Conflicted Functions of Journalism

Archetypes

• An archetype is a character type recurrent across the human experience.
• It creates an immediate sense of familiarity, allowing an audience member to relate to the character.
• The most common archetype is hero and villain.

Hero vs Villain

• Narratives that pit the villain against the hero tend to show the moral triumph of good over evil.
• This is often set up via a range of diction and imagery that contrasts and juxtaposes character traits.
• Post-structural writers tend to blur this dichotomy to reveal the duality of man.

Purposes

• There are many purposes to writing.
• The most popular are to inform, to explain, or to persuade. However, more specific purposes can include commentary and criticism.
• These purposes can be helpful when considering the purposes of journalistic writing.

Fallacy of Incomplete Evidence

• Also called "cherry picking", it refers to the phenomenon whereby people tend to be swayed and believe a proposition or argument, if there appears to be evidence for the argument, even if that evidence is incomplete or biased.