My Life as Reid

           It's no surprise that most people will end up in some sort of argument in the online atmosphere. Most of us can likely think of at least one argument that we've participated in online. These arguments are just like arguments in real life, with the exception that everybody gets to hide behind a screen while they argue. This typically means that the arguments very quickly become hostile and mean spirited. This typically results in multiple people saying many things that they would never say in person. All in all, we can see that online arguments are a waste of time and typically result in everyone feeling worse than they did before. Regardless, we also know that no one is going to just stop arguing online because of this, so what is the best way to argue online? To answer that we need to look at an online argument. To source this argument, I went to reddit, scrolled down a few threads until I found an opinion stated online, after that, it was ...

           The Toulmin Method is an interesting overview of how to have a more impactful argument about a specific topic or idea. Its broken down into the following bite sized chunks, claim, data, warrant, backing, qualifier, and rebuttal. The claim is your main idea, it is essentially the point you want to get across. The data, is the credible support you've found for your claim. The warrant works with the data, to explain how the data supports the claim. The backing is the support for the warrant. The rebuttal is the speaker addressing any counterarguments. Finally, the qualifier is used throughout the argument, it essentially states that there are rare exceptions in what you are arguing. For example, if my argument was "Winter is the Best Season" my claim would be that "Winter often provides a colder and more enjoyable environment then other seasons". The data would be "There are no mosquitos in the winter and most people report sleeping better during th...

         This week, I listened to a podcast titled Public Speaker  (which can be found at this link https://open.spotify.com/show/5ICmAnNsLvdsk8V2kJ6o81) . This podcast can also be found on all podcast platforms. It is hosted by Lisa B Marshall, and goes over multiple quick tips and tricks about how to communicate better in a variety of different scenarios, including online. The specific episodes I listened to was "How to Write High Quality LinkedIn Recommendations" as we have spoken about business communication online recently. Overall, the podcast was great, and it was a lot of fun to listen to.         The main idea of the podcast was obviously how to increase the quality of your LinkedIn references, but it spoke a lot about how that needs to be done. At the forefront of it all, was the fact that you need to be genuine and well-spoken when writing a recommendation, which ties in greatly to our week four learning materia...

           One of the most surprising uses of social media is how it can affect public opinion. It used to be that if you did something wrong, but not illegal, the only people who really knew, were the people that heard by word of mouth. Now, however, it is just as easy for that information to become public knowledge in the largest degree. We now have the ability to affect the opinions of people with a quick, thirty second video. This has changed the way we look at quick communication, as now more than ever, you're capable of putting out, and receiving, info as soon as it comes out. This affects us in a large way, especially when it comes to the cases I will be looking at. Local politics relied mostly on local broadcast radio and TV prior to social media, along with that, a lot was spread simply by word of mouth. To look at this closer, I'll look at one of my local politicians, Chris Murphy, the democratic candidate for Senate (although the same ideas would...