Online Argument


For this discussion I chose this online Reddit discussion about the season 46 Survivor winner. (Spoiler warning). This was the discussion I selected as I am a huge fan myself. Season finales and winner picks always cause a lot of stir. People either love or hate who the jury of previously voted off contestants choose to win a million dollars and the title of sole Survivor. With a loyal fanbase, I expected this discussion might reveal some of the negative elements of online communication we have learned about. 

One issue I have with this argument is commenting on someone's real life experience as if they are characters. In this TV program, the contestants are real people who are authentically themselves on national television. Some speakers in this thread seemed to speak about the contestants as if they were merely characters. Similarly, a user called winner Kenzie's story about her upbringing, which was one of poverty and struggle, a "sob story". This is offensive and also inappropriate. Another minor but confusing element was a comment was deleted. I'm not sure why this was but it made the discussion difficult to follow in that section. 

If I were to create five rules about arguing online I would say: 

1) A clear frame for a discussion should be established. 

2) All dialogue should be respectful, appropriate and free of hate speech. 

3) Voicing opinions should be done in turns. 

4) Trying to use a claim, reason and evidence helps make for legible arguments.

5) Eventually, two people may just need to agree to disagree and this is acceptable and encouraged. It is healthy to let things go and step away. 









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Digital Natives & Digital Immigrants

Image
 When talking about the digital world's intersection with learning two terms arise; digital natives and digital immigrants according to Prensky. Digital natives would describe me and my age group well. We are equipped with the language that comes with the rise of the internet, social media and the digital age. We are used to reading, writing and communicating online. Digital immigrants on the other hand, are less familiar with this technology and communicating style. They have been raised learning from physical material, processing and answering sequentially. This is often what causes a divide between an older professor and their college aged students. When I think about my own learning as a creative writing major, I realize we often utilize methods and strategies from digital immigrants. Instead of editing a poem in multiple ways in one revision, we are often trained to complete a revision with one snippet of feedback at a time. We also usually print out and mark up an actual text...
Read more