My Interviewees on Social Media

Social Media is important to journalists and business majors. In the field of science there is no use for it. But in some rare cases, people in engineering have one.

ijmaki, "Social Media", 2/19/2016, CC0 Public Domain

1. What are the names of each interviewee and which social media networks were you able to find each of them on?

Dr. Blowers: LinkedIn Profile

2. How would you describe each interviewee's social media presence? What kinds of things are they talking about or sharing on social media? Write a brief description of what you learned about them through the listed social media feeds.

Dr. Blowers: He doesn't have mush of a professional media presence. Most of on Linkedin are for recommendations of former and current students. His facebook page is personal and closed to outsiders, hence there is no link above. He doesn't appear to have either a twitter or an instagram account.

3. Now return to the piece that this author published in the academic journal (from Blog Posts 6.2). How does their persona on social media differ from their persona in the pages of the academic journal? Be specific and cite details from both the journal and the social media posts you discovered.

Dr. Blowers: There isn't much of a social media presence for Dr. Blowers. In the article he is very articulate and precise in his observations and statements about greenhouse gas emissions. In his LinkedIn posts he is very descriptive about his students and praises them highly.

My Interview Subjects

1. The names of the two people you're scheduled to interview for Project 2
Dr. Paul Blowers

2. The names of the organization(s) your interviewees work for, as well as their job titles
Blowers= University of Arizona, University Distinguished Professor

3. Any higher education degree that your interviewees hold and the names of the institutions that issued them
Blowers= Bachelor's Degree in Chemical Engineering, Michigan State University; Masters Degree in Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois; Ph.D in Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois

4. How many years your interviewees have worked in the field professionally
Blowers= Recieved his Ph.D in 1999 and started working at Pima Community College until 2008. In 2008 he began working for the University of Arizona.

5. If you can, provide photos or images of the two interviewees (identify them with captions), as well as hyperlinks to their professional website(s) or home page(s)

Dr. Blowers

http://www.che.arizona.edu/paul-blowers



6. The date, time & location of your scheduled interview
Dr. Blowers= Tuesday March 1, 3:30 JWH 128


7. A list of 8 to 12 interview questions (for each interviewee) that are written to specifically reflect the interviewee's background, position and publication history

Dr. Blowers=
1. What is your history in Chemical Engineering?
2. How would you describe your job at the University?
3. What kinds of genres of writting do you generally publish as a chemical engineer? Examples like research papers, news articles, social media posts, etc.
4. To what kind of audience do you direct your writtings to?
5. I 've noticed most of your papers were done in collaboration with other people. How does the collaboration on the papers work?
6. What is invoved in the publication process and who do you go through to publish your pieces?
7. What is the process for a project proposal and how often do you do them?
8. For daily forms of writting that are not nessicarily published publically, what genres do you write in? Ex. social media posts, emails, timecards, etc.
9. How has communication changed since you entered the industry?
10. What is the hardest part about writting a research paper? What is the most exciting part?

 

My Interviewees as Professional Writers

janeb13, "New York Times Newspaper", 1942, CC0 Public Domain

1. Give us the name of each interviewee and write a short summary of the kinds of professional publications they've authored (according to their website, CV and/or other easily findable online resources that list their publications). You don't need to include all the bibliographic information for their publications, just the basic facts.
Dr. Blowers= Professor blowers has published a dozen or so research papers on the impact of certain chemicals and chemical reactions on the environment. He also has created a dissertation for his doctoral degree called "Engineering Approximations for Chemical Kinetics. His LinkedIn profile has posts about current and former students who he is recommending.

2. Track down a few of their publications online. Be sure to examine at least two different publications by each interviewee (and hyperlink us to the two examples for each). What professional genres has each interviewee written in? Explain how these genres differ from each other, according to conventions, formatting, techniques, content, and anything else that seems relevant to describe.
Dr. Blowers= The adsorption of mercury-species on relaxed and rumpled CaO (001) surfaces investigated by density functional theory
Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Refrigerant Choices in Room Air Conditioner Units
Professor Blowers has mainly published in the genre of research essays and scientific journal articles. The conventions of this genre are graphs, data tables, specific headings and sub headings, concise, explanation of results and derivations of equations.

3. What is the context surrounding the two different pieces published by each of your interviewees? (See the bulleted questions on Student's Guide page 180 for specific questions about context). Cite specific details from the pieces in your answers.
Dr. Blowers= The main theme of his pieces is protecting the environment from hazardous chemicals in the air. The context for his pieces could be that in the 2000's and 2010's there have been lots of support for research on saving the environment from global warming and greenhouse gases.

