The scholarly article I chose to transform--To Have or Not to Have a Pet for Better Health? by Leena Koivusilta and Ansa Ojanlatva--talks about about the associations of pet ownership with perceived health and disease indicators. This study takes into account socio-demographic background factors together with health risk factors such as exercise.
I came up with two ways to transform this genre into new and different genres: a health magazine article that you typically find in a doctor’s waiting room and an online BuzzFeed article, specifically found on Snapchat’s “Discover” section. The magazine article is geared towards an older audience because it is more likely that adults pick up a health magazine compared to a younger audience. For this article I will make sure to include the research within the scholarly article that describe how aging individuals’ health can be positively affected by pet companions. As far as the Snapchat article, I am not completely sure how I will recreate this genre since most of the articles in the “Discover” section have videos and moving images and words and I am not technologically confident to make one myself. For now I will focus on the content for this genre. Given I will be targeting a younger audience, I will try making it as entertaining as possible. To keep the readers engaged, I will relate things from the scholarly article that may affect them. For example, in the scholarly article, Koivusilta and Ojanlatva talks about 20-24 year olds and their associations between the amounts of exercise and diseases.
I noticed that health magazine articles have a catchy title, creative font styles, and colorful images. They also tend to include images of famous artists; typically women. They are usually longer than other entertainment articles and use a more scholarly tone, whereas popular media articles use a conversational tone. Health magazines, compared to the scholarly article, tend to summarize the main points mentioned in the scholarly article instead of going more in depth with the research process and the results obtained from that study. For the health magazine article I was thinking of using cute pictures of puppies and a catchy title like “10 Reasons Why Puppies Can be Good for Your Health.” Then I will break into the different reasons, discussed in the scholarly article, that show why pets such as puppies can be god for a person’s health. In a way, I will be trying to persuade readers of an older age group to consider getting a pet.
I want to try using social media as one of the textual genres because applications such as Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook have an important effect on the younger audience of today’s generation. Many college students today have a snapchat account and use it as a means of communication between friends. One of the features on snapchat that has recently been included is a “Discover” page that includes links to specialized articles such as Cosmopolitan, BuzzFeed, Now This, Comedy Central, CNN, ESPN, of many. These articles help bring current and popular topics that typically intrigue a younger audience of discussion such as sports, food tips, etc. I will recreate my own article and talk about the effects on pets on a younger population using the data in the scholarly article.
I hope to have some fun making these textual genres even though I am not exactly sure how I will go about this assignment.For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Snapchat, here is what I mean...
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI thought that your idea for the health magazine is very interesting and a very common piece of writing that I would certainly associate with an older audience. I think it’s good that you are focusing on the font style, catchy title, and small details like that because they are the important conventions that make up this genre. I’m pretty sure you allude to this but I think you should be more specific when transforming why older audiences should care about animals being good for their health. Perhaps including the correlation with longer lives and animals in your reflection.
For the younger audience the buzz feed article sounds very promising, but I feel like there is a lot of detail you have not yet acknowledge, such as How are you going to make it interesting so it can attract the youth? Something you might consider is how you can translate the language from the scholarly article to something that will be intriguing for younger readers to engage with. Also can explain who uses snapchat? and what its purpose is?
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ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I love the title of the article you chose, the title itself is enough to interest me but that's because I think pets are the best family members to have. I think more of a summary about what the article is about would help me understand what information you are trying to incorporate in the buzzfeed discover article, and the health magazine. What is the argument that the original article is trying to make? How are you going to incorporate this main argument in the new articles that you are creating.
ReplyDeleteI think that you will be able to recreate the buzzfeed discover page. Are you just creating one of the little pages on it? Because I've noticed that there is usually a visual, but then when you scroll down there is usually an article. Or have you thought about doing a mini experiment like buzzfeed does like the one where they try to go a week without their phones? You can do something like that but make it about pets.
For the health magazine article what magazine are you designing your article after? How will you try to convince adults to get a pet? And why do you think your techniques will be effective?
Ayala,
ReplyDeleteSome questions that I had before getting into your transformation ideas were: what were the associations that they were interested in? What demographic variables did they consider? (And why?) And what were their findings? The answers to these questions are all ways to think about your possible transformations—and the “essence” of the article—in further detail.
The magazine article seems like a nice fit, but: what magazine? And why? And what kind of specific article? (And why?) Try to narrow in on those smaller nesting dolls.
Looking ahead, I see that you’re thinking about the ““10 Reasons Why Puppies Can be Good for Your Health” idea, and I think that’s great. Are there any downsides to pet ownership? If so, you might wanna consider a pros + cons type of list.
The Buzzfeed article sounds cool too—just make sure it’s tailored to a *specific audience for a specific reason. It seems like you’re on your way to making some purposeful decisions here, just make sure you’ve got a WHY with every WHAT decision that you’re making.
Z
I think your idea to transform the original article into a BuzzFeed article is a very creative one and is a good way to get the information out to a younger audience. However, since you didn't really say what the argument of the original article is or too many details about the information included in it, I'm not really sure I understand what you're going to include within your transformation. Does the article include information about how pets are beneficial to younger people? Is this what you'll be focusing on in your BuzzFeed article? Maybe you can think about why a younger audience would want to learn about the health benefits of owning a pet? I think transforming into a health magazine article will be a very effective way of incorporating the information from the original one. Again, you can think about why the audience might want to know this information? And maybe based on the information presented in the article narrow down a certain population of adults that might be interested?
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ReplyDeleteI think it is really important to be sure to include specific facts from the scholarly article in both the magazine article and the buzzfeed article. I also really like how you explained why you chose a genre shared through social media—because of its effect on the young generations. I have a few questions though.
ReplyDeleteHow would the buzzfeed article be specifically geared toward an audience that is younger than our age? Do you think there are certain buzzfeed articles that are geared towards younger teens, and certain ones that are geared towards young adults? What would be different about these two types of buzzfeed articles?
Also, for the magazine article, what parts from the scholarly article would you intentionally exclude? How much of the study would you talk about, and would you change the jargon that the scholarly article uses? How would conventions such as the organization of the scholarly article vs. the magazine article differ? What about length?
Joseline, it seems like you really looked ahead into the conventions of a health magazine, a really great thing to do because eventually you’ll be making one. The tile you mentioned in your PB3A seem like it could work for your PB3A, but I’m just curious as to how lengthy each reason would be. You mentioned in you summary that the study took into account socio-demographic background and I was wondering if you’d include that in either of your two transformations. Besides those two question it seems like you have this transformation down.
ReplyDeleteI feel like this transformation is a great way to get the younger audience involved, since social media has taken over how most of the younger population gets their news. Knowing that you must keep the reader engaged, I was wondering if you would try to represent the data along-side with scenarios that would be relevant to your younger audience. Finally, I know you mentioned you weren’t tech savvy, but maybe could just present it as a regular article and just surround it with a snapchat frame/background.