Assignment

Question 1 asks you for your preconceived notions so you can be aware of them and analyze where they came from. Take Disney. Does your preconceived ideas come from their advertising? That is just good marketing. I want you to analyze the source of your preconceived ideas and understand how those preconceived ideas could cause you to "fill in" evidence in question 4 with your own evidence. You MUST stay within the corporate website as this assignment is a critical reading of a corporate website.

Example: What is your personal experience with the products of this company? How has that influenced you?

Question 2 is descriptive. You must describe what you are seeing as you navigate around the page. Describe the layout of the page. What do you see? THEN, how do those things make you feel? Second, analyze why do you think the company does this? Why use cartoon characters? Why invoke your childhood memories in a corporate website?

Example: Describe the layout in detail.

Question 3 is straightforward. If you can't clearly find the values either you are not looking hard enough OR the company doesn't make them clear. Values are what the company believes. Show me your process of searching for the values. Where are you looking? If you can't find them, that is fine but show me by describing your search for them. You shouldn't have to guess at their values. They should make these explicitly clear. If they don't, that is a rhetorical failure.

Question 4 is an analysis. How well does the company, staying within the website, provide evidence of how they put their beliefs into action. Do they make this evidence explicit or do you have to guess?

Question 5 is an analysis. First, you must stay within the website and not make any assumptions based on the company's size. You must look for textual evidence within the corporate website that supports your claim that the company is likely vertical or horizontal.

Example: Vertical companies do not include much information about anyone other than upper management. They also refer to "our employees" rather than "We" or "Us." Horizontal companies downplay rank for the free exchange of ideas from low level employees to upper level management.