Rhetorical Analysis of a Social Media Account

The Project: Rhetorical Analysis of a Social Media
Account (Expanded Overview)
Admit
it: some of you are addicted to social media. You scroll through Insta every
day. You “like” dozens of posts each week. You take pictures of your carefully
arranged meals. You carry a selfie stick with you everywhere – just in case.
And some of you shun social media. You can’t stand it. The
waste of time. The superficiality! The endless trolling.
Love it or hate it, social media is a common type of 21st century composing. And it relies on
both words and images to convey its messages and provoke reactions in viewers.
Although it may not always seem like it, many social media accounts (Twitter,
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube) are designed to be persuasive to some targeted
audience. And being strategically persuasive means being rhetorical.
This project asks you to compose a rhetorical analysis of the social media account of a public figure in your community. Your
analysis will be directed toward an audience of external readers who might find your analysis in an online digital ‘zine that accepts
rhetorical investigations of popular culture (such as
Harlot).

To
complete this assignment, you will need to choose a figure in your community
who is active on social media, using the following guidelines.
●
Select a person (and their social
media account) that is somehow important or influential in your community. For example,
if you currently live in Phoenix, you might select the Twitter feed of a
prominent local entertainment personality or the Instagram account of a popular
food truck owner. Or, if you’re from rural Alaska, you might select the YouTube
channel of a local wilderness expert or the Facebook page of your state
representative.
●
The person you select should be both
alive and actively posting.
●
Select a person you might reasonably
be able to interview for our “Profile” project coming up next.
●
As stated above, you may not select
a company, organization, brand, etc. For example, you could select the personal
Instagram account of Cindy Dach, but not the Facebook page for Changing Hands
Bookstore. Finally, you should limit your choices to one of the four social
media sites/apps mentioned above: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Once
you’ve selected a suitable individual subject’s social media account to
analyze, you should begin to focus on the specifics of rhetorical analysis. The genre of rhetorical analysis is concerned
with exploring and explaining the specific persuasive choices the author of a
text has made. How does this social
media account try to persuade an audience to think, to feel, to act? Does it
always succeed? Does it sometimes fail? Is it ever contradictory? How do you
react to the site’s content and messages?
The rhetorical
concepts we are specifically practicing (ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos) are key tools you must use in your analysis. You
will be looking closely at the rhetorical choices the creator of your chosen
social media account has made (e.g., words, visuals, sounds, timeliness) in
their posts, looking specifically for rhetorical choices you find interesting –
and that you think external readers of your analysis will find interesting as
well. For example, does the social media account’s reasonableness (logos)
contradict itself in different parts of the account? Is the emotional message
(pathos) inconsistent? Does the account have content that damages the owner’s
credibility (ethos)? Are the topics the owner of the account is posting on
out-of-date or timely (kairos)? Do parts of the account rhetorically “miss the
mark” in terms of the audience being targeted? How? Why? It is up to you to
study your chosen social media account and find content on the account that you
find both meaningful and rhetorically interesting, and focus your analysis
around this “interesting” content. Overall,
what does your analysis of the social media account reveal that will be of
rhetorical interest to external readers?
To answer this question, you’ll need to craft a thesis statement to help you organize
and plan your analytical research and composing. Ask yourself, “What are the
main ideas I am trying to communicate to my readers about this social media
account’s rhetoric?” Your thesis should communicate this main idea and preview
your analysis in one or two succinct, reader-centered sentences. Figuring out
your thesis is difficult. You may need to complete the “for feedback” draft
before you figure it out. Don’t give up; trust the writing process.
Once you’ve articulated your thesis, you’ll be ready to
collect and organize your analytical support for that thesis, including your visual inclusions. This allows you to practice multimodal composing as
well as the processes and habits successful composers employ – no matter what
genre they find themselves writing in.
This rhetorical analysis should be between 750-1250 words. As we want to practice
composing using more than just words, it must also include at least four images
that add value to your rhetorical analysis. It is up to you to strategize what
“add value” might mean in your own composition.
Your analysis should also have a creative, relevant title and be directed toward an audience of external readers who might find your
analysis in an online digital ‘zine
that accepts rhetorical investigations of popular culture (such as
Harlot).

Making
It All Manageable:
Working
Through the Stages of the Rhetorical Analysis Composing Process

Now
that you have a sense of what this rhetorical analysis project asks you to do,
now what? It can be intimidating, scary, and stressful to think about how to
move from the beginning to the end of a composing project. Successful composers
work a little (or a lot) every day, breaking the thinking and composing down
into manageable stages. Delaying the real work of a composing project—otherwise
known as procrastinating—will prevent you from maximizing your potential and
your cognitive growth. Here, we outline a plan to help you avoid such
procrastination. Try working through the recursive steps outlined here as often
as you can.

Step 1: Select a Social Media Account to
Analyze
Reread
this project’s description and overview again. Think deeply and
critically about your community. Do any
prominent individuals immediately come to mind? If so, they likely have several
social media accounts. Which account would be the best subject for your
rhetorical analysis? Take a cursory look at the content of each account with an
eye toward rhetorical analysis. You may need to consider several individuals
and their various social media accounts before you find the one you wish to
analyze. Make sure to follow the selection parameters outlined in this
project’s description and overview.

