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Ruiqi Tao

Josh Smith

27 January18 March 18, 2020

New Genre

Information dissemination is an integral part of life today. Most appearing news needsare

necessary to be notified to let everyone knowand most people would like to receive updated

news every day. In collegedaily life, most advertisements, association events, and festivals are

spread through emails and leafletswarning posters and broadcast. However, I want to introduce a

new genre, postersemergency alert email, which is a form of posting in the corner of the school

or the student dormitory aimed to inform what will happen or what has already happenedemail

with specific title and sent from a relatively high-class character. We usually ignore most emails,

but this new genre of emails will not be ignored after we read his title and sender, because the

transmitting information is related to our life and health and academic career. In my opinion, this

new genre, postersemergency alert emails, is still different from the antecedent genres, emails

and leafletswarning posters and broadcast, and even better than them, though all of them aim to

disseminate information.

Genre is like a category of artistic composition which can be understood as a style. And we

can define each genre by its convention which makes you understand better. Genre convention

can be explained as what you tend to gain in this genre. Posters, emails and leaflets’ conventions

are all to disseminate informationEmergency alert emails, warning posters and broadcast’ s

conventions are all to disseminate information which might be important or urgent. Another

element of genre is rhetorical situation. The rhetorical situation is made up by composer,

audience and the content. Posters, emails and leaflets’Emergency alert emails, warning posters
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and broadcast’ s content are word and pictures, but people can figure out numbers of methods on

painting of warning posters and leafletsplaying broadcast with music to attract more passengers

to read and listen. The audience of emergency alert emails is wilder and more varied than leaflets

and posterswarning posters and broadcast because of the internet, but the audience of warning

posters and leafletsbroadcast is slightly limited. The composers of them are all the people who

drafted the poster, emails and leaflets.

Comparing posters and emails, posters are more attractive than emails. When most people

receive emails that are not academically relevant or interesting to them, they choose to delete

these irrelevant emails or ignore them. Thus, the emails do not play a role in spreading. Although

the emails can help everyoneemergency alert emails, warning posters and broadcast.

Comparing emergency alert emails and warning posters, people can receive the

dissemination informationemergency news as soon as possible, they are still useless if everyone

chooses not to read it. However, posters are usually designed with colorful text and vivid

pictures. Therefore, people and gain enough time to take emergency measures in advance though

warning posters are usually designed with colorful text and vivid pictures which can attract more

people to read it. People are often attracted by these interesting pictures or eye-catching text of

warning posters, and then they will become interested in reading the disseminated information.

Thus, the poster does play a disseminating role. In addition, everyone will choose not to read

emails because of the length of the email. When a community event is considered to be spread,

the e-mail usually starts with the introduction event and then tells the time and address at the end.

People start to lose patience and interest after they have read a few lines. But the poster will

mark the time and place with a larger font at the beginning, which will let people see it at first
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glance and then quickly match their schedule. Once they find time allows, they subconsciously

attempt to see if the content of the poster is part of what they are interested in.

Take an example of my personal experience. When I just entered the university, I had to live

in a dormitory for the first year. Nevertheless, everything about university was strange to me

because it was my first time that I went abroad to study alone. When I first moved into the

dormitory, I saw a poster about the orientation party as soon as I entered the door. The time and

place of the party were designed by colorful pens and written by bold typeface, so I was quite

impressed by the time and place. However, I did not have too much interest in participating.

When it came to the day of orientation, I suddenly thought of it and found that I was free to visit.

Finally, I met and made a lot of friends at the orientation party. Also, they gave me a lot of

suggestions about course selection and university knowledge. There is indeed a subtle help in

future life. One month later, when I was sorting through the mail, I found out that the school had

sent me an email of the orientation party which might be ignored. Therefore, some sorts of e-

mails are easy to be ignored and forgotten, but the posters simply and directly convey the

message they want to express.

Between leaflets and posters, leaflets are often rejected by passengers, because everyone is

eager to go to work, school or something more urgent. Thus, the group of posters’ audience is

larger than the group of leaflets’ audience since more people tend to accept the posters rather

than leaflets. Also, the content of the leaflet is unknown before people receive it, thus people

often do not get interested in accepting and reading it. However, posters posted in the student

bedroom or outside the teacher's office can be glimpsed as the teacher or student passes by. If the

post attracts them, they stop to read it carefully. Similarly, when it posts in a place for a period of

time, you will see the poster many times then to deepen the content of the poster. Then when
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they are free, they will go online to find information about the content of the poster, and even

this new topic that is new and fresh to them will become a new hobby for them. In addition,

printing leaflets requires a lot of paper to print out, but the need of paper for poster is extremely

less than them. This helps cut down fewer trees to protect the environment. Also, most people

choose to discard them after receiving the leaflets, which is also a waste of paper. In addition, the

leaflets need people to spend time and energy in a specific place to spread it. In fact, few people

accept these leaflets from spreading. Nevertheless, the posters only need to be posted in a

specific place. Hence posters are more efficient than leaflets.

