My second artifact, the Sandy Hook promise ad is a back to school ad that sheds light upon the horrors that kids have to face when school shootings happen. The ad appeals to their audience by starting it out as a normal back to school ad but slowly devolving it into a cesspool of intense emotions and actions that come out of school shootings. The ad specifically appeals to the audience by first providing juxtaposition of tone from the beginning of the ad to the end. This serves as a way to grab the audience’s attention and focus their attention on the individual horrors that the ad is portraying. Then the symbolism of basic back to school supplies acting as ways to protect themselves from school shooters reveals an extremely important idea that children face in schools. They can not feel safe in schools so rather than using supplies that are meant to be educational, they are forced to think about them as ways to protect themselves as school shootings. It creates an idea that the general population is not keeping kids safe in schools but rather neglecting them forcing students to fend for themselves. The abysmal state of these kids are supposed to create a sense of change in the audience which is the whole purpose of this ad. This ad and my first artifact are similar in terms of general rhetorical devices and topic however the PSA fails to encapsulate the audience in a way that the ad effectively does. The PSA inherently limits it self by defining that guns are the problem to school shootings. Where as the ad just states that school shootings are preventable. To an audience member the idea of taking away guns may be out of there reach but making a difference to fight against school shootings may be more realistic which then creates a stronger civic engagement. Also the similar tone and pathos are more strongly present in the ad than the PSA. The Ad accomplishes the framing of these inhumane school shootings much better than the PSA which is why the Ad invokes much stronger emotions. The PSA is good for appealing to specifically gun control advocates but it falls short of reaching the entire audience. The focused framing of the PSA makes it much less effective than the Ad especially when appealing to the entire population of the United States to prevent school shootings.
I liked the comparison of your ads, and claim that one ad is more effective than the other. I agree that the PSA limiting the school shootings solely on gun control is counter intuitive to the process of stopping school shootings. It might also be effective to discuss the differing contexts of each situation; the Sandy Hook ad is much more pertinent to a post-school shooting environment, whereas the PSA is warning against it. These pieces of information might also add a few differing aspects to your comparison.