Students in Dr. Nicole Pfannenstiel’s summer 2025 writing seminar crafted blog posts exploring Rhetoric & Composition. Over the next several weeks, we will share their work in this space to bring visibility to their posts and offer a variety of perspectives on pertinent topics within Rhetoric & Composition. These posts are written by graduate students currently in the MA and M.Ed. English programs.
Digital Rhetoric: Rhetoric’s Shifts Online
By: Renée Curtis
Digital Rhetoric is rhetoric in a digital space, more specifically, how the use of communication and language in electronic formats to persuade, discuss, or inform (particularly with social media) operates differently there than in traditional spaces. Looking at when Digital Rhetoric really comes into conversations in academia, it started in the 90s, so it is a relatively new discussion of around 30 years, and with Rhetorical history beginning in the 5th century BCE, that is an incredibly short time in the grade scheme of Rhetoric (Hess & Davisson, 2017). In that short time frame, rhetorical techniques, such as tone and style, are forced to change shape in this relatively new online space that sometimes even limits characters or word counts – there is a much shorter amount of space on some platforms to develop tone and style, therefore, new theories and best practices with this are based in but do change from the traditional.
When it comes to online spaces where people interact with each other, traditional rhetorical theories and practices can be helpful as a starting point to analyze or participate in discussions online, but in many ways the traditional does not work as effectively in those spaces. Douglas Eyman suggests that there might be a “need to invent new theories and methods (e.g. new appeals, to extend ethos, pathos, and logos” (Eyman 2016). With this, Donna LeCourt does start to introduce new concepts and classifications for digital rhetoric specifically in Social Mediations: Writing for Digital Public Spheres. There is a focus on how rhetoric is applied to digital public spheres rather than just any digital text, and in particular introduces categories of how people come together and interact digitally.
Branching off how LeCourt defined new categories for how people assemble online, it seems that an online writer or participant needs to understand their audience and the space they are entering into in a much more nuanced way than a physical public sphere or other text based public spheres when they enter into assembled or assembling groups. In the traditional sense, a speaker might be entering an area of their peers, talking to those of authority, or speaking to a group of people whose commonality is the geographical area they are living in. However, people online gather in much different ways since the internet connects people over a wider social and geographical range. On top of that, the speaker needs to consider if they are part of the shared identity of the group or if they are an outsider. With traditional rhetoric, a speaker or writer would want to establish their characteristics that make them appealing across the board as a speaker of “practical wisdom, virtue and goodwill” and then they can present their ideas or arguments (Fortenbaugh, 2006). However, those aspects might not be enough for a speaker to establish themselves for some online audiences if that speaker does not share a common identity with their audience. Here, reflecting on oneself becomes much more important for digital rhetoric – online discourse requires a participant to reflect not only who they are and how they can present themselves but also how others might actively respond and react to them.
Circulation is another major difference for how digital rhetoric operates – what picks up traction in online spaces and what methods created that traction? How did people react to it and how did it amplify or change the conversation? Because digital spaces are so vast, what circulates, or what can be intentionally circulated, is much different than a traditional speaker addressing a group directly in front of them as online circulation can quickly and instantaneously spread outside the original group and influence others on a much greater scale.
Although digital rhetoric is relatively new, and while understanding the foundations of traditional rhetoric is important and helpful in online spaces, because of the way it is such a different sphere than traditional spaces, different considerations need to be made by a speaker, like who they are in regards to an online group, how what is discuss can expand outside the group, or even the amount of space they have to work with, it shifts what theories and practices work best when communicating online and how people understand and deliberate with one another.
Resources to Review
Fortenbaugh, W. W. (2006). “Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric”. A Companion to Greek
Rhetoric. (pp. 107-123). John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Uchmanowicz, P. (1993). The History of Rhetoric and Composition as Cultural Studies.
Eyman, D. (2015). Digital rhetoric: Theory, method, practice (p. 177). University of
Michigan Press.
https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/24037
Hess, A., & Davisson, A. L. (Eds.). (2017). Theorizing digital rhetoric. Taylor & Francis.
Eyman, D. (2016). Looking back and looking forward: Digital rhetoric as evolving
field. Enculturation, 23, 1-10.
LeCOURT, D. (2024). Social Mediations: Writing for Digital Public Spheres. University
of Pittsburgh Press.
Pullman, G. (2016). Writing online: Rhetoric for the digital age. Hackett Publishing.
Diaz Ruiz, C., & Nilsson, T. (2023). Disinformation and echo chambers: how disinformation
circulates on social media through identity-driven
controversies. Journal of public policy & marketing, 42(1), 18-35.