For my three genres on Abraham Lincoln, I started by making my Buzzfeed article so I could use the points within it as the bones for my other two genres. I decided to take my three main points of the research paper and split them into smaller facts. I first decided to make the list itself, and then find gifs or images which were relevant to the content of each point.

For my YouTube video, I made a PowerPoint with general bullet points, and then I did a voice over to elaborate on the points. Due to my goal audience being children, I decided to hold back on Lincoln’s thoughts about African Americans and slavery. For my podcast, I made an outline of beginning statement which I did not use in the other two genres. I also decided to make a statement on how I do not want to demonize Lincoln, and I thought this was an important difference from the other two because the podcast can be sound more serious than the colorful video and gif loaded article.

Explain the rhetorical choices you made in each genre and how you see those choices and why they would appeal to your audience.

The intended audience for each genre was key to deciding the rhetorical choices I made. Starting with the YouTube video, I wanted to make it appeal to children by making it feel like a school lecture. A PowerPoint based lecture with a teacher talking over it gives the ethos appeal. However, for the podcast I went more for establishing pathos by relating the research to my own experiences and my own feelings about my work. The podcast, I think, pathos is important because adults no longer in school or concerned about the issue might ask themselves why should they care about Abraham Lincoln, and they might dispute with my research because it differs from their previous beliefs. The Buzzfeed article uses an appeal to teenagers through comedy and little facts. The article is more likely to be read by teenagers because of the gifs which I made mostly memes.

The choices I had to make involved deciding what information I should leave out of the genres and what I should include. My research question related to how media influences perception about Abraham Lincoln, and I decided to leave out the media part of the genres because all my genres were through the internet. I felt if I said most information you find on the internet, like YouTube is untrue, I would have to spend more time talking about the actual research process and why my research process it true. Instead, I talked about the facts that are often misconstrued. I also had a difficult time turning my three points from the research paper into many smaller points. I felt I had to include every detail because history is telling a long story, but if I loaded the YouTube video and Buzzfeed article with too much information, I would most likely lose interest from those who are not into history. I generally don’t read articles with paragraphs that are more than fifteen points, or YouTube videos that are longer than ten minutes even though I am a history major.

My promotional strategy did not work out as well as I had hoped. I was depending on my friends and classmates to take the few minutes to watch the video or read the article at least, but that did not generate a lot of responses. Then I moved on to trying to find discussion boards, Lincoln pages on Twitter and Facebook, which also provided little feedback. However, the one discussion board I found has generated a lot more views that I got on anything else. One person did respond to my thread, and twenty-five people viewed it. After checking back on the discussion board, I did have double to amount of views on YouTube and five plays on my SoundCloud. Sadly, Buzzfeed is preventing me from seeing that data on my article so I do not know how many people have looked at it. I decided to include all three links everywhere so anyone who saw the post could choose the way they got the information.

If the promotional part had gone better, I think the project was effective. Since my research topic involved how wrong information is spread about Abraham Lincoln, the project results in their being correct information about him in the form children and adults find their information. I will keep my genres up because it might help any other person trying to learn about Lincoln.

The best response to presentation I got was on my article. I received compliments on its information and the gifs in it. When I showed my coach the article, he did say he would show it to his friends because it was interesting and funny. I did not get any feedback on the YouTube video or podcast, but I hope the views mean there was something pleasant about them. Two people did tell me how they thought the idea of remediating my research was a wonderful idea, and they at least agreed that the article was a nice delivery of material.

My opinion of the community was changed because when I was composing the research paper, I felt like I had a topic that I cared about but no one else did. I dreaded project three because I was not aware there were other people on the internet who would be interested. However, when I started to post my genres on Facebook and I got a positive remark, I was glad to know that people did care about the truth about Lincoln.

The composing of project three was much more dependent on creativity and originality than project two. I wanted to do two of my genres in a different manner, but I had to completely change them in order to fit my lack of creative flare. Although, I enjoyed the freedom I got with style aspects in project three I could not do in the research paper which made the composing easier. I knew that for the article I would need relatable gifs to join my facts and I was successful to find some sort of gif or image to fit the point. I also had to add in a personal element to the podcast that I could not in the research paper, and the first person did make the composition of the podcast quite difficult for me. Overall, the composing of this project was more difficult than project two because I did not feel like I had the necessary tools to make the genres. I wanted to do more than was beyond my ability, but research papers are in my comfort zone.