Rhetoric: The art, practice, and study of human communication, according to Andrea Lunsford. Among other things, rhetoric holds that all communication is contextual—meaning it happens in a particular set of circumstances that must be examined in order to fully understand the communication. When we look at a news story rhetorically, we explore the ways in which all of the aspects of the communication influence the credibility and usefulness of that source. Some of these factors include its author and place of publication, the current political climate, the source of funding, the kind of evidence presented, and any omissions, to name a few factors.
Genre: Specific types or categories of texts that respond to similar rhetorical situations and share certain conventional characteristics. Genres include political speeches, YouTube videos, newspaper articles, and lab reports, to name a few. Think of the ways in which state of the union addresses, horror movies, Facebook posts, or text messages have certain characteristics that audiences expect and that facilitate communication in a group. Although it might be tempting to think of news articles as a single genre, they come in many different varieties, ranging from editorials and columns that may express an author’s opinion to pieces of evidence-based journalism that include a variety of sourced quotations and precise descriptions of events with a careful attempt to avoid opinion or bias.
Discourse Community: Groups that have goals or purposes and use communication to achieve these goals. James Paul Gee writes that “discourses are ways of being in the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes.” Discourse communities usually employ specific genres in their communications. Particularly in the age of digital news and social media, people tend to read news sources that speak to their existing discourse communities—phenomena sometimes referred to as “echo chambers.” While discourse communities facilitate communication by providing members with a clear context and shared terms, they can also narrow dialogue by precedent, prescribed practices, or rejection of points of view that are simply “not what our members care about.”
Rhetorical Situation
Rhetorical Context: The situation of discourse: the speakers, writers, listeners, readers, background information, medium, and other factors that influence the discourse. The rhetorical context dramatically affects meaning, and with news articles, the rhetorical situation can influence what kind of opinions are valued, what counts as evidence, and whose points of view are included, among many other important factors.
Exigence: The motivation for and goal of the discourse. Although we may assume that the exigence for a news article is always to inform, articles often attempt to persuade readers, and modern, digital news sources often don’t strictly differentiate editorial content from reporting.
Constraints: The factors that limit the author’s ability to communicate. Constraints can include anything from conventions or cultural expectations to the physical limitations of a medium or the demands of an authority figure. News sources rarely have access to all of the available information when they publish. Sources that respond quickly to information being spread solely on social media can be especially suspect. When evaluating a news source it’s critical not only to explore what information the article presents but also to consider what constraints might prevent the author from having enough evidence to present an informed conclusion.
Author: The speaker, writer, or designer who communicates. Authors always bring their background experience and training into the process of writing an article. Rhetorically savvy readers will consider how an author’s background might influence their choices as a writer. What’s more, an author’s background may significantly affect their approach to an article. For example, a trained journalist will approach a topic very differently than a political columnist.
Audience: The recipient of the discourse. Always distinguish between the intended audience, for whom the discourse was produced, and incidental audiences that happen to see or hear it. For example, a sign advertising office space might be seen by countless people, but only people with the means to rent the space would be the intended audience. Many digital news outlets produce articles with the primary intention of speaking to a specific intended audience presenting neither alternative viewpoints nor evidence that might challenge this accepted position. Such sources tap into a form of faulty reasoning called confirmation bias, which refers to people’s tendency to accept information that confirms their viewpoints even in the face of stronger—sometimes much stronger—contradictory evidence. When dealing with potentially false or misleading news reports, looking to see if a source is attempting to exploit confirmation bias can provide important clues.