Speaking to the article I shared titled “What is poverty?”, the article was written by a student at Michigan State (Go green) from what appears to be a POV stance. The author uses powerful imagery through very detailed descriptions in order to depict a lifestyle that would be considered less that desirable. The article appears to have been published in 1971 and the forward states that it is a personal account so the name of that author isn’t to be shared. That being said there is a name at the top so therefore I am confused. The audience really is everybody because the text isn’t very hard to understand or seem to be targeted to w specific audience. It’s a narrative piece designed to bring attention to the hardships of poverty and expose the difficulty of acquiring basic resources for survival. There doesn’t appear to be research done per say because it would appear that the author needed no sources to convey her point.
To touch on my second piece, it is an article providing information on the top 10 cities in the US with the highest poverty rates. It contains 10 sections that provides census data and a small photo snapshot of the city in question. Each summary boasts a before and after introduction, showing what was and what is and gives reason to the economic decline. The article uses research based primarily on government data and population statistics. The article reads in a “descending” order, providing stats for the #1 poorest place in the US (Flint MI) including average household income, percent population below the poverty level, and average employment rates. They then get slightly better as we go down the list all the way to #10 at Rochester NY. We see an increasing trend in income and employment as the article nears the end. This is not to say that at the end of the list the situation is good, it’s just not rock bottom. This article uses an effective format to draw readers in because it’s interesting data and it portrays it’s info in small, easily readable chunks (as opposed to a full narrative on the city which most readers would deem too long to sit down and read the entire thing). Each neighborhood profile provides links to spreadsheets and charts from the US Census Bureau that offers a full statistical breakdown of the city.