For my final post, I will be answering the following question through a more current perspective, social media: How have media rhetorics changed in delivering information to people as mediums evolve?
The first source I ran into while researching this lens was a 2016 case study by Katie Jones from Mississippi State University. Even though her research focused on how nonprofits can appeal to stakeholders on social media marketing websites (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram specifically), she learned that each platform was able to gauge more stakeholders based on different rhetorics: "For Facebook, the best rhetoric to use are pictures and videos; for Twitter, the best rhetoric to use are retweets; and Instagram, the best types of rhetoric are hashtags or a lack of platform-specific rhetoric." Continuing my search, I found three studies: a study on social media advertisements of national parks, a study on Sina Weibo (a popular Chinese social media), and a study analyzing the first 100 days of former president Donald Trump's tweets. I specifically emphasized these three articles because they all clearly mentioned that the best way to gain attraction on advertisements, tweets, and news was by "creating emotional response, strengthening credibility and persuading in rational approach" (Li).
As a daily social media user, the public rhetoric I find the most fascinating with social media is that complex news stories are usually simplified; a particular word choice is used in posts/stories that immediately attracts my attention. The best part about social media news is that global audiences are more connected than ever despite the speculation of whether we are being controlled by algorithms or feeding into misinformation. Such platforms allow us to become aware of events going around the world with just one tap, ranging from an athlete's contract extension to the current Palestine-Israel conflict.
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