4. What is the overall message of each piece? How did you decide this? Cite specific details from the pieces in your answers.
Dr. Blowers= The message of the first publication is that Calcium oxide surfaces can be used to absorb Mercury Chloride which is sometimes a byproduct of coal fumes. I looked at the abstract to determine this. The Abstract's purpose is to summarize the purpose and results of the experiment. The second publication's message is that the current cooling agents used in refrigerators (r-22 and r-134a) produce more emissions than substitutes like ammonia or dimethyl ether. I also found this in the Abstract of the document.

5. What purpose is each piece trying to achieve? Cite specific details from the pieces in your answers.

Dr. Blowers= Both pieces were trying to find the best method to achieve a desired outcome. In the first publication the purpose is report on the findings which were trying to determine the best surfaces to absorb Mercury Chloride. The second publication was to report on the findings on better cooling agents for refrigerators that don't produce as much emissions.

Report on My Interviews

.After interviewing Dr. Blowers, I found many genres that he uses in the Cheical Engineering field.

PeteLinforth, "Company Report", 12/16/2016, CC0 Public Domain

1. What are the most significant or interesting genres that you learned about from your interviewees? Please identify at least THREE specific genres from your discipline/field of study that your interview subjects discussed writing within. 

The three most prevalent genres that my interviewees probably write in are the genres of Research Essay, Emails, and Presentations.

2. How do these genres differ from one another? Think about things like genre convention, content, purpose, audience, message, and context as you describe these differences.
Research Essays: This type of genre has many conventions including Headings, specific subheadings (abstract, introduction, etc.), graphs and tables, and is very technical. I did not make up this genre name but I am sure the reason it is called a research essay is because the main topic of the piece is to analyze research.

Emails: The email genre has the conventions of being very short and concise, usually written like an electronic letter, having documents attached, and being only available to people the author designates to recieve it. The audience is anyone, the content is pretty much anything, and the context depends on what the author is writing the email for.

Presentations: This genre uses many different conventions than emails and research essays. The conventions of presentations are images, visual graphics, bullet points, speeches, transitions, and a well dressed speaker. The contnt can be anything, the audience is usually a group of people listening to the presentation who are somehow involved in the topic, the purpose is to convince or inform the audience, and the context is usually a response to an issue or event going on.


3. Based on the information you gathered in your interviews, what is challenging and/or difficult about writing within these genres (from a professional's point of view)?
According to Dr. Blowers, the most challenging thing about writing in these genres is the rejection of being published and getting all the information together. Getting reviewed can also be very challenging because it could cause the whole experiment to be redone if there is something wrong with the procedure.

4. Based on the information you gathered in your interviews, what is exciting and/or rewarding about writing within these genres (from a professional's point of view)?
Based on the interview with Dr. Blowers, the most exciting part of writting the genres is getting them accepted and published. Although Dr. Blowers writes many grant applications, very few are accepted whereasmost of his papers are accepted and published.

5. Where in mass media - popular, academic, and/or social - can examples of this genre be found? If genre examples cannot be found within mass media easily, where can genre examples be found/located?
Genre examples can be found in academic journals and some presentations can be found on panapto through the University of Arizona. Some of the academic journals, the ones before the internet, can be found in the library.

Rhetorical Analysis of Academic Journal

 

AIChE Journal, February 2016

1. Who are the authors/speakers published in this specific issue of the academic journal you've selected? How many different authors are published here? What do you know - or can you find out - about these people? How are the authors/speakers portrayed in the journal issue? Cite specific details from the journal issue in your answers.
There are over 50 different authors published in this specific journal issue. Most of the people in the journal are professors in multiple different universities and a few of them work in research laboratories for major companies. Many of the authors are from countries other than the United States. As for how they are portrayed, there is no way that this question can be answered. There is no article or anything other than a sentence about where they work linked to their name.

2. Who is the intended audience for this particular journal issue? How can you tell? Are there any secondary audiences included here? Cite specific details from the journal issue in your answers.
The intended audience for this particular issue is chemical engineers and researchers. I can tell that they are the intended audience because of the use of specific and complex scientific words and concepts known only to this audience. One example is in the article title "Chemical nature of active sites for defect-mediated nucleation on silicon dioxide." It is rare that anyone outside of the science field would know about defect-mediated nucleation or understand the article itself.

3. What is the context surrounding this particular journal issue? How does this affect the content of the journal? (See the bulleted questions on Student's Guide page 180 for specific questions about context). Cite specific details from the journal issue in your answers.
The context of the journal is that the articles in the journal are published within three months of it being submitted to the journal. That means that most of the topics in the journal are fairly recent. The authors are knowledgeable about their publications and are very credible.

4. What is the overall message of the journal issue? How did you decide this? Cite specific details from the journal issue in your answers.
The overall message of this journal issue is that Chemical Engineering is interesting. All the articles in the journal are very interesting, especially the article about Micro-Explosions.

5. What purpose is the journal issue trying to achieve? Cite specific details from the journal issue in your answers.
The purpose of this journal is to inform the reader of advances in the field of Chemical Engineering. Specifically in the fields of Inorganic Materials: Synthesis and Processing, Particle Technology and Fluidization, Reaction Engineering (Kinetics, and Catalysts), and many more.

