Q Reading Critically: Tufekci & Thierer In this discussion activity, you will practice and develop your critical reading skills by engaging with the arguments of Zeynep Tufekci ("We're Building a Dystopia...") and Adam Thierer ("The Unappreciated Benefits..."). This activity will also give you an opportunity to refine and develop the position on advertising you will be arguing in your Midterm Exam essay, and to figure out how you will integrate one of these two writers' arguments into your essay. Your Task STEP ONE: Make your first post (15 points, 100-150 words). In this first post, you will be summarizing and responding to a point made by EITHER Tufekci OR Thierer. • Summarize ONE important claim about advertising that ONE of the writers makes. Refer to a specific quote from the text if it helps to convey this claim. • Respond to the claim with some sort of evaluation of it. Some questions to consider: o Do you think this claim is true or is it somehow misleading? Why or why not? What in your own experience or knowledge has led you to believe this claim is true or misleading? o Do you think this claim is important or is it insignificant? Does the writer’s criticism or support of advertising strike you as significant and worth paying attention to or not actually that big of a deal? STEP TWO: Respond to someone else's post (10 points, 75-100 words). • Identify a post you find interesting and respond to it. Please respond to a post about the writer you did not write about in your original post. • You could agree with what the person has to say, and explain why. You could disagree and explain. Or, you could pick up where they leave off, adding to what they have to say. Please don't repeat what you've written in your initial post; generate new ideas in response to someone else's post. Follow-up Activity You don't have to turn anything in for this follow-up activity to the required discussion. Instead, this is an opportunity to develop the position you'll be arguing in the Midterm Exam essay and to think about how you'll be incorporating at least one of these writers' ideas into it. Step One: Decide which writer makes the more persuasive argument. After discussing the two texts, which seems more significant and convincing—Tufekci's arguments about the dangers of advertising or Thierer’s arguments about the benefits of advertising? Step Two: Return to “Ideas for the Midterm” in your notes. (I recommended that you begin this section in your notes after completing "Week Six Discussion, Part 1.") Free-write responses to the following questions: • Have these texts and your classmates’ responses to them changed your position at all? If so, how? • How can you synthesize one or both of these texts into your argument? • What points in these texts might work as support in your proof paragraphs? Or as counterargument or refutation?