If
no prominent individuals come to mind, you’ll need to do a bit of research to
identify potential individuals with public identities in your community. A
simple Google search can be a good starting point, as can browsing the various
social media websites/apps. Use the
project invention assignments to help you hone in on your subject as well.

Step 2: Conduct Primary Research
This
will involve actually sifting through the many posts in the account you’ve
selected to analyze. As kairos is one of your key analytical tools, try to
limit your analysis to posts within the last 6 months. What is the content
of the posts? Who seems to be the target audience? How do the posts appeal to
the audience’s senses of trust, emotions, and rationality? Are there any
contradictions within the account’s many rhetorical decisions? What does
your initial analysis reveal that will be of interest to readers? As you research and begin to answer these
questions, you may start to formulate a thesis statement at this point. Try to
identify posts you will potentially want to include in your “for feedback”
draft as evidence as well to support your working thesis.

Step 3: Formulate a Plan for Your Draft
Before
you begin composing your “for feedback” draft, you should plan out how you want
your analysis to unfold. You should start by crafting a clear working thesis
statement: everything in your analysis should orient to that thesis. Once
you have that thesis, plan how you want the various elements of your draft to
be organized (introduction, analysis, visual sources, conclusion, etc.). This may involve using index cards, creating
a physical outline, jotting some rough notes down on paper, or any other
strategy that works for you. But what you should not do is simply start writing
your “for feedback” draft as a freewriting exercise. It is much more difficult
to impose structure on a haphazardly written stream-of-consciousness-style
draft than it is to draft with a structured plan already in mind.

Step 4: Compose a “For Feedback” Draft of Your
Rhetorical Analysis
With
plenty of primary research and planning completed, you’ll be ready to begin drafting
your analysis. Approach this drafting step knowing than it will be
imperfect—it’s more important to get your thoughts out in composed form at this
point than making sure it’s “perfect.” The act of composing will force you to
organize your thoughts; it will also produce new thinking on your analytical
subject. If you find your draft diverging from your thesis statement, that’s
not abnormal—it’s actually a good thing! This draft will likely be
composer-centered, which is also normal, and a crucial step in the writing
process.

Step 5: Provide and Obtain Written Feedback
You
should receive written feedback from your classmates to deepen your
understanding of your rhetorical analysis and to learn how informed external
readers respond to your writing and multimodal composing. You will also provide
your own written feedback on the “for feedback” drafts of two of your
classmates. The critical thinking skills required for effective peer review are
the same skills you will need to revise your own composition. Through the peer
review process, everyone’s understanding of their rhetorical analysis will
improve.

You
will also receive Instructor feedback at this stage, and you will receive
Writing Mentor feedback if you choose to attend a Revision Workshop. Learning
to take in all this feedback, synthesize it, and even reject some of it, is
another crucial skill to help improve your composing process.

Step 6 (Optional): Conduct More Primary
Research
Based
on the feedback you receive on your “for feedback” draft and your own
understanding of the needs of your draft (your thesis might have changed!), you
might need to gather additional primary data from the social media account
you’re analyzing to help your analysis reach its potential. Reread the
project’s learning outcomes rubric criteria carefully. This would also be a
good time to do some more organizing/planning.

Step 7:
Compose Further Drafts of Your Analysis
Based
on the feedback you’ve received and any new research you’ve done, it is time to
revise your draft. This will likely involve revising (or perhaps simply
tweaking) your thesis statement. You will then need to revise the rest of your
analysis to align with this new thesis statement. Remember, to “revise” means
to re-see and re-imagine your writing and multimodal composing. Thus, revision
is much more than fine-tuning your word choice, strengthening transitions
between paragraphs, or correcting surface errors. That’s editing (an important
step to be sure, but not the same as revision). True revision is substantial
work—likely as much (or more) than composing your initial draft. You will
likely need to add new sections to your analysis, delete unneeded ones, or
rearrange existing ones. The most common pitfall at this stage is thinking your
“for feedback” draft was “good enough.” Don’t be afraid to make wholesale
changes!

In
this round of drafting, you will also want to more carefully consider the
audience of your analysis. Where your
rough draft was likely composer-centered (meeting your own needs), your
“revised” draft should be reader-centered.

Step 8 (optional): Repeat Steps 5-7 as Many
Times as You Can
The
writing and composing process is recursive: this means that you can always
improve your work with additional rounds of feedback, critical thinking,
research, and new composing. Remember: every time you compose or write, you
produce new thinking. Go through these crucial stages of the composing process
as many times as your deadline allows.

Step 9: Submit Your Revised Draft
After
this second round of drafting, you should have a draft you are happy enough
with to consider “revised.”

Step 10: Reflect on Your Work
Upon
completion of the rhetorical analysis project, you should reflect on your
learning experience. (Ideally, you will be reflecting weekly, but the formal
reflection due after completing the project’s “revised” draft is critical.)
Remember, reflecting is a crucial Metacognitive step in facilitating the transfer of your writing and composing
skills to other situations and genres.

Last Completed Projects