The genre my team is developing is of the translation of difficult topics from the complex to the vernacular. At a finer level, we are focusing not only on the blogging side of this realm, but more pointedly on those blogs which make a concerted effort to relate to, and entertain, the reader. This is accomplished by leveraging modularity of discussion, humor, analogies, images and a perhaps incidental use of first person.
The genre is akin to a veil being thrown over a swath of difficult to understand sources relating to a singular difficult to understand topic. If the author of the blog tailors the veil correctly, the sources that he/she relies upon to create the blog entry should be undetectable to the reader — instead leaving the impression that a trustworthy oaf who happens to be grounded on a particular topic is doing you the favor of telling you what they overheard two professors saying about it during a long elevator ride.
The benefit of a well executed example of this genre, is that it can spread with ease over the internet. Although in a sense sharing the entry on social media is transitively sharing the scientific papers and research that it is referencing, that of course is not the impression that is given off to the unsuspecting Facebook scroller.
In order to orchestrate this successfully formulated entry, the author must operate in a world in which he must act as a student when reading complex papers, be professional when interviewing experts, be relatable when detailing his/her conclusions, be sensitive to the efficacy of his/her style — making alterations accordingly, and wear any given number of other generic hats.
While the reading was a helpful reminder to view the generic elements with a more clinical eye, I found the dictating of genre analysis frameworks to be forcefully abstract. Perhaps considering the differences between the frameworks might have yielded a stronger and nonintuitive understanding of the purpose of each genre frameworks — and the benefits of each approach with relation to the others — I cannot shake the apathetic feelings of an engineer taking a writing course as to how much added insight can divulged by using the different frameworks listed.
