Blog #4

I chose to read the JSTOR articles, "Where American Public Schools Came From," "Viral Black Death: Why We Must Watch Citizen Videos of Police Violence," and "'Stranger Things' and the Psychic Nosebleed." Last Friday was the first time I've ever heard about JSTOR and it piqued my interest because I'm so used to reading lengthy scientific journals all focused under the same discipline that finding a database with shorter articles covering a broad variety of other topics seemed a lot less boring and strenuous on the eyes.
As an undergraduate research assistant for the Neuromechanics and Neuroplasticity lab her at state, I have A LOT of experience finding, reading, and even contributing to writing academic articles for scientific journals. I'm used to the structure, jargon, and word count of such articles so I thought that reading the three articles above were really interesting (as nerdy as that sounds).
The article by Gershon explaining the history of American Public Schools seemed to me like a reading from a high school textbook. He only had one citation and was very straightforward. I appreciated the conciseness of it and how he didn't have to unnecessarily  fluff up his writing.
Fain's article about Viral Black Death was a little on the lengthier side but it made sense because she had a lot more points to talk about. I feel that she was really good about establishing logos as she referenced the "Legacy of Lynching" as a parallel to white police brutality specifically targeting black civilians. She also appeals to the younger generation and establishes pathos by including the #staywoke which is known to be a powerful hashtag.

The last article written by Tracey discusses the extremely specific topic of psychic nosebleed in the new Netflix original series, "Stranger Things." I thought this was the most fun article out of the three just because it was such a "strange" topic. Tracey mentions how its such a common phenomenon for psychics to get nosebleeds when using their powers and attempts to explain it from a medical standpoint referencing a scientific article, "The Five Signs of Death.

Switching on to the three editorials - I read, "Why Facts Don't Unify Us," Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?" and "Criminal rape cases should not be on a ticking clock."

After talking about each of the JSTOR articles I realized it's not that great of an idea to talk about each one individually since there's a strong likelihood that my classmates read other articles and have no idea what I'm talking about. So for the three editorials I'll talk about them in a more broad sense.

Maybe it was just Ms. Flewlling's choice of weekly readings but compared to the JSTOR articles, the editorials seemed to cover more pressing matters. They talk about climate change, politics, and social injustice whereas the JSTOR articles talk about anything else really. Editorials are opinion pieces written by established reporters who no doubt have a well-established reputation if they're featured in national newspapers such ad the The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. Pathos is assumed almost immediately. Since these are opinion pieces they also have to have a good balance of ethos and logos. The authors build credibility by showing they can support their opinions with facts while simultaneously appealing to the their audiences' emotions.