When it comes to writing a solid essay, your target audience can play a key role. Target audiences can determine how complex or simple the paper is. Knowing who your target audience is can help writers to make decisions about what information they should include, how they should arrange that information, and what kind of supporting details will be necessary for the reader to understand what they are presenting.

In my last two essays, I discussed the topics of gender inequality and how it affects girls at a young age and women’s mental health but specifically the mental health of women who have the responsibilities of having a job and raising a family. The target audience for both of these papers was women between the ages of 13-25 mainly because they are the new generation, the generation that can cause a change to happen. I wanted my audience to be moved by my paper. I wanted them to be motivated to go out and break the constant chain that occurs when it comes to gender inequality. Because of this, I believed that visual aids like photographs and art pieces would help make my ideas more attractive to my audience. I think different artworks can really allow my audience to have a stronger reaction emotionally rather than my long, excessive paper. I also believe that poetry would also be a great aid for my thoughts. The rhetorical strategy that I think would work in my favor would be pathos mainly because I want my audience to have a strong emotional connection to my paper.

The author usually will aim for an audience to relate to his/her writing to grab a person’s attention. In my previous writing, I discussed how social media sites can have a large impact on an adolescent’s mental health. I plan to continue this topic for my third essay and directly target adolescents. More specifically, adolescents who are struggling to know what qualifies them as a person who is addicted to social media. I hope when they read my composition, they understand the dangers of social media and the mental consequences that come with it. I want the reader to feel some sort of realization of the issue on whether they are truly addicted themselves. Lastly, I hope they commit to limiting their time on social media to prevent these issues from happening after reading my composition. I will create this message by sharing a meme of someone struggling with social media addiction and also an artistic picture/image of the issue showing a solution. I want this essay to be more visual this time to make it look more appealing to other readers, instead of just spewing statistics and graphs. However, I still do plan to provide logical reasons on how bad social media addiction can be for their mental health by providing facts from scholarly resources. I also plan to share some emotion to the issue by sharing some of my personal issues with social media addiction so that there is some sort of connection between the writer and the reader.

During the start of the writing process every writer must identify the audience that his work will reach; not only would this increase sales and have his work spread further towards other persons but additionally be much more comprehend-able. In both of my previous written tasks my thesis topic stayed relatively the same, something to do with immigration and either the positive or a negative stance on its effects towards the host nation and its people; primarily writing to influence an average blue collar working American.

For my next task I plan on continuing the same intended audience as well, due to my families’ and communities’ closeness to this group, but additionally, possibly, also widen my audience to include the white-collar working class. I feel as if attempting to include another audience would show my neutrality on the topic and be taken as more of uniting piece without a bias of supporting or demoting one side. I feel as if using a genre of narrative writing as well as Expository writing would not only present facts on which my essay will stand for, but the use of narrative writing would create an emotional pull-on reader to use empathy, which they can imagine and react to how certain effects or causes of immigration can make one feel. I believe my essay would use all three rhetorical strategies, first to build my credibility I would use logos and to subtlety influence the readers stance on the composition I would employ the use of pathos. I must make sure that I don’t damage my credibility by choosing a stance to be successful in my writing.

In many speeches and articles, the author has to have their target audience in order to grab their attention, persuade them to their opinion (based on the topic), and make the point they wish to make. In my previous essay, essay #2 I had mentioned how social media has been a positive effect on teenagers, especially during the pandemic. I would present this essay with the visuals between high school teenagers and parents. High school teenagers from ages 13 and older we able to find their escape way of how the pandemic limited them to do things, especially for those who did extra activities. We can see the challenges they went through, how they started to use social media and how today is still in good use for them. Meanwhile, parents do concerned about what their children see on social media. These are two perspectives that are sometimes difficult for a child and parent to see. A child will like to be respected with their privacy by setting up boundaries, as for parents they like to keep eye on their children, have communications and set a relationship with there is confidence. 

My audience will be teenagers and parents, being able to understand what it feels like to be in each other shoes. Once trust in each other is based on the boundaries each one sets up, of course, there are some things children don’t want their parents to know and vice versa. If parents get to feel the emotions of solitude and boredom their children feel, they would get to understand how social media can make them feel better. The same thing with children, if they get to feel how their parents are concerned they would be able to open up with each other. Examples like TikTok videos of people sharing DIYS, funny videos, and inspirational words teens see today can help parents see and feel what their children feel when they see these videos. Not only is social media an escape way for children but also a helpful way out when doing projects. Finding information on YouTube or Instagram based on political issues can be beneficial for everyone. In the end, I wish to reach parents and teens to understand each other more and build a better bond for each other. 

The visual essay is the most important because it allows individual expression. Because it is visual, it is important that my writing and artwork reach the proper and intended specific audience to deliver the message. As my essay #1, and essay #2 have both focused on the topics of mental health in youth, and then specifically with high school and college students, it will be important that my visual essay addresses two audiences. The first is these high school and college students, and the second is people surrounded by youth who ignore the issue. The primary characteristics of this audience for the first group are people between the age range of 13- 22. Those who are more inclined to be using social media, in sports and aware of the mental health crisis among their peers. The second group will be people in the age range of 30-65, this being people in the work field surrounded by these kids such as teachers, parents, professors, and doctors. For both of these groups, wealth, and gender are not large influencing factors to limit who the audience is, as it should be able to reach all demographics.

