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In the article “Sheeple: Everything Old is New (Media) Again”, Kerley writes initially about a “popularity contest” between the powerful news organization, CNN, and a celebrity, Ashton Kutcher. Kerley’s analysis not only deals with what she believes to be a shallow display of “super-sized ego”, but also examines our society’s interaction with media, the ideas behind our media, and how each may or may not be changing.  She defines the difference between and emphasizes the necessity of both mass media and social media, appealing to the reader through the timely use of casual and formal language and punctuating her argument with humorous rhetoric and pop culture references.

Kerley shifts from writing with a completely casual tone and topic to writing about a more serious topic regarding powerful “premises” prevalent in our society. She begins the article with an incredibly casual tone (“So, um, if he could…”); she uses first person perspective, which draws the reader in and provides a sense of comfort, intimacy and trustworthiness. After she has successfully gained trust and established credibility, Kerley begins to move onto more serious topics, such as the preference of our government structure and the transformation of media in our society (“democratization of content to the audience”).

Kerley makes a connection between government and the Internet. This may be a false analogy to some extent: although the internet and the government do have many things in common, such as the vast quantity of demanding people involved in each, directly comparing the two may have dangerous implications. Kerley notes that because we as a society have declared Ashton Kutcher to be the “king” of a website, we also have the tendency to prefer a monarch to a democracy. Although the concluding statement of that paragraph (“Yep, irony indeed runs deep”) provides some comedic relief and thus causes previous claims to seem more casual, the comparison still catches the reader off-guard and may cause the author to lose credibility. Even though the false analogy is present, the comparison still stands. Because at first, Kerley uses anecdotal support (“I’ve been balking over…”) for her point and then switches to more historically based evidence (“Man against machine premise”), her legitimacy improves with the increase in formality. The reader can easily recognize the balance between opinion and fact.

Evidence of fallacious arguments can be seen in the article. For instance, referring to the competition as a “Twitter-powered popularity contest” and referencing Ashton Kutcher’s “super-sized ego” creates the straw man and the ad hominem fallacy. Kerley summarizes Ashton’s cause and competition as something different than what it is – something much more petty than it is in reality. Kerley also states that because Oprah declared Kutcher the “King of Twitter”, the rest of the American population is in agreement. Although Oprah does have some influence over the public’s opinions, she does not have the authority to determine our thoughts on which governmental structures we may prefer. Kerley’s appeal to authority is evident in this argument. The reader may recognize that Oprah declaring something may make it more legitimate, but also may realize that Oprah only appeals to a certain demographic and therefore may see her views as less credible.

The use of humor in this blog has an incredibly strong effect on the reader. Kerley unified the blog through including a humorous bit about Susan Boyle in the beginning and ending the blog with another mention of the recently popular celebrity. She even humorously concludes the blog with the proverbial proposal: “How’s about them apples?” Kerley intertwines humor into her serious points and it even seems to give those points more validity. The use of emotionally charged words and exclamation helps communicate the mostly sarcastic tone of the article. Although if employed differently, the use of such obvious and frequent humor could detract from the article’s validity, Kerley uses the humor to her benefit, punctuating her main points with humorous bits and allowing the reader to feel a sense of normality and casualty, while still viewing the argument as legitimate and credible.

Kerley concluded her blog with a strongly focused theme. The way in which she structured her blog and implemented humor allowed the reader to first see a specific example of the subject of her argument and then see how that example represents a concept as a whole. Because of this structure, Kerley was able to ease into her point without it seeming forced upon the audience. Although Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter endeavors initially appeared to be the focus of the entire blog, Kerley used that focus as a gateway into deeper subjects and the transformation of media (but not the ideals behind it). She may not support the “competition” between Kutcher and CNN, but she points out the valuable lesson inherent in the situation: New media and old media are both prevalent in our society and probably will be for quite a while; they rely on each other in order to exist and evolve. She also points out an important difference between social media and traditional media – we have direct control over social media and “there is no right way” to utilize social media. The structure implicit in “old” media is not present in new media. She helps prove these points through the use of examples, not only using persuasive rhetoric, but also providing concrete evidence. Kerley argues that old and new media are incredibly similar, or at least have similar roots in purpose. However, she notes that although the ideas behind both medias may be similar, the media itself has indeed changed. Kerley successfully makes her point, even if some slightly fallacious argumentative techniques were employed. Her validity still stood and she even provided the reader with some humor along the way.

P.S. – This was also for my English class!