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Boden Marco

Professor Orozco

ENC 1102

10 October 2023

Research Question: How does Jenae Cohn's six elements of visual design analyze how

NASA uses rhetoric from its astronomy picture of the day photos on its website to inform,

engage, and promote their information to a general audience about information regarding

astronomy and astronomy-related events?

Annotated Bibliography

Cohn, Jenae. Understanding Visual Rhetoric – Writing Spaces. https://writingspaces.org/past-

volumes/understanding-visual-rhetoric/. Accessed 26 Jan. 2024.

This source talks about how rhetorical situations are heavily influenced by visuals and

how the elements of visual design are used to intrigue viewers. All the elements have a

purpose and the elements are lines, colors, shapes, sizes, values, and texture. These

elements are discreetly used in websites they make the viewer more interested in

whatever the website is showing off. These elements have been proven to help guide the

viewer to focus on the creator of the website want the viewer to focus on. This article was

very informative and well-written because it talked about how exactly visual elements

impacted rhetoric situations and made it very easy to understand. This article provides

everything I need about how images influence rhetorical situations.

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Foust, Jeff. The Space Review: The Value of Public Interest in Spaceflight.

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4625/1. Accessed 31 Jan. 2024.

This source talks about how important it is to get public involvement in space

exploration. Nasa is publicly funded which means the public is the ones that pay for the

program. The more interested the public is, the more funding NASA will receive. Public

interest is crucial to the survival of the space program so Nasa needs to figure out how to

keep the public engaged with their space program. This article was very informative used

statistical data and was very well made. It talked about why the public interest was so

important, but I also need to use another source to show how using multimodality on their

website will get more people engaged with their program.

Lee, Taejun (David), et al. “Are Pictures Worth a Thousand Words? The Effect of Information

Presentation Type on Citizen Perceptions of Government Websites.” Government

Information Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 3, July 2020, p. 101482. ScienceDirect,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2020.101482

This author talks about how pictures can be a better way to give out information. The

source talks a lot about how using lots of words can be overwhelming and it can be better

to use pictures to provide information. Using pictures will allow readers to gather more

information without them getting overloaded by the amount of text within a source.

Readers can process visual information more without having an information overload.

This article was well-written because it talked about how pictures are beneficial to have

in a source because they help the reader perceive information without getting
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overwhelmed which I can use in my research paper to talk about how pictures can be

used to present information in a useful way.

Maier, Carmen Daniela, and Jan Engberg. “Harvard Business Review’s Reframing of Digital

Communication: From Professional Expertise to Practical Guidance.” Journal of

Pragmatics, vol. 176, Apr. 2021, pp. 186–97. ScienceDirect,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.02.005.

The author studies how hypermodality and multimodality gain the interest of a non-academic

audience. The author tests hypermodality and multimodality using a website context. The

non-academic audience is tested by tracking the engagement of the audience and the

comprehensibility of the website. This source is well-written and provides a lot of context

to my research questions relating to multimodality. It provides tables and graphs

providing a visual representation of the data which makes it easier to understand. This

source provides everything I need relating to multimodality.

Tyson, Brian Kennedy and Alec. “Americans’ Views of Space: U.S. Role, NASA Priorities and

Impact of Private Companies.” Pew Research Center Science & Society, 20 July 2023,

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/07/20/americans-views-of-space-u-s-role-

nasa-priorities-and-impact-of-private-companies/.

This source talks about Americans' involvement and interest in the NASA space

program. The source mentions lots of statistics and important information about the

public and what the public's thoughts are about space. The article mentions that only 47%

of Americans are engaged with space but 69% would say that it is important for the

United States to be a leader in space exploration. This research showed a gap between
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people who believed that space exploration is important and those who actually engage in

it meaning that Americans need to get more engaged in space. I thought this website was

very helpful because it provided lots of statistics about NASA and the public’s interest

and engagement.

Zhaoyao, Meng. “Explore Mars from the NASA Website.” Physics Education, vol. 40, no. 4,

July 2005, pp. 355–58. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1088/0031-9120/40/4/005.

The author explains how the picture of Mars on NASA's website is used to excite

children and to get them engaged in physics and astronomy. Once the children saw the

picture they wanted to learn more about it. They also added some questions to allow the

children to interact with the picture and get them actively involved in astronomy. Not

only are the children now engaging with the website but they are also learning new things

about space and astronomy. This article is informative about getting kids involved with

astronomy but I need more information about how to get the general public involved.