Comparing Arguments from Diverse Perspectives — Unit test Answers

How does the writer best use evidence to support the claim? Select three options.

Read the passage from a debate speech.The current trade situation in this nation is unacceptable. We continue to lose money to other nations, while those nations prosper. I have a detailed plan to get our country—and its people—back on the right track. My opponent, who uses her time to spread lies and rumors while eating nice dinners bought by you taxpayers, does not even have a plan. I question her priorities.

Which quotations from the excerpt provide evidence to support the claim that governments have responded to criticism delivered through social media? Select three options.

Examine the excerpt from a public service campaign website. Which words from this campaign best indicate the target audience?

Read the excerpt from "Social Media Made the Arab Spring, But Couldn't Save It" by Jessi Hempel.Five years ago this week, massive protests toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, marking the height of the Arab Spring. Empowered by access to social media sites like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, protesters organized across the Middle East, starting in December 2010 in Tunisia, and gathered together to speak out against oppression, inspiring hope for a better, more democratic future. Commentators, comparing these activists to the US peace protesters of 1968, praised the effort as a democratic dawn for an area that had long been populated by autocracies. In a photo collection published by the New York Times a few months later, Irish writer Colum McCann wrote: "The light from the Arab Spring rose from the ground up; the hope is now that the darkness doesn’t fall.”The darkness has fallen. Half a decade later, the Middle East is roiling in violence and repression. Activists are being intimidated into restraint by governments that are, with the exception of Tunisia, more totalitarian than those they replaced, if any government as such really exists at all. Meanwhile, militants have harnessed the same technology to organize attacks and recruit converts, catapulting the world into instability. Instead of new robust democracies, we have a global challenge with no obvious solution. The Arab Spring carried the promise that social media and the Internet were going to unleash a new wave of positive social change. But the past five years have shown that liberty isn't the only end toward which these tools can be turned.Activists were able to organize and mobilize in 2011 partly because authoritarian governments didn’t yet understand very much about how to use social media. They didn’t see the potential, says NYU professor of politics Joshua Tucker, a [principal] investigator at the Social Media and Political Participation Lab at New York University. "There are a lot of reasons the people in power were slow to pick up on this,” he adds. "One of the things about not have a free press is it is harder to learn what was going on in the world.”

Read the first paragraph from an article in the local online newspaper.Local businesswoman Inés Garcia-Ruiz is joining the race for the state senate seat that is soon to be vacated by retiring senator Benjamin Hall. A long-time resident of this community, Garcia-Ruiz says that, if she is elected, she will "dive into projects that aid low-income families.” This should be obvious to most constituents because she is well known for her impressive charity work. Time and time again, she has worked tirelessly to improve the lives of those living in poverty in our community.

Examine the public service ads. This first ad is from 1985.This second ad is from 2015.

Read the scenario.A pilot is being investigated after an air-traffic accident led to many passengers being injured and hospitalized. Reports about a cover-up by the airline are surfacing, and people have accused the pilot of negligence.The editor-in-chief of the local newspaper has just assigned the story to the most experienced investigative reporter in the newsroom. However, the reporter’s uncle is the pilot being investigated. No one in the newsroom knows about this connection.

What reasons does the author give to support the claim that it is difficult for a message to move people to take action? Select two options.

Read the excerpt from a newspaper article.Last night, Fairview police arrested six university students for involvement in an illegal gambling ring. Today, community leaders and university officials are claiming that Professor Shuman, the students’ academic advisor, should also be arrested. Dr. Harris, the department chairperson, reports that Schuman has recently started holding group tutoring sessions in his campus office in the evenings. Video footage from security cameras outside the campus building shows him exiting on several occasions with some of the accused students. Although Shuman denies the gambling ring allegations, he was most likely involved with this illegal activity.

