Website Content: Maintainig Viewership Through Design
Abstract
The world is changing to become more focused on online information. As such, websites, particularly those that market written and photo-based content to viewers, must carefully analyze how they manage information to maintain viewership on their websites. The average person will not spend long on a website unless they find something interesting, so it is important to employ techniques that will grab attention immediately; however, the longer a user spends on a website, the more likely he/she is to stay, so good content is a must as well. This is especially true as Internet usage becomes increasingly more popular on mobile devices, and websites must conform to mobile-friendly standards in order to maintain a consistent viewer rate, as mobile viewers are even quicker to leave a website once opening it. The interesting thing, then, is that the content is less important than the design and presentation of that content.
Website Content: Maintaining Viewership Through Design
The Internet is a constantly changing environment, making it hard to pin down what, exactly, happens to be the best strategy to market on it. Studies have been conducted on eye patterns, header information, clickbait, and a variety of other techniques to get a glimpse into human interaction on the web—a medium that is much harder to track than any other due to the distinct lack of face-to-face transactions as revenue is made—but little progress has been made because the Internet, and the devices we use to access it, changes so quickly. Unlike static media such as books, magazines, newspapers, and even television, movies, and music, the Internet is a fluid information source, and the strategies that influence its usage change more in a few years than the strategies employed for books have in the last century. But, even in an environment where information absorption changes so often, and the most viewed types of content are forever in flux, there remains some consistency as to what draws the eye. It is, therefore, imperative to focus on taking advantage of those consistencies through webpage design to draw the reader to the content, as the content will not work in and of itself.
First Impressions
First impressions are the most important for a website. According to a data analyst webpage, Chartbeat, as referred to by Farhad Manjoo (2013), about 40 percent of webpage viewers click off the page immediately after opening it. But, a lot of viewers won’t even get to the webpage if the real first impression is not made. That first impression occurs in the search results.
Two surveys by Mediative, reported by Kellogg (2015) in 2005 and 2014 indicated the ten-year change on how people view the search results page on Google.com. In 2005, viewers followed a pattern termed “The Golden Triangle.” This shape is how a viewer’s eye interpreted information on the page. The eye started in the top left corner, went straight down through the first few results—not scrolling the page—and then went back up and across to delve further into the information on the top two links. But by 2014, the Golden Triangle era had ended, leaving in its wake a more linear approach to viewing the search results page. Viewers focused on mostly the left-hand side of the page and also viewed more results on the first page. This all occurred in less time, though, with average time spent on the results page dropping from 15 seconds in 2005 to about eight in 2014. Figure 1 indicates the heatmaps from the surveys. According to Petrescu (2014) survey findings indicated that the first link of a search result saw a 72 percent click-through rate (clicks on a link). This shift represented a change, both in the viewers, and in the Internet itself. As it has become more popular, certain sites are known to be more reputable, so just knowing the name of the website does more for the site than anything (Search Engine Ranking Factors, 2015). On the Internet, being popular is akin to having the best information.
Figure 1: The Mediative heatmap indicates how viewers’ eyes track on the search results page.
This data confers the necessity of the first impression of a website: Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is essentially the steps taken to ensure that a website appears at the top of the list for search results, not including paid placement. The factor that most affects that search result is keywords: words located in the search that are also embedded somewhere in the website’s code that lead the search engine to point the searcher to that website. The more words a site has in common with a search, the more likely it is to appear at the top (Liu, White, & Dumais, 2010). That’s not all, though. Some other factors include click-through rate—websites with more visitors appear higher—user ratings, links on the webpage, length of content, readability, etc. (Search Engine Ranking Factors, 2015). Another factor in SEO, particularly on Google, is mobile friendliness. In 2015, Google shuffled its results page to reflect the changing of Internet browsing to smartphones by moving websites that are mobile-friendly to the top of the results page (Winkler, 2015). The size of a screen affects how a webpage can be viewed, and as more people view information on smaller screens, it is important to have a website that is compatible with the consumer’s method of consumption. According to Condliffe (2018), 23 percent of people accessing the Internet did so from a mobile device in 2010. In 2018, that number jumped to 84 percent. It is just as important as SEO, then, to have a website that changes design based on the size of the screen on which it is viewed.