From Academia to Social Media

It is important to know a author's credibility when using an academic journal article. Knowing his social media presence is completely pointless to know when writing anything other than a fan blog. But just in case you were curious at all, even if you aren't, here is all that there is on one such author.

ijmaki, "Social Media Network", 2/20/2016, CC0 Public Domain

 



1. What is the name of the author (from the academic journal) that you selected and which social media networks were you able to find her/him on?
Joseph M. McCrate- LinkedIn

2. How would you describe the author's social media presence? What kinds of things are they talking about or sharing on social media? Write a brief description of what you learned about them through the listed social media feeds.
I would describe the author's, Joseph McCrate, professional social media presence as nonexistent. He has a LinkedIn account and that's all. He doesn't share anything other than his publications.

3. Now return to the piece that this author published in the academic journal (from Blog Posts 6.5 & 6.6). How does their persona on social media differ from their persona in the pages of the academic journal? Be specific and cite details from both the journal and the social media posts you discovered.
I would say that the author's presence in the journal article is completely different than his professional social media presence. He writes and comments in the journal article but doesn't do anything on his social media other than post his publish his own articles. But this isn't surprising because most chemical engineers don't have social media accounts for their professional lives. Research takes a long time to complete so it is pretty pointless to post about how a chemical is still reacting or how now the concentration of the solution has changed from 1.2 M to 1.3M in the past week.

Academic Discourse & Genre

Academic journals are an important part of staying up to date on developments in the field of Chemical Engineering.

1. How many different kinds of genres seem to be published in this particular issue of the journal you selected?
There seems to be three different types of genres published in this journal: research essays, letters about research essays, and editorials.

2. Identify at least three different genres within the journal issue and describe the significant formal differences between the three genres. If you made up your own name, explain why you chose the name you invented. If you'd like, provide snapshots of the different genres (clearly labelled) to help your reader see how they look different (or are organized differently, with different conventions) on the page.

Research Essays: This type of genre has many conventions including Headings, specific subheadings (abstract, introduction, etc.), graphs and tables, and is very technical. I did not make up this genre name but I am sure the reason it is called a research essay is because the main topic of the piece is to analyze research.

 Research Essay Example

Letters about Research Essays:  This genre is slightly different than a research essay for many reasons. Letters about research essays do not have sub headings. They still have graphs and data tables like research essays. They are usually a response to other research essays.

Letter about Research Essay Example

Editorials: This genre is completely different than research essays and letters about research essays because it has nothing to do with research an data. It is a letter directed towards the readers of the journal and describes changes or topics concerning the journal. Some conventions are the use of first and second person, bullet points, and a signature by the author.

Editorial

3. Now come up with your own definition for each genre (using the name you coined, if you weren't sure what the 'official' name is for the genre). Be sure to explain what you perceive to be the purpose of each genre and how each genre might meet the needs and expectations of a target audience.

Research Essays: The definition of these research essays is a document that has a primary purpose of informing the reader of the results of an experiment and analyzing the data to come to a specified outcome. The targeted audience of the research essays are professionals and people who are interested in the topic at hand.

Letters about Research Essays: The definition of the letters of research essays is a document that compiles other documents about a certain topic and analyzes them. The purpose of the document is to analyze other publications and research. The audience is professionals in the field of Chemical Engineering.

Editorials: The definition of editorials is a document, usually a open letter, that describes the changes and advances that are available in the journal. The purpose is to inform the reader of any changes and the audience is anyone who regularly reads the journal.

 

My Field of Study

Unsplash, "Antique Typewritter", 12/29/15, CC0 Public Domain

1. What do students in your program or department learn how to do?

Students in my deparment learn how to improve chemical processes and to design more efficent processes. A major part of my discipline is reaction controll. Students learn about mass transfer through fluids and thermodynamics.

2. What do people who get degrees in this field usually go on to do for work?
Usually people in this field go and get jobs with companies that produce chemicals. Companies like Tide and Dove are examples. Chemical Engineers also go to work for petroleum companies like Exon Mobile and BNP. A surprising industry chemical engineers go to is cosmetics.

3. What drew you to this field?
What drew me to this field was my love of chemistry and math. What also fascinated me was the designing of massive chemical processes and how everything works. I also like thermodynamics so there is a bonus as well. Something that inspired me is that Elon Musk is a chemical engineer who is one of the most successful men of the century.

