Minor Assignment 104/8/2018 In “The March for Science Can’t Figure Out How to Handle Diversity” by Zuleyka Zevello, inspects how an organization who strive to keep science in the spot light, can still run into issues when it comes to diversity. A movement like March For Science, at first, appears to be a group who value science as a key part of our society, but through various mis-steps ends up being the focus in a diversity driven debate.
When considering how this case relates back to issues relevant to this course, a few things come to mind, but once in particular I want to touch on. I believe that the most important thing to learn from this case, that is also relevant to our course, is to always keep audience in mind when writing for the sciences. It quickly became apparent in the article that the March For Science group forgot that their organization was meant to reach people in all walks of life and began “reproducing gender stereotypes of science as part of its promotion of the march” (Zevello). While it should be obvious that stereotyping of any kind is never appropriate, it seems especially unadvised when trying to reach a broad audience. Through this, they immediately lose a group of people that could have potentially helped rocket their movement to the forefront of media. But instead, by negatively stereotyping this group they immediately lose their support, as well as anybody’s that do not agree with their expressed views. In relation to our class, we have talked about how science writing has such a niche audience already that it is imperative to retain any readers that you can. This is a topic that has often been touched upon as we discussed our final projects, given that many of them are meant to be read or used by the general public directly. With this in mind, many of our final projects have to be tailored to be understood and appreciated by all different groups of people. For example, for my final project specifically, I have to attempt to make my site description appealing to anybody who would want to visit the preserve. This could be anyone from hikers to runners to people with young children just looking for a place to take a walk. When thinking in this way it becomes imperative that I do not section off any of these groups and make them feel unwanted or incapable of visiting the preserve, as we have learned can easily be done through “The March for Science Can’t Figure Out How to Handle Diversity”.
1 Comment
Ethan Jordan
4/9/2018 10:00:26 am
I like that you bring that the audience for science is typically divided into niches that are dependent on the topic. I pointed out the importance of appealing to your topics audience which the march for science initially failed to do and their back and forth changes to their message in response to criticism didn't help.
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April 2018
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The purpose of these blogs were to serve as a mode to turn in minor assignments for my Professional Writing Class. Many are responses to reading we did, and a couple are first drafts of various major assignments. |