Analysis of Forwarding Online
Now, find a webpage or an article from an online newspaper (like The Huffington Post) with a large number of comments from readers/users. These readers’ comments are an online conversation. Copy-and-paste the URL in your response to this activity.
Write a 500+ word mini-essay that analyzes how the people in the comments forward the ideas in the article and how they forward each other’s ideas. Start with an introduction and an underlined thesis that tells your readers the purpose of your response.
Your mini-essay should focus on analyzing users’ comments. Include short quotes, paraphrases, and/or summaries of what you think is important in these comments. Be specific when describing what you observe in the comments.
How are they responding to each other? How do they respond to the ideas in the article? Are they quoting each other and/or quoting from the article? How are they “forwarding” the work of the article or “forwarding” each other’s text? Try to find and explain four examples of the four types of forwarding in the comments and show how these comments are a conversation.
Conclude with a statement about what you have learned about the significance of forwarding.
