Brummett and Rhetoric in Terms of Technology & Social Media

In 1979, Barry Brummett wrote an article called "Three Meanings of Epistemic Rhetoric," a dense article that basically suggested that there is a relationship between how people communicate and what they know. The way in which a message is transmitted from one person to another is crucial to the understanding of the knowledge, or the misunderstanding of that knowledge. I'm summarizing a LOT here since the article is kind of hard to understand if you aren't familiar with the terminology.

One of his meanings really stood out for me in terms of technology and media: the ontological meaning of rhetoric. Large words and "scholarly" writing don't impress me when I need to have a dictionary on hand in order to understand just what the heck the author is telling me, so I'll give a "dumbed-down" version of what Brummett was telling his audience for my sake as well as the sake of my readers. Basically, Brummett said that conversation changes what we know about the world. The example used in class makes the most sense: the debate about Pluto. Pluto, the big rock floating out in space, never changed. It's always been the same good ol' Pluto. However, it was people who discussed and argued with each other and decided that Pluto shouldn't be a planet anymore.

So what does this have to do with technology? For one thing, there's a huge difference between watching a full-length documentary about, let's say, sharks and the ocean and reading this meme:

Yes, this is meant to be funny and is in no way close to the truth, but who knows, there might be someone gullible enough to believe that. Some of the people I see on the Internet lead me to believe that there is. Exhibit A:

(Yes, dogs do have brains. That's how they, you know, survive and function as living creatures.)

 

I digress.

 

Technology doesn't always cause misunderstandings and suppress the passage of information from one person to another. In some ways, taking advantage of a certain medium can efficiently pass information in ways that other mediums couldn't. Twitter users, the really experienced ones, can efficiently communicate an idea in 140 characters. If you aren't very good at using Twitter, it can be difficult to say everything the way you'd like to in such a small amount of space and make it have an impact. Instagram is another medium that often proves that a picture can be worth a thousand words. The things that people post on social media shows exactly what their reality is, and it is through media and discussion that can change just what you know about the people and the world around you.