For my Technical Writing class I needed to comment on how “Well-crafted Web sites seem to have a rhetoric that persuades or leaves an intended impression on the viewer.”
I’m going to repeat that post here. Comments are invited on either forum. (Update 02/24/2007: The web site no longer has the pictures I was refering to so I turned of comments.)
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The first site that came to mind as I read question #3 in Ethics in Technical Communication was Cryptome. For examples of two sides of this site see http://cryptome.org/ and http://cryptome.org/other-stuff.htm.
reasoned — logos — word — the way things are — logical — truth
credibility — ethos — character — ethics
emotional — pathos — acceptance — rejection — fear
About itself the Cryptome site says:
“Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance — open, secret and classified documents — but not limited to those.”
My assessment of the Cryptome site is John Young, the owner of the site, is attempting to make the point that spies, spying, and secrecy in government, our CIS, NSA, and the like, and the other countries equivalent organizations, are contrary to a free and open society.
I don’t think Cryptome attempts to persuade based upon its own credibility. Quite the contrary it makes the point when talking about spying you cannot trust anything. From the site itself, “Cryptome’s advice to readers is to believe nothing seen on the Internet, Cryptome especially.”
I don’t think ethos, credibility, other that what is established over time by the site itself is a factor in its presentation. In fact “Cryptome’s advice to readers is to believe nothing seen on the Internet, Cryptome especially.†Mostly Cryptome just presents documents. The reader is left to make their own conclusions, with only occasional commentary.
On the other hand, the second link is definitively a appeal to the emotional. Scroll down a little ways to the contrasting photos of lingerie models vs war dead and wounded. Regardless of your views on the war, that is a powerful visual message.
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About the words at the top of my post; that was my attempt to get the meaning of the three parts of persuasion into my head; so I could think about what to write.
As an aside: A while back there was an article in People about the Amish school girls that were killed. In that same magazine there were lots of stories about the latest Hollywood gossip (which as you know is standard fare for that magazine). I know it wasn’t the magazine’s intention, but the contrast, about what is really important in life, was difficult to ignore.