Considering Genre

            The genre of a project can certainly make or break it. For instance, if you were covering a controversial topic on the fishing of aquatic animals, would it be best to describe what was happening? Or perhaps show them what was happening?

            I am choosing to write the college essay for Project 1. The reason I’m choosing this is because I feel like my issue is one better described and discussed in detail rather than briefly overviewed with pictures and audio. Genetic modification is something that needs a lot of detail and crisp detail in order to be understood. The idea of CRISPR isn’t something that I would be able to (visually) show, since it is happening at the cell-level.

Koonce, Brian. "Living Essay" 11/02/12 via Flickr
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            The primary genre convention that I will be developing is my enthusiasm towards the subject. I know that I am passionate about the field, but I just have to make others passionate about it as well. I will also be developing my writing conventions (varied sentence structure, length, word choice, etc.). Not only will I be paying attention to conventions but to style such as font, spacing, and margins.

            I plan to make use of the conventions in order to draw my audience in the most. For instance, I will not describe the process of genetic modification step by step because that will bore most people (other than the select few). I plan to make my project applicable yet informative by using intriguing style and word choice.

            I am feeling a lot more confident about this project than I was a week ago. I also realized that I am actually excited to do this project. This is mainly because I have never truly been given the freedom to research whatever I want until now.

            The biggest challenge that I see in creating this project in the amount of sources available. I feel like there may be a limited amount of sources because of how new this topic is. I am also worried that this may translate in to limited information on the development (and such) of CRISPR. I am also anticipating that most of the controversy will be one sided (against genomic modification) unless the individual is a scientist of some sort himself.

Cluster of Stakeholders

The basic idea of a cluster involved with stakeholders is to identify the audience affiliated with the topic. I made a cluster in accordance with all of the individuals who may be affected by the development/possible use of CRISPR. I made sure to introduce the more general population (doctors, government etc.) and make it more and more specific. 

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Evaluation of General Sources

How do you know if a source is credible? Is it based on the website? What about the author? Trustworthy sources are the key for any type of research. Without credible sources, most research would be unreliable.

A url that ends in “com” implies that the source is from some company. This usually indicates that there may be bias and the article may also be subjective. Edu indicates an education source and is fairly factual and credible. Org means organization and can be credible but isn’t always. Again, as with .com, there may be bias in some articles. Gov implies it is a government website and will always be factual and reliable. Biz are used by business sites and can display factual statistics and graphs. Name can be used by anyone and can be very unreliable and opinionated. Info is mainly used for information only but, again, can be skewed because it can be used by anyone. Net is used for windows based apps and can be biased, depending on the user.

The url for the first source is: http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-crispr-cas-9-20151218-story.html. The fact that this ends with .com implies that it is apart of the la times company and can have some bias in its articles. Although, this is not always the case.

The url for my second source is http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-05-14/promising-gene-editing-method-causes-ethical-controversy. This was published through an organization. Organizations can be less bias and slightly more objective than say companies. However, sometimes they can be highly subjective because they stand firmly for some cause.

The author of the LA Times is a science reporter. This indicates that she certainly knows general information about science-based topics, but most likely is not very informed in something specific like CRISPR.

Robert Boos is the author of the PRI article. There is no information about the author other than his recent publications. He most likely does not have qualifications to be writing about this topic.

Yoshihoti, MIKI. "DNA" 06/07/08 via Flickr.
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The last time the LA times was updated was in December of 2015. The material is most likely not out of date seeing as this was only a month ago. The links mostly lead to other science magazines and articles by the LA times.

The PRI was last updated in May of 2015. While this may seem slightly out of date, this controversy is still very recent and so the source is still credible. The two links provided lead to a website called nature.com. They are both articles related to the topic.

The purpose of both texts are to inform. They provide factual information about CRISPR and also discuss the controversies in an objective manner. Neither have any inclination to endorse any kind of product.

The LA times has three visuals. The first is a picture of one of the founders of CRISPR. The next is video describing how CRISPR works. The third is a TED talk by the woman in the first image. These are merely to inform and discuss the topic at hand.

The PRI had a picture, an audio segment, and a video. The picture was an animated picture of a strand of DNA (perhaps to promote a scholarly-based article). The next audio segment and video are used to inform the reader of what CRISPR does.

Both sources appear to be fairly objective. Anyone reading the article will hopefully realize the potential that genetic engineering (such as CRISPR) has. Any individual who is interested in genetic engineering will profit from these articles. The information in both of these articles are fairly similar and are like other articles on the subject.

Both sources include sources for further reading (as discussed earlier). Both of the texts also mention the doctors and researchers who are behind the making of CRISPR. The LA times article cites a UC Berkley photo, a ted link, and an animation created by MIT. PRI cites the same MIT video as well as a quote from a professor from University of Wisconsin’s Law and Medical Schools.