TED Talk Analysis
https://www.ted.com/talks/nonny_de_la_pena_the_future_of_news_virtual_reality/transcript?language=en
Nonny de la Peña, at the beginning of her talk, identified herself as a journalist who has worked in print, documentary, and broadcast. The mention of her background was a use of ethos, and it immediately gave her credibility to talk about the journalism industry because of her experience. She said her purpose of becoming a journalist was to inspire people through stories and make a difference. She argues in this talk that virtual reality can achieve that by increasing one's capacity for empathy. She provides three examples to support her argument. The speaker mainly relies on pathos in her examples.
In the first example, she started a project to document hunger. This project created an evocative scene of a diabetic man having a seizure while waiting in line at a food bank. The speaker described the reactions to the scene that she created. In her diction, she used words like "terrified," "surprised," "crying," and "comfort." This emotional diction was used to create pathos in her argument.
In the next example, she created a scene about Syrian refugee kids. This project was commissioned by a USC dean after he had witnessed the project on hunger. This example used ethos, logos, and pathos. The scene showed a young girl singing in the street and then a bomb goes off. Peña described some reactions to the scene, "I've had individuals who have been involved in real bombings tell me that it evokes the same kind of fear." This is using ethos, because it is establishing the virtual experience as one that is near-real. The speaker then goes on to say that, "over a five-day run we ended up with 54 pages of guest book comments, and we were told by the curators there that they'd never seen such an outpouring." The mention of 54 pages is logos. This is showing a tangible effect of the project and logically it means that the project had some sort of impact on the participants. In the second part of the quote the speaker uses pathos. She describes the reaction of the curators. They were in awe. This creates an emotional appeal to the audience.
In the last example, Pena creates a scene of Trayvon Martin's case. She provides this example to highlight the issues that come with using virtual reality for journalism. There is the risk of misrepresentation. Pena tells her audience that creating virtual experiences with integrity will become important as this new media form expands. Pena utilized logos in this example. She described how she created this particular scene and all the sources she consulted to ensure its accuracy. The logic of the argument is that because the details of the case are accurately portrayed in the scene, the scene can be trusted as a source of truth. This also becomes a form of ethos because it is providing credibility to the validity of virtual experiences, and also to the speaker. The audience is more inclined to trust what the speaker has to say if they approve of her honest methods.
The use of pathos and logos create two effects on the audience. The first is that the audience sees virtual reality as a valid emotional experience because of its representation of real events. This then creates ethos, because the virtual experience is then established to be as valuable as a real experience. The second effect is that the audience understands the emotional implications of a virtual experience; it garners empathy. Perhaps the audience may even be inspired by the work of Peña. These two effects serve to fulfill the author's purpose that she identified at the beginning of her talk. Peña wants to make this more technology available so then she can accomplish her goal as a journalist.
The reason I chose this Ted talk is because I have been researching virtual and augmented reality for my Ethics Bowl team. The case I've been looking at discusses the value of a virtual experience versus a real experience. It's a thought-provoking topic and I though this talk would provide some insight, and it did :)
It's interesting that this TED talk focuses on the emotional value of virtual reality, rather than the technological aspects. The talk also is interesting in that it implies that VR can be used in place of other news sources in the future. Even though this technology is fairly new, it is good to see that people are bringing up topics which may be points for discussion in the future, as it shows that people are interested in what impacts this technology will have.
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