Audience is a key factor to think about when informing about anything. Your audience determines how you will speak and the content of your piece. My intended audience for my Digital Project will be nativist who are against immigration to the United States.
Generally, Nativists’ main argument for being anti-immigration is the idea that the United States needs to prioritize the native citizens of the country over people who migrate to the United States from other countries. They believe that providing resources to help immigrants takes away from what can be used for citizens who are from the U.S. who are more deserving in their ideology.
To appeal to my audience, I need to speak in a way that doesn’t undermine their beliefs, but nicely persuades them to change their views. From what I’ve seen, people can have intensely strong beliefs on anti-immigration. A lot of times harmful stereotypes are used to support the anti-immigration agenda. In some instances, intimidation is used to push immigrants from occupying spaces in this country. Even powerful politicians like Donald Trump support and spread negative stereotypes and propaganda about immigrants. While discussing Haitian immigrants in Ohio during a nationally televised debate against Kamala Harris, Trump stated the baseless claim of, “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats.” Trump has a lot of loyal supporters who believe anything he says, so this is harmful to immigrants in the United States.
A good way to appeal to the Nativist mindset could be to show them how immigration could open jobs for themselves and other native-born Americans. If I can counter a big argument for anti-immigration like overemployment, it can be a turning point in the minds of some nativists.
My audience for Digital Project #2 will be nativists who are very anti-immigration, so I need to keep everything above in mind when presenting my article and evidence.
The magic of your first car is a photo essay that shows young adults in Los Angeles who have just started driving their own cars. This piece uses images to allow the viewer to make their own interpretations of what the authors are trying to communicate. The texts in the article are used to steer the reader in the right direction of what the author is communicating.
In the images the young adults are not really performing a task, but it seems like they are doing things outside of their homes to have an excuse to drive their new cars and exercise their newly found form of freedom and independence. I feel this because of my personal experience of being 16 and having my own car. It felt like a safe place and gave me access to a lot more places and freedom than I was used to. When we all received our first cars, my friends and I would go on random adventures to a park or any area to just be away from home and not have to spend money.
The top photo shows two young women in a car that appear to be very relaxed. The introduction of the photo essay article talks about how young adults can ride with the windows down and be free from parents’ overly watchful eyes. This photo shows the women’s hair blowing in the wind and their faces look very calm and in a carefree or relaxed state. The lines from the article that I stated previously hint at the overall theme of newly found freedom that this photo essay displays.
The second photo in the article really jumps out at me because I feel that I can relate to it. It shows a young man just sitting in his parked car most likely outside of his home by himself. I know that for me personally when I first started driving my car was like my getaway space from everything. If I needed to make a call that I didn’t want siblings or my parents to hear I could go sit in my car. The text that is affiliated with this image uses the phrase a “home away from home.” A young adult’s first car can be their getaway from a toxic home environment or anything and I feel that this image perfectly represents that.
Through looking at these images in this photo essay, I can learn a bit about this community. I can infer that the people in this community are more outdoorsy because most of the photos are of young adults outside enjoying natural air and light from the sky.
The quote attached to the picture of the two young adults and the dog adds important detail to the overall theme of the photo essay. “Driving around on her own for the first time was exhilarating” Describing the feeling as being exhilarating explains why the teenagers in the photo essay are driving to go sit on the side of a highway. It feels good to them to have the freedom and ability to just go somewhere of their own will.
In my opinion the writing and the images complement each other very well and do a good job explaining the community to the reader. The piece shows how in the middle of a pandemic, young adults can use their new abilities of operating a vehicle to get away and destress themselves. The image of the man sitting in his parked car outside of houses pops out to me because of the two light glares in the picture. On the left side is the sunset, which gives the image a glare. The upper right-hand side of the image really shows the photographer’s creativity by showing the camera flash in the rearview mirror to produce a second glare of light in the image. I would use a similar strategy while taking photos of my own to keep the visual interesting.
