My website focuses on the social illness of obesity. I chose this topic because obesity is a physical social illness that I see everyday. It is a global endemic, a continually growing problem (see what I did there?). For my website, I decided to include 5 different webpages under the following tabs: home, about obesity, health effects, data and statistics, and what you can do. Many of the websites I visited that were centered on obesity had similar tabs. Through the various rhetorical techniques, I attempted to send an important message to my audience: obesity is a prevalent problem that leads to negative health effects and we can take steps to prevent it from further spreading.
As a reader scrolls through my website, he or she notices that I utilize ethos, logos, and pathos to support my claims. For the webpages, I include many arguments that place obesity in a negative light. I list the potential health disadvantages associated with obesity. I state the high rates of obesity among men, women, and children. I point out that obesity may lead to poor self-body image. Nothing I say about obesity is positive. In order to support my arguments, I practice logos by providing my readers with facts that I received from reliable resources like PubMed and Center for Disease Control. In addition, I refer to data, statistics, and definitions in order to clarify a concept to my readers or to back up a particular statement. By practicing these strategies, I am giving myself credibility as a source because I am finding evidence that supports the ethos of my website. To further persuade my targeted audience, I insert image assets to elicit feelings of concern, hope, and motivation from my audience.
I chose certain images to align with the content of a section of my website. For instance, I embedded the image below at the top of my health effects webpage:
This picture from faudzil.blogspot.com not only illustrates the topic of my webpage, it demonstrates what obesity looks like both externally and internally. It conveys a clear message that victims of obesity can suffer from a number of serious health risks. The image speaks the message. Another asset I picked was a picture of a smiling family from upc.ardenthealth.net on my what you can do page:
From this asset, readers may respond by thinking about their own families and feeling affection. Underneath the image is a short paragraph explaining how individuals can help their families maintain or reach a healthy weight. By inserting this image, I show my readers that obesity can affect their loved ones --this may add a motivational factor to my website and may convince a reader to take action.
The pathos of my website, I believe, creates kairos and prompts metanoia depending on the readers. If a reader suffers from obesity and cares about their health, this may convince the reader to take action to fight against obesity. However, if a reader falls within the normal weight range for their height, then the website will not have as great as a kairos or metanoia effect on him or her. By offering a wide range of facts about obesity and complementing the facts with images, the readers may self-reflect about their own health and may or may not decide to make a lifestyle change. While I would like to think that my website has the capacity to motivate a reader to practice a healthier lifestyle, I don't think my website is quite on that level rhetorically. In order to do that, I would need to play around with pathos more and add more content.
I believe that my site could've been more rhetorically powerful if I had employed more types of media. For example, I could've created an entire webpage that was devoted to childhood obesity and inserted a video or an article on childhood obesity. Instead, I solely relied on images for the rhetorical situation. While the idea of adding videos and articles to my site did pop into my head, I do not know how to on Microsoft Expressions. Also, I was frightened of trying to embed videos or articles for the fear that it would ruin the webpage layout I wanted to retain since a simple deletion of a divider can mess up the entire structure.
While my use of diverse media types is lacking, I did strategically set up my webpages to place an emphasis on the image assets. By deliberately using two simple colors (white for the background and navy for the tabs), the reader's attention is immediately drawn to the colorful images on the pages. Also, I usually sized the images to be larger to direct the readers' focus to them. For my what you can do page, I used an orbit of three images to grab my audience's interest and to make my page more aesthetically pleasing. The spacial dimensions of the website helped emphasize the images as well. I placed images at different locations on some of the webpages (like the what you can do page and the what is obesity page). The position of the images differentiates between the separate sections on the webpages and guides the readers to these sections of text. The layouts of the webpages also all differed spatially. Some pages have a single large image at the top of the page. Some have smaller images dispersed throughout the page. Others have surrounding text boxes around the centered images.
Along with the assets, the ethos of my website is heavily dependent on the content and the linguistic modes. The readers notice immediately that the text is in English; therefore, the website is geared towards English speaking readers. The language is more formal and factual rather than conversational on most of the pages with an exception to my home page and my what you can do page. My home page asks rhetorical questions and is directly addressing the readers. The language on my home page also contains more emotional appeal because it provides an example of an obese child being taken away from their parents by child protective services. In my conclusion, I add informality to my page by referring to the readers and myself in the 2nd person "We." My what you can do page also refers to the readers in the 2nd person. In contrast, my other pages are told from the third person and act to educate the readers rather than address them.
My website falls under the genres of propaganda and public service announcements. I don't know what other genre it would be considered. However, with a few adjustments, the website could easily be transformed into an informational source on a government sponsored website or on a medical website (like PubMed). It could be used to explain the goals of an organization that is taking preventative measures to slow down obesity.
With my limited skills of web design, I would say that I did alright producing the rhetoric of my website. Although I consider my website rudimentary, with the short amount of time we had as a class and with my lack of experience, I think my website employs space, images, and text well to convey a message to my readers. And I definitely believe that my website contains a lot of ethos, pathos, and logos to strongly present the rhetorical situation at hand.
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