Below is our agenda for Monday’s class followed by some final advice for completing the Blog Analysis project, which includes a sample analysis of The Pioneer Woman’s blog.

Class session agenda

Log into the Writing Studio and post your blog URL to the appropriate Writing Studio forum. (5 minutes)

Set up our Research Journals in the Writing Studio. (15 minutes)
You will post your Blog Analysis in your journal as it is your first formal form of research for the semester.

Discuss plagiarism and copyright and the difference between the two. (25 minutes)
Read the examples of five separate plagiarism cases  outlined in the article, 5 famous plagiarism and fraud accusations in the book world. Do they all seem equal in their ethical violations? Should there be legal consequences in each case? Issues to consider during our discussion:

• citation v. remix
• writing/print v. other forms of media
• what is creativity? what is originality?
• what about an artist’s ability to make a living from her art?

Wrap-up (5 minutes)

• Homework due Friday: Writing Studio Forum, “What is plagiarism in the digital age?”
• To Watch for Wednesday: Lessig, iCommons Summit talk on the history of CCommons
• Questions on About pages, Welcome pages, header images, or the Blog Analysis project.

Blog Analysis project advice

Below is a version of a blog analysis that you can refer to as an example if it helps you to look at a model. I know this sort of rhetorical analysis is a new form for many of you, so I offer the following as an example, not as an exact template that you need to follow.

If you have additional questions about the project, you can leave a comment here and I can reply here as well. This way, if others have the same question they can read my reply instead of emailing me individually. If your question is specific to the blog you are analyzing and you do not think the question relevant to the rest of the class, you can email me instead.

Now, here is my example analysis of The Pioneer Woman blog.

****

The Pioneer Woman is the alter ego of Ree Drummond, a modern city girl turned cattle rancher’s wife, who blogs about her newfound simple life in the country. At least that is how she describes herself on the blog’s about page. She distills her biography down to three short paragraphs:

After high school, I thought my horizons needed broadening. I attended college in California, then got a job and wore black pumps to work every day. I ate sushi and treated myself to pedicures on a semi-regular basis. I even kissed James Garner in an elevator once. I loved him deeply, despite the fact that our relationship only lasted 47 seconds.

Unexpectedly, during a brief stay in my hometown, I met and fell in love with a rugged cowboy. Now I live in the middle of nowhere on a working cattle ranch. My days are spent wrangling children, chipping dried manure from boots, washing jeans, and making gravy. I have no idea how I got here…but you know what? I love it. Don’t tell anyone!

I hope you enjoy my website, ThePioneerWoman.com. Here, I write daily about my long transition from spoiled city girl to domestic country wife.

The rest of the about page reads similarly. There is no mention of Drummond’s media empire—her three cookbooks, series of children’s books, memoir that’s been optioned for a film. She is just a happy country girl, and that is a deliberate ethos choice [ethos is a Production Strategies/Rhetorical Appeal] that reflects her purpose and target audience [two parts of the Statement of Purpose]. It is clear from her post topics—confessions, cooking, home and garden, homeschooling, entertainment—that her purpose is to draw in women who are longing for the simplicity of mythical 1950s domesticity. The confessions category is comprised of posts about her pets and the oddities of life with her kids such as her son’s inability to say the letter “J”, thus rendering “juice bag” (a Capri Sun) “douche bag.” Her cooking section is filled with recipes for comfort food such as pot pie, and brown sugar oatmeal cookies and “cowboy food”—steak fingers, potato skins.

