Digital Rhetoric in Social Media
Rhetoric has evolved in numerous ways since it’s inception. I think it’s safe to say that the internet is the driving force in the evolution of rhetoric — in the form of digital rhetoric. Digital rhetoric being a way of informing, persuading, and inspiring action in an audience through digital media that is composed, created, and distributed through multimedia platforms. The Internet is a revolutionary leap of technology that has enhanced the way we communicate. We tend to communicate more naturally and openly on the internet than any other medium to date. As a whole, the way we talk about communicative principles has been changed. Communication over the internet can be vastly different than how we would communicate something in person. Writing over the internet is oftentimes informal, with little regard to proper grammar rules and principles. While some may see that as a threat to the art of rhetoric and the English language, I think that it’s the opposite. The language is not fading away, and the same principles of rhetoric that have been used centuries are still there, but expressed differently in today’s age. In an article about the change of rhetoric, Emmy Favilla says that, “However, the way we communicate — the punctuation (or lack thereof), the syntax, the abbreviations we use — is dependent on context and the medium with which we are communicating. We don’t need to reconcile the casual way we talk in a text or on social media with, say, the way we string together sentences in a piece of journalism, because they’re different animals.” This goes to show that the way we communicate using digital tools is not detrimental to the art of rhetoric. Instead, I believe the internet has provided opportunity to carry on this art in a new, modern way.There are numerous ways in which the internet has shifted rhetoric as we know it. For instance, there are more ways than ever before to express yourself or an idea through text. Whether that be a .gif, an emoji, or an animated version of yourself is completely up to the user’s discretion. Throughout the internet there are communities and places where you would adjust how you communicate with a person, based on the context. For instance, you wouldn’t email your college professor with the same verbage and acronyms that you would direct message your closet friend on a social media platform. Even within social media there are different communities that may require different interactions.
Social media is the medium in which has challenged the classic principles of rhetoric the most. The character of whatever that is written has a much more significant importance now on social media platforms. Celebrities like Rihanna or Travis Scott are people who have great influence and a huge following, and so when they post their posts get a lot of interaction. Also due to the influence celebrities own, it’s more likely people will believe whatever they are posting about. The common thought would be, “They’re rich and famous and live a luxurious lifestyle, why would they lie?” This holds true for many of those that have a huge social media following in the world. Although the fame of an author typically yields positive results, it can be used incorrectly as well. Taking the current President of the United States as an example, it shows that not everyone will believe what is said based on popularity or status in the free world.
This power and influence can be used in a negative way, and as such is a problem that social media platforms face in shaping rhetoric.
If you’ve ever been on any type of social media you’re undoubtedly going to see products that you’re interested in while browsing. It’s also quite possible that those products are ones that you have browsed on other websites or even were thinking about recently. That’s because another way that social media is so persuasive is their advertisements and data collection. Any business can create their own social media accounts, which makes it even easier to advertise to their prospective or current customers. Paired with a figure with a large social media following, that increases the business or service’s outreach by a substantial amount. This technique has become standard for large businesses looking to stay in the mind of the consumer as much as possible. Social Media is disrupting the traditional marketing rhetoric by providing the consumer with more power than they may realize. This has created the demand for the consumer-centric rhetoric when it comes to marketing on social media. In fact, consumers are marketers and influencers whether they realize it or not, everytime they post about a product or service. Finally, I think that social media has changed the narrative that style is more important than content in regards of rhetoric. The content matters more than ever in the current climate of the internet, and this is due in part to the fact that wary consumers can fact check whatever a company states.
In terms of the context of social media it can be confusing at times as to what is happening. What exists on most if not all platforms out today is inside humor, in the form of memes and specific internetspeak. It’s the same reason that kids can understand and communicate with each other using these techniques while someone 20+ years older than them would have no idea what they are speaking about. A linguist named Gretchen McCullough has studied this topic and categorized internet users generally. She stated,
“Before delving into the community-building of memes or how emoji function on a sentence level, she lays a strong foundation by discussing the function of language in society and breaks down ‘internet people’ — classifying folks by when they “came online” and the effect it’s had on their usage and communication. ‘Old internet people’ coined many of the internet’s slang and acronyms from programming language, leetspeak, or in nascent chat programs. ‘Pre-internet people’ are more likely to use ellipses to break up thoughts, while ‘full-internet’ people are more likely to use those same marks ironically. Post-internet people (Gen Z) are already on video chat apps I don’t understand and will no doubt be the subject of willfully obtuse cartoons of the future.”
McCulloughs groupings help explain why some groups are “in” on specific memes and phrases on social media. The time in which they were introduced to the internet seems to have a role in their level of relevance to what is online.Who we are, our perceived audience, and intended formality determine the way in which we commuincate. A positive impact that I believe has great potential for social media is idea of community and identity. Social media has a unique strength when it comes to building communities within. Whether its an artist fan page, or a PC gaming reddit, or some other realm of the internet there is often a place for everyone. There are endless possibilities to find your place and identity on different social medias. It can help those a lot when they are able to be their true selves on the internet and escape from their real life, while also creating a digital one. Our role on social media is to find ourselves and where we fit in the digital world, whether it be for good or bad reasons.