The Website
The first impression of the website itself is also important. According to Liu et al. in 2010, the time users spend on a website is denoted by a negative aging Weibull Distribution. The Weibull Distribution is usually used for mechanical components to determine how long it would take them to fail. In this case, the variable was reconfigured to be how long it takes for someone to leave a website once it is opened. The fact that it ages negatively refers to the disparity between good and bad sites. Users leave bad sites immediately, but the rate at which users leave slows and steadies considerably as time goes on. The survey found that the highest percent chance a viewer has of leaving occurs almost as soon as the webpage is opened, meaning that the viewer immediately found something they didn’t like, whether that be a clunky home page, an odd color scheme, a weird logo, a clickbait headline, or even the loading time. All of these can factor into a viewer leaving a webpage. But, the longer a viewer is on the page, the less likely they are to leave. In essence, the website has about ten seconds to get the viewer’s attention. If it has failed to do that, the viewer has left. Fortunately, after those first ten seconds, the viewer is more likely to stay than leave, so long as your information is relevant, formatted to be easy to read, and relatively short. Figure 2 below is a graph that displays the particular distribution for the survey.
The hard part, then, is determining what to do in order to grab a viewer’s attention immediately. The unfortunate answer is that there is no clear-cut way to get the job done. But there are a few things that do help.
Figure 2: The Weibull Distribution from the webpage survey. As time increases, viewership becomes steadier, so the first ten seconds are the most important.
The first thing to know is how viewers track information on a webpage. The eye moves in a set path depending on the content, usually one of two different designs: the Gutenberg diagram, seen in Figure 3 below, or the aforementioned Golden Triangle. While the Gutenberg diagram is more geared towards photos, videos, and artwork, and the Golden Triangle is generally more often observed with text, the important thing is that both diagrams start at the top left corner.
Figure 3: The Gutenberg diagram depicts the movement of the eye as it views a webpage.
Once you know how information is consumed, plans can be made to best take advantage of the nature of the viewer’s mind by playing to the subconscious pattern. First, make sure the information is placed in the correct spot. Start with the most important thing in the top left corner so that it is the first thing a viewer will see. Next, take advantage of things that naturally draw the eye, such as a large logo, a header, or a navigation bar. These are the things that people spend the most time staring at when they open up a webpage, at about six seconds of view time per each item. (Dahal, 2011). It is also a good idea to have a place for action to be at the terminal area (Anthony, 2018). The last thing a viewer will see is more likely to leave an imprint, as viewers spend nearly as long at the bottom of a webpage as they do on the logo, header, and navigation bar.
Once the critical 10-second threshold for viewership has been passed, the problem becomes getting the information across that must be purveyed. The crux of the matter is that the words on the site don’t really do as much to cover it as one would think. While word count does play a factor in how long a user will stay on a site—the more words and information there are, the longer a reader will spend on the site—it is hardly conclusive that the word amount is actually an important factor. Weinreich, Obendorf, Herder, & Mayer, (2008) found that the number of links as compared to dwell time on a webpage moves in nearly identical fashion to the word count variable, as seen in Figure 4.
Figure 4: The number of links and number of words move in a similar pattern in reference to dwell time on a site.
That inconclusiveness becomes doubly apparent when paired with the finding that, at an average reading speed of 250 words per minute, most viewers can read only 25 percent of the total words on a page with an 800-word article if they spent no time at all doing anything but reading (Nielsen, 2008). This is a clear indication that readers are skimming information rather than actually reading it. To avoid having readers skim through and miss important details, the presentation of that information must be conducive to the Internet reader, who wants quick chunks of information and not long paragraphs. Weinreich et al. (2008) said, “the ‘scannability’ of information and hyperlinks as well as their intelligibility seem to be essential for the usability of web pages” (p. 20).
On a word-based website, the presentation of the words is most important; information is useless if the viewer will not read through a huge chunk of text to find it, and they won’t. Breaking up the information into clearly designed sections with informative headers will help navigate a reader through the information. Shorter chunks are better, too. While there is no conclusive evidence that the Internet has lowered human attention span, it is clear that people do not navigate the Internet like a novel: no one sits down for hours scrolling through one webpage. Most viewers don’t even get more than 60 percent into one, according to Manjoo (2013). Defining information becomes like eating a pie. Give one person the entire thing and he/she will never be convinced they can eat it; cut it into small slices and place them on the table one at a time, and he/she will never know they made it through a whole pie by the time he/she has finished it. Just in case, though, putting the important information first is good, both to ensure that a viewer will get to it in case he/she gets full too early, and because it has a good chance of acting like a great first line in a book and hooking the reader for the entire piece.
