20.1.1: 20.2 The Reading

Read: Rhetorical Research Strategy

Rhetorical Research Strategies

Rebecca Moore Howard, in her The Citation Project (see http://www.citationproject.net/), reported several concerns with how college student writers used research. For example, students cited material from the first page of their research sources 46% of the time, suggesting that they were not reading these sources carefully and comprehensively. Of their sources, 56% of them were cited only once in their drafts. Furthermore, 52% of the sources involved “patchwriting” in some way—an indication that student writers were paraphrasing and/or quoting these sources in ways that would concern their instructors.

Another concern that students show in their research is their tendency to only choose sources that confirm their ideas and perspectives. In short, these are sources that their skeptical readers may not find persuasive and credible. As a 2014 PEW Research study on political polarization shows, these student writers are acting similar to Americans in general: they prefer to read or view media sources that confirm their worldviews. For example, the PEW study found that 47% of conservative viewers watch a single news source, Fox News.

As this chapter asks you to consider argumentation as taking on risks — after all, you are making yourself vulnerable and allowing for the possibility that your ideas about the issue will change — you should also look for research sources that your own skeptical or resistant readers will find persuasive. In other words, you want to make sure you’re using research rhetorically: with consideration for your audience, message, and persuasive purpose.

We will look at these three strategies for using research rhetorically:

• Consider the credibility and bias of your research sources
• Use different types of research that your skeptical readers will find credible and
  persuasive

• Shape your research sources to fit your skeptical readers’ assumptions and values

Consider the Credibility and Bias of Your Research Sources

As you choose sources, you’ll want to determine how credible they will be for your readers. Use criteria such as the following to judge how credible your sources are:

• Currency: How recent are your research sources? (Be mindful that certain audiences will expect far more recent research than others.)
• Authority: How easy is it to determine who the author or sponsoring organization is of the source? (If you are using a website, domain names indicated by .gov, .org, or .edu may have more credibility.)
• Comprehensiveness: Does the source include evidence and information that is complete and satisfying for your readers?
• Accuracy: Does the information and evidence in the source appear to be accurate?

In addition to these criteria, you should also be aware of the ideological slant or bias of the source you are considering. You can get an idea about the bias of your sources by going to a website such as AllSides (allsides.com/media-bias), which categorizes many media sites according to a “left” (liberal), center, and “right” (conservative) continuum. For example, the following figure shows how a few well-known media sources are categorized:

Left	Left-Leaning	Center	Right-Leaning	Right
The Huffington Post Mother Jones MSNBC The New Yorker The Daily Beast	The Atlantic BuzzFeed News The New York Times The Washington Post	USA Today Bloomberg Reuters AP	The Wall Street Journal The Washington Times	Breitbart National Review The New York Post

Figure 2: Selected Online News Media Sites from AllSides

Though you don’t necessarily need to stay away from media sources that have an ideological bias—all sources in some way will favor a particular ideology or worldview—you do have to be aware of these ideological and political sources, especially when you are using them for evidence to persuade your own readers.

To get better at examining sources, you might want to develop your strategy of “lateral reading.” Unlike “vertical reading,” in which you literally read closely through a single source, lateral reading asks you to jump to different online media sources to quickly determine what they are saying about the site you are interested in. The author of the online text, Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers, Michael A. Caulfield, describes the process of lateral reading:

When presented with a new site that needs to be evaluated, professional fact-checkers don’t spend much time on the site itself. Instead they get off the page and see what other authoritative sources have said about the site. They open up many tabs in their browser, piecing together different bits of information from across the web to get a better picture of the site they’re investigatingIn other words, twenty-first century reading requires intensive and careful reading of sources and, at the same time, scanning of similar sources to figure out how one source fits into a larger network of sources.

For example, how about if you find a source from this organization, the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal (www.jamesgmartin.center)? How will you know if this organization has a strong ideological bias or not? How can you tell if your readers will consider it to be credible?

You can find a little bit about this organization’s political position if you go to its “About Us” page in its website. Here is the statement of the organizational goals:

Our goals are to improve colleges and universities, especially in North Carolina. We want to:

• Increase the diversity of ideas taught, debated, and discussed on campus
• Encourage respect for the institutions that underlie economic prosperity and
  freedom of action and conscience
• Increase the quality of teaching and students’ commitment to learning so that they graduate with strong literacy and fundamental knowledge
• Encourage cost-effective administration and governance

These are goals that many groups, regardless of ideological conviction, may champion, yet two phrases stand out: “diversity of ideas” and “economic prosperity.” These are concepts that more conservative groups will often be committed to.

By searching about this organization and looking at what other sources say about it, you can begin to get a better portrait of the politics of this organization. You will find that it is linked to the National Review, a traditionally conservative publication, and to the National Association of Scholars, a conservative academic think tank. SourceWatch, a website curated by the Center for Media and Democracy, defines this organization as a “right-wing 501(c)3 nonprofit and associate member of the State Policy Network,” itself a “web of right-wing ‘think tanks’ and tax-exempt organizations.”

