Research proposal. I thought i posted this thursday, guess not

Purpose:
The purpose of my rhetorical project is to motivate and encourage people to come forward if their friends or someone close to them is engaging in a self-destructive act or habit such as drug use. With my project I intend that my audience voice their concern somehow, whether it be directly to their friend/close one, anonymously to that persons parent/guardian, or anonymously to that person. An anonymous confrontation or recommendation for help can be done by means of a letter, email, or through someone else.

Audience:
My primary audience is adolescents or young adults who have friends/close ones that are engaging in self-destructive acts. Although there are middle-aged people who are associated with drug addicts, typically, it is younger people who are naïve to the substantive consequences of drug-use and thus remain silent and inactive when a friend/close one is engaged in addiction. Because of this naïveté and denial of consequences, I feel that adolescents and young adults need to be exposed to the actual effects of drug use and encouraged to come forward against it.

Context:
Typically, adults, school administrators, or teachers have initiated arguments directed towards adolescents and young adults against drug use. Students usually do not identify with these people so their arguments are often unheeded or regarded as lame or stupid, and vise versa; since these educators do not identify with students, their arguments do tend to be ineffective. Being a young adult I can identify with this crowd more effectively than educators have in the past.
Considering the lethal consequences and long-term effects of drug use, the urgency to motivate kids/young adults to help their friends get off drugs is extremely important. In my rhetorical project I can further stress the relevance of this argument by putting into perspective the long-term consequences of drug use, and by providing real-world stories of kids who have died as a result of it. This in effect will (hopefully) instill a sense of urgency and relevancy in my audience and motivate them to take action.

Rhetorical Strategies:
As I mentioned above, I am going to provide real-world stories about kids who have died not only as a result of drug-use, but also as a result of having friends who were silent about their addiction and self-destruction. These stories, being real, will contribute to the pathos of my argument and will instill a realization in the audience that they are not invincible, and that there are real-world consequences to drug-use. Hopefully this would confirm or draw out any concerns that they have for their friend’s/close one’s addiction and cause them to start thinking about how they should come forward about it.
I will also provide empirical data about long-term and short-term effects of drug use. However, this portion is not going to be over-powering in my project, because I believe that most people are aware of the dangers of drug-use. I also anticipate the audience will get the impression that I am just trying to preach information that is mundane and commonplace, and will reject the argument overall for doing so.
Furthermore since I am trying to persuade people to come forward about their friends/close ones drug addiction, I am going to suggest how they should approach confrontation or recommendation for help. Since most people value privacy and anonymity, and probably would prefer confronting their friends indirectly to avoid fights, drama, or being ostracized, I am going to sympathize with that approach and really elaborate on methods of indirect confrontation. This, I feel, would be a very effective method to motivate coming forward in that I am identifying with the audiences values, and presenting actual, feasible strategies that would allow for anonymity and would also help out their friends/close ones.

Sources:
http://www.focusas.com/
http://www.usnodrugs.com/
http://www.nida.nih.gov/
http://teens.drugabuse.gov/

Medium:
I believe a website is the best medium for my argument. My audience, for the most part, is very technologically orientated and spend a lot of their time on the computer and browsing the Internet, so, I believe a website would be of easy-access to my audience. Another reason a website would be effective is that I can add visually attractive graphics and format it in such a way that would prevent my site from looking bland, and thus indulge the audience to explore the site more and hopefully cause them to absorb some of the information. A website wold also be beneficial to my argument in that it will allow me to include a bulk of information and graphics that I otherwise would be lacking or unable to present in another medium.

Arrangement:
I am going to format the website and present the information in such a way that won’t seem daunting to the audience, in other words, I am going to keep it brief and avoid large bulks of writing. I will include pictures, possibly shocking or graphic ones, which will capture the audience’s attention. I will also avoid using bland fonts or even cheesy fonts to prevent my website from being just that, bland or cheesy.
I can also include links to other sites and resources that would not only legitimatize my cause, but would also start leading them in the right direction to get help for their friends/close ones.