Limitations
The biggest limitation for this is certainly the jumbled mess that is the Internet. While information on this subject is boundless, the organization of it is miserable and entirely too focused on certain niche websites, such as libraries. In addition, because the Internet changes so quickly, information from even five years ago can be incredibly outdated, and depending on the variables used in research, even information that should be the same can come out completely different. A lot of this information also has issues with dedicated viewership, which can’t be accounted for throughout such a wide topic. To really analyze this data properly, it has to be done on a page-by-page basis, which is mostly impossible. Another limitation is the fickle reality that is the human brain. Considering the enormous variety of factors that influence the most minute of decisions, it is nearly impossible to accurately portray any statistic for this topic. Really, the most difficult thing is that website design is much more like an art than a science. While there are certain things that the masses find more appealing, and there are groups of people who like some designs over others, it is mostly subjective, and each viewer will be different.
Future Studies
In the future, it would be good to be able to more deeply analyze this information on a site-by-site basis to gather more accurate data. Statistics are difficult to categorize, but it might be easier if a more pointed survey was done. If I had more time, I would have designed a usability survey focusing on two websites with the exact same information but with different design tactics employed to have a clearer view of what the deciding factors in webpage viewer maintenance actually are. Some things to focus on would have been photo placement, video embeds, links and advertisements, the logo, and graphic design. Each would be changed one at a time so that they could be categorized independently of each other. If I really had the time, I would even consider doing this for all types of websites, such as video platforms, blogs, news, and miscellaneous to help further categorize the findings and make them more efficient.
Conclusion
The artistic nature of website design makes it difficult to efficiently categorize every “best” practice, but because the human brain works in patterns, there are certain steps that can be taken to efficiently achieve the goals of a good site with the information available. One of those few steps is to design something that is user friendly. A design that is both easy on the eyes and the brain will be the most beneficial to a viewer who wants to find the information he/she is looking for without bleeding eyes and a headache. While the content is the end goal of the viewer, that information will never be found unless it is made relatively easy, so a clear design will be the most helpful in ensuring a website makes it to the top.
References
Anthony (2018, April 09). Why Users Click Right Call to Actions More Than Left Ones.
Condliffe, J. (2018, January 23). The average American spends 24 hours a week online.
Dahal, S. (2011). Eyes don't lie: Understanding users' first impressions on website design using eye tracking. Missouri University of Science and Technology.
Kellogg, K. (2015, October 21). Google SERP Eye-tracking: 2005 vs. 2014.
Liu, C., White, R. W., & Dumais, S. (2010). Understanding web browsing behaviors through Weibull analysis of dwell time. SIGIR '10 Proceeding of the 33rd International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, 379-386. doi:10.1145/1835449.1835513
Manjoo, F. (2013, June 06). You won't finish this article.
Nielsen, J. (2008, May 6). How little do users read?
Petrescu, P. (2014, October 02). Google organic click-rhrough rates in 2014.
Search engine ranking factors 2015. (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2018.
Weinreich, H., Obendorf, H., Herder, E., & Mayer, M. (2008). Not quite the average: an empirical study of web use. ACM Transactions on the Web, 2(1). doi:10.1145/1326561.1326566
Winkler, R. (2015, April 21). Google gives boost to mobile-friendly sites. Wall Street Journal.
Falling Literacy Rates: Why They Are Falling and How They Can Be Raised
Abstract
Students consistently move throughout the education system of the United States at a basic level in fields not directly associated with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). Consequently, reading skills have fallen off the wayside by over-testing and failure to address the lack of motivation in students to read following the third grade. This has created a constant flow of students reaching the end of their secondary education unable to read proficiently; therefore, many students reach college or another form of post-secondary education without the ability to comprehend the texts necessary to get through their classes. Even then, they struggle through but reach the end of their college careers only to not comprehend laws and official government documents because they were never prepared. According to this failure of the education system, I have analyzed the problem and provided a solution which may very well help drastically reduce the number students who cannot read proficiently at Western Carolina University, and should the model be as successful as predicted, it will hopefully spread to other universities, and eventually down to the third-grade level where it needs to be placed.
Introduction
“Nay, do not think I flatter;
For what advancement may I hope from thee
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits,
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled,
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee” (Shakespeare, 1599-1602).
Congratulations are in order for an accurate interpretation of that passage from Act III, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.” This play by Shakespeare is commonly recognized as 12th grade level reading; therefore, the ability to understand that after the first read-through places the reader at least at a 12th grade level—most likely higher (Leveled Reading Systems, Explained, 2017). That is better than approximately 63% of seniors in high school (NAEP Report Cards, retrieved March 24, 2017). Those who read at a 12th grade level would actually only be able to comprehend about 75% of the information in a 12th grade level text according to the Lexile scale (MetaMetrics, 2017). It's a worthy accomplishment to be able to comprehend that passage before 12th grade, but being a college student who can’t understand it presents a problem. Any reader beyond high school that can’t understand the passage isn’t ready for reading in college, and perhaps isn’t ready in other subjects either. Why? Because according to Sandra Stotsky, an education specialist at the University of Arkansas, our standards for “college and career ready” are actually equivalent to about the standards of high school readiness—9th or 10th grade work (Hope, 2015).
