Genre Rationale
For my composition in two genres assignment, I decided to talk about the issue of global warming and climate change. This is an issue that is personally important to me and in my opinion one that is or should be extremely important to the entire world. If we continue to leave the causes unchecked and continue to allow ourselves to damage the Earth’s climate, we will eventually destroy our only home and the only planet in the known universe that has life. Because I have a large personal interest in the topic of Global Warming, I wanted to look into ways I could share the massive amounts of Data on climate change as well as showcase its dangers to other people.
I decided that one audience i had to target was young adults, people between the ages of 19 and 39 according to google. I chose this audience for a lot of simple reasons, the first being that i am a part of it and so i knew that would help me be able to connect with this audience. Another being that young adults are usually not climate change deniers, or scientifically illiterate, people my age have grown up in a world that has been positively impacted by scientific advances in every way and therefore trust science, vs older people such as our president who are more inclined to believe rising sea levels are a chinese hoax.
To communicate with this audience i decided to try writing what i believe is called a “data narrative”, a sort of summary of data used to draw conclusions. I felt that besides the various internet genres like videos, twitter, and podcasts, that this would be the best way to grab my audience’s attention. I wanted to show raw numbers and let the data speak for itself, letting the audience come to their own conclusion just by analyzing the graphs. I included some minor details and information where I thought it would be relevant to the reader and helpful to the “data narrative”. I believe using this genre instead of something like a social media post would force a reader to think a slight bit more about the issue but i do concede nothing gets you thinking like a good meme.
The second audience I wanted to reach was children, younger kids probably 10 max. I remember being that age and learning new things(not really in school but things like what a greyhound bus is and what their parents do when they’re not home) is what drives most kids. I’ve read that a child’s brain is like a sponge and that it thrives when soaking up knowledge. So with an inherent will to learn I thought they’d be the best of all age groups to teach(or warn) about global warming. And besides easily being able to learn about a topic, they are at an age where they are learning right and wrong and so therefore absolutely need to be taught about climate change. Only 10 years ago when I was about 11 I can distinctly remember people on TV actually debating if climate change was real or not. For the most part we’ve passed the “is it real” stage and are on the “what should(could) we do ” part of the game, but it’s still important to teach young kids that Climate Change is very real, and that they can help prevent it.
To address this audience I made a simple powerpoint with a little polar bear related humor without trying to be too corny. I thought that the best way to reach a young audience would be to keep it as simple and brief as possible, while also emphasizing the impacts global warming can have on our world.
