Presented at TESOL 2019 Social media can make the nebulous concepts of genre, audience, and style more concrete and immediate for our students. In considering the genre features of posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, students must develop audience awareness and make choices to tailor their writing style to each audience. Participants will see how students can engage more deeply with their source material by transforming academic summaries, responses, and syntheses into posts for various social media platforms. The presenter will share lesson plan ideas, sample student work, and assessment tips.

1. Social Media as a Laboratory
for Genre & Audience
Kelly M. Tracy CALL-IS ELectronic Village 2019

2. “Teaching our writing students to
examine rhetorical situations as sets of
interacting influences from which
rhetoric arises, and which rhetoric in turn
influences, is...one of the more important
things we can do.”
Keith Grant-Davie

3. What is a Rhetorical Situation?
“the context in which speakers
or writers create rhetorical
discourse” (Bitzer)

4. Rhetorical
Situation
Rhetor
Audience
Constraints Exigence

5. Rhetorical
Situation
Rhetor
Audience
Constraints Exigence
Who?
Speaker or writer

6. Rhetorical
Situation
Rhetor
Audience
Constraints Exigence
Why?
A problem or need
that can be addressed
by communication

7. Rhetorical
Situation
Rhetor
Audience
Constraints Exigence
To whom?
Actual or imagined
people who hear or
read a text

8. Rhetorical
Situation
Rhetor
Audience
Constraints Exigence
Under what conditions?
Factors that may affect
audience response to
discourse

9. How can we teach these
abstract concepts to
undergraduate NNES writers
in a way that is both
digestible and practical?

11. The Rhetorical Situation of a Tweet
▶ Rhetor (who?)
▶ Exigence (why?)
▶ Audience (to whom?)
▶ Constraints (under
what
conditions?)

12. The Rhetorical Situation of a Tweet
▶ Rhetor (who?)
U.S. Senator (D),
presidential candidate
▶ Exigence (why?)
▶ Audience (to whom?)
▶ Constraints (under
what
conditions?)

13. The Rhetorical Situation of a Tweet
▶ Rhetor (who?)
▶ Exigence (why?)
State position on gun
control, evoke audience
concern for personal
safety, express solidarity
with voters who support
specific policies
▶ Audience (to whom?)
▶ Constraints (under
what
conditions?)

14. The Rhetorical Situation of a Tweet
▶ Rhetor (who?)
▶ Exigence (why?)
▶ Audience (to whom?)
Supporters and potential
supporters
▶ Constraints (under
what
conditions?)

15. The Rhetorical Situation of a Tweet
▶ Rhetor (who?)
▶ Exigence (why?)
▶ Audience (to whom?)
▶ Constraints (under
what
conditions?)
Republican presidency,
Republican majority Senate,
federal assault weapons ban
expired in 2004, 15 mass
shootings since then (14
involving semi-automatic
weapons)

16. The Rhetorical Situation of an Instagram Post
▶ Rhetor (who?)
▶ Exigence (why?)
▶ Audience (to whom?)
▶ Constraints (under
what
conditions?)

17. The Rhetorical Situation of a Facebook Post
▶ Rhetor (who?)
▶ Exigence (why?)
▶ Audience (to whom?)
▶ Constraints (under
what
conditions?)

18. Sharing Research on Social Media
An ESL group project for applying
rhetorical situation to social media

19. Context
❖ Undergraduates in a university IEP
❖ Integrated reading/writing/grammar course
❖ Low-advanced level (students would be in
freshman composition the following term)

20. Student Objectives
❖ Select, read, summarize, and react to professional/
academic texts.
❖ Demonstrate understanding of topic-specific vocabulary
❖ Understand and use different genres to communicate to
different audiences for different purposes.
❖ Integrate sources into writing.
❖ Practice engaging with and producing texts with peers.