Current Situation
The issue currently is that not enough students are prepared to succeed in college or afterwards, perhaps because they fail to read effectively. According to Dr. Kelly Tracy, Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at Western Carolina University, children lose the want to read sometime around third grade, and from there on, their abilities falter (Dr. Kelly Tracy, Personal Communication, April 11, 2017). It’s common knowledge that not practicing something means you don’t improve at it, and for reading that becomes doubly important. When children don't learn how to read well, and instead fake it to get by, they hurt themselves in reading, writing, math, and science. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ 2015 report card, only 37% of high school seniors read at or above proficient; their own grade level. Statistically speaking, that number hasn’t changed much over the years, but the fact that it’s so low is an issue in the first place. As shown in figure 1, student reading abilities have not improved, and instead maintain a downward trend overall.
Figure 1: The percentage of 12th grade students who read at or above proficient. Proficient is defined as reading at or above a 12th grade level. Adapted from “Nation’s Report Card National Achievement Level Results,” by U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, and National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2015. (https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/naepdata/report.aspx?p=3-RED-2-20153-RRPCM-B001151-NT-MN_MN,RP_RP-Y_J-0-0-5). In the Public Domain.
The Problem
The Effects of Standardized Testing
Most of the problem stems from too much standardized testing, which was mainly introduced as a penalty method towards schools on a national level by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (Dr. Kelly Tracy, Personal Communication, April 11, 2017). Following the passing and implementation of this act, schools had to push for federal support by upping scores on standardized tests. Naturally, this can solve many problems, but it also created many. For one, standardized testing forces teachers into a corner. They must teach to the test or they risk losing funding for their school and eventually their job. This causes a loss of connection between students and teachers, which is imperative for teachers to do their job properly and encourage learning, especially in elementary education, grades K-5. Possible failures in teaching due to this disconnect include:
· Failure of the teacher to ascertain each student’s learning style
· Failure to find a student’s motivation for learning and schooling
· Failure to individually work past students’ problems to create understanding
· Failure to comprehend and deal with the emotional and mental strains of growing up
Most importantly, in this situation, is that it will cause a loss of motivation in the children to read. Because standardized tests require a specific course material to be taught, teachers, and consequently, students fail to vary from this material in any creative manner, especially in the subject of reading. By teaching to the reading tests in third grade, students become demotivated from reading because they don’t enjoy the material they are forced to read. As part of psychological development, it hasn’t yet occurred to a child at that age that there are different kinds of reading. Their brains have not developed to that extent by the age of eight; therefore, they picture a part as a whole, and no longer wish to participate in the activity. This time in a child’s life is commonly referred to as the “preoperational stage.” This stage is where imagination and memory begin to develop, allowing a child to develop better thinking skills. It does not, however, yet allow them to use logic operationally. They still think based mostly on intuition, so extremely complex concepts are difficult to grasp (Piaget Stages of Development, 2005-2017). So, really, the problem which is caused by all of this is that students don’t read, usually because they never find what type of reading they most like to do (Dr. Kelly Tracy, Personal Communication, April 11, 2017). And, because students don’t read, they don’t learn how to read better. Since they don't learn how to read better from reading, they never improve, and then when they are tested, their scores remain below average. The disconnect between students and teachers is clearly illustrated by test results by location within the United States. A larger student to teacher ratio causes lower scores in reading proficiency, as shown in figure 2. Students who attend school in city locations have lower test scores than students who attend school in the suburbs and rural areas more often than not since 2009.
Figure 2: 12th grade students at or above proficient based on location of school in three years. Adapted from "NAEP Data Explorer," by U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, and National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2015. (https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/naepdata/report.aspx?p=3-RED-2-20153-RRPCM-B001151-NT-MN_MN,RP_RP-Y_J-0-0-5). In the Public Domain.
