“#StoptheDrones,” Hamza Malik (2015) — Inquiry 4

Watch Malik’s video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ5yZ2slrWk

The first time I heard the professor say that we were going to remediate our inquiry 3 with any visual rhetoric, I instantly knew I was going to make video. I had a lot of experience working with videos in high school and I was looking for a chance to showcase my skills in college, and I got it with this project. However, it wasn’t easy making a video about my inquiry 3 because my topic was too broad for a 3 minute video. Hence, I had to choose an aspect of my inquiry 3 that would appeal most to the audience. So I decided to work on the civilian casualties of drone attacks in Pakistan. Drone attacks are quite common in Pakistan and nowadays mostly people don’t care that much, however, one thing that always ignites anti-American thoughts is when the locals hear the news that a certain drone strike killed certain number of civilians including children.

As this issue is quite big, I was able to find a lot of resources for my video. I included statistics, video interviews of survivors, and pictures in my video for better visual effect. I think my video was able to touch base on all three sides of a rhetoric triangle. For my ethos, I used videos of key American people, such as President Obama and John Oliver, who admitted that there have been several civilian causalities by drone strikes. The logos effect was given by the statistics I gave in the start of the video which included things as how many people were killed for the death of one terrorist, the accuracy rate etc. The strongest aspect of my video was no doubt the pathos effect. After showing my video to a couple of friends, I could see some emotion in them. The pictures of dead and injured children, the live-feed videos of people being bombarded, and the interviews with the survivors backed with my background sound choice will stir a little -if not much- emotion in my audience.

My target audience for this video is generally the American public because in the end only they are the ones who can stop the drone attacks. Most of the people are aware that the American government uses drone strikes to target terrorists in Afghan-Pak region and readily support it. However, they don’t know that many civilians lose their lives because of these strikes. So I was hoping of raising awareness about that. At the end of my video, I ask people of how they would feel, if someone comes into their country and bombs them, so that they can feel some empathy for the drone victims.

Overall, this was one of the easiest and most joyous work for an English inquiry, i’ve ever done my whole student life.  As stated above, the only problem with the video was not having enough time to show everything I had to talk about, but in the end I am quite happy with what I did for my inquiry 4 project. I feel that it is quite appealing to the audience and will make them think about the issue at hand- at least that’s what my roommate thinks.