Not that Drummond hides her money and success. She doesn’t have to. Her target audience is women living middle class suburban lives. [What follows is an explanation of the context—the attitudes readers bring to the blog.] They simultaneously aspire to richer, classier lives and to lives of simple, old-fashioned domestic pleasures. They lust after the yuppie kitchens in the William Sonoma catalogue and dream about days filled with cooking and child-rearing. Drummond taps into the paradox of 21st century womanhood, which valorizes both the the sophisticated, college-educated working woman and the domestic goddess who keeps chickens, pickles everything, and homeschools her eco-friendly children. Her readers see no paradox in a woman who claims to spend her days single-handedly keeping house for a family of six while finding time to make millions from her writing.  And those women from the previous generation, feminists of the 60s and 70s turned homemakers who gave up their big-city dreams long ago, they can connect with Drummond’s surface claim that she is happier spending her days at home in the country: “My days are spent wrangling children, chipping dried manure from boots, washing jeans, and making gravy. I have no idea how I got here…but you know what? I love it. Don’t tell anyone!”

[What follows are examples of visual and verbal arrangement—number four in the list of requirements. The primary modes of delivery discussed are words and photographs—number three in the requirements list.]

Her blog has a deliberately amateurish look and feel. The overall design is busy and cluttered in contrast to current web design aesthetics that privilege simplicity and ample white space. I would liken her design to the just-rolled-out-of-bed look of the hipster who spends hours styling his unkempt beard.

The Pioneer Woman homepage

The Victorian fonts and header image with gilded picture frames and ornate floral elements look like they would grace the prairie home of the cartoon cowgirl Ree uses for her profile picture on the right. However, this clutter masks a well-planned, logically organized navigation system that allows users to quickly find what they are looking for in this massive archive. Each of the main menu items leads to a page that subdivides the content for quick access. The one uncluttered spot on the homepage is the large photo slideshow that highlights the most recent posts in each category.

Photo slideshow of The Pioneer Woman’s most recent posts

The logical organization of the navigation, reinforced by the strict color coding of each category page, makes the site extremely usable, while the ornate visuals reinforce the emotional appeal to everyday domesticity. The combination of the two support Drummond’s ethos as a first-rate, accidental domestic goddess. This combination is reinforced in her writing. For example, in her cooking posts Drummond is overly enthusiastic about what she is cooking and is self-depricating about her cooking and blogging abilities. She starts her post on spinach artichoke pasta this way:

I love spinach artichoke dip. I’ve loved it for over half my life. And I’ll love it till the day I croak or become allergic to artichokes. Whichever comes first.

I posted my Spinach Artichoke Dip here over the (long, hot, thank goodness it’s over) summer, and it’s tremendously terrific. But a couple of weeks ago I decided to take a walk on the wild side and make a pasta version.

And then I died from bliss.

She connects with readers by stating her love of spinach artichoke dip, a staple at every chain restaurant in America, and jokes about trying to get fancy with the staple dish. The post opens with the following photos. The first establishes that this is a fancy pasta dish and the next reassures readers that this fancy dish can be made with standard grocery store name brands.

showcasing the spinach artichoke pasta sophistication

common grocery store ingredients

In reference to the ingredient photo, Drummond writes “The Cast of Characters: Butter, garlic, spinach, canned artichokes, flour, milk, cream cheese, Monterey Jack (or mozzarella), Parmesan, salt, cayenne pepper, and (not pictured because I’m an airhead) seasoned Panko breadcrumbs (my emphasis)”, which reminds readers that she is just like us regular folks and is just a housewife sharing her favorite recipes. But, of course, her incredibly detailed, logically arranged, step-by-step instructions assure us that she knows what she is doing. Every step of the instructions is punctuated by a mouth-watering photo designed to balance the logical arrangement with an emotional appeal to our assumed love of cooking for our families.

[This conclusion meets number five of the requirements and is a thesis statement of sorts that could be used more traditionally at the opening of the analysis.] Every element of The Pioneer Woman blog is designed to support Drummond’s online persona as a blissfully happy ranch wife who stumbled upon blogging in an attempt to share her life with others. this may have been how it all started, but now the blog is the centerpiece of a media empire and maintaining that simple country girl image is an essential rhetorical strategy that allows Drummond to maintain her connection to her middle class audience even as she makes millions.