 I want my audience to feel strong emotions about my visual essay, such as sadness, shock, questioning, and drive to resolve the issue. I want this to be the feeling and the response so that way there can be recognized and drive to aid these younger people who suffer from mental health in the US. I want my audience to after this visual essay presentation, to be able to feel that the mental health crisis is real, but that it is okay and can be accepted. 

I feel that genres such as poetry, graphics of drawings/ paintings, and political cartoons will best reach my audience because this negative stigma around mental health can be really well demonstrated through imagery. I also believe it will be more accessible to my audience because reading long papers can be daunting and boring, so visuals are more entertaining and easy to understand. I will use rhetorical strategies of pathos to appeal to the emotions of my audience, such as personal connection or just general empathetic connection. This will allow me to engage my audience with my essay because it makes a personal connection between my art, myself, and my audience. Overall, I believe that this visual essay will allow me to solidify the importance of my social issue, and why it is so important that it is recognized.

As we begin the reach the end of the Fall 2021 semester, we have clearly witnessed and experienced how online learning has influenced both our daily lives and our academic efforts. While some may view online learning as an improvement from learning within a classroom setting, others, such as myself, view learning in person as the better form of education. Thus, the main audience of my third essay would essentially have to be students who may view online learning as beneficial. The primary characteristics of these students are those who wish to spend more of their time focusing on their hobbies or personal life rather than improve their knowledge of the classes they are taking. The main appeal I would like my audience to take away from my essay is how going back to the way schools used to be is better than attempting a completely new approach of learning that clearly has had its setbacks. Thus, I would want these students to better understand the choice they are making when determining which learning style may best suit them. The genre that I feel would strongly captivate my audience would be exposition and argumentation through the use of poetry and poster. The poem would reach out to the audience’s pathos while the poster would more or less be presented as a form of propaganda that may attract the attention of my audience. Rhetorical strategies that I may use to engage with my audience would essentially be narration as both the poem and poster would present themselves as a story, hence creating a significant impact on the audience’s emotions. The reason why this methodology is most effective, especially considering the period of time we are currently in, people tend to follow what fascinates them or is considered “trendy”. So by creating an emotional impact, I would draw in more attention from the students, thus spreading the word more quickly amongst other students, which would lead to a mass domino effect. Overall, I am quite interested in witnessing how my essay will look like.

As we’ve seen, there are different kinds of people around us, with different mindsets; there are certain people, who are opposed to vaccination, typically people who don’t let themselves or other people they know take the vaccines. Then there are some people who don’t trust the government and believe that there might be multiple side-effects from taking these shots. The main audience for my essay 3 would be the anti-vaxxers who live in our community. The primary characteristics of the anti-vaxxers are to not take the vaccines or let anyone else take them either. The main purpose of this essay is to make the audience realize that the perspective through which they are looking at the disadvantages of the covid 19 vaccine is wrong. The vaccine actually has way too many benefits, and they can try to change their perspective, or at least stop convincing others to not take their shots. The genre that I’m considering for this essay is going to be descriptive and expository and I’m going to portray those through a poster and a meme. The poster would mainly be about supporting the vaccine, and the meme would portray the thought process of anti-vaxxers, through a simple meme that both gen Zs and boomers would get. The main rhetorical strategy that I would direct my essay towards is Logos, as the meme and poster would lean more towards logic and reasoning than emotions. I am choosing this category, as most of us are familiar with them, and see them almost every day, it could be on social media or maybe a poster on the subway, train, etc. I am really looking forward to seeing how this essay turns out.

https://ccnymailcuny-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/ecortes002_citymail_cuny_edu/EffpwWNnk09AnjO4mAgydhoB0GCwOFfEwT9lKJnwmvAj4g?e=IHKPKMhttps://ccnymailcuny-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/ecortes002_citymail_cuny_edu/EffpwWNnk09AnjO4mAgydhoB0GCwOFfEwT9lKJnwmvAj4g?e=IHKPKM

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https://ccnymailcuny-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/ecortes002_citymail_cuny_edu/EesUn-iVSNZGro84AaRrsDUB0HBTmzlHFEE_MEoui8OdSQ?e=LYkwcs

“How can a parents substance abuse and deteriorating mental health effect the individuals children, as well as their childs mental and emotional health? “. This is the research question I decided to write on , it is something i am very passionate on spreading awareness about. What mainly sparked my interest in this topic was my personal experience. I do believe that the question is relevant to social action since it is something that several people have experienced in their life. But i do think that it can be cut down if people decided to reach out for help. My timeline for completing my research for secondary sources would be 10/23, because by then I would have read and analyzed my sources properly enough to give an explanation or summary of the sources. As well as be able to give proper insight and context when explaining a citation/quote/evidence. My audience would be social workers as well as mental health workers or just parents dealing with substance abuse. As of yet, i don’t have a model essay.

Sources I have so far:

https://www-clinicalkey-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/#!/content/playContent/1-s2.0-S0145213421002751?returnurl=null&referrer=null

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02673843.2021.1908376

https://go-gale-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=cuny_ccny&id=GALE%7CA661457952&v=2.1&it=r

https://www-sciencedirect-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/science/article/pii/S0145213421002040

https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/doi/full/10.1111/scs.12868