My main purpose in Writing Project 1 is to explain to my audience how the photograph “Sitting on Rail” evokes ethos, pathos, and logos in the audience through the technical aspects used in the photograph and also to explain the context of the photograph. I want to make clear the photographer’s purpose of showing what life is like for the orphaned children in Rwanda and ensuring that their story is told throughout the world and that the children and their stories are not forgotten. I also want to support the photographer’s argument in the photograph—that despite what tragedies may have happened, people must adjust and go on with life, which is exactly what the children at the orphanage had to do.
My audience of this paper consists of my teacher, classmates, future English 151H students, and potentially anyone who has access to the Internet and stumbles across my blog. My primary audience is my teacher. This writing project is a graded assignment, and my teacher is the only person that I know for sure will read this. Because of this, I have to keep in mind the guidelines of the assignment and make sure to follow them to get a good grade on this paper. I also have to make sure that I present my ideas and argument in a clear and unique way that will stand out against the papers of my classmates and make an impression on the reader, in this case, my teacher.
My secondary audience is my classmates and future students. These people all know that my blog exists and will have easy access to it through links on their blog and on the English 151H main page. This audience will not be reading my paper to grade it like my teacher would be, but they may be reading it as an example of what the assignment is or to get an idea of how other people are doing this writing project. My current classmates are all doing the same assignment, and there is a good chance that future students will be doing the same or a similar assignment as well.
Another secondary audience could be anyone with access to the Internet. This could be someone who is browsing blogs and happens to stumble across mine, or it may be someone searching the Internet with a specific purpose in mind. When I googled the Imbabazi Orphanage that I mention in my writing, my blog comes up on the second page of results. This shows that there is a pretty good chance someone who is looking for information on that orphanage could find my blog. When keeping this audience in mind, I have to make sure that all the information I present is clear and accurate.
The context in which all my audiences will be reading my paper is on the Internet. This means that the audience will have access to multiple resources and lots of additional information on my topic. This is beneficial to me because I can use hyperlinks and multimedia elements like photographs to enhance and supplement the information I give in my writing, and this will help to increase the understanding of the audience.
If I were doing this project on a different medium, such as a traditional paper, I would not be able to make use of these aspects and my audience would have to rely only on my paper as a source of information, unless they wanted to do any outside research on their own. Using the Internet as the medium of this project makes additional information much more accessible as well as increasing the scope of my potential audience.
