Twitter Talk and Twitter Sharing in Times of Crisis: Exploring Rhetorical Motive and Agenda-Setting in the Ray Rice Scandal

ABSTRACT

Social media continues to challenge many of the default assumptions agenda-setting. One particular arena of society that has witnessed the growth of nontraditional content producers has been the sports community, especially when moments of crisis involving broader cultural concerns emerge. This study examines the Twitter content shared and produced regarding the conversation that occurred immediately after TMZ video showing Ray Rice attacking his then-fiancée went viral. By attending to these users’ rhetorical purposes and agendamelding activities, we content that, far from safely agreeing with the dominant opinions in their respective social communities or merely being expressive, users debated with and challenged one another, even inviting disagreement.

KEYWORDS:

• Agendamelding
• Content Analysis
• Domestic Violence
• Rhetorical Purpose
• Social Media

Notes

1. Vertical media are mainstream/traditional media and horizontal