4. Name three of the leaders/most exciting people involved in this field right now in 2016. Why are they interesting or exciting to you? These could be individual people or specific companies, organizations, businesses or non-profits. Hyperlink us to a homepage professional website for each person, if possible.
   1. Elon Musk- The reason for my interest in Elon Musk is his determination to stick to his ideas and how much work he does to make sure they come true.
   2. Charles G. Koch- I am interested in Charles Koch because he is a very successful man in the chemical engineering industry.
   3. David H. Koch- I am interested in David Koch because he, like his brother, is a very rich and sucessful businessman and chemical engineer

5. What are the names of three leading academic/scholarly journals in your field? Where are they published? Give us the names and locations of at least 3. (HINT: If you have no idea what the answer to this question is, try Googling “What are the top academic journals in [insert field of study]?” and peruse the results). Make the titles of each journal into a working hyperlink to the website for that publication. (NOTE: if your links aren’t included or don’t work or if the page it directs us to is blocked from public view, I will not be able to assign you full credit for this exercise).
1. Chemical Engineering Joural - Published online
2. Journal of Chemical Enginering & Process Technology - Globally published online
3. AIChE Journal - Published online

Brutally Honest Self-Assessment

Alexas_Fotos, "Motivation", 12/6/15, CC0 Public Domain

1. How are you feeling about the project you just submitted for assessment? Give me your raw, unvarnished opinion of your own project overall. 
I am feeling very confident about the QRG I submitted for this project. I took the reviews of my peers and compiled them into an amazing draft. The only doubt I have is whether or not I used all of the conventions of the QRG. In one of the reviews the reveiwer stated that I should use more white space, but I felt like I used it well. Hopefully Bottai agrees.

2. What are the major weaknesses of the project you submitted? Explain carefully how and why you consider these elements to be weak or under-developed.
The main weakness of the project is the lack of specific stakeholders. This controversy involved many groups of people and very few specific individuals. This made describing them very difficult and made me nervous about wether or not I did them justice.

3. What are the major strengths of the project you submitted? Explain carefully how and why you consider these elements to be strong or well-developed.
A believe that two of the strengths of this project was my use of pictures/graphs and wide range of sources. I tried to use more relivant images in this draft than in the last one and found graphs that I could use in the text. I also used a wide range of sources, including a reference to Godzilla, to make my project interesting to the reader.

4. What do you think of how you practiced time management for Project 1? Did you put enough time and effort into the project? Did you procrastinate and wait till the last minute to work on things? Share any major time management triumphs or fails....
Well thats a great question, coach. I feel like I practiced decent time management skills. I did most of my blog posts during the week so that I could spend all of my time on the weekend working on the final of the project. But I did procrastinate until the last hours of Sunday to start working on my final. I feel like it turned out well but hope for the next project I won't have this procrastination problem again.

Local Revision: Variety

When reviewing a essay, QRG, or any other type of literature, it is important to understand the structure of the sentences in the piece. Varying sentence structure makes the piece interesting and keeps the audience from being bored.

geralt, "Marker Hand Planning", 11/4/14, CC0 Public Domain

1. How much variation is there in your sentence structures in the current draft? Can you spot any repetitive or redundant sentence patterns in your writing? Provide a cogent analysis of what the Rules for Writers reading tells you about your sentences.
There is a few variations in my QRG sentence structure. I used many different sentence opening to vary up the sentence flow and make it interesting. What I didn't do was vary sentence structures and made most of them very choppy with little to no flow with the rest of the paragraph. They were really short sentences that were hard packed with facts and no descriptive verbs.

2. What about paragraph structures, including transitions between different paragraphs (or, for video/audio projects, different sections of the project)? 
The paragraph structures of the QRG are very weak. I wrote the QRG with no transitions to the next paragraph, but instead used sub-headings. There were very few introductory sentences and the conclusion sentences were lacking adequate summarizing of the paragraph.

3. What about vocabulary? Is there variety and flavor in your use of vocabulary? What are the main strengths and weaknesses of the draft's approach to vocabulary?
The vocabulary of this QRG is relatively basic with a few words thrown in every once in a while. The strengths of the vocabulary in this QRG is the simplicity of the words making it easy for people with almost no nuclear power background  to read and understand it. The weakness of this QRG is the repetitive words. I used "explode" and "exploded" numerous times which could be replaced with a better and more descriptive word.

Local Revision: Pronoun Usage

geralt, "Banner Header You and I", 1/6/16, CC0 Public Domain

1. Based on your analysis, how effective is your pronoun usage in Project 1? What does actively examining your pronoun usage tell you about your writing style?
After posting the list of my Pronouns used in my QRG I found that I used very few pronouns. Instead of using pronouns I used a lot of proper nouns which made my essay seem really wordy. Reviewing this QRG has shown me that I don't like to use pronouns and I tend to use the name of the company or person. The reason I think I do this is so I can keep track of who I am talking about when I am writing the essay or QRG.

