The first online article I have chosen that mirrors my research topic comes from the state of Arizona. The author is named Jeff Commings and he writes for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Arizona. As of now I have very little to work with about the author’s background and beliefs, however, he did leave some contact information at the end of his article that I might use at a later date. The title of his piece is “Neighbors showcase anti-war signs.”
Based upon the article in question, it seems that the intended audience is the lower to middle classes. The picture shows a grubby man with a makeshift sign behind him, something that would put wealthy upper class people off entirely. What I think he is trying to do is to connect with the largest group, bringing the issue of the war down to a level that is very close to home for a lot of people. Another interesting fact is that the article repeatedly refers back to the 70’s, indicating that the target age is around their 40’s and 50’s, people who can still remember the 70’s firsthand.
The website is an online source of the Arizona Daily Star, so it has correlations with a news agency instead of something such as Yahoo or AOL.
The article was written a couple of years ago, and so more modern feelings about the war are present. However, this is a good example to see how the war has shifted our opinion about the legitimacy of the conflict. Also, it was written when another president was around, and so public feelings were radically different than they are currently.
My second online article that I want to present is from the website AntiWar.com. Just from the website, we can see that there is going to be bias when reading about the current war. The article is called “Afghanistan: All About The Oil?” and was written by Alan Bock back in March. Alan Bock has written numerous articles for AntiWar.com, including “Will the Next President be any Better?” “Meek Oil,” “Empire at the End of Its Rope,” and “resignation Setting In?” From looking at a few of his other works, I have very large doubts that he will be able to write anything about the war without being overly biased against it.
It seems to me that the majority of people who access this website are those that oppose the war. AntiWar.com itself is all about the negatives of the war, and so I believe that people who are also against go there to read what others have to say. From looking around the website, I can’t come to any real conclusion about which audience they are trying to reach out to. The only real one I can see is anyone who is opposing the war effort.
The main purpose of the website is to show people viewpoints and news about the war and how it is bad. A quote from the website itself states: “Your best source for antiwar news, viewpoints, and activities.”
This article should be taken with a grain of salt because of the nature of the article. It was found on an antiwar website, and the author has written many biased article in the past. If anything, it can be read as a certain viewpoint on the war in Afghanistan, but nothing else. Even if there was real news, it has been twisted into something that can portray the war as bad and unjust. The information is current, it’s just not credible.
Both of these sources have one thing in common, and that is the war on terror. However, one came from a news website that tries to depict events in an unbiased way, while the other came from a website in which it was very biased against the war. They are so different that there isn’t much that came be compared. If I was to go with either of these two, I personally would pick the first article, because the second is so overarching in its bias that I see no point in reading it because what real truth is left? It’s just one person’s point of view and that is not what I came for.
Hi Oliver. Glad you are finding some sources to work with. Realize a couple of things: 1.) we can determine audience by location in which article is published. So in first case, I am curious why you say online Arizona Daily Star article is targeted toward lower and middle classes.
2. Also, realize that as stated on assignment handout, biased sources can be used strategically in our essays as long as we let our readers know they are biased. Just because a source is biased does not make it not useful to us. I was hoping that you might take time to practice evaluating and putting sources’ ideas into conversation to see how you could actually use all sources strategically without compromising your own ethos…The point is you don’t have to try to locate all “credible” source. Biased sources can create rich sites of tension in our work if we use them wisely.