A rhetoric of twitter
OV
- Look at how members ID selves: Search for a place or topic, look at the twitter name, descriptive text, image.
- Consider what rhetorical information we can glean from a tweet: screen name, real name, rhetorical situation, place, object, ...
- Isolate the affordances and elements of a tweet and twitter exchange.
Search Models
Rhetorical Situation
- Rhetorical Situation and Kairos, from Rhetorica
- Bitzer lecture notes, part 1, by Edward Lee Lamoureux, Ph. D., Bradley University.
Rhetorical Strategies and Conventions
A Twitter Cheat-Sheet from Web Worker Daily.
Figures
- Sagolla, chap 10.
Some potential topics
- Immediacy in twitter: immediacy tends to be connected to authenticity and can be very persuasive. Immediacy seems to come of two three elements: the message is posted and read in real-time, the act of composing is compressed to first-draft-final, the technology of composing and reading are immediate tools (computer to txt, txt to txt, text to computer).
- Concision in twitter: 140 characters is a rhetorical constraint that influences the persuasive means of the message. Short form messages persuade how? Might have a look at other short form messages: epitaphs, curses, greeting cards ... Look at how it constrains and how rhetors use those constraints.
- Audiences and performances in twitter: Tweets are addressed to followers, and the exchange can be seen online. How do tweets work as messages to and how do they operate as performances for? Epideitic rhetoric applies. Look at other instances of public performance.
- Develop a HandlistOfTwitter. Look at Sagolla, chap 10, but for other handlists see Kentucky Glossary or Rhetorical Devices at Ohio or Rhetorical Terms. But the best model is Lanham, Richard. Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. University of California Press, 1991.
- Apply rhetorical concepts as described in 140 Characters to a set of tweets or a particular person. The idea would be to expand the set of examples Sagolla presents, to see how common a move might be, or how effective it may or may not be. ...
- Retweeting. Sagolla has a lot to say about how and when and why to retweet. See how his observations hold up in practice, and what other practices you discover.
- Linking. Hypertext is a way of shifting context, writes Sagolla. It's also a way of extending the tweet beyond 140 characters. Look at how the link and the target line up or intertwingle meaning. Check his examples and comments in chap 9.
- Ethos. How it is manifest in Twitter - especially in ways it is not manifest in other media. Sagolla discusses Making Your Mark, but he also considers how ethos works on Twitter in retweeting, considering audiences, framing, timing, following ...
Readings on Twitter
- The Rise of Twitter as a Platform for Serious Discourse. The title suggests twitter is moving towards respectable rhetorical exchange.
- twitter as backchannel: using twitter to disrupt presentation. dana boyd.
See also SocialNetworkingProject
CategoryProject