2. Are there any instances in your project where you speak to or refer directly to the audience? If so, how effective are these moments at creating a bond or connection between audience and author? If not, why not? Explain why you're choosing to leave your audience out of your writing. There's nothing wrong with that, per se, but you should be able to give a sophisticated explanation of your choices.
There are no instances where I speak directly to the audience. The reason I choose to exclude the audience is that I have been taught for many years not to. I am also used to writing essays were it is not the best idea to do so and makes the paper seem less professional. But I can see that for this type of project, connecting with the audience is probably advisable because it will help draw their attention to the topic. In the re-write of the QRG I will most definitely be using  this method. You think this is a good idea or what?

My Pronouns

artsvector, "Man Women Vector", 11/26/15, CC0 Public Domain

List of Pronouns
Those (Nuclear Power Plants)
This (The tsunami flooding)
Some (Japanese towns)
Its (TEPCO)
Another (TEPCO)
Its (TEPCO)
They (Japanese Government)

Local Revisions: Passive and Active Voice

Active (Specific)	Active (General)	Passive
Exploding	Open	Decide
Ensure	Help	Isn't
Suffered	Take	Destroying
Flooded	Prevent	Causing
Exploded	Began	Reaching
Plunged	Backing	Caused
Forced	Using	Let
	Experiencing	Affected
	Pushing	Placed
	Explode	Put
	Shut	Made
	Damaged	Hit
	Spread
	Produced
	Started
	Continued
	Turned
	Traveled
	Occured
	Relied

OpenClipArtVectors, "Megaphone Voice", 10/12/13, CC0 Public Domain

1. Looking at the breakdown of your verb choices here, what do you notice about your current draft? Are the actions in your piece mostly general, vague or non-specific? Are the actions mostly vivid and specific? Are there instances of passive voice? Summarize what you learned by analyzing your verb usage in this way.
Based on the list abov it seems like my project contains a large amount of General Active voice verbs. The next highest type of verb is the passive verbs and then finally the Specific Active voice. The verbs used are not very vivid in detail and a majority ofthem are not specific. By analyzing the verbs I used it seems like I will need to change quite a few sentences in my QRG to make it more engaing for the audience.

2. Based on this analysis, how could your use of verbs be improved overall in the project? Be specific and precise in explaining this.
Using more Sepcific Active voice verbs will improve my QRG. I used many active verbs but they are very general and do not give a good description of the event. By using more Specific Active voice verbs, the audience will recieve a more vivid description of the events. I also used the verb exploded quite a few times and probalby should find a different verb to keep from being repeatative.

Local Revisions: Tense Usage

To create an interesting peice of work, the author must understand the verbs he uses and try to make them as engagng as possible.

PeteLinforth, "Clipboard", 1/8/16, CC0 Public Domain

List of Verbs and Their Tenses

Past	Present	Future
Caused	Began	Open
Shut	Backing	Help
Flooded	Using	Decide
Suffered	Exploding	Take
Damaged	Isn't	Prevent
Exploded	Ensure
Hit	Experiencing
Relied	Pushing
Placed	Destroying
Put	Causing
Made	Explode
Forced	Reaching
Occured
Affected
Let
Traveled
Turned
Plunged
Continued
Started
Produced
Spread

1. Which tense is the most prevalent in your draft?
The past tense is the most prevalent tense in my daft.

2. What effect or tone/quality does the current usage of tense have on the reader/viewer/listener?
The use of the past tense in the QRG creates a calm mood. The QRG feels boring and very bland. When the present tense is used, the QRG becomes more colorful and exciting because it allows the reader to feel like they are living the event.

3. If you're using more than one tense in the draft (which is not a bad thing at all), do the shifts between different tenses in the piece make sense? How do they flow? Are there any jarring or dischordant shifts in tense?
The shifts in tense flow logically and are usually separated by sub-heading. There are some instances where the tenses are jarring where mid-sentence the tense changes. These will be fixed in the final draft.

4. If you have not employed any present tense verbs in your piece - why not? Are there any moments of crescendo or dramatic action in the story you're telling that could benefit from being described or told in the present tense? Remember, present tense has an immediacy to it. It puts the audience right into the story as it is unfolding. It's a powerful technique. Could your piece benefit from that technique? How and why?
I used a few present tense verbs but not as many as I should. Using the present tense will crete a more intimate feeling to the story, bring the audience in. My QRG would definitely benefit from this because the topic iself can be a slightly boring read.

