e martë, 12 qershor 2007
Nomination briefing for Iraq the Model
Honing in on one of the most important events in news and global media, Iraq the Model stands as a beacon among a sea of political advocacy blogs. With a steady focus Iraq the Model looks at only those political news topics dealing with Iraq. The two people who write for the blog, Omar and Mohammed, live in Iraq around Baghdad giving them an interesting perspective for their English readers who mostly hail from the US and Europe.
This blog excels most in the categories of emotion and critical thinking. One of the harder to measure parts of emotion is in people’s response to the blog. This blog in particular has a high number of comments, averaging about 100 per entry. While it may be difficult to judge the quality of each comment, many take a critical look at the ideas in the entry. For example, on the June 8th entry the first comment quotes the original entry at relevant points and then disagrees civilly. Commenters also address the original poster by name showing a type of emotional connection with the writers. The blog also had a "trackback" option which a handful of people have taken advantage of as well. When another blog uses excerpts of the posted entry they "trackback" to the site which shows interest in the topics the blog is covering.
The two writers live in the region that they're writing about and are able to provoke a unique viewpoint which is often silenced. Several of the entries commenter’s pose opposing viewpoints instead of perpetuating the echo chamber effect whereby like-minded writers simply find different ways of agreeing with each other.
The blog is crisp and clear; its ideas are laid out in an accessible manner and are accessible to the average person. Lastly the rhetorical situation of this blog is one of utmost social importance because the situation is one everyone is involved in but no one will open a dialogue about. Iraq the Model is a voice that has become silenced due to war and turmoil. All of these factors add up to Iraq the Model being a stellar candidate for the Kairos Award.
Kairos Scoring
On June 12, 2007, our class listened to two presentations about this blog and deliberated about its quality in light of the evaluation criteria developed to measure excellence in blogging kairos. Below are the average scores awarded after the conversation.
Critical Thinking [out of 25 points]: 21.42
Writing Quality [out of 20 points]: 18.03
Timeliness [out of 15 points]: 10.58
Emotion [out of 15 points]: 12.75
Credibility [out of 10 points]: 8.42
Social Responsibility [out of 10 points]: 8.75
Intangibles [out of 5 points]: 4.08
Total Points [out of 100]: 84.08
Leave your response