Assignment 5: Defining and Visualizing Concepts

Assignment 5: Defining and Visualizing Concepts

The main topic of focus that I have decided to explore proficiently is the idea of animal rights.  Do non-human animals deserve the right to obtain equality and legal protection against humans who exploit and abuse them?  What is the reasoning behind exploiting an animal?  There could be a variety of answers.  Maybe these particular humans choose to operate a dog fighting ring as their source for income or maybe humans believe animals are merely undignified beasts of nature that are only good for nutrition or an accessory.  These are the particular questions I would like answered as I further study society’s decision to objectify animals as merely a representation for the human’s own selfish benefits.

As I begin my multimedia project, I intend to focus on people’s honest opinions on animal rights, therefore, I plan to interview different groups of people from different ethnic and social classification backgrounds.  Aside from personal interviews, I will also explore more proficiently through journal articles and any published media and input a voice over into the project.  Basically, I plan to create a documentary-styled project.  I have already found a few articles from the American Sociological Review, one in which explains the idea behind social movements of animal rights and why certain people choose to support it while others reject the idea.

I have chosen a more visual approach to conceptualize and operationalize.  The two broad types that I feel are more convenient for the viewer to understand as well for me to portray are the informational visualization concept and the second is the concept visualization.  As far as the information visualization, I will pursue the idea of a data map in order to visually portray any statistical information in which could depict any particular social class, race, or any other societal group that neglects the idea of animal rights and/or is prone to exploit animals for profit and other purposes.  For the concept visualization I will pursue the cause and effect chain.  This will give the opportunity for a better insight on the reason for choosing to exploit or abuse an animal.

According to the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, the definition of animal rights is: the rights to humane treatment claimed on behalf of animals, especially the right not to be exploited for human purposes.  In my opinion, animal rights is just that; equality and respect for all living non-human animals in which not only should they not be exploited, but they should not be subjected to abuse of any kind by any human kind.