Verifiability

Marshall McLuhan was a very influential theorist during this time and created notable ideas such as: medium is the message and hot and cool media. Saying that, McLuhan has a very detailed background and one can easily find reliable sources and research.

For starters, the structure of Marshall McLuhan’s Wikipedia page is insightful. I noticed that for some theorist or even political figures, if they had invented something crucial for our society, their biographies would focus more on what they did than who they were and their personal background. The structure of this article was very thorough in the sense of the subcategories in each section. The initial beginning to the body of the article opens with his career path and how he lead himself to being the renowned theorist he came out to be. As a reader, I had not visited his Wikipedia page up until this point in time and I felt as if I knew everything I needed to know. Not only were there perceptive details but there was a ton of reliable sources that were used plenty throughout the entire article. I have come across many Wiki articles and Marshall McLuhan’s article stuck out to me. It was perfectly thought out in detail and had dependable references.

Unfortunately, not every Wikipedia article is ever truly completed but neither is every article as in depth and dependable like McLuhan’s and Michelle Citron’s article is a good example of that. It wasn’t visually appealing to me only for the sole factor of its length. I didn’t trust the article because of how short it was and for how vague it was too. This article is also a great example of what I was talking in the previous paragraph on how decent to almost perfect articles contain what the person did rather than who they were and for the most part, Citron’s article is mostly on her personal background. For all I know, I can learn everything about this individual but, “what she did” is still unclear with its lack of information. This could be personal opinion but, I did not think it was as useful as the Wikipedia author thought it would be, however, the charts explaining the books she has written isn’t as visually appealing if instead the author were to just write it out in detail in a regular paragraph. Even creating subcategories like McLuhan’s article would be effective because I can visually understand what I am reading. Lastly, the sources. Although it wasn’t as satisfying as Marshall’s, I do believe the sources were reliable but they were limited.    

To conclude, I would like to reiterate and say that reading both of these articles and comparing and contrasting both of them only proved to me as a reader and as a student how important verifiability is. I end this post with Wikipedia’s rule for Verifiability: “Wikipedia does not publish original research. Its content is determined by previously published information rather than the beliefs or experiences of its editors. Even if you're sure something is true, it must be verifiable before you can add it.” (Verifiability1)

Work Cited:

Marshall McLuhan. Wikipedia Article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Mcluhan

Michelle Citron. Wikipedia Article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Citron

Oversimplification

Once reading the term “oversimplification” I began to think of issues and ideas of what one would consider an oversimplification. As human beings, it is in our nature to be demanding and ask for facts for evidence and truth, we tend to oversimplify and think a lot about our decisions. Our beliefs in racism or even being stereotypical towards a certain stereotype, oversimplification is something one will never be able to turn away from. In Lazere’s article, chapter 10, “Avoiding Oversimplification and Recognizing Complexity,” she mentions that oversimplification is the essence of generalities such as advertising, talk radio, TV programs, propaganda, etc. However, Lazere taught me that oversimplification isn’t something as valuable as rhetoric. Where as rhetoric gives the best dialectical discourse and connection between audience and speaker and oversimplification gives the lowest result of that. Congressman Newt Gingrich quoted, “You have to give them confrontation.” Something to work through their (the audience’s) thinking to get them to oversimplify.

If there is such thing as oversimplifying then overgeneralizing has to quickly follow. Overgeneralizing is when a speaker does not fully prepare their facts, evidence and/or cases to back up their claim. For example, “people who drive Mercedes are rude because people who drive Mercedes are rude.” For Corbett and Eberly’s theory this one quote stuck out to me:

“You can spot discourses that beg the question by looking for such words as obviously… any defense lawyer would say “objection!” if the prosecution were to say to the jury, “obviously, she is guilty.”

Below is a photo I have attached to my blog post as an easier way to understand Corbett’s and Eberly’s article. When they mentioned false analogy, immediately I knew there had to be an image to where I can show my audience and my followers exactly the point I am arguing. The definition of an analogy is knowing something by knowing a similarity like it. Resulting in analogies may not be the smartest tactic but, if one enjoys analogies like myself, you can really grab your audiences attention.