Bruns And Highfield Non-Expert Audience

Writing an article, a book chapter, or any sort of literature can almost be comparable to a science. Authors must write in such a way so that the reader can understand the content and be persuaded by it. As such, writers often tailor their arguments and supports based on what kind of audience they are trying to reach. Bruns and Highfield, trying to target the expert audience, use a different method than Steele, who is addressing the non-expert audience. Although they are both writing on the same issue of professional journalism and “citizen journalism,” they portray themselves differently depending on which audience they are trying to reach, through the use of tone, their assumptions on how much their audience already knows, and by extension, …show more content…
In the case of Bruns and Highfield, who are trying to reach the expert audience, they assume that the experts do not know exactly how Twitter works. Thus, they explain that the hashtags group tweets of the same genre together so that anyone who wants to read about the issue can do so (Bruns and Highfield 21). Many journalism experts might not be familiar with Twitter due to a lack of interaction with it in their careers, or even because they look down on it because it is not as prestigious as traditional media. In explaining Twitter, the authors are improving their argument because then the experts would understand their reason for including it. On the other hand, Steele does not go so far as to explain how Twitter works because he assumes that the non-expert audience has already been exposed to social media, especially through popular culture. Even with the fact that social media and new technology is central to his argument, he is assuming that the non-experts, who are not seasoned journalists, do not really need to know about the exact mechanism involved. Since his article contains mostly opinions and anecdotes, he assumes that the audience is not reading to develop a very deep understanding of the issue, but to get his own expert opinion on the ethics and morals involved in …show more content…
Similar to the use of tone, Bruns and Highfield try to convince their expert audience that their argument is valid. In order to do so, they must include extra information, such as their sources from which they got their information because their credibility would be at stake. Even if they are using a term coined by themselves, they must still cite it and provide the information (Bruns and Highfield 20). This is so that they can prove that their argument is valid because it draws on the work of other experts and makes themselves seem like either the experts’ peers, or even inferiors because they draw so heavily on other people’s work. For the non-expert audience, however, Steele does not include any citations. As previously stated, his article contains mostly his own experiences and anecdotes. He uses his own credentials as a respected journalist, whom other editors and journalists look to for advice, as his base for his argument. As non-expert readers, they can look to him as the source of authority, or a superior, on the subject because of his experience. They would not have as much of an interest in delving deeper through citations, so there would be little reason to provide