Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Fifth Assignment- Post #2
The audience plays a huge, and arguably most important, role in the ethics of a rhetorical situation. By engaging in public discourse, politicians, newspeople, or other public figures are inviting discourse from the public as well; a back-and-forth between the professionals and the non-professionals is a part of the bargain. Unfortunately, in its current state, audiences tend to be more destructive than constructive. Most of the (attempted) ethical rhetoric is done online in articles or videos posted to YouTube or Yahoo, and in the comments section the users have full anonymity and free reign to speak on whatever they'd wish with no consequence. A part of this means that attacks are common and people use their faceless avatar to say exactly what they think without working towards a common goal, rendering the institution of ethical rhetoric non-existent. This was described as well in my previous post.
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I agree. Do you think that news or politicians purposefully incite these online arguments? Do they learn from them perhaps? Do you think the people who post confrontational things on the Internet are a minority with a loud presence, or does everyone share their opinion in this fashion? Maybe their could be better ways for the public to express their opinions.
ReplyDeleteDo you believe that those who make these anonymous attacks are educated on such issues, or are they just trying to blow off steam? Do they have authority on the issue?
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that audiences tend to be more destructive than constructive nowadays. What can we do to interact with technology in a beneficial way?
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