Aha! That Makes more sense...

Why are Bloggers still sitting at the kids table? Andrew Moshirnia addresses this question through the use of the Federal Shield Law and the popularity of online media. He says how online media is growing in terms of online news, such as an online newspaper, and social news through social networking. The Federal Shield Law is what Moshirnia uses to make his argument that online media outlets, such as Bloggers, should gain the same rights that paid journalists have when it pertains to the confidentiality of their sources. Moshirnia is a second year student at Harvard Law and targets his audience as he would himself, or to others who are educated in the field of social and online media. The author states the claim that Bloggers are still considered kids when it comes to their creditability and their standing with in the Federal Shield Act, in comparison to the standing that professional journalists have. He uses: logical fallacies regarding the Shield Act to promote Bloggers, claims which he intended would add creditably to his work, logical appeals by stating facts to strengthen his argument, quotes to support his claims, and diction by targeting a small group of people as his audience. Logical fallacies are used through out the article to make claims about what the author thinks to be true, when in fact these claims are not supported with clear evidence.
In the author’s effort to appeal to the logic of the audience, some points in his argument show characteristics of logical fallacies. Near the beginning of the article, it is stated that we have not become a nation of journalists. However, one of the most direct points of his article is that Bloggers should have the same rights as professional journalists, since their media is so widely read. There is also a claim that many professional journalists, who have blogs, are not protected by the Federal Shield Law when it deals with their blog. Yet, many professional journalists are not allowed by contract to have a blog in addition to what their job is outlined in their job description. (Reference: is social media now mass media?) Logically, this does not make sense that since most professional journalists are not allowed to have blogs in addition to their careers, so they do not need to worry about not being included in the Federal Shield Law. With this logic in mind, the author doesn’t have evidence to support his claim.
The author tries to make his claims creditable by offering many references to other articles, yet many of his references are not of a creditable nature. He offers much support articles which help the reader gain believe that his claim is more truthful; however, many of these articles are from the Citizen Media Law Project which is the same site that this article is from. Since the information is coming from the same group of editors, this information can be bias towards the author’s opinion. Some of the sources also include wikipedia, a site where anyone can post anything about a topic, which is filled with unaccredited information. These references also offer appeals to the audiences’ logic.
The author uses statistics and references to articles to appeal to the logic of the reader by making the information seem more creditable. Sourcing other resources to back up the claims of the author make the reading want to go and learn more about the situation since the sources are included. The reasoning for the author’s claims is not timely after they are stated, and it is not of his own reasoning but that of others. The logical appeals were used to state his claim and back his claim, yet some where not done in a creditable way. Another way that the author appeals to the logic is through the use of quotes, which seem to decorate his article.
The authors expansive use of quotes through out his article, are used to support the creditably of his work. Through the usage, the author also commits emotional fallacies to engage his readers. The author talks about how the Bloggers blogs are used through out the world by many people as a source of mass media, but the Bloggers are still unprotected by the Federal Shield Law. The pull at the readers’ emotions is in fact an emotional fallacy. The author however also includes many statistics as quotes in his article that most definitely appeal to the reader in a way that an emotional fallacy is not committed. The use of quotes also increases the author’s creditability, and makes the reader more inclined to value the claims that the author creates. In addition to the usage of quotes, the author also uses diction to state his argument.
The use of diction through out the article is constantly showing who the author thinks he is appealing to with in his audience. The author assumes that the reader knows what the Federal Shield law is and how it works by linking to articles that support his point and not articles that provide a definition. With the way he has phrased or structured his argument, it is tailored to those with in the journalism field, or to those who at least are educated on the manor. As well as making these assumptions about his audience, the author also uses qualifiers to keep the audience size smaller by being as specific as possible. A smaller audience means that the author was very specific and concise with his arguments due to the word choice or diction that he used.
The author used tools such as: logical fallacies, claims with evidence, logical appeals, quotes and diction to appeal to the reader by making his argument as strong as possible. The author however may have placed certain things sooner as to add to the strength of his article. The quote at the end about who uses the internet and how it is distributed among sources on the internet, could have been moved to earlier in the story so that the reader would understand that mass media is moving to the internet. This would help his argument at the beginning instead of his reference to the quote about trends in technology over the last decade, so that the reader could really understand that many people look at blogs, and that it is relevant for them to have protection. He also says near the beginning that the nation isn’t becoming a bunch of little journalists, and then goes to say that many people blog and that most people go online to these things for answers instead of mass media. The contradiction of these two arguments is undermining his who point in his article, which makes it seem unclear and thus less creditable. Overall, the author uses such literary tools to prove his point, whether he uses them in the right way or not is the question.