My Verbs

Moucheiro, "Infinitive Verb", 12/5/15, CC0 Public Domain

List of Verbs
Began
Caused
Backing
Shut
Using
Flooded
Exploding
Open
Suffered
Damaged
Exploded
Ensure
Experiencing
Hit
Help
Isn't
Decide
Relied
Placed
Put
Take
Made
Forced
Occured
Affected
Pushing
Destroying
Plunged
Turned
Continued
Produced
Causing
Explode
Started
Prevent
Spread
Traveled
Reaching
Let

List of repeated verbs
Began- 4, Caused- 3, Backing- 2, Shut- 2, Using- 2, Flooded- 2

Local Revisions: Wordiness

benrosengard, "Tile Words", 10/11/14, CC0 Public Domain

 

 

Exerpt from "The Second Chernbyl: Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Energy Controversy"

Before

March 11, 2011- A record 9.0 earthquake hit Japan destroying buildings and property. 140 miles south of Tokyo, the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power station began experiencing the effects of the earthquake and shut down units 1, 2, and 3. With this immediate shutdown along with those of 11 other nuclear power plants in the area, Japan was plunged into a black out. The 8 emergency generators of the power plant turned on to ensure that reactors’ stability. Within an hour, the tsunami caused by the initial quake flooded the backup generators and the plant as a whole. This began the infamous four day meltdown of the Fukushima reactors.
After

March 11, 2011- A record 9.0 earthquake hit Japan unleashing destruction. 140 miles south of Tokyo, the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power station began experiencing the effects of the earthquake and shut down. The earthquake caused Japan to be plunged into a country wide black out. The 8 emergency generators of the power plant turned on, but within an hour the tsunami flooded the backup generators and the plant as a whole. This began the infamous four day meltdown of the Fukushima reactors.

How is the rewritten section different from the original, from the perspective of your audience? Is it better? In what way? Is it worse? In what way?
The rewritten section is different from the original because it is less descriptive. When I originally wrote the paragraph I was keeping in mind that I wanted it to not be wordy so I tried to condense it as much a I could. Condensing it further for this exercise has made it a very vague paragraph that does little to inform the reader of some interesting information. The positive side of the condensing is that the reader only gets a small amount of information and no un-needed information.

Peer Review 2

sandra_schoen, "Laptop Network", 5/12/2014, CC0 Public Domain

1. What did you learn about your own project (or the project in general) by comparing drafts of the same project in different genres?
After comparing the drafts of my peers to my own draft I realized that I need to do more research on the arguements of the opposing sides. In Neej's blog, he describes why people disagree with Obamacare. This made me realize that I only explained who was against the controversy. I also realized that I need to explain myself in the article and the sources I used.

2. I want you to plan on doing revision between now and our next class meeting on Tuesday. Tell me the top three issues or problems with your draft in its current form and what you plan on doing over the weekend to address those issues.
Issue 1: I need more information on the QRG itself. I focused mainly on the disaster and not so much on the controversy it caused
Issue 2: I need to expand my explainations of my sources
Issue 3: I did very little analyzing of the information I was given. I need to spend more of the paragraph analyzing instead of spitting out information.

3. Tell me the top three strengths of your draft. How/why are these things strengths? How will you build on them to make the rest opf the draft as strong?
The strengths of my graph were the graphics, use of quotes, and the use of white space. To make the rest of the QRG strong I am going to try and reference the graphics in the text and analyze what they mean to the audience. I will also do the same for the quotes.

Links to Blog Posts:
http://niherard.blogspot.com/2016/02/draft-of-project-1.html?showComment=1455344034556#c2730351235205699727

http://jacksonenglish109.blogspot.com/

Links to Reviews:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13OIt_2Og-0v7qmviZXj9ag64g0iBfyAnLiyoj8Hrb98/edit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x9gzVNdclbhFLT_EOk4OPLayWRqlLUpYTaz3sVyVgxo/edit

Peer Review 1

Peer Blog: http://ipass4zona.blogspot.com/2016/02/draft-of-project-1.html
Rubric & Score: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GlpCVLIRQtD2jsy4ttsozvN2soZcWi-mlF-j_ohu7oM/edit?usp=sharing

Neej Patel, "Neej Patel", CC0 Public Domain

For this assignment I review Neej Patel's blog post about the Obamacare controversy. After reading this draft I realized that my QRG was lacking in the information area. Neej's QRG had a large amount of information and was analyzed very well.
Two mistakes that Neej made was the lack of white space, which is an important QRG convention. The words were spaced very close together and there was little room around the paragraphs. The second mistake was the lack of explaination of the dates and some events concerned with the controversy. Two smart things Neej did was, one, he did an excellent job of describing the stakeholders in the controversy and, second, he used lots of information and did a great job of analyzing.

Draft of Project 1

Link to Draft:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zYWyNvvL99SVrE3EVwYDaLU9F-0kqWrZYJTjYFSGh3g/edit

To My Peers:
This is a Quick Reference Guide for the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Meltdown. The guide goes over the process of the meltdown and who was involved in the disaster. I tried to put as many pictures as I felt were relevent and appropriate. I included a twitter hashtag stream fo tweet that occurred at the end of the disaster to show how peole were feeling at the time.