As stated before, an inability to read effectively does not only have consequences when it comes to reading tests. Reading effects every subject, and even life after schooling. It is, perhaps, the most important subject to be adept in, and failing is not an option if one wishes to live an informed life. People who read below proficient—not defined by the exact numbers of the NAEP—will find themselves struggling to interpret and compare documents of differing viewpoints. In other words, they may not be able to determine differences in two editorials. Those who read proficiently can synthesize and infer about multiple documents at one time, which is necessary for understanding laws and changes in laws, as well as many well-written government documents (Baer, Baldi, & Cook, 2006). It is also only logical that if one cannot understand a question asked, he/she cannot possibly answer the question correctly, which means that reading is integral to mathematical and scientific word problems. In a study involving those of similar backgrounds and ages, it was suggested that reading, alone, had a significant effect on math skills as well as reading and vocabulary advancements (Sullivan, 2013). The web of reading stretches over all aspects of life, and it is important to at least be competent enough in the subject to comprehend necessary information both through school and life after.
Solutions
Solutions to this problem are many, but viable solutions are few and convoluted. Most solutions require implementation at the third-grade level, or even before, which is unrealistic for college students, as foregoing a basic knowledge of reading makes it much more difficult to acquire an advanced knowledge late. It is possible to implement a solution at the college level; it only becomes more difficult to make sure the solutions stick after the students are brought up to a good standard. Note that it is imperative that a test be implemented to determine student reading levels before entering college for any of these solutions to work. Scores in reading comprehension will most likely need to be accessed via the ACT or SAT as most tests to determine reading comprehension and reading grade level must be administered in person.
Below are two solutions which may be possible to implement at Western Carolina University.
Solution 1: A remedial course which covers techniques meant to help increase reading comprehension
This solution would take place as a one credit hour course directed within the English department. The class would be comprised of students who did not reach a benchmark score on the ACT—22 (College Readiness Benchmarks, 2017)—or the SAT—480 (Benchmarks, 2016). In this class, students would read material and be asked to provide a three-page paper detailing themes and how they were presented in the material. During classes, the instructor will go over common methods to deduce main ideas and supporting details in material. Reading material will become progressively more difficult throughout the semester. The final exam will be a class-wide reading literacy exam. Students who pass will proceed from the class, but students who do not will be offered a chance to take one more remedial course after the benefits of reading effectively are explained to them thoroughly. There are a few advantages to this technique. The most prevalent is that an instructor will be either refreshing students on ways to deduce ideas from material or will be giving entirely new instruction regarding it. Techniques which are not usually provided in primary and secondary education will be given to make each student a better reader. The cons of this are that there will be little to no motivation for students in the class, and it requires following the same standardized testing process that caused much of the problem in the first place.
Solution 2: Provide competition to motivate low-achieving students and methods with which to ascertain each student’s preferred genre of reading
Dr. Kelly Tracy emphasized the necessity for finding a genre of reading which each student likes, as this technique is more likely than any other to get a student hooked on reading (Dr. Kelly Tracy, Personal Communication, April 11, 2017). As shown in figure 3, reading more is likely to boost scores in reading proficiency tests. In 2013, the National Assessment of Educational Progress polled students who took the assessment for reading proficiency, asking how much they had read in the past year, either for pleasure, or for school. The results indicate that reading in almost any form is likely to boost proficiency test scores.
Figure 3: 12th grade students' scores on the NAEP Reading Proficiency Test based on the number of pages read in the last year. Maximum score on this assessment is 500. Adapted from "NAEP Data Explorer," by U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, and National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2013. (https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/naepdata/report.aspx?p=3-RED-2-20153-RRPCM-B001151-NT-MN_MN,RP_RP-Y_J-0-0-5). In the Public Domain.
In fact, according to a study involving 17,000 people born in the same week in England, Wales, and Scotland, it was suggested that reading is one of the most influential tasks in terms of test scores in reading comprehension, among other tests. Of the 17,000 participants in this study, 6,000 who had similar test scores at ages five and 10 were given the same test at the age of 16. After comparing them by demographics, researchers found that those who read often from the age of ten and on achieved higher test results than those who did not read or read less (Sullivan, 2013). So, getting students hooked on reading is a priority, and if each student is given time to discover their own interests in reading, they will be encouraged to continue reading after the course.
In order to encourage competition, students with better reading scores will be mixed into the class to act as mentors and discussion guides for the students with lower reading scores. If a student has questions, they can turn to someone else who is in the course, who will be continuously pushing the lower-achieving student to strive for success. Tests of some form must also be added in order to accurately assess improvement; however, instead of creating or buying tests, this should be done through a presentation. Mainly, each student will read a book every two weeks and present in class the summary of the book, reasons for which they liked the book, and two themes within, as well as how they identified the themes. Each presentation would need to be no more than five to 10 minutes in order to accurately assess improvement. Such a course would be best implemented through the tutoring center, where students can be more easily involved with their mentors, who would be hired as “tutors.”
