, and choosing a website to form my final project on. The aspect of the project that took me the longest to complete (other than getting a grasp on the concept of remediation and forming my final idea) was finding a website to use to create my project. I initially wanted to incorporate some kind of moving collage into my project, and considered trying to use a still image of a tweet with moving videos in the background, but abandoned this idea when I couldn’t find a website that accommodated the vision I had.
Overall, including class time and time spent outside of class, I spent about 4 hours on this project. Although I feel like I achieved my basic goal of using thought provoking images to evoke emotion and point out the hypocrisy or alternative truth behind some of Donald Trump’s tweets, I think my project would have been more interesting if I had found a way to use a type of moving collage or incorporate videos into the background of the tweets. Overall, although I wasn’t completely satisfied with the project in relation to the initial vision I had of it when I thought of the idea, I was satisfied with the rhetorical aspects and overall point that the project got across.
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