The Time Period

When a controversy is happening, it is important to understand what is going on around it. Events that are happening in the world around the same time effect the controversy itself or be affected by the controversy.

slipshire.com, "Watch", 2/17/2014, CC0 Public Domain

Local Links
1. http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/04/11/20110411arizona-mexico-truck-pollution-regulation.html
2. http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2011/04/18/20110418arizona-adoption-preference-bill.html

National Links
1. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-03-20-att-deal_N.htm
2. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-03-02-rw_spice01_ST_N.htm

Global Links
1. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-12811197
2. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/mar/14/bbc-asian-network

During the time period that the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster was occuring, there were many local, national, and international events were going on. In Arizona (local events), the former governor, Jan Brewer, had just signed a bill that gave married couples priority over single applicants for adoption services. In the national news, T-mobile had agreed to be bought by AT&T for $39 billion. The deal never went through. In international news, BBC decided to cancel thier plans about closing their Asian Network which was the second reversal in two years.

The Setting

The location of a controvesy can give valuable insight into the controversy as a whole. For the Fukushima-Daiichi meltdown the location is in Fukushima and the government office that debate the nuclear energy probablility.

The Canadian Press, "Japan Earthquake Fukushima", 8/24/2011, CC0 Public Domain

Maybe the physical location is a specific city, or neighborhood, or a specific university or institution or company. What does it look like there? What does it sound like? What's on the horizon? How does it smell? What kind of characters are milling about? What kind of stuff takes place here? Your description should ignite at least THREE of my FIVE senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch).

The physical location of this controversy is in the Fukushima Prefecture in Japan. The exact location of the controversy is in the Fukushima-Daiichi power plant that was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami. The area is on the east coast of japan and has a clear view of the Pacific Ocean. The west side of the location is full of small green mountains with trees and grass lands. The village of Ono is a mere mile and a half away from the power plant and has been evacuated so now it is an abandoned town. The power plant on the other hand is busiling with activity. Their are working crews with nuclear hazard suits working to decontaminate the area. The ports and sea within 30 km of the site are completely void of fishing ships. The towns are quiet with just the whisper of the wind to brush the overgrown green trees. Some of the buildings around the plant are collapsing due to the lack of upkeeping. The power plant smells like the ocean but looks like a graveyard. The only things that happen here now is clean up of radio active material.
Another setting for this controversy takes place in conference rooms of government officials. In these rooms the government officials debate on whether or not to allow nuclear energy to continue. It smells like freshly printed paper. The sound in the room is made of many voices speaking all at once and the sound of a speaker loudest of all.

Stakeholder #3

Stakeholders are the people or groups that have money or resources invested in a specific controversy. In the case of the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster the stakeholders were different groups of people and institutions. One of these groups was the Japanese government itself who is a major utilizer of nuclear energy.

Freewallpic, "Japanese Flag", 6/23/2011, Copyright 2013

1. Can you describe this third stakeholder in 200-250 words? If they're an individual, vividly describe how they look, what they wear, how they move. Tell us how they sound, how they talk, what their mannerisms are. Conjure them in our mind's eye, by appealing to at least THREE of our FIVE senses. If the stakeholder is an institution or group, then describe the institution and how it appears in the world. How do people encounter this group or institution, digitally or physically? Describe their website or headquarters or something else that physically represents the group to the world at large.
The Japanese government is a major stakeholder in this controversy because the disaster happened on its own soil. With the meltdown of the reactors, the Japanese government lost a major source of electricity for its citizens. In 2009, the Japanese government relied on nuclear energy for 27% of its total energy needs. The government has 48 operational nuclear plants. If the population of Japan were to decide that nuclear power was not a safe choice, the country of Japan would lose over 50,000GWh per year of electricity. Although the government is not directly involved with the generation of energy, it does control who can build power plants and how many of them can be running at any given time. People do not directly interact with the government but interact with representatives of the government. They can interact with them physically when they talk to these representatives and they can interact with them digitally when they access their website or other form of electronic communication. The government is run by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (yeah, conservative and liberal) and their website is very professional.

2. Can you identify THREE specific claims being made by this stakeholder? The claims should be public and about the specific story you're investigating. Provide direct quotes for three different claims or ideas made in public by this stakeholder. Each quote should be clearly hyperlinked to the original source.
"With regard to dealing with the contaminated water from the station, the policy of the Japanese government is based on three principles: 1) removing the source of the contamination, 2) isolating water from the contamination source, and 3) preventing leakage of the contaminated water." -Source

"In order to ensure the delivery of readily understandable information to the affected, Local Headquarters published newsletter to post in shelters of the suffering areas (5 editions to date) and broadcasted radio programs featuring Q&A session at two local radio stations (AM and FM) everyday since April 11. These contents are posted on METI website to allow the affected including those who evacuated out of Fukushima Prefecture to have access to them." -Source
 
