Rhetoric and Writing

Course Description

What does “celebrity” mean in the age of Instagram? How do you get attention online when there’s so much noise, and similarly, how do you make people forget something you’ve posted online when you want them to? In this course, we’ll talk about internet celebrity and digital personas, and examine a few big questions about social media, focusing specifically on virality, privacy and managing your own digital ethos. Over the course of the semester, we’ll look at some of the ways these platforms are used to design and/or manipulate identity, as well as to draw and engage an audience. In so doing, we’ll think about how we build digital identities, how we direct attention online, and why we trust these platforms and the people who use them with intimate representations of ourselves.

The course is organized in three units. In the first unit, we’ll look at how celebrity is curated on the internet: How do people cultivate or maintain their celebrity online? What are some of the strategies and tools they use to stay in the spotlight? In the second unit, we’ll look at what happens when celebrity goes wrong: Who are some people who have been ruined by social media, the internet and virality? What goes viral on a platform and why? In the final unit, we’ll talk about digital reputation management: How can you rehabilitate someone whose reputation has been ruined by social media? How can you ensure the safety of your own?

Objectives

Students will learn:

  • How to critically engage with and evaluate the social media platforms we use everyday.

  • About ethos, reputation management, and how to build and manage their own personal or professional “brand.”

  • About the ethics and politics of virality in regard to digital identity.

  • HTML and CSS basics, data visualization tools, screen-casting, video editing, photo editing, and beginning web design.

Major Assignments

Paper 1

Your purpose in this 5–7 page essay is to map out the various positions within your chosen controversy, stating clearly what those positions are and then highlighting the relationships among them. Do not present a one-sided view, as if those who argue certain positions don’t know what they’re talking about. If this is really a controversy, there are several legitimate positions possible, and your job is to articulate each position’s most compelling arguments. Your audience for this essay will be concerned and interested but not particularly informed citizens who are looking to you to provide an unbiased lay of the land.

Paper 2

The major writing assignment in Unit 2 is a rhetorical analysis essay. You will explain why an audience would or would not find your primary text persuasive. You will use information learned from your secondary text to show key information about the context (the audience, the circumstances, or the speaker). By teaching you to think critically about audience and argumentation, this analysis will prepare you to write your persuasive essay in Unit 3.

In this 5-7 page essay you will closely analyze one position in your controversy. You’ll do this through the careful analysis of a single text advocating a position. For our purposes here, a “text” can be loosely defined as any persuasive effort that can be interpreted. A text may be a print article (such as an opinion column in a newspaper), a blog entry, a video, a commercial, an image, or a webpage. You should select a text that makes a clear argument—a text that very clearly asks the audience to believe, feel, or do something.

Paper 3

The culmination of all your work in RHE 306 is the ability to argue responsibly and persuasively. This essay will demonstrate that you have learned about your controversy, that you can fairly and accurately summarize sources, that you can evaluate and use rhetorical strategies, and that you can address a specific audience in a persuasive way.

Your purpose in this 6-8 page persuasive essay is to advocate for one specific position in your controversy. You’ll do this by situating yourself within the “map” of positions on your controversy that you constructed in Unit 1. Your goal for this essay is to produce an argument that advocates for a particular position using the persuasive strategies analyzed and studied throughout the semester.