The benefits of this idea are many. Firstly, it creates a sense of joy in reading that can only be established when someone finds a subject they truly enjoy reading about (fantasy, romance, mystery, biographies). It also creates a thriving community that can continuously progress throughout college life. It runs on competition, which can create a very fast-paced and enjoyable learning environment that doesn’t feel like learning.
The disadvantages of this are that it is time consuming, and it is difficult to ensure that competition will succeed as a motivator. While Americans generally thrive in a competitive environment due to our capitalistic, individualistic society, not everyone works the same way, so such competition might not work for all students. It is time consuming because part of the problem of not reading often is that students become slow, stumbling readers, so having to read a new book every two weeks and prepare a presentation on top of other classes may be difficult.
Recommendation
While both solutions may work, prior information indicates that the first method is merely a reproduction of efforts introduced by Common Core, which has so far failed to boost student achievement levels in reading since its beginning in 2009 (Development Process, 2017).
Solution 2: Provide competition to motivate low-achieving students and methods with which to ascertain each student’s preferred genre of reading
My recommendation is to implement solution 2 at Western Carolina University. The reasons for this lie mostly in its tried and true state of student benefit and access, in that every time a student finds things they enjoy to read, they will continue to read until they no longer have material that they enjoy. Not only is that verifiable nearly 100% of the time, it is suggested through many studies that pleasurable reading is the most impactful form of reading there is. Constantly, students read for school; they delve deep into large textbooks and boring biographies and spend most of their moments outside of school doing this to better themselves in school, yet there seems to be no significant improvement in their ability to read. This solution will fix that problem by giving them motivation in the form of entertainment, and student support. This is imperative in the mission to successfully reach students who need to improve. Being supported by their peers will only reinforce the want to achieve something better for themselves. And, while the competitive aspect may require extra student involvement and the time required may be heavy at first, by the end, each student will have found something enjoyable, and the two weeks of pain and effort it used to take to read a book will become one week of enjoyment and pleasure that will extend past college. The second solution has a farther and deeper reaching impact than any other probable solution.
Conclusion
The education system in the United States is amazing at preparing the future of science and math, but not so great at preparing the future creators of worlds beyond many imaginations. It neglects what is probably the most important subject to focus on careers that can advance our way of life, but not our minds. Reading is important, a necessity, in the world, yet we are failing at it. My hope is that through this we can begin a reading revolution at Western Carolina University that will spread throughout the education system in the United States of America to better prepare our students for their lives in post-secondary education and beyond.
References
Baer, J. D., Baldi, S., Cook, A. L. (2006). The National Survey of America’s College Students: The Literacy of America’s College Students. Retrieved from www.air.org
Benchmarks. (2016, December 08). Retrieved April 16, 2017, from https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/about/scores/benchmarks
College Readiness Benchmarks. (2017). Retrieved April 16, 2017, from https://www.act.org/content/act/en/education-and-career-planning/college-and-career-readiness-standards/benchmarks.html
Development Process. (2017). Retrieved April 16, 2017, from http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/development-process/
Hope, M. (2015, January 03). Expert: most US college freshmen read at 7th grade level. Retrieved from http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2015/01/03/expert-most-us-college-freshmen-read-at-7th-grade-level/
Leveled Reading Systems, Explained. (2017). Retrieved March 24, 2017, from https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/leveled-reading-systems-explained/
Shakespeare, W., “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.” (1599-1602). Retrieved from http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/full.html
MetaMetrics (2017). Lexile Measures. Retrieved April 16, 2017, from https://lexile.com/about-lexile/lexile-overview/lexile-measures-details/
NAEP Report Cards - Home. (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2017, from https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/
Piaget Stages of Development. (2005-2017). Retrieved April 16, 2017, from http://www.webmd.com/children/piaget-stages-of-development#1
Sullivan, D. A. (2013, September 16). Reading for fun improves children's brains, study confirms. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/sep/16/reading-improves-childrens-brains
The Rhetoric of News: Is Persuasion Too Much?
The Rhetoric of News: Is Persuasion Too Much?
Nathaniel Evans
Western Carolina University
Abstract
Of all the many things that are causing uproar among the American people, the reporting of news is certainly one of the most controversial topics. No matter which side of the political, ideological, or identity spectrum a person resides on, they have problems with the way the news is presented. The central identity that must be questioned in all of this is journalism: what are the goals of a journalist? What are the goals of the people to whom the information will be presented? What are the goals of the company the journalist works for? All these things weigh heavily on society, in particular when related to the political and warlike climate of today’s America, and the world at large. Which of the above questions should weigh heaviest on the journalist who is responsible for writing the way information will be disseminated to the American public? In essence, we must ask: how much rhetoric in the field of journalism is too much? What should the goal of a journalist be? In this presentation, I seek to provide an answer to this question: Is persuasion in journalism too much? In this, other categories of journalism will be challenged, such as whether journalists should be tied to certain political parties or identity movements. The writing style can also be challenged, as it, in part, has allowed leeway to the writer for opinionated articles. And, finally, how the American people have shaped this journalistic identity, and how it can be changed.
