Facebook and Rhetorical Analysis

In Jane Mathison Fife's article "Using Facebook to Teach Rhetorical Analysis," the author argues that Facebook can be employed for the study of rhetoric. Fife writes that "students' enthusiasm for and immersion in these nonacademic literacies [social media sites] can be used to complement their learning of critical inquiry and traditional academic concepts like rhetorical analysis. Although they read these texts daily, they are often unaware of the sophisticated rhetorical analysis they employ while browsing others' profiles (or as they decide what to add to or delete from their own page)."

As Fife asserts, the study of ethos, logos, and pathos can easily take place on Facebook. Unlike traditional texts, Facebook profiles feature text, images, sound, and videos to create and support a person's "self" and his or her ideas. When compared to traditional texts, Facebook--with its diverse content--may prove engaging to students. Importantly, as they know the site well, students are able to navigate, collect the information they need for the assignment, and begin understanding rhetoric to a higher degree. Truly, a myriad of possibilities exist for the study of rhetoric on the site.

By analyzing Facebook, Fife argues that students are able to address the difference between truth and the perception of truth created by the Facebook user. After noting that certain Facebook users purposefully posted pictures of themselves at parties or other social gatherings, Fife's students came to realize that a "persona" could in fact be created through the inclusion of certain photos and other information on the page. Perhaps the users on Facebook pages viewed were not social or happy-go-lucky but wanted to appear that way. For Facebook users who did not know this person, the "truth" is that the person was really how they appeared. In a rhetorical sense, the perception was the truth.

Fife notes that after viewing Facebook pages as a class they "had pulled together a fairly extensive list of Facebook features that students thought were rhetorically significant. These features included quantity and type of pictures (in profiles and albums), people’s comments on walls, applications (what and how many), the “about me” and “personal info” sections (how much and tone), standard profile information, and groups." After introducing the topics of ethos, logos, and pathos and discussing their rhetorical uses, it will likely prove very easy for students to find those elements on a Facebook page.

After studying the site in class, students can begin to not only understand that arguments can become multimodal in nature, but also that texts themselves can become more than just words. Fife concedes that "One of my students remarked that Facebook profiles can share extensive information about a person and that for some people it may be the closest
they come to writing an autobiography."

This idea of rhetorical analysis, then, is a nice segued assignment either into or from the previous post on assignments which deal with multimodal composition through social media.