http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2019/feb/20/san-diegos-street-lights-spy/
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/story/2020-03-01/san-diego-has-3-000-cameras-on-street-lights-do-they-target-any
(INSTRUCTIONS)
Many residents of San Diego are unaware that thousands of streetlights all over the city now have high-tech cameras that record the public twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We, as citizens and taxpayers, are paying millions of dollars for this surveillance. Our city government, mostly behind closed doors, developed this plan with private businesses that manufacture and service surveillance technology. Our city leaders control them. Our police have access to them. Most concerning, the sheer number of cameras in use in our city makes us one of the most watched cities in the world, more so than cities in Russia, China, and North Korea.
There have been several news stories focusing on this issue. We are going to examine two:
“San Diego Street Lights That Spy,” by Matt Potter of the San Diego Reader
and
“San Diego Has More than 3,000 Cameras on Streetlights. Are All Neighborhoods Treated Equally?” by Lyndsay Winkley and Teri Figueroa of the San Diego Union-Tribune
Your task is to engage in a rhetorical analysis of ONE of these two articles. After reading and understanding the sections of this unit describing rhetorical analysis and its elements, you will examine the article you have chosen for its diction and any signs of bias, consider the chosen sources and people interviewed for fairness of representation of both sides of the issue, analyze their rhetorical patterns, strategies, appeals and fallacies. You will also take a stand on the issue of surveillance in San Diego in your concluding paragraphs. Please note: If you would like to use the other article that you have chosen NOT to analyze but want to use it briefly as a means of comparison, you are allowed to do so.
CRITERIA FOR SUCCESS
Throughout the units for this assignment, you will analyze and hopefully come to understand the many elements that comprise a rhetorical analysis. These elements will become your tools as a writer to complete this task. Here are some important considerations for achieving success in your essay:
LENGTH: Your final essay should be at least 1200 words long to receive a passing grade. In terms of page count, that should put you close to 4 full pages. Failure to reach the minimum length requirement will automatically earn a failing grade.
FORMAT: This essay will require MLA format as well as MLA conventions for citing sources in-text and on a bibliographical page called a Works Cited (or Work Cited when using only one source). You will be receiving a lot of instruction for using MLA documentation before the essay is due.
APPROACH: Your essay must analyze ONE article in depth and consider some of the rhetorical tools and elements we have covered (see Canvas module pages 3.1 and 3.2). You are not allowed to bring other outside sources into your essay. You are also not allowed to ignore your chosen article or to treat it superficially in order to avoid it while simply writing at length about your own views or experiences.
THESIS: Your introduction should have a clearly identifiable thesis that makes a meaningful statement about your essay’s main point in regard to the issue and the two articles addressing it. Your conclusion should also echo your thesis in order to bring your essay to a satisfying closure.
LOGICAL ORGANIZATION: The essay’s organization will be guided by the elements of analysis you choose and the articles themselves upon which you are working.
CONTENT: The essay should have a good balance of your own exposition mixed into your implementation of source material. The essay should avoid excessive quotation and use primarily paraphrasing when citing sources. This will also be covered in my instruction.
STYLE: The essay should employ the skill sets developed during earlier units of the course incdiction (active verbs, concrete nouns, avoidance of clichés and common expressions). The essay should use a more academic formality than was required of your narrative essay. You should avoid slang and contractions. Make sure you employ variation in your selection of sentence types. Your paragraphs should have clearly identifiable topic sentences that make clear why your use of source material is in each of those paragraphs.
GRAMMAR AND MECHANICS: The essay should be written in clear prose with special care to avoid errors in grammar, sentence construction, and spelling. Very few errors of any type should appear in a college-level essay. Egregious errors in English fundamentals will cause the essay to fail.