Use Different Types of Research That Your Skeptical Readers Will Find Credible and Persuasive

As you conduct library- and Internet-based research, consider the types of research that your audience will value. Although you want to avoid stereotyping your audience, you can make some good educated guesses regarding, for instance, whether your readers will gravitate towards personal stories or towards statistics. Other audiences will be more accepting of information sources such as company blogs, whereas others will expect peer-reviewed academic research articles.

Here is a list of some possible research sources, which is far from complete:

• Primary research sources, including field research, observations, interviews, and surveys
• Peer-reviewed articles from library databases
• Statistics
• Government white papers
• Editorials and commentary
• Human-interest stories or examples from newspaper or Internet sources
• Internet blogs
• Social media sources, including user comments and chat room transcripts
• Personal stories or anecdotes
• Textbooks and class notes

One research strategy, coming from the social sciences, is that of “triangulation”—to find different types of research sources to satisfy your readers. For example, you might find yourself blending several different types of research sources together to enhance your persuasiveness, such as starting off your introduction with a personal story related to the issue, then reviewing alternative perspectives by using library-based research, and then supporting your own position with an interview of a professor, statistics that come from a textbook, and a statement from a company press release.

Shape Your Research Sources to Fit Your Skeptical Readers’ Assumptions and Values

Your research will take on several different purposes. Among many possibilities, it will

• Support your main reasons
• Support your assumptions
• Show your understanding of alternative perspectives
• Reach your audience emotionally
• Emphasize strengths in your argument and subordinate weaknesses
• Rebut the reasons, assumptions, or evidence of alternative or oppositional sources
• Provide an example of the issue
• Demonstrate your commitment to the issue

You should use readerly cues and explain your use of the research to help guide your readers and shape their reading experience. (If you look up “Transitional Devices” on the Purdue Online Writing Lab, you’ll find a substantial list of these readerly cues.) In fact, rhetorically researching and using research rhetorically implies that you are thinking about your readers and how they will be interacting with the information, and, hopefully, being persuaded by how you are using the research.

Here is one example of how Kelsey Reith uses research rhetorically in her essay, “Bathroom (In)Security” (please see the Student Example in the back of this chapter):

Next, safety is not only a concern for those that would support the strict sex- assignment use of public restrooms; safety is a huge issue for the transgender community. Imagine a woman, who would for all intents and purposes appears to be woman, but perhaps her birth certificate says otherwise. What might happen to her if she were to follow her sex-assignment, and walk into the men’s bathroom? This is the reason that harassment is frequently reported by the transgender community. The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found that in the past year 59% of those surveyed had avoided the bathroom out of fear of conflict, 12% had been verbally harassed, and 1% had been physically and sexually harassed while using public restrooms (Barnett). The way transgender people are politically and socially treated in bathrooms is an issue of discrimination. This treatment has been shown in several studies to lead to violence, poverty, and isolation. Which puts transgender people’s quality of life at risk. Between 2003 and 2016, there has only been 1 case of a transgender individual committing sexual assault in a public restroom, while there have been 19 cases of cis-gender men pretending to be transgender in order to enter women’s bathrooms and commit sexual assault. There has been no evidence to suggest a connection between laws that permit transgender people to use their preferred bathrooms and an increase in cases of assault by cis-gender men disguised as transgender women (Barnett). What this means is that predators have been committing sexual assault under the guise of the transgender identity for a significant time and there hasn’t been a rise of these occurrences in areas where restroom facility policy is favorable to the transgender community. When it comes to sexual assault in bathroom, laws that allow transgender people to use their preferred restroom are not the problem, and not allowing them to do so is not the solution to the behavior of cis-gender predators.

Importantly, although Reith is only using one research source here, she is paraphrasing the statistics from this source and introducing, contextualizing, and explaining her use of the sources (the chunks that have been underlined). She asks her readers interactive questions, and she explicitly tells them what the research is doing or showing:

• “This treatment has been shown in several studies to lead to violence, poverty, and isolation.”
• “What this means is that predators have been committing sexual assault under the guise of the transgender identity for a significant time...”

Finally, shaping your research sources might also entail having to explain or qualify your use of them. For example, what should you do if you have found the “perfect research source,” yet it’s one that you are fearful will not meet the ideological worldview of your readers? In this case, instead of hiding the ideological angle of the source, admit it and then qualify your use of the source:

• Although the United States Interior Secretary David Bernhardt is well connected to the petroleum industry, we shouldn’t immediately discount his rejection of environmental regulations.
• Undoubtedly, many conservative readers will wonder why I have cited statistics from a study that PETA sponsored. Although, like you, I do not accept some of the advocacy work that PETA does, I think we can all agree that dangerous conditions of farm animals need to be looked at—to increase the safety of meat consumers and relieve the suffering of animals.

Citations and Licenses: Marzluf, Phillip, "Designing Arguments for Academic, Public, and Professional Audiences" (2021). 134-139 NPP eBooks. 40.
https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/40 Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC 4.0