Targeting Audience
Purpose: This group activity is intended for use in a synchronous classroom, whether face-to-face or over video conference. The purpose of this activity is to teach students about creating content that is targeted to their audience while giving them the opportunity to conduct a group brainstorming session for the remix portion of their Meme Analysis assignment. This activity should accompany the Identifying Audience mini-lesson.
Materials Needed:
- PowerPoint Slides
- Identifying Audience Worksheet (attached below)
- Students must already have chosen the meme that they will be analyzing.
- Student access to an internet browser.
Procedure:
First, discuss the steps to writing for an audience:
Next, have students get into groups of 3 or 4, and give them the attached worksheet.
Targeting an Audience Worksheet
You will be introduced to three different people. You will be playing the role of a vegetarian trying to convince each of these three people to become vegetarian themselves. Your purpose is to sway the opinions of others. Your goal is to tailor your argument so it is most effective for your audience. Below are sample arguments for vegetarianism that you can pull from, or you can also use your own:
- Being vegetarian lowers your risk for heart disease.
- Cutting meat out of your diet can help reduce carbon emissions.
- Being vegetarian can lower your blood pressure and your risk for cancer.
- A vegetarian diet is cheaper than a meat inclusive diet.
- There are fewer hormones and preservatives in an all-veggie diet.
Which of these arguments would be effective if your audience was:
Julie:
Karen:
Brad:
_________________________________________________________
Walk through each slide which provides the information necessary for students to determine who their audience is and what their audience values. Have students within their groups determine the best way to appeal to each audience and then have a full group discussion.
For example, because of what we know about Julie, students may determine that the best way to appeal to her is to appeal to her environmental work and use the argument about carbon emissions, to appeal to her love of animals, and to appeal to the fact that she likely needs a cheaper diet to construct their argument for Julie.
The other two slides are as follows:
Another component of this activity is for students to then look at the arguments that they have tailored for each person, have students pick one person and ask the students to create a visual argument that would appeal to that person. Ask the students to search for images they think would be effective to convey their argument. Would they use graphs? What colors would they use? Students don’t need to actually edit these images together, but can draw up a mock up of their visual argument using any medium they’re comfortable with.
The final portion of class will be dedicated to each group discussing their own individual plans to target their remixed memes to an audience of UK students. Each group should answer the following:
What do we know about UK students?
How can I appeal to UK students using:
-Ethos?
-Pathos?
-Logos?
