Blog 4 - JSTOR vs Op-Ed

I really like all of the memes people are choosing to illustrate their blogs, but it's getting late and my desire to be witty is decaying as we speak, so here's the first one I found and liked after typing "opinion meme" into Google. It's a pun and it's an elephant. Uh, does it get any better than that? I think not.

So the articles I chose were arbitrarily picked based on their titles, as is the case for many things I do in life. Nothing political because then it gets too messy - and that made it easy because that narrowed down a lot of options. 

So, with that in mind I'll jump right into the article explaining this phenomena; JSTOR's "How Does the Language of Headlines Work?". In this article, the author followed the evolution of headlines. Employing research dating back to 1625, the timeline of this article spans almost 400 years as the author compares one of the very first headlines in London to the common tactic of "clickbaiting" many web users are familiar with today. Some interesting points made by the author was (1) that newspaper articles began using present verb tenses in their headlines which created a sense of urgency to read the article because it made readers feel like the action was still in effect, and (2) clickbait tactics make use of pronouns without former reference to a proper noun, creating mystery and intrigue among viewers, reeling them into clicking on an online article.

The next article, titled "Why Facts Don't Unify Us", relayed the results of a recent experiment done regarding how people view climate change and whether they would be swayed if they received new information. The end result was that people who had viewed Global Warming in a negative light from the get-go easily pictured a darker future when given more alarming statistics but weren't swayed much from their original viewpoint when given a more promising outlook. The opposite held true for individuals who felt like Global Warming would affect them much less negatively in the future. The point of this article was to show the trend in polarization that occurs among society even when given the same facts. The statistics that these test subjects were given only drove a deeper wedge between the two viewpoints. 

In another JSTOR article regarding "The Politics of Kindness in 2016", the author illuminated how the generosity shown today is strewn all over the posts of facebook and in the media. He mentions that a trend is forming where good deeds are displayed on social media or in access for others to see, which turns being kind into a twisted way to draw sympathy and regard from other people. He argues that doing so takes away the base foundation of what it means to be "kind" because the motives are changing if people openly try to advertise their kindness. 

The 3rd JSTOR article I read dealt with "Where American Public Schools Came From" and it outlined the history of how schools formed and dealt with the philosophical question of how much is society's responsibility to educating the young. Surprisingly, the piece reports that people don't really disagree with this and are willing and wanting to offer good schools to students through taxes. 

I really enjoyed reading "Liberals are the Sort of People Who..." which was a whirlwind of contradictions assigned to "liberals" which served to point out the flaws in Liberalistic American thinking based on views and (I'm guessing) a few examples of real-life liberals. Some were very humorous while others I had to think about ..."[Liberals are the sort of people who] demand that men be allowed to use the women's restroom even as they claim conservatives are engaged in a war on women". While it was a very entertaining read, it was not in the least bit backed by any facts or proof and seemed to lump the characteristics of different types of liberals into the same groups, which is why the material presented is skewed and makes liberals appear ludicrous.

On a more serious topic, the last topic I read about what an Op-Ed titled "Criminal Rape Cases Should Not be a Ticking Clock". This article dealt with the Cosby rape/assault cases and served to shed light on how, in California and many other states, there is a time limit on reporting crimes - called the statute of limitations. This article's opinion centered around the fact that rape-related cases should be exempt from that rule due to the nature of the crime because many victims will not report these incidents until years later. This article mentions the Justice for Victims Act and indirectly urges readers to support this bill, even mentioning how the Governor has this bill on his desk. 

Overall, I enjoy the Op-Eds more than the JSTOR articles because of their nature of being extremely one-sided. The one's I have read were a very entertaining read and gave me many things to think about. While they weren't all backed by facts, they still held some undeniably strong opinions which, with research, could certainly lead to factual evidence backing up those opinions. The JSTORS, I found, were much drier in nature and were not too far from academic writing and I think this type of style developed within this genre because they stem from an academic setting of condensing current research and findings. Op-Eds on the other hand seem to be as free and biased as they come and are granted the liberty to say many ridiculous things if it lies in accordance of the author's opinion.