The purpose of a civic artifact is to persuade people to make a crucial change. The two artifacts that have been chosen alarm the audience to stop being a dead fish in the water when it comes to making an effective change for our state of being in this world and society. The first artifact shows you a look firsthand into a serious situation and pans out to the multiple thumbs up that are portrayed as “helping” the situation in the middle. The second artifact further proves this point and uses visual rhetoric, exigence, and the commonplace of “performative activism” to entice the reader into thinking more about the topic at hand. Artifact 1 takes a more serious and realistic approach to this movement while Artifact 2 displays a cartoon-like image that shows a common area where performative activism is present. While the two ads show different ideas of the same commonplace, they still hit all the points by using these rhetorical lenses.
I think that the detachment displayed in these artifacts is something that is very interesting. This more or less sums up what we find inherently shallow about likes and signs – words are nothing without action. Its interesting how sometimes it is more important to be seen “caring” than to care.
Both of these artifacts show how diluted the idea of activism has become. I like how you show that both display ways people are doing nothing beneficial with these forms of performative activism. I also like that you show the contrast between the tone used in the artifacts.