Visual Representation Analysis

For your first major assignment, you’ll select a select a website for a product, service, or organization connected to your field or projected profession and write a thesis-driven evaluative argument in which you examine the rhetorical strategies of the site. For example, if you’re a pre-pharmacy major, you might select a website from a drug company, a national pharmacy chain, or even the website for the National Pharmacists Association. Each of these websites is making an argument: “(You should) buy this” or “(You should) shop here” or “(You should) join us.” The purpose of this essay is to evaluate how effectively your site persuades viewers or potential customers to “do this” or “do that” by analyzing and evaluating the rhetorical elements in the site.Assignment Preparation: List all the times you have seen the career or major depicted online, on TV, or in print. How many visual representations come to mind? Then do a freewrite on what those representations have in common and on makes each of those representations different. Then ask yourself: which one of those representations seems to be the most interesting or complex?Assignment: Select a visual representation (e.g., poster, pamphlet, billboard, webpage) of your intended career or major. Analyze how that representation is achieving or not achieving its creators’ desired effect. The point here is not to evaluate the representation, but to walk your readers through the specifics of how that representation is working, or attempting to work, on a group of viewers.