Facebook Handlist of Rhetorical Affordances

Morgan will develop this in class as the groups notice affordances and figures.

Look at the affordances on Facebook and how they are used to cause the preumed audience to think and act in particular ways. Start with the templated areas of the page: What kind of information is placed where, how entered (select from limited menu, or free text, or generated by system). Look to how information posted in one place reappears in another (images).

Look also to what Facebook users can do: poke, post on a wall, add a friend ... These are rhetorical actions that we need to take account of.

From a rhetorical perspective, these are ethos field marks.

Look to what makes for popularity on Facebook: Pulse? Number of friends?

Categories and places on the Profile page

• photo (or not)
• task links to view friends, send message, Poke

Friend Details

• canned or written?

Friends in Other Networks

• lists of where and number

Account Info

• Name and Status
• Relationship status: selected from list
• Birthday
• Political Views: selected from list
• Religious views: free text entry

Mini-Feed

• ...

Information area

in two areas: contact info and personsl info

Contact Info selected from menus

• email
• others optional

Personal Info free text entry under templated headings

• Activities
• Interests
• Favorite Music
• Favorite TV Shows
• Favorite Movies
• Favorite Quotes
• About Me

notes: Consider the order of headings, what heads are included and what heads are missing. on individual pages, notice how rbetor uses the heading spaces (as intended or stretching the intention?) ... What's the upshot of defining these areas and not others? That is, imagine Facebook for professors: What might the headings be?

Education

Education Info

• College: Bemidji State
• High School optional?

The Wall

• posts appear with image, name and network, date and time posted
• posts appear in reverse-chronological order
• text posted is free text entry.
• look to features of the text
  • short? long? multi-paragraph?
  • use of IM shorts, lack or presence of punctuation, caps. casualness of editing?
  • look to topics dealt written about
  • look to frequency of posting
  • look to number and diversity of posters
  • look to whom is being addressed? person, other friends, everyone...

Affordances available on the page

• written descriptions
• lists of interests, music, clubs
• images: look to content and framing.
• friends listed
  • these might have some persuasive power, adding to ethos. That is, we might find that the number and location of friends contributes to ethos
• the wall: comments...
• groups
• what info is presented and what not.

Consider

• language used: slang, shorthand,
• content of the images: people presented, situations presented
• numbers! of groups, friends, amount of wall messages...
• range and distribution of same
• names, nicks, etc.
• how naming things creates a link up: that is, emo connects to emo, but Brit Pop goes nowhere
  • connects back to folksonomy