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Social Semiotics: Application of Rules for Visual Images

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  According to a paper titled Social Semiotics in 2009, social semiotics is the attempted understanding of how people communicate through different channels in an attempt to understand and comprehend the world around them. Michale Halliday introduced the theory of social semiotics in 1978 in his book Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. Since this initial introduction of the theory, there have been many different versions proposed by numerous scholars such as Gunther Kress and Robert Hodge. This is a really important theory because it suggests that everything people do to interact with one another is a sign and every sign is simultaneously stating something, relating people to each other, and connecting to other signs to create a comprehensive message (Bezemer et. al., 2009). There are many types of “meaning makers” and “modes” of which signs can be conveyed. Images, the elements of writing, dictation, gestures, posture, and the gaze of a...
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FACT - People Need Sound to Live : How to Properly Argue Online

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  For this blog post, I am going to be talking about an argument that happened in the comments section of a Facebook page a while ago. Argument: https://www.india.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/315.jpg . I am not including the screenshot here because, as a warning, it is rather… uh… not kid-friendly to put it lightly. I chose to talk about this argument because I felt it displayed two rather clear types of arguments. It is a rather short argument, but one person has a much clearer ability to use logic and has an actual basis for his position. The initial post stated that the movie The Martian looked rather unrealistic and not to his taste. A second person responded by explaining where the logic behind the movie came from and it is actually very realistic. The original person then responded by saying it was not because humans need sound to live, and there is no sound in space.  There are many things wrong with this argument, but I will stick to the main concerns I have. The in...
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Toulmin's Argument

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  According to the chapter titled “Analyzing Arguments: The Toulmin Method” in the textbook titled Communicating Online by Julia Green, the Toulmin method is a method of analyzing arguments by identifying the claim, their ground for such a claim, and the warrants that connect the two. The second level to this model is identifying any qualifiers to the claim that would limit its application, the quality of any evidence presented, and the rebuttals they address as well as how well these rebuttals are addressed (Green, 2017, p. 324). Every argument has a strong claim that is based on some aspect of their lived or researched experience. The warrant is the bridge between these two that explains how they are related. The qualifiers are limiting statements such as “in most cases” that limit the applicability and are used as a way to reduce the ability for rebuttals. The evidence used has to be from a reputable source and relevant in order to make a good argument.  Below is an exampl...
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Engaging in Online Meetings

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     If you are anything like me, you know what it's like to never pay attention when in an online meeting. They are boring and can never grab your attention. The professor of your class uses the same slide format every week and talks in the same monotone voice, so you'd rather be playing with your cat than focusing on class.      This week I listened to a podcast produced by Stanfords Graduate business school titled Quick Thinks: How to Shine Online and Excel at Virtual Communication (listen on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/19uW3rmMNnjcswqi5cOrNV?si=OmkqYKGLQz2RJbtf6QNZtg ). This episode was a shorter podcast, only about 8 minutes, but talked a lot about how to successfully communicate online using platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams.  At the time this episode was released, the current pandemic had been in full swing for a little over a year in the United States and everything such as school, business meetings, and every hanging...
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Social Media's Role in Making and Recording History

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  Social media is drastically increasing the records of history but in an unexpected way. There are both good and bad sides to this depending on how one looks at it. In the evergrowing popularity of media, events ranging from small, insignificant moments in time such as that college party last weekend to major global events such as the 2022 Winter Olympics are documented and shared on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and every other major social media platform. This provides a record of events and things people have said or done that will have a permanent footprint. This is a great thing because history being made today will forever be recorded as it happens. This means events and periods of history are likely never to be lost to time.  Cultures, where oral traditions or singular copies of a manuscript are all the history there is, can easily lose history to a disease or old age as with a lot of native tribes or a corrupt government such as in Orwell’s 1984. Having a plethora of ...
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Online Presence of a Professional Businesses

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BioChroma Analytics Lab LLC is a company based out of Dallas, TX that provides aid in product development and distribution to companies in fields such as cosmetics and medicines. They do this by providing services to customers in the fields of biology and chemistry to consult, help develop, upscale, and even run tests of products the customers are trying to distribute.  This company has a great online presence that provides a professional outreach to clients and other interested third parties. I originally found this company through a job listing on the website Indeed that had a brief job description, an email address, and a link to apply through their website. Upon clicking the link to their website, I was brought to a webpage with a very eyecatching banner and logo. The logo itself is simplistic, yet conveys the company name, and some visual representations of what the company has to offer. The banner below that is then a brightly colored picture of berries and medicine in the ...
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Digital Native or Digital Immigrant?

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According to Marc Prensky, a “Digital Native” is anyone around the age to be in college (as of 2001) or younger. These people have grown up in the digital age where they have always had some form of technology accessible to them. They play more video games and watch more TV than they do reading books. They go to the internet as a first option when researching rather than a book or another person. They prefer to play games rather than doing actual work. A “Digital Immigrant” is someone in older generations who did not grow up with things such as the internet or computers readily available. Instead, they have had to adopt these into their lives much later and had to learn to use them after having already lived life without them. They appreciate a good book or long walks outside more than the average Joe who was born later than the ’80s.  Using the age definition, I technically fall under the classification of Digital Native. I was born the year Prensky wrote his paper. I grew up with...
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Online Communication's Role in My Relationship

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This picture was taken at my boyfriend's brother's wedding. He remains very close with his family and so we go to family dinners quite often. I have not connected with any of his family on online platforms but I have managed to form a good relationship with all of them despite this.    Currency, I am in a committed relationship that has been going on for almost a year in a half. Moving to Corvallis from my hometown in New Mexico, I knew only one person from my graduating high school class who was also moving to Oregon. I had no other friends or even family remotely close by. Being an introvert, it has always been really hard for me to make new friends, especially since everything my freshman year was online.  A month before I left New Mexico, my best friend had moved away. On one of our multi-hour late-night phone calls, she decided to sign me up for a dating app as a joke despite me being against them because one of her friends had signed her up the night before. Origina...
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Issues with Social Media Today

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 I think every social media platform has its own benefits and drawbacks. For example, Snapchat is an online platform that allows you to share pictures and videos with specific friends, groups, or everyone you are friends with on the platform through a story. Some benefits include real-time updates on what friends are doing, more personal communications, and the ability to have easy video conventions with people while still not requiring both people to be online at the same time. However, there are some issues with this. One of the major drawbacks is the limited time for which certain messages and such are available to be viewed. After an image is viewed, it's gone forever and no longer saved in a chat log as with regular text messaging. Another issue could be with privacy. A user may not be aware of how much information, such as address and other locations is being shared in videos or with the map feature if they are not aware it is even on. This is a lot of private information th...
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About Me

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     Hello, my name is Taylor and I am from a small town called Rio Rancho which is just outside Albuquerque, New Mexico ( fun fact, it took me almost 18 years to be able to spell Albuquerque correctly, kind of embarrassing ) . I was born and raised in the Albuquerque/Rio Rancho area and lived there for 18 years before I moved here to Oregon for college . I originally started a degree in ocean science before I quickly decided that was too easy and switched to advanced chemistry, because who doesn't switch to a more difficult major, right ?       In my free time, I love playing and listening to music . I play the piccolo, concert flute, and alto flute. I originally started on the c flute almost 10 years ago and played it all the way through high school . I joined my high school marching band and did that for all 4 years and then joined the marching band here at Oregon State when I arrived and my main instrument is now the piccolo .     ...
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