Alexander Tingling
Professor Castagnozzi
English 170
27 April 2025
Social Media Rhetoric Poster Statement
When I made this poster, I tried to talk about the combination of social media and rhetoric. It uses language, images, and other online media to achieve specific communication goals. It is the understanding of how audiences perceive and respond to messages and making and watching content to resonate with them. I find this is very important because it helps shape social identities, influences many people’s opinions, and plays a big role in communication and persuasion. It allows people to connect, converse, and meet others with common character traits. I also explained the three branches of rhetoric that help with communication and help with persuasion. These are called pathos, logos, and ethos. It uses these appeals to grab attention, connect with emotions, and persuade people to trust or believe a message being put out. An article called “The Ethos, Pathos, and Logos of Social Media Rhetoric” talks about how the rhetorical branches can be applied to social media. The author also claims that “social media rhetoric also requires the ability to be flexible.” This can be very helpful since it can help people craft persuasive messages that are meant for specific audiences. This shows that if someone is flexible on social media rhetoric, they are more likely to be able to handle different audiences, platforms, and situations that need different approaches.
While social media rhetoric is important, social media bias also needs to be discussed. This is the tendency for someone to spread information or opinions on social media to be shown in a way that favors certain viewpoints in a prejudiced way. It is the use of false claims or reasoning to build an argument. There is also critical thinking that is involved with social media, which involves evaluating information by considering different perspectives and making judgements based on facts and evidence, rather than emotions. Social media is a place where critical thinking should always be used since there is a lot of information there that is true and false, and it is important to notice which is true or not. An article called “How Social Media Negatively Affects Our Critical Thinking” discusses how social media can undermine critical thinking in people. The author addresses the concept of “chronically online takes,” which are opinions that emerge only with online communities and “lack support of real-world evidence.” This shows that having opinions and thinking like this can stop people from looking into genuine issues and further polarize discourse, especially during times of increased online activity. Critical thinking is something that everyone needs because it helps them make better decisions in life and enables them to understand information better.