It is striking to see the damage a natural disaster can have
on a country. It is almost impossible to be unaware of the damage hurricane
Sandy (which reached the continental US October, 2012) has caused. Even in our
country where we have many groups and organizations aside from government and
state agencies, not to mention a very well planed infrastructure, after a week of
the storm’s official dissipation millions of people were still without electricity.
While a natural disaster cannot be stopped by any human
being, its affect on the lives and property of humans can be mitigated. While all
knowledge of these crisis situations is potentially beneficial, when the sky
becomes black it is not time to try and learn how, for example, a hurricane
builds over warm water. When a natural disaster is imminent it seems most
expedient to know how to prepare, and how to act.
Preparation and action is the
focus of the Ready text on hurricanes.
This text is one of many which Ready distributes
through via the television, radio, print and web. Ready and
the Ready Campaign were created in
2003, which describes itself as “a national public
service advertising… campaign designed to educate and empower Americans to
prepare for and respond to emergencies including natural and man-made
disasters”. With a self set goal of “get(ting) the public
involved and ultimately to increase the level of basic preparedness across the
nation.” According to their website, Ready
works with other large organizations including the Red Cross and The Humane
Society of The United States, and both works and publishes material for the
Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In my opinion, a
good response to any situation is somewhat dependent on who a person is.
Therefore, Ready a national
organization, must acknowledge that there are multifarious responsibilities and
concerns for people in this country. Furthermore, it seems wrong and even
dangerous to make assumptions without having evidence or knowledge to back it
up. In a crisis situation it is not prudent, nor responsible to assume that a
person with little or no computer and web skills, for example, would never seek
this sort of information online. It is this particular fictitious case, as well
as others, that a creator of a text (like the text I have chosen) will have to
consider.
However, for the
creator, the exigency of these crisis situations demands that they understand
the who in a particular manner. While
some information producing places might restrict understanding of who to “Young Adults” or “Pet Lovers”
the user of this, and related texts, will need to be more carefully considered-
for Ready web traffic to its sight is
not an indication of how successful this or another text is. Therefore, while
every individual situation and user’s needs are impossible for a creator to
anticipate, in order to fulfill a goal of educating, informing and preparing
the creator(s) must understand their users and must understand how their needs
can be met.
Because this text
must keep in mind such a wide audience of users coupled with the fact that it’s
information literally might be the difference between life and death this text
is going to have to be very accessible. While Ready prides itself on covering a range of mediums, I will speak
only on the accessibility of WebPages .
My primary focus
is sentence elements; however, I think that users will appreciate the way which
the information is structured. For example, my particular text concerns itself
with the time frame “before a hurricane”, and within this webpage are easily
accessible tabs entitled During (The Hurricane) and after. Within these three
texts the information is ordered using the bullet point, in a way where a
person might literally cross off what the text suggests they do when they
complete a task.
On the sentence
level, the text provides
information in short and focused sentences, and the raw scores also point in
this direction (Readability scores: 68.1 (F.K Reading Ease) 7.7 (SMOG) 8.9 (Average). I found that the ease of
reading in this text reminded me of writing that we see on, for example, car
seats and hair curlers. For these sorts of things, there is a paramount
interest that (whatever it is) not only provides information that many people
can understand, but actually provide justification for what it suggests. In the
same way that an adult is startled to read how putting a young child in a car
seat in the front seat can result in death, readers in this text are prompted
with lines like “prevent(s) windows from breaking”
to not only justify, but prompt a person to follow out the suggestion “Be sure trees and shrubs
around your home are well trimmed”. It is my belief that a reader can easily
skim over things a text suggests, but a sort of pathos tactic is very effective
to prompt action. For example, making the readers imagine what glass flying
around their house might result in could very likely stimulate them to board up
windows. While this and related texts run the risk of users thinking “how dumb
do you think I am” minor alienation, I would think, is not a great concern.
In all cases of a
person seeking information, they run the risk of finding confusing or downright
misleading information in their search.
It seems that the text I have chosen does a fine job of directing
readers toward this text, as well as having the user stay on their website for
related information. For example, links can be found to this particular page on
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and through FEMA
(Federal Emergency Management Agency). On the other hand, the text functions in
a way to direct readers who seek information as diverse as evacuation, food
safety and insurance information to texts within its own website. In other
contexts, such as websites that are created and maintained by for profit
companies (notably Weather.com and AccuWeather.com) have no (or no easily
found) link to this text, but rather include their own information, as well as
provide links that ensure users stay on their site. While the goal of the
governmental websites and dot com websites share a similar interest of keeping
users on their websites, the flashing adds on the dot com website’s pages leads
me to believe that their goals (user traffic to name one) certainly influence their
texts.
While I am unable
to fully explore some relevant questions, it is interesting to wonder why the
government needs to create these projects if dot com and for profit companies
might provide the same information. While I cannot provide evidence for my
claims, it seems to me a necessity that a text dealing with this sort of
subject matter should focus only on
what the users needs, and find exactly why a user has this need. In my mind, a
government agency expected to fulfill
needs of people, while it is usually the role of a for profit company to, for
example, create the “Weather.com home rebuilding force” when the crisis has
abated. On the same note, I can imagine a person becoming angry that a dot com
website provided information that turned out bad- but I would expect a stronger
response from people if the information from a governmental agency was “bad”.
David A. Stilin
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