Being at the peak of innovation, everything is just one click and swipe away. Need to know something about our history? Google it. Need to know what’s trending? Go to any social media apps like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and such. Everything is so convenient now that people take technology for granted and forget the main objective of this wonderful innovation.
“Everything changes but change itself”
-Heraclitus
Back in the days of Socrates, Traditional Rhetoric was the thing, where the Sophists would discourse and persuade through oration in front of the crowd. Now I’m not saying that it was not effective because it was, but there is always room for improvements right? This is where Digital Rhetoric takes place. What is Digital Rhetoric in the fist place? To simply state it, it is using the modes of Traditional Rhetoric in digital platforms, let it be through videos, photos, arts, written articles, and more. But let’s dig more unto it, shall we?
Facebook and Twitter are one of the main sources of information by the youth and even the adults, due to its accessibility, everyone has an equal chance to voice out their opinions and insights about a specific exigence, now let’s put into mind that again ANYONE HAS THE EQUAL CHANCE TO STATE THEIR OPINIONS, so whether what that person post is factual or not, he or she can still post and persuade uninformed individuals.
One example is Mocha Uson’s Blogs, her being a public figure makes her influential and that a lot of citizens can see her posts, and I have read her writings and it saddens me that there are a number of people who actually believes what she says when since day 1 she has been spurting nonsense and non-factual based arguments. People has been agreeing and sharing her posts that resulted to a spider web effect, that makes the uninformed vulnerable.
What makes Digital Rhetoric stronger than the Traditional? Gurak stated that characteristics such as speed, reach, anonymity, and interactivity are the advantages of being rhetoric online. Speed, it is more convenient to persuade online because you can just post in any digital platform like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and like this one – WordPress. Reach, again being in a digital world, your post could reach thousands, or even millions of people in a wider range – different countries and all. Anonymity, you could also get the chance to stay anonymous to avoid threats or if you don’t like to gain any recognition. Lastly, interactivity is being closer to the people because you get to interact and have discussions with them even if they are a thousand miles away from you. Traditional Rhetoric may be successful in persuading, but nothing must stay the same, to achieve greater things, one must evolve.
According to B. J. Fogg, “computers functions as a persuasive technology”, for it is an easy access tool to persuading the mass. Even without us noticing, we are being persuaded by what we see online, and because we are in a constant conversation with human beings, in Twitter we get to see people’s replies about a certain topic and in Facebook we get to see people’s comments, which can lead to reflect and soon be persuaded.
For example, a product of the Lotus MarketPlace was never put in business because of some issued raised about it, even if it only came out due to “highly emotive and inflammatory ethos”. If people didn’t persuade and didn’t get persuaded, this product could be making tons of money by this time.
Warnick stated that “symbolic action as carried out through visual images, specialized argots, hypertext patterns” – the digital world is being used in the process of creating an identity and a community. How? And how does it affect one’s rhetorical practice?
To make things a lot clearer let me state an example. I am born and raised Catholic, I follow pages in Facebook and accounts in Twitter that, of course teach and preach about the church. Now here comes the issue about the implementation of Divorce, and me being formed by a community that values the sanctity of marriage in accordance to the Scriptures, I chose the side of defending the sanctity of marriage by not implementing Divorce in the Philippines, and that I made a rhetoric response to a post about Divorce out of rage. I then read the comments about my response, some agreed and some chose the other side. It made me think about the argument of the other side and at the same time how I too became a factor of one’s formation of identity.
To sum it all up, we are in an era where we are capable of doing a lot of things. We should think about it carefully and use this ability wisely. Because our persuasion now, could lead to creating a group of individuals with the same opinions as us. Persuade responsibly.
Rachell Anne T. Capaning 