Read the two passages.Passage 1Violence in video games is unavoidable. More than half of the top video games contain some element of violence. Does this lead to violence in the real world? Logical people know the answer, and the facts prove it. Between 1994 and 2004, video game sales increased by 204 percent. During that same time period, the arrest rate for juveniles committing violent crimes decreased by 63 percent. These facts make it obvious that video games are not a problem.Passage 2The majority of video games contain violence. Children playing these games leads directly to acts of violence. Several studies, including a 2014 study by the Journal of the American Medical Association, have shown a correlation between persistent video game use and aggressive behavior. While my own children play video games, they do not play games labeled "Mature.” Simply avoiding these games and allowing children to play the thousands of other available games is a logical way to avoid a potential problem.

A high school student has just won a science award from NASA, and the local paper is reporting on this accomplishment. Which headline would best indicate that the priority of the news source is to maintain credibility?

What is a multimodal media campaign?

Which topic is most likely to be the subject of a public service campaign?

Examine the public service ad.

Read the excerpt from a magazine article.The software magnate has been revolutionizing the gaming industry for a decade, releasing several new and exciting titles each quarter. This past quarter, Mr. Vincent’s company posted an impressive profit, as it has in each of the past 10 quarters. The public has caught on to Vincent’s vision, and the sky continues to be his only limit.

Read the excerpt from "The Role of Social Media in the Arab Uprisings" by Heather Brown, Emily Guskin, and Amy Mitchell.Now, research is emerging that reexamines in a more detailed way the role that social media played in the Arab uprisings.In July 2012 a report was published by the United States Institute of Peace. . . . The authors came to some conclusions that countered the initial assumption that social media was a causal mechanism in the uprisings.Instead, the study suggests that the importance of social media was in communicating to the rest of the world what was happening on the ground during the uprisings. . . .Data from the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project at least somewhat supports this conclusion with its findings that the majority of Egyptians are not online. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of the total population do not use the internet. When looking specifically at those with a college education, use of social media for obtaining political information is more prevalent than in other segments of the population. Though most of the country is disconnected from the internet, 84% of those who are online say they visit social networking sites for news about Egypt’s political situation. These findings point to social media’s important role in spreading information, but do not necessarily indicate that social media was a mobilizing force in the uprisings.Read the excerpt from "The Truth about Twitter, Facebook and the Uprisings in the Arab World" by Peter Beaumont.As commentators have tried to imagine the nature of the uprisings, they have attempted to cast them as many things: as an Arab version of the eastern European revolutions of 1989 or something akin to the Iranian revolution that toppled the Shah in 1979. Most often, though, they have tried to conceive them through the media that informed them—as the result of WikiLeaks, as "Twitter revolutions" or inspired by Facebook.All of which, as American media commentator Jay Rosen has written, has generated an equally controversialist class of article in reply, most often written far from the revolutions. These stories are not simply sceptical about the contribution of social media, but determined to deny it has played any part.Those at the vanguard of this argument include Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker (Does Egypt Need Twitter?), the New Statesman's Laurie Penny (Revolts Don't Have to be Tweeted) and even David Kravets of Wired.co.uk (What's Fuelling Mideast protests? It's More Than Twitter). All have argued one way or another that since there were revolutions before social media, and it is people who make revolutions, how could it be important?Except social media has played a role. For those of us who have covered these events, it has been unavoidable.Precisely how we communicate in these moments of historic crisis and transformation is important. The medium that carries the message shapes and defines as well as the message itself. The instantaneous nature of how social media communicate self-broadcast ideas, unlimited by publication deadlines and broadcast news slots, explains in part the speed at which these revolutions have unravelled, their almost viral spread across a region. It explains, too, the often loose and non-hierarchical organisation of the protest movements unconsciously modelled on the networks of the web.

Which elements are associated with a logical appeal? Select three options.factsvaluesevidenceauthorityanalytical theoriesperceived credibility

Which statements best evaluate the evidence in this excerpt? Select two options.

Which scenarios are considered ethically acceptable for journalists? Select three options.paying money to attend a conference about climate change in order to do research for an articleaccepting money from a politician to report on an opponent, then donating the money to a charityending an investigation because it may lead to violence and disunity in a local communityinterviewing the CEOs of two insurance companies that are competing against each otherusing information from a wiki page to clarify information about a topic