- Many of the comments on the article, "Donald Trump Issues New Statement On Mexican Immigrants," agree with Trump's position on illegal immigration. They share his fears that illegal aliens bring crime to the country and hurt the economy by placing unnecessary strain on the nations taxpayers. The other group present in this comment section are those who disagree with Trump. These people's fear is that Trump will become president and act on what these people perceive as prejudice towards Hispanics.
- Many, if not all, of the comments are purely based on personal experience. Each author reacts to Trump's position by generalizing Hispanic culture in the US based on what they have observed. None of the comments offer any statistical evidence.
- A few of the commenters provided reasonable responses to the articles. On this list I would include Jake, BongBong, and Al'n. These three are effective because their comments are on topic (unlike many of the other comments) and also they don't resort to defaming Trump's character. They provide explanations for their positions, often based on personal experience without coming across as pretentious. The strongest aspect of their comments is the evidence given. They form an argument not based purely on accusations.
- A few of the comments seemed to lack credibility. Since many of the comments did not make an effort to back up their claims, they came across as unsubstantiated. All of the anonymous commenters (anonymity in itself undermined their credibility), Paul, Mike, and nerdrage did not provide convincing evidence for their claims. This resulted in comments that were not convincing or trustworthy.
What I Learned From My Classmates
I had the opportunity to read Jason Wittler's and Nicole Nelson's blogs. Both brought up very interesting perspectives on all the comments. The most notable lesson that Jason showed me was that none of the comments contained any concrete evidence. Every commenter merely appealed to personal experience and lacked any trace of objectivity. I enjoyed Jason's desire for fundamental truth from these commenters. Nicole taught me to look at all the information presented to you when evaluating a source (in this case a comment). She underscored the importance of looking at the username and using this to characterize the commenter's credibility. This, too, was a valuable lesson.
I agree with the tone that you wrote your post in. You did not favor one side of the issue over the other and instead gave an unbiased view. Like yourself I read other classmates' posts about the same topic and found it interesting that we all shared the same theme, not supporting a biased view on the same issue.
ReplyDeleteI feel foolish for not having even thought about the fact that no one really included any sort of evidence for their claims, and I find it especially interesting that you brought up that each comment was based on the commenter's personal experience with Hispanics. I agree that the anonymous comments lacked credibility where having a name made the post seem to have some substance to it. I honestly would not have originally thought of Jake's comment as reasonable, although I understand why he could be considered so based on your explanation - especially in comparison to some of the other comments.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more when you say that a majority of the comments are based on personal experience and not actual statistics. I feel that this could be a case of media portrayal of hispanics, and not true facts. I too appreciated the fact that those three commenters did not resort to slander to show Mr. Trump in a bad light, but calmly stated their reasonings.
ReplyDelete