Introduction
Did you know that 45% of statistics are made up on the spot? No? That’s because they’re not, even though that one was. The underlying meaning for that statement is simple: it’s hard to know when people are telling you the truth. What becomes harder still is determining whether the truth is statistically true; were research findings, surveys, and figures qualified, quantified, and compiled properly? You could always do your own research to discover if someone is credible enough to deliver the truth accurately; the Internet is out there and waiting for you to peruse the millions of pages filled with countless words of information, but that also comes with a problem. Even though the Internet has become much better at regulating its mass of users and who can post, and it is usually easy to find somewhat credible information, it doesn’t hold the same rules as traditional information sources. But, what happens when traditional information sources, those people have trusted for years to disseminate accurate information, fall prey to the lure of easy, quick, and persuasive Internet information that may not be entirely accurate? That is a reality that is all too real in today’s media climate, which is why we must evaluate the role of journalism to determine its identity. Journalists should adhere to the ideals which their audience expects from them: they should tell the truth, and nothing above and beyond that. Though the definition of truth is sometimes confusing, I will define that later.
Current Situation
What faces journalism today is an avalanche of skepticism as America works its way into a frenzy of the misleading ways of major social media. Take, for example, this headline from The Washington Post, which reads: “U.S.-led coalition accidentally bombs Syrian allies, killing 18” (Gibbons-Neff, & Ryan, 2017). While a horrible headline, and notably factually accurate, it is entirely misleading; it seeks to portray the U.S. Military as inadequate, ineffective, and quite simply, daft because they bombed their allies, but that’s not what happened. What did happen was that our allies, The Syrian Democratic Force, mistakenly gave their own coordinates to the U.S. Military to target for a bombing run. Then, a separate unit noticed the first from afar and reported the group as Islamic State fighters. The military, trusting this information, bombed the target given to them (Gibbons-Neff, & Ryan, 2017). Of course, the average reader won’t even realize this. According to a study by the Media Insight Project as a part of the American Press Institute, 60% of people who read the news do not read past the headline (How Americans get their news, 2014). So, then the obvious assumption is that at least 40% of news readers will know that we didn’t just accidentally bomb our allies out of our own incompetence, right? Wrong! According to data analyst for webpage viewing, Chartbeat, 38% of webpage viewers don’t even engage with the page they click on. That means that, out of a group of 100 people who read the headline above, 40 will open the article, and of that 40, only 25 will do so much as move the mouse on the page without closing the tab. What’s worse is that of those 25 who remain, 10%, around three people, will not scroll down. Figure 1 below shows what the article from The Washington Post looks like if a viewer does not scroll down.
Figure 1: The Washington Post's article as viewed without scrolling down on a MacBook Air, 2013 edition in Google Chrome.
The numbers get slightly better on from there. Of the 22 people remaining in our scenario, 60% will make it to the halfway mark (Manjoo, 2013). In this particular article, that is 13 readers who make it 14 paragraphs in, just enough to get the proper information about the misreporting of coordinates to the U.S. Military, which is located in paragraph 10.
It might be that this could be called negligible, were it not for the fact that 69% of Americans get their news via the Internet (How Americans get their news, 2014). The distribution of users who report receiving news from different sources can be located in Figure 2. So, what are the results of these actions? Americans don’t trust news sources. According to the May 2017 Harvard-Harris Poll, published by Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies, 65% of voters believe mainstream media publishes “Fake News.” That number is higher per certain political parties, but in general, journalism is no longer seen as trustworthy.
Figure 2: American Press Institute found that a majority of the population receives news from the Internet.
Part of the problem stems from the political divide; as news becomes more heavily opinionated, it becomes more difficult to distinguish fact from opinion: News has become too interpretive, and it’s mostly unwanted. A study by the PEW Research Center before election day in 2016 found that 59% of Americans want straight fact from the news with no interpretation of the information whatsoever. But does that mean that rhetoric should be totally dissolved from the field of journalism?
What is Journalism?
