Speak up for Education and Kids

New media has forced political communication to change and adapt.  Now they have the world at their fingertips.  Any candidate, or politically affiliated group, can literally selectively talk to the demographic that they want.  One of the things I find interesting is how involved “3^rd parties” get involved in politics.  In this blog I will discuss the idea of new media in campaigns and how support groups utilize those mass media sites, specifically Facebook.

1.             The group that I have looked into on Facebook is called “Speak up for Education and Kids.”  It is a pretty sizable group with close to 150 thousand likes, and over 2 thousand people currently “talking about it.”  They are actually a tributary of a website called EducationVotes.org, and that group is actually a branch of the parent organization called the National Education Association (NEA).  So, I happened upon their Facebook page, and my findings were pretty interesting.  The first thing you notice is that they are 100% Pro-Obama.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise I guess, because most everybody thinks that Obama’s plan for education is miles ahead of Romney’s.  Anyways, I also noticed that when I scrolled down they had a ton of persuasive posts and comments on the days leading up to the election, actual Election Day, and the few days after the victory.  It’s obvious that the role of this group/Facebook page is to get President Obama reelected, but also, a little less subtly, to get people out to the poles and fulfill their civic responsibility.  So, clearly I am going to focus on how they function within Obama’s campaign without actually being directly involved with it.  Don’t think that this group wasn’t responsible for at the very least a small percentage of Obama votes; they had almost 150 thousand page likes which most likely equals 150 thousand Obama votes.  Now, I know that’s not a lot when you consider the population of the United States is just over 300 million, but it is a lot for a Facebook page.  I would say that the Internet, specifically Facebook, is obviously the right choice for a campaign group like this one.  It is extremely effective at getting like-minded people together without having to actually be geographically close to each other.  And there are literally thousands of Facebook pages similar to this one; all with the intent to get people together who support the same candidate.

2.             This Facebook page for “Speak up for Education and Kids” is actually able to engage in all three of the rhetorical appeals, but not without the help of their fans and commenter’s.  I read through a lot of the post’s and comments and found that all three of the appeals are represented by the actual people/person who runs the Facebook page, while the guest’s and commenter’s reciprocate that with their reply posts.  An example of a pathos appeal would be the page’s various posts about “Kids not Cuts.”  It is actually a pledge for people to contribute to, and they will eventually take it to congress in order for some action to be taken.  You can tell that they feel the best way to gain proponents of this pledge is to emotionally appeal to them.  It seems to be working because they had a post that said they’ve gotten 12 thousand supporters to sign the pledge thus far.  That’s very predictable that an emotional appeal would warrant such success like that because as we’ve said all semester: pathos is the strongest, most effective appeal.  As for logos or logical appeals they really just use an extension of the emotional appeals.  They make you think what would be the best for my kids?  Thinking logically, any parent would want the best for their kid’s education.  They never really come out and say it, but they are, in a way, combining pathos and logos.  The logical appeal is just underlying, giving way to the more successful emotional appeal.  Finally, there is actually a strong sense of credibility or ethos appeals.  For one, they are representing a very large organization, the NEA, which is credible on its own.  Also, more apparent to us, they have tons of political leaders such as senators, congressmen/women, and others that have videos posted on their Facebook page.  This is effective because people can look at Speak up for Education and Kid’s page and say, ‘wow, if the Missouri President of the NEA is invested in this issue, then I should be too.’ By the way, that video – and many others like it – is actually posted on the group’s Facebook page.

3.             When looking at figures of speech in a candidate’s speech it’s easy to identify them.  However, when you are looking at an overall Facebook page, it is much more difficult.  I didn’t focus on any particular video on this page or any speech, but when looking at this page there is obviously examples and exemplum.  Now, be careful because those two things are slightly different.  An example is self-explanatory; it is the citation of something that happened in the past.  This page uses hundreds upon hundreds of examples, but one of those would be when they post an article such as this one about Kids not Cuts.  An example of exemplum would be when someone directly quotes someone else.  This happens quite often on their page.  For example there is a post that includes a quote from an article about Glenda Ritz.  Now, it’s not a quote from anyone famous, but it is a very clear form of exemplum even though it’s not directly in a speech.

4.             Finally, in order to find fallacies without using a video or any kind of speech, I went into the photos page.  I found two photos that demonstrated false causation and reductio ad absurdum.  They are both very similar because there is a little bit of each of those two fallacies in each one.  The first one shows a sign that reads, “We have no future without public schools.”  That is clearly not true, and the fact is, no politician ever said that we were going to get rid of public schools.  All that would happen would be budget/funding cuts.  So, this statement is mostly absurd, but also shows a little bit false causation because cutting funding or making cuts doesn’t equal the schools closing down; there are many other factors that would get to that drastic conclusion.  The second picture shows an adorable girl holding a sign that says, “If you cut education, how will I be able to read this sign?”  Now, that is also clearly a reductio ad absurdum fallacy as well as false causation because it is so rash to just say that cuts to education’s funding will result in children not being able to read.  Now, these pictures, and many others like these two, are no doubt fallacies engaged in by this Facebook page/group.  I would say they are flawed because nobody actually believes that cutting some funding could possibly equal the loss of all public schools forever.  Fallacies weaken your argument.  It may work at first when everyone is all “hyped up,” but when you really take time and think about it, it is clearly ridiculous.