Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
We've talked a lot about youth culture thus far:
From the Pepsi Logo indexically linking itself with youth culture,
to visual sophistry,
to how logos convey a certain meaning using a visual vocabulary,
but all these sections of Rhetorical Criticism have ceased to be at the vanguard
When speaking about modern rhetorical criticism...
Are we really speaking about MEDIA SEMIOTICS or do we mean something else:
When we talk about semiotics from 1450-1960, we're really talking about Print Culture;
When talking about semiotics from 1960-1995 or '96 we're talking about Media Culture.
At the time of the 1960 presidential election TV had yet to prove it self as a potent rhetorical
tool—
having only slowly been adopted by few,
ad companies had always seen it as a niche, lower-impact marketing tool.
But, the 1960's, and more specifically, the election between Nixon and Kennedy
signaled an important moment for culture in general:
it would be the first time in history a candidate would be judged on more than just their merits
and past experience
For the first time ever, the audience for the first time could hear more than just the
timbre of his voice
Many critics at the time underestimated puissance of this new fad medium
but after it,
we saw a relatively unknown, kennedy pull ahead of a well known incumbent vice president
Most historians agree that history will remember that campaign as won or lost during that first
televised campaign
in specifically in just how old and sweaty he looked in comparison to kennedy.
This moment marked a shift in our culture as the moment that TV established its primacy
over print culture,
but now, with the advent of the internet and the transformation of our lives by personal
and mobile computing another era has yet again
trumped the long standing primary means
for semiotic communication
We have entered a new era.
I grew up playing sports and slowly kind of got into fashion when i was in junior high
and you know
it was was a great way to a attract girls it certainly set me
apart from all the other kids in midwest junior high
growing up looking at magazines from seventh grade until you know now
without specifically trying to and they can just pick up a visual dialogue a
visual understanding
and so it wasn't really the technical aspect of photography but how it communicated to
me, how it
created certain curiosities to a kid in the midwest to would look at Vogue or look at
GQ and say, "Wow, that is really a different world!"
I feel very lucky to get to have part of my day leading
a visual life.
It takes X amount of time every day just to make the blog work,
just to get everything going and get all the business of it done,
but then the real joy of it is having those four or five hours a day to go out and just
be in the world that you're in,
see it,
keep your eyes open and really relate to what you're seeing,
react to what you're seeing.
the fact of the matter is you know, I didn't grow up dreaming to be a photographer
I didn't assist for anybody
I just kinda started doing it
so for me it's so instinctual the way I shoot
the way I do is just the way I do it
"Excuse me, do you mind if I just do a fast photograph of you standing just like that?"
"Um...what's it for...?"
"I do a site called 'The Sartorialist'."
"Oh! (laughs)"
"Good, good, good!"
I don't see a hundred images a day that want to take you know, I see two or three, so,
for me,
it's very easy to the patient
and wait for those images because
that's just the way I thought it was supposed to be
"Thank you very much, I appreciate the..."
"I love your site Sorry I didn't know who you are."
"It's okay, it's okay."
"...the genius behind the camera; [who's] always the genius."
"Exactly, It's easier to recognize me with the lens cap."
"Have a good afternoon."
Blog, I can take a photograph and have it up on the internet and share it with people
across the world
people of this moment can comment on how they feel that looks how that fits and if it's
of the moment
I think will look very interesting a hundred years from now
the ability to be able to capture that and how that attitude is going to change over
hopefully the next
thirty to forty years that i'll be doing this
captures something that we've really not been able to capture before
because the internet is the world shrinking
are we all becoming to homogenized?
Milan hasn't changed;
Paris hasn't changed;
New York hasn't changed; so I don't think it's really homogenized anything.
but I do think it's given us what I like to call a 'digital park bench.'
So many people you meet say I love to just go an people watch
and before you really limited to
the people you could see right there in front of you at your park
Now, you can go on the internet
and look at a blog like mine
or other blogs that are based somewhere else
really the whole world's open to you now.
How does our shift to DIGITAL CULTURE modify the rhetorical model?
