What to do

This discussion will give you practice analyzing ethos in Dr. Harvey Risch's article, "The Key to Defeating COVID-19 Already Exists. We Need to Start Using It. (Links to an external site.)" You may also access the article in a Word Document format  Download the article in a Word Document format. 

1. In preparation, read and annotate Risch's article carefully, focusing specifically on the ways that he uses ethos (appeals to credibility) to make himself and his argument seem more trustworthy and credible to his audience.
2. For your response, please share at least 3 examples of strong or weak ethos (appeals to credibility) that you found in Risch's article (you can do a mixture of strong and weak if you'd like). Where in his argument did he increase his credibility with his audience and make himself (and therefore his argument) appear more trustworthy? Or, if you feel that he had some weak appeals to character, which passages in his essay undermined his credibility and why?

Please Note: When we analyze ethos in an argument, we are specifically focusing on the ways the author increases or upholds his own credibility with his audience. Also, although Risch's article has a huge amount of logos in it since he cites a lot of data, try to take a step back and zoom out from it all, and ask yourself, "Okay, with all this being said, what aspects of this article make me as a reader trust Risch more (or less) on this topic?"