"With regard to the identification of the actual status of emergency incidents at reactor facilities, emergency measures to be taken to control the incidents, and other matters, the Government and the nuclear operator established Integrated Headquarters for the Response to the Incident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations (currently renamed as Government – TEPCO Integrated Response Office) (in operation from March 15 at Head Office of TEPCO) for the purpose of working together, sharing information, making decisions and issuing instructions on necessary responses." -Source
 
3. Can you explain how valid these claims are? Objectively, how much weight do these claims carry? How credible are they? Be specific. Think about how poorly or successfully the stakeholder cites FACTS, plays on our EMOTIONS, or presents themselves as a CREDIBLE actor in the debate.
These claims are valid because they depict the actions of the government and their plans to resolve the problems caused by the Fukushima-Daiichi meltdown. The stakeholder cites facts very well, which is to be expected because it is in a statement submitted to the International Atomic Energy Association. The stakeholder does not play on our emotions but instead focuses on facts to persuade the audience of their reliability.

4. Can you explain how these claims are similar and/or different to the other stakeholders? Be clear and precise - does this stakeholder have anything in common with others involved in the debate? Who do they have the least in common with? Why?
The Japanese government claims are similar to TEPCO's because they are connected. The government relies on nuclear energy to function as does TEPCO. They also have some of the same goals as the NEI because they want t expand their nuclear energy capacity even after this set back.

Stakeholder #2

Every event has a major stakeholder and one or more minor stakeholders. In the Fukushima-Daiichi meltdown in March of 2011, there was one major stakeholder, TEPCO, and numerous minor ones. One of these minor stakeholders is the Nuclear Energy Institute.

 

Nuclear Energy Institute, "Nuclear Energy Institute Logo", Registered Trademark 2015

1. Can you describe this other stakeholder in 200-250 words? If they're an individual, vividly describe how they look, what they wear, how they move. Tell us how they sound, how they talk, what their mannerisms are. Conjure them in our mind's eye, by appealing to at least THREE of our FIVE senses. If the stakeholder is an institution or group, then describe the institution and how it appears in the world. How do people encounter this group or institution, digitally or physically? Describe their website or headquarters or something else that physically represents the group to the world at large.
The second major stakeholder in the controversy is a very general group: nuclear power proponents. Since this group is made up of many smaller ones I have decided to choose one that is based in the United States for convince. The Nuclear Energy Institution is a political lobbyist group that is based in Washington DC. The group represents nuclear power companies and researchers and works to get nuclear power issues in front of Congress. The NEI is a very strong proponent of nuclear energy in the United States. The NEI corresponds with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to improve nuclear power and make it a viable option for the United States. The group is moderately large and has 28,000 followers on their twitter page. When the Fukushima-Daiichi meltdown occurred, the NEI began pushing for Congress and the NRC to work with nuclear power companies to increase their emergency preparedness in case of a natural disaster and to increase the safety standards of the nuclear industry. Their website is geared towards informing the community of nuclear energy and how it is cleaner than other power sources. The website also has information about what is going on in the news concerning nuclear power.

2. Can you identify THREE specific claims being made by this stakeholder? The claims should be public and about the specific story you're investigating. Provide direct quotes for three different claims or ideas made in public by this stakeholder. Each quote should be clearly hyperlinked to the original source.
"The nuclear energy industry has taken seriously the accident at Fukushima Daiichi and continues to both support recovery efforts in Japan and compile lessons learned that can be applied to U.S. reactors. We have undertaken significant work in the past 90 days to examine our facilities and take the steps necessary to enhance safety. We will continue to work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to identify potential enhancements in safety that should be made." -Source

"The nuclear industry is implementing a response strategy called "FLEX" which will provide the greatest safety benefits in the shortest period of time. FLEX will mitigate those extreme, unexpected scenarios that are beyond the plants’ de-sign parameters. " -Source

"Additionally the industry's added regional response centers as a lesson learned from Japan. We've taken it a little bit further than that you may have heard press releases where we talked about the two regional response centers that we've located in Memphis and Phoenix, but it's also the 65 other facilities in the U.S. that we share equipment with freely." -Source

3. Can you explain how valid these claims are? Objectively, how much weight do these claims carry? How credible are they? Be specific. Think about how poorly or successfully the stakeholder cites FACTS, plays on our EMOTIONS, or presents themselves as a CREDIBLE actor in the debate.
All three of these claims are credible and are in response to the Fukusima-Daiichi meltdown. The claims carry some weight but are relatively weak when compared to what a government can do. The NEI focuses mainly on facts to persuade people to work with them.

4. Can you explain how these claims are similar and/or different to the other stakeholders? Be clear and precise - does this stakeholder have anything in common with others involved in the debate? Who do they have the least in common with? Why?
The claims made by the NEI are concerned with using the disaster as a way to improve the nuclear energy industry unlike TEPCO which is mainly trying to save themselves from their failure. They have the least in common with the groups who oppose nuclear energy because those groups are making claims that the disaster shows that nuclear power is not safe to utilize.