Journal Response 2 (Daniel Borjas)

Networks, writing, and materiality are each related to each other and they are going to influence what you write and how you write it.  For example in the Bazerman article, it was shown how during before the American Revolution, letters were sent out to rile up the people to want to rebel against Great Britain.  They wrote the letters in such a way that made the people upset at Great Britain, sent out the letters to those who they thought would respond well to it, and influenced the people to become more angry with Great Britain.  The people who wrote those letters knew who they wanted to send the letters to, so they used that information to write up the material that would influence the rebels before the American Revolution happened.  Another example that networks, writing, and materiality influences writing, is political ads.  A democrat knows their audience and knows what values they have and the same thing goes for republicans.  During a democratic debate, the democrats will say something along the lines of they want more gun control.  The democrats knows that their audience or network likes that idea.  So the material they present on the debate will try to influence other democrats to vote for them.  On the republican debate floor, they want less gun control and the republicans who are watching that probably like that idea because that is something they want.  The material that both sides are using are different, but they are both trying to influence voters.  So even though the material is different, the writing is not.  They are both using key phrases like "I can get this done" to influence voters to believe that they can actually make these things happen if they become president.  The material might change during the general election because they want to get as many votes as they can and the network for the general election is much larger, but the style of writing will be essentially the same. In the end, it will be a "this is why I should be president" kind of writing.  No matter what, your writing and material is going to be influenced by what your network and target audience is.  An ad for coke will not go and promote pepsi, a comedian will use humor to advertise their shows, a romance writer might continue writing romances because they already built an audience out of that, etc.