Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Website appeals

Of the websites you/we perused in class today, which do you think relies most heavily on an emotional appeal to its audience (pathos)? Explain and give evidence. Can you think of any sites that you visit regularly that are free of emotional appeals?
Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.6

7 comments:

  1. Between the Obama page, the cell phone page, and our PETA page, I have to say it's hard to beat cute fuzzy animals for emotional appeal, but I would also argue that the Obama page had the best use of symbols and colors to achieve it's goal. It was a better use, but not as strong of a push.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have to say that the PETA page tried as hard as it could to pull on the audiences heart strings. The use of a baby, human or animal, evokes a strong biological response in most humans. This emotional response to aid in the baby's survival is not an emotion, that on a biological level, is under human control.

    The awe response wins.

    The Democratic Party page is a close second with strong emotional pulls that are based on "Logical Beliefs" based around a political party. There is a reason why "polite company" usually doesn't talk about Politic and religion, this is because of the emotional charge people have toward political views.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I concur that the PETA page, and the organisation in general, tries to convince people of its stance mostly by showing adorable pictures of animals, and sometimes pictures of cruelty towards adorable animals to especially sway their opinion.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The website that mostly used pathos in the websites that i visited was the food for the poor website. This website used images such as little children crying and small animals to get the audience to feel sympathy. It also used a fish symbol at the top of the page which is associated with the Christian religion which is viewed as a caring religion.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think the PETA page did the best job too. It is really hard to argue with cute puppies.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I must agree with the consensus that PETA did the most play on emotional appeal. On a daily basis I visit one page that does not play on emotional appeal, google. It is plain and simple, gives me what I need: a search box.

    ReplyDelete
  7. i think the website that used the most pathos was the food for the poor website. It had a lot of images of kids crying, and that probably really effects the emotional appeal of the audience. A person looking at the website would feel sympathy for the small children.

    ReplyDelete