Another technique I noticed in the photo essay was in the image of the couple on the side of the highway. The photographer focused on the two in the middle and showed the cars driving by in a blurred background. This shows how the two are focused on each other and losing themselves in the moment. This is a very clever technique of just focusing on a part of the image to give a message through an image.
I was able to make my own interpretations of what I was seeing in the images through personal experiences.
Water is the most prevalent source on the planet. Over 70% of the entire planet is covered by water so any type of water issue would most likely be important. I want to discuss water infrastructure, specifically the concept of building roads and businesses to be able to handle heavy rainfall without flooding.
Two years ago, in a town close to where I am from called Florissant Missouri, there was a heavy storm that caused a massive flood on a business strip called Florissant Meadows. The Florissant Meadows shopping center was a strip mall off the busy street of Lindbergh. Stores in this strip mall included Save A Lot, Walgreens, Dollar Tree, CVS Pharmacy, a DMV, a ST. Vincent De Paul thrift store, and more. On July 26, 2022, a storm flooded this strip mall and put businesses out for months and years.
This is a picture of what the flood looked like outside of Walgreens from (nytimes.com)
I believe that this situation can be classified as a wicked problem. It is understood that in order to be a wicked problem, a situation must have six characteristics: a vague problem definition, an undefined solution, have no end point, be irreversible, unique, and urgent.
The Florissant Meadows flood is a vague problem because it breeds an abundance of issues not just for the business owners but also for the community. Members of the local Florissant community relied heavily on stores like Save A Lot, Dollar Tree, and CVS for their everyday living. Save a lot and Dollar Tree were cheap and easily accessible ways for people to get groceries and more specifically produce without having to travel more than a couple of miles. The second closest available grocery store is located a little more than a mile down Lindbergh. That store is harder to reach for community members who don’t have access to motor vehicles. The thrift store is one of the only places in the area to buy affordable clothing within two miles of the strip mall.
There is not one singular solution to the Florissant Meadows flood. The strip mall flood resulted from the area’s infrastructure and Coldwater Creek behind the strip mall overflowing. The surrounding area of Florissant Meadows is shaped like a gigantic bowl. When the heavy storm hit, all the water was stuck in the bowl’s center. A big creek being in the center of this bowl did not help the situation. A solution could be to move all the business to a different location so this can’t happen again. But it is just not that simple. Some of the businesses are small local family-owned businesses and not big chain businesses. Those owners had to fight hard to open their stores again but still have that risk of losing everything.
This is a picture of an empty Coldwater Creek from (alchetron.com)
To continue from the last sentence, there is no endpoint to the problem with Florissant Meadows. Another heavy storm can pass by and flood the strip mall again and hurt the community members and businesses. Any day or night their operations can be slowed or shut down depending on how mother nature feels.
Here are some stories of some of the local business owners who were affected by the flooding.
This flood did not just affect the business strip. People’s homes were also flooded that night.
Another characteristic of a wicked problem that ties with this situation is that the effects are irreversible. There is no room for error when trying to fix the issues at hand. Homes and places of businesses are affected by floods in this area. Failing to solve the problem can result in the repeated devastation of lives in the community. The method of trial and error simply does not work in this situation.
What makes this problem unique is the fact that it stems from multiple sources. The infrastructure of the area being shaped like a gigantic bowl is already an issue for flooding by itself. To make matters worse, there is a creek in the middle of the big bowl to add more water to the flood.
The last characteristic of this wicked problem of the Florissant Meadows flood is how urgent the issue needed and still needs to be addressed. The businesses have been opened back up and are running currently. However, if another heavy rainfall storm occurs like the one that took the businesses out two years ago, the exact same results will take place. The locals that live in that area cannot afford to be constantly at flood risk whenever there is a storm.
The Florissant Meadows shopping center is crucial to the local community members and their way of life. This strip mall flooding is a wicked problem for the community because of the abundance of problems for the community it causes, there not being a specific answer to its problems, the issue does not have an end, damages and failures to help fix the problems are irreversible, the issue has unique circumstances that cause the problems, and it was and still is an urgent issue.
