In relation to the final image above

Audience Strategy

My intended audience is anyone who is interested in the current issue of Asian Hate and how to effectively participate in changing it. A younger audience, teenagers and young adults, would be my targeted audience. I want to see people get on the streets and project their voices, younger tends to have more energy to do that. They are also better at technology so spreading the words will be more efficient across platforms.

A younger audience means a shorter attention span on articles, so a minimalistic style art piece would work wonderfully well in getting their attention and informing of the issue. However, I do not want to exclude older audiences so an addition of information on poster and links to reliable resources with lengthier words, more informational than the poster are presence. Younger audience spend a lot of time on the internet and considering that we are still in a pandemic, a social media post would work best. I am considering Instagram and Pinterest, where media similar to mine is consumed the most.

For what I want my audience to react, I want them to feel angry, to feel sympathy seeing someone helplessly beaten. I mentioned at the beginning, I target younger audience because I want them to go out and do something, to protest, to create signs or funds to help the movement. Of course, we are still in a pandemic so spreading through the internet is also a great way of protesting and younger people does that the most efficient.

Reflection

I plan my piece to be a social media post across many platforms, preferably Instagram and Pinterest where art, photographic content is easier to be seen and spread. I chose social media post because there is a great potential in attracting younger audiences, who is the targeted audience. When you post on media, there are many different things to consider, the creativity, is it bold enough to make them stop scrolling for a second to read through? is the information shocking enough to pique their interest and generate a reaction or a change? Younger people, preferably teenagers and young adults, tends to have a lot more energy and sensitive in seeing what is wrong and the desire to fix it. They also have a shorter attention span compare to older people, which mean that whatever design I make, it will need to be short, compressed and includes only the most vital information and I make sure to include that in my piece.

The rhetorical I use to mainly pathos, appealing through emotion with logos features included. The reason I chose pathos is because I believe it can cause the strongest reaction out of all three. Emotions has always been strong; this can lead to a bigger potential of change than the other two. I want to evoke anger, to show people the cruelty of society and as Lorde says in “The uses of anger”, it can be a source of energy to cause positive change instead of destruction. Though any emotions are invalid without the support of logical reasoning to back it up. Without reason it would be a rant, but with it, comes argument. Why should we be angry for AAPI people? Because there is actually evidence of them being murder and hated for hundreds of here in America. At this point, every minority group is being abuse and kill, but Coronavirus has made it extremely hard for APPI people specifically. For audience who want to further research on the topic I will includes links to official websites, funding and resources to help or just understand the situation better:

• Stop AAPI Hate  – Donation to the campaign and is also a reporting center for incidents.
• Stop Asian Hate (nyc.gov) – I strongly encourage to visit this link as it contains links to many other websites and resources, as well as interviews.
• I Still Believe in Our City – art campaign by

In the center of my artwork, you can see an eye crying out blood, which represent the sad emotion and the reality that we are being killed and abused. The white of the eye is full of blood veins, something that comes out when human are in an extreme state, whether it is anger, sadness, or tiredness. It fits perfectly into what we, as AAPI, is feeling right now. The broken heart in the iris should be easy to understand, a broken heart. There are flowers growing out of both corner of the eye. These flowers are called equinox flower, higabana, red spider lily or scientifically known as Lycoris Radiata. The flower has a rather sad meaning to it. It represents death, or rather the idea that a red flower grows where the human lay. They are also called hell flower because they are believed to grow on the way to the other side, leading wandering spirit to their destination. Given the situation that we are in right now, where many APPI people are being attacked or even killed for simply belonging to Asian descend.  

Visual and traditional essay, though presented in very different format, still contain many similarities. Perhaps the main common thing is their purpose. Both my written essay and the poster/drawing are both contributing to the anti APPI hate movement. The different of these two, there are a lot. One being the format that they are presented, one is for visual learners and one is for people who absorbs words better. The medium of where to post them is also different, visual essay are more commonly seen on social media, subway train, where people only spend a little amount of time interacting where written pieces are expected to be seen for longer time period so newspaper, books are easier for the audience to see.