the final draft of your academic research paper analyzing an issue or problem facing members of your disciplinary or professional community. For this project, you will adapt your research to speak to a new audience about this problem and how it should be solved.
Outside the classroom, most people will not be persuaded to action by an academic research paper, so you must decide the best method of reaching your target audience and convincing them to take your recommended action on this issue. In other words, you must decide which genre will best help you reach your new audience.
Some examples of genres you might create include a visual (e.g., using Canva, Piktochart, or PowerPoint), a PSA-style video, a boardroom-style presentation, a petition, an internal memo or white paper, or a TED talk. Be creative! Please see the MediaHub Guide (ERAU)Links to an external site. for further examples and ideas.
To help you decide what kind of text to create, consider the following:
- Who is my target audience?
- What are the expectations of the audience?
- With what kinds of media will the audience be familiar?
- What are the constraints and affordances of those media?
- What constitutes an effective rhetorical strategy for a particular audience?
- What potential genres could be used to communicate with the specific audience?
- What are the conventions or features of those genres?
In addition to exploring these questions, you will engage in a brainstorming activity designed to help you focus and refine your rhetorical strategies, particularly in terms of genre, audience, and medium selection.
Remember, you have already composed a research paper regarding this topic. Therefore, you should draw upon the research you have already conducted, but you will need to present your findings in a way that your new audience will find persuasive. This assignment requires you to engage your critical thinking, your rhetorical awareness, and your reflection capabilities in order to most effectively communicate to your audience.