Since rhetoric is the art of persuasion
to persuade, naturally, you need a
person to do the persuading,
a subject about which to persuade,
as well as an audience to persuade.
but with the rise of digital culture,
the relationship between these three has changed.
As we all know these three can be described as
Ethos
Logos,
and Pathos
the three means of persuasion commonly referred to as the rhetorical pyramid
The first way in which modern rhetoric is different in the digital age
is that it collapses the artificial distance between the speaker
and the audience—
if you look at mediums like twitter
they create a point of contact between companies, and figures that were before inaccessible.
There is increased opportunity for a dialectic with the audience, for the audience to as
well act on and shape the message and this more intimate relationship with the speaker
increased opportunities for pathos
to enact on the audience emotional connection to the message, instead of the speakers message
being solely theirs the message becomes 'ours' relationship
through audience participation
Being able to connect with brands like as every day as Oreo, or Burger King on twitter
and get a response has been proven to increase brand loyalty
In the example of the short film we just saw, when the Sartorialist blogger wants to (send
a new message or new post) to his readerships he just clicks a button and voilà!
Time is no long a prohibitive factor
in his ability to effect or persuade his audience
the relationship between the two appears closer because it is happening in real time,
in a less artificial way.
As soon as the blogger clicks submit, the subscribers devices buzz immediately
and SECONDLY, there are MORE audiences in this rhetorical model.
Rather than a message just being limited to small homogeneous readership—
how, for say, for example, how Time magazine, in the 1950's may have been largely circulated
here but no where else—the internet allows for many different audience to be within the
purview of the speaker's message
The speaker's ethos is changed in this rhetorical model because
Whereas in media culture we had almost a hyper sense of ethos....
ala Nixon vs Kennedy's battle of the looks,
in Digital Culture
anonymity has eroded the ethos somewhat.
Anonymity has eroded ethos as a tool of persuasion.
when an article was written in the Encyclopedia Britannica, it has a certain ethos of legitimacy
that could persuade you that the information contained within it could be trusted,
but now, with the internet, we are inundated by millions of articles, the author's of which
are unknown to us....
When we see the Sartorialist out and about in the street, even the people who love his
blog
don't even know who he is—
are distrusting of this stranger.
He lacks the ethos—the sense of persuasion that comes with personhood,
to convince them of his identity
And lastly, we have how Digital Culture has changed ethos,
Using the example again of the sartorialist, the LOGOS of the digital world has exponentially
been increased
The topics about which people can speak, that they can put on a pedestal about which to
discuss has been radically democratized.
A woman in a simple hat may have never before been cost effective to advertise to millions
in print ads,
to buy television time to celebrate,
or even get up and make a speech about.
But in with the ease that digital culture provides the modern rhetorian, their logos—however
quotidian—is aggrandized just because its important to the speaker...
Don't believe me... well think about it.
How many 'cute cat videos' have proliferated on the internet not because they are important
to talk about,
or that people think many people will find them important, but only because one person
found it important.
Though digital culture has changed the nature of the rhetorical triangle and most specifically
how ethos works... there may still be some pros about it
Though anonymity, and a lack of a prohibitive threshold to put out falsehood,
at least who get's to speak is democratized. And that there is merit in that.
Through youtube or through writing a blog anyone now has access to their own platform
that could reach any one of a number of people
The blogger in our film, is able to reach millions of people just from the confines
of his home.
Could you imagine if our blogger was handicapped, for example? Or didn't have any other way
of having such a platform
As you can see, there are no artificial constraints on who is able to produce a message.
Last Question:
Do You Agree With This Assessment:
That as we move away from oral and print cultures, we see a change in the structure of rhetoric
so that:
1, The ethos of the speaker is reduced
2, The logos (or the text) takes a more central role
3,The potential for pathos is increased due to
size increases in the audience?
Though there are substantive differences between "the rhetoric of an image" and "the rhetoric
of words,"
I hope this presentation has given you an insight into that invisible vocabulary in
that world of signs and symbols that exists all around us.