Rhetoric, reality, and mass media

Abstract

The mass media's capacity to create reality senes as the stimuli for rhetorical responses. Two categories of rhetorical activity are directly attributable to the influence of mass media: (1) that exacted by defects and problems in reality as it is created and shaped by media and (2) that exacted by sheer awareness on the part of the spokesmen and audiences that reality can be persuasively shaped, maintained, or altered by media. Each category of response poses special problems and dangers important to critics concerned with the functions of rhetoric and media.