Once Chinese Students Association organized an activity about making dumplings and

eating dumplings during the Chinese New Year. They advertised in the form of posters and

flyers. They posted posters in each dormitory and sent people to distribute leafletsHowever,

emergency alert emails usually spread content about physical safety or major events. When

people see such emails, they still choose to read them though people usually ignore most emails

because of their length. And with the help of the Internet, people can receive these messages as

quickly as possible. However, posters need people to happen to see them before they can receive

messages. When a particularly serious disaster or a extremely significant event is coming,

warning posters usually do not serve the purpose of transmitting information.

Take an example of my personal experience. The recent outbreak of COVID-19, a new type

of influenza, has been spreading. The number of people infected is increasing every day. This

type of influenza is extremely transmissive. Once contacting with patients for more than 15s,

people will be infected. Since this new type of influenza, which is currently particularly difficult

to recover from, many schools have begun to suspend courses or switch to online courses, and

our school is not exclusive. Our last two weeks of courses have adopted online teaching and the
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final exams have become optional or online exams. The purpose of these is to prevent we go out

to contact other people. I received all of the information about this influenza by emergency alert

emails sent by the school. After knowing this situation in the first time, I went to the supermarket

and convenience store to set up various daily necessities, disinfection supplies and food. At the

same time, I also had some preparations for meeting and fighting with this influenza. However,

we are not able to receive information passed through warning posters, because almost no one

can go out. The only way we can get the information is through the network and through the

school's emergency alert emails.

Between emergency alert emails and broadcast, broadcasting has a better effect on the way

of spreading messages, because people usually play music as broadcasting messages at the same

time, which will attract more people to listen to the broadcast, and the cost of listening to the

broadcast is lower than receiving emails. For the poor children, from many mountainous areas,

can't afford cell phones to receive the transmission of information by emails. Nevertheless, the

scope of broadcasting is very limited. They usually broadcast in a specific field, such as schools,

subways and shopping malls, and then spread the information. However, emergency alert emails

can be spread more widely when the Internet is available. In the current era of big data, most

people stay with their mobile phones and computers all the time. It is commonplace for everyone

to receive e-mails and read them. And most public places also have set up free Wifi. Thus,

people can receive the transmitted information from emails everywhere at any time.

When I was in high school, I lost my wallet and I went to the Lost and Found Office to

report it. About half a year later, I did not receive a reply from my page until I came to the Lost

and Found Office again. However, the staff member said that they had pushed the broadcast after

they found it, but no one came to claim it. I later thought that I might have been illness and didn't
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come to school on the day of the broadcast. Later when I was in college, I lost my card bag again

in the classroom, but it did not take too much before I received an alert email from the school

saying that my wallet was picked up and placed in the front desk of the library. As for me, I don't

like to accept leaflets because I don't know whether I am interested in the content of the leaflets.

Even if I accept the leaflets, I may not read them or even throw them into the trash. However, my

friend, who lived in the dormitory, could see the poster about the activity every time he returned

to the dormitory. Finally, my friend took part in this activity on time, but I was absent and felt

unfortunate. Thus, posters are more acceptable than leaflets.dormitory. And I can pick up it when

I am free. In this way, emergency alert emails can spread emergency information more

effectively. People can receive information at any location, but broadcast is only applicable to

some designated locations, such as shopping malls. When children are lost, broadcasting will

become very practical way to notify their parents to come and claim.

As time goes by, posters,Emergency alert emails, warning posters and leafletsbroadcast have

not disappeared, because updated news, knowledge and information need to be conveyed every

day. Recent influenza from Wuhan needs to be conveyed to everyone around the world to take

actions for premunition; the news about Kobe Bryant’ death also needs to be conveyed to people

who are fans of him or people who respect and love him. Posters and leafletsWarning posters

and broadcast can be specifically targeted to a specific community at a specific location, and

emergency alert emails cover the entire Internet crowd. In my opinion, all of them are

indispensable because multiple coverage of conveying information can increase the probability

that people will get the information that is passed on. Also, people are making improvement in

each way: People attempt to make alert posters more interesting and attract more people; People

develop communication skillsplay the broadcast with music to make more people accept leaflets;
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emailbroadcast; Emergency alert emails system is also gradually being improved to make it more

convenient for users.