For this project, I have chosen the Foundation for Intentional Communities website, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that allows people to connect with others from various communities. The overall purpose of this website seems to be to allow people to gather and communicate in different parts of the world, and to provide answers to people about those various communities. Since there are many communities in the Directory of Intentional Communities, the website's purpose also seems to be to help people find the right community for them. As a result, the invoked audience of this website is most likely people who are searching for a new community; one of the ways that the website invokes this audience is the inviting search bar at the top of the page which allows users to easily search for a community; the second way is the vivid pictures of some of the communities featured in the Directory of Intentional Communities, in addition to facts about those communities.
The three relevant aspects of the website are probably the fact that people want to find new communities (this is implied and part of the context), in addition to the large amount of resources available for download and viewing, since visitors probably want to see examples of communities. The final relevant aspect is probably the modern and elegant design of the website that will lure people in. These three relevant aspects cater to the primary insight of the website, or the purpose of the website, which was to draw in people who are in search of new communities to live in. The website does this by zeroing in on the things that people like or will be attracted to, and integrate those things into the website. As a result, the Foundation for Intentional Communities site is, so far as this analysis goes, very good at invoking the correct audience.
The people who are excluded from this website are those who do not seek the values that the website encourages; such as sustainability and ecology, and spirituality. There are no other types of people who are excluded; this website welcomes quite a lot of different types of audiences; one of the main points of the website and the organization is to create diversity. However, this does not affect the primary insight and purpose of the website too much, since the purpose was more aimed towards allowing people to find homes, without worrying about spirituality and types of people too much.
The three strategies that the website uses to work towards achieving the purpose of allowing people to gather and communicate include easy access to the directory of communities so people can view them without having to do much work, in addition to easy website signup. The next strategy is the integration of modern website features and lots of colorful images to draw viewers' attention. All of these strategies are appealing to ethos, since the point of the website is to draw a community together with a certain type of spirit, which is what ethos is. These three strategies are probably the main driving factors of why the website is so good at invoking the correct audience; the makers of the website know exactly why their users are coming to the website, and they emphasize that point and reinforce that audience by implementing the strategies mentioned above. Here is the hyperlink to the website so you can see for yourself:
The primary insight of this website and how successful it is is probably fueled by the fact that it provides an easy-to-use interface for users wanting to find a community and fast. As shown from the several strategies above, this website definitely is successful at invoking the audience given in the context because of its insight into what users want to see on a community website, and it lives up to its primary purpose, because it allows viewers to do exactly what the website wants them to do, which is to find a community and join one. This website, through its various strategies, makes that very easy, especially since it only excludes a very small amount of types of people. Overall, this is a very well-crafted website that adroitly achieves its purpose.
And that's all for the Final Draft of Writing Project #5: the Rhetorical Analysis.
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