The document provides guidance on how to analyze and evaluate websites. It instructs the reader to identify the site's owner, purpose, and target audience. It also recommends examining the site's content, interface, navigation, layout, color scheme, typography, and interplay of modalities. The document then provides examples of site purposes such as buying something, finding a date, entertainment, community, news, or information. It stresses that purposes are linked to audiences and dependent on cultural and technological contexts.

1. 1. Analyze the rhetorical tactics of a controversial site.
· Using the earlier questions, analyze the website of a company
that’s recently been in the news in a negative way. Examples
might include oil and gas companies (BP, Exxon), big banking
companies, news sites and blogs with a distinctive political
leaning (Fox News or Breitbart for the conservative side,
the Huffington Post on the liberal side), organizations that
promote controversial ideas (the National Rifle Association,
Planned Parenthood), and controversial products (Monsanto,
fast food companies like McDonalds or KFC, pharmaceutical
companies, producers of high-fructose corn syrup).
In writing your analysis, first search for recent news and
opinion articles about the company and provide a summary of
the main issues identified. Then answer these questions:
· How does the site acknowledge the controversy, either overtly
through its content or less explicitly through its interface?
· What is the site’s primary message, and how does this
correspond to what’s been said about the company in the news?
· How does the company attempt to manage its reputation or
reframe the issue through its website?
2. Do a comparative analysis of competing websites. Visit the
websites of two groups with opposing views on the same topic
(the most obvious example of this would be the websites of a
Democratic and Republican candidate for the same political
position). How does each construct its ethos differently? Using
the framework for analysis above, consider the intended user
and purpose of the site in light of its interface and the interplay
of the various modalities. Write a brief essay explaining the
differences in the sites.
3. Evaluate the effectiveness of a website or app. Imagine that
you are a consultant charged with analyzing the effectiveness of
a website or app. Using the earlier first determine the intended
audience and purpose of the site or app, and then evaluate its
effectiveness in enabling the intended audience to achieve its

2. purposes. Assess the content, the interface, and the interplay of
the various modalities. Present the conclusions of your analysis
and evaluation in a memo to the leader of the company or
organization, along with recommendations for improving the
site (or commendations for how well it meets the needs of its
target audience).
4. You might also recommend other audiences that the company
might want to consider and provide suggestions for how the
current site might be revised to meet the needs of these Does
the site include video or audio components? What is the
relationship between the text, navigation, the visuals, and the
sound? How do these, along with the typography, layout and
design elements, textual content, visual representations, and
sound, contribute to the quality that one author refers to as
“point(s) of view or voice” (Pauwels 257).
How to…
Analyze and Evaluate Websites
1. Identify the basic type of site.
2. Identify the site’s owner, rhetorical purpose, and target
audience.
3. Examine the site’s content.
4. Study the site’s interface (navigation, layout, color scheme,
typography).
5. Examine the interplay of all the various modalities included
in the site.
new audiences.
1. Identify the Site’s Owner, Rhetorical Purpose, and Target
Audience
2. Purpose and audience for websites are (as with all
communicative acts) intimately linked. All websites aim to get a
certain group of people to do, think, or feel something.
Identifying the purpose and audience of the site will give you a
means of understanding the site’s design choices (and vice
versa—analyzing the design choices will help you identify the
purpose and audience).
3. Understanding who owns the site might begin to give you a

3. clue about the site’s intended purpose.
4. To identify the site’s rhetorical purpose, you might start by
asking what problem the site aims to solve for its audience.
What does the audience want or need that the site provides?
5. To buy something?
6. To find a date?
7. To be entertained?
8. To feel like part of a community?
9. News or gossip?
10. Information about a product, service, event, or
phenomenon?
11. To store photos online?
12. To waste time at work?
13. Something else?
14. Problems (and websites that grow in response to them) are
always changing and are deeply dependent on ever-evolving
contexts, including both cultural events and the development of
technologies.