Analysis of a Sample Public Arguement

From the three examples presented I decided to do "Suffering in the Dessert" for this blog post.

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wonderlane/3370155351

Overall I would say that the tone of the video is a sad one. The music is a big contributor to this, if it was something happier it would have had the affect of me questioning why it was included, which would distract me from the video's message. The visuals were also another key part, especially the images of the spine and unaccompanied children. There were also some text that really sets the tone as a sad one for me. It was primarily when it mentioned the rising number of dead minors. If either of those two things were different, the message would have lost a lot of weight/impact to me.

The video to me primarily relies on emotional appeals, in other words pathos based arguments. Also, logos was used, since several statistical numbers and trends did appear in the video. Which is the right choice in my eyes. The combination of these two types of arguments would work well on convincing the target audience to take a stand in favor of helping illegal immigrants whose lives are in danger.

The credibility is established via a works cited section at the very end, which scrolled like a credits section. The segment showed that she put effort into researching the materials to use in her arguments.

The video starts with the thesis after the title. Sections are order in a way that is text statement followed by supporting pictures. Which is almost exactly like PIE structure, except the explanation is left too the viewers to put into words.

The video starts with broader statements, which than go into more specific statements, like statistics. After these it tells you about an organization doing what they can to aid suffering immigrants, and how they are punished for it. The video also gives a way to find more information about the group. I believe this is a good way to organize it, since if for example the organization that is trying to help is moved to the front, the viewer will be less likely to care about what they are doing, because they haven't been exposed to the rest of the video yet.

I do believe that there is a call to action in this video, which is presented in the form of the web address of the previously mention organization that is presented in a slide saying "see what you can do to help". The spine and unaccompanied children really add a sense that something needs to be done now, before those kids end up looking like the spine.

If I were to do this I would probably add more sections related to the Minuteman Project.