21. Methods
In groups of 3-4 students (grouped by related majors):
❖ Identify a current trend or problem in art and design.
❖ Find 3-4 trade journal (or academic) articles on your
topic.
❖ Read each article.
❖ Identify and create a glossary of 20 keywords for
understanding your topic.

22. Methods
❖ Write a ~150-word summary of each article.
❖ Write a ~250-word reaction to each article.
❖ Identify and create images to illustrate or expand on
each article.
❖ Create a blog and social media accounts for your
group on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

23. Methods
❖ Use your articles, summaries, reactions, and images to
create posts to educate your peers about your topic.
❖ Be responsible for the quality and accuracy of all
writing from your group.

24. What’s the rhetorical situation?
❖ Rhetor: The students as experts in their topic
❖ Audience: Identified by each group
❖ Exigence: To share useful knowledge; to establish
students’ authority on the topic
❖ Constraints: Vary by platform

25. What do we know about
the constraints and conventions
of each platform?

26. Blog constraints
❖ Unlimited word count, links, and media
❖ Allow comments
❖ Easy sharing via social media platforms
❖ Highly customizable

27. Blog conventions
❖ Conversational (but sometime authoritative) tone
❖ Meet audience needs with information,
entertainment, community-building
❖ Scannable via short paragraphs, subheadings, lists,
images
❖ Unique take on topic via voice, genre, niche

28. Facebook constraints
❖ Post length: ≤63,206 characters (though long posts get
“read more” cut)
❖ Can include links, images, and videos
❖ Post are easily shared within the platform
❖ Allows threaded comments and reactions (like, love,
laugh, wow, sad, angry)

29. Facebook conventions
❖ Shorter text posts get more interaction.
❖ Engagement with video is rapidly increasing.
❖ Platform lends itself to highly shareable (useful, funny,
interesting, or inspiring) content.
❖ A conversational, community-building invites
interaction.

30. Twitter constraints
❖ Post length: ≤280 characters
❖ Can include one image, video, or link
❖ Post are easily shared within platform (retweets)
❖ Allows comments and likes

31. Twitter conventions
❖ Sharing news and engaging in conversations
❖ Hashtags to index Tweets by topic
❖ Use of @username to publicly tag/address other users

32. Instagram constraints
❖ Caption limit: ≤2200 characters (though longer caption
get “read more” cut)
❖ Must include one or more image and/or video
❖ Posts are not easily shared within the platform
❖ Allows threaded comments and likes
❖ Captions cannot include clickable links (profile can
include one)

33. Instagram conventions
❖ Post images can be photos, videos, illustrations,
infographics, graphic quotes...
❖ Captions tell stories and provide context for images.
❖ Hashtags to index posts by topic
❖ Square image no longer required, but it still typical

34. Student Work

35. Blog posts
~250 words/post
❖ React to an article from a trade or scholarly journal.
❖ Include an image to illustrate or expand on the article.
❖ Share the blog post across social media platforms.

38. Facebook posts
~50 words/post
❖ Link to each blog post with comment
❖ 30-60-second video about an aspect of each blog post
❖ Content curation: shares of related posts from other
sources (with short explanation of significance/
connection to research topic)

39. Sharing own content Curated content

40. Tweets
~150-200 characters/Tweet
❖ Link to each blog post with comment
❖ Curated content via retweets with comments
❖ Questions and polls for followers

41. Curated content Questions to start
conversation

42. Instagram posts
~50 words/caption plus 2-3 hashtags
❖ Original photos related to research topic
❖ Graphic quotes related to research topic
❖ Graphic facts and tips graphic related to research topic

43. Graphic quote Concept illustration

44. Assessment Rubric

45. Opportunities for expansion and improvement
❖ In-class practice composing posts
❖ More model texts
❖ Explicit instruction on visual rhetoric
❖ Overt teaching of genre analysis for transfer

46. Thank you!
Slides, detailed
project assignment
information, & rubric
tinyurl.com/KellyTESOL19
@kellymtracy
kellytracy1@gmail.com