Not necessarily. To understand this properly, we have to go back to the broadest sense of what journalism is and narrow it back down, defining each branch as it comes along. Journalism starts as a form of communication, which is taking information and moving it between people to create understanding. Journalists are technical communicators. They take facts and deliver them in a written form to an audience so that the facts can be understood. But, as technical communicators, their role becomes doubly complicated because the English language is not a scientific language. The language comes with denotations and connotations that change over time and vary by region, tone, sentence structure, and context. In other words, it is impossible to present wholesale facts unless you use only numbers, which eliminates the need for journalists entirely. No, instead they must be rhetorical. They must seek to persuade, but they must not persuade their audience of the implications of data. Instead, they must impress upon their audience the importance of the information they are writing about. Russell Rutter (2012) wrote on the necessity of rhetoric in the writing field: “writing must be conceptualized as an activity that by its selection and organization of information and its assessment of audience creates its own version of reality and then strives to win the consensus of its readers that this version is valid" (28). A writer’s, and thus a journalist’s job is to convince their audience that the information they are writing about is important enough to be viewed as impactful and that it is true enough to be reality. The importance here is that the truth cannot be sacrificed for this. The father of modern broadcast journalism as we know it, Edward Murrow, said “To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.” It’s important to be truthful first, so that we can persuade people that our words are important. Once we have the facts down, we can almost start writing about them.
Audience and its Importance
After the facts have been gathered, it is important to focus on how to convey them to an audience, and so, a journalist must know what the audience wants. Kirk Amant (2012) wrote about the importance of credibility in international communication, but his ideal applies everywhere: “effective international communication involves developing materials members of other cultures will consider credible, or worth using. Creating such credibility is often a matter of rhetoric, or knowing how to present information in a way that different cultural audiences will consider credible” (474). To apply this to journalism, a journalist must know what his/her audience wants in order to be credible.
The Truth
So, to adhere to Edward Murrow’s belief of journalism, a journalist must be truthful, but what is the truth? The average dictionary gives something along the lines of “that which is in accordance with fact or reality.” But, often truth does not seem objective, especially when someone brings up “subjective truth.” But are there inherent truths that must be accepted by all, no matter what the self believes to be true?
There are two general camps to this argument that has been around for as long as writing. Adherents to the “consensus” school argue that humans create all existing truth through rhetoric; the truth that they know is built upon the persuasion and agreement of many. To those in the “consensus” school, a wall does not exist because it is there physically, but you “know” it exists because you can assume the existence of an objective entity such as a “wall.” The “objectivist” school, however, argues with common sense that because walls exist and constrain daily interactions, language has developed a word to describe this existence and thus rhetoric is affected by it (Railsback, 1983, pp. 352-353). I think it is clear that the latter is the case, specifically because of how languages evolve over time.
In this example, I will use Japanese. The Japanese people were a very private society, and thus were unaware of many new things that their language was incapable of describing. In fact, they have an entire alphabet dedicated to understanding words that come from different languages: Katakana. In large part, this shows that the “consensus” school of thought is inaccurate because of things like pizza. Pizza existed before the Japanese saw it; the earliest recordings of pizza have dated back to circa 70 B.C., whereas pizza as we know it was recorded as early as 1889. The first place in Japan to be certified to sell pizza was in 1997 (Pizza the way they make it in Naples – more or less, retrieved November 13, 2017). Certainly, pizza existed before then, but until it was introduced to Japan, there was no word for it in Japanese. Now there is. They did not know it existed because they had a word for it. They could see it existed before, and then they created a word for it in Katakana: ピザ.
Therefore, truth can be defined as something visible which affects the way of life and constrains it or expands upon it, which leaves rhetoric and language to be defined as ways to convince an audience of the truth. To hearken back to Edward Murrow, journalists must take the objective truth and explain it through language accurately enough to be credible, so that the information conveyed becomes believable.
Conclusion
So, no, persuasion in journalism and rhetoric in news is not too much; it is exactly what is necessary for information to be conveyed in a fulfilling manner to the audience, if it is done correctly. Journalists must adhere to the audience, though the audience itself has somewhat contributed to the plight that faces American news today. Sally Lehrman (2017) expressed that journalism is an engine of Democracy, that is, it was created by Democracy for the sole purpose of being a news source that wasn’t the government, and by and large, she had the right idea. Journalism is supposedly separate from the government so that it does not fall prey to the likes of “subjective truth;” thus, Americans have perpetuated the idea for the longest time that the media always tells the objective truth, even though such things have somewhat faded away now that principle-free enterprises undermine the role of accurate journalism.
Journalism, then, must enhance itself as the distributor of objective, true reality to its audience so that journalists can again become truthful, credible, and believable. They should tell the truth, and nothing more, which is precisely why rhetoric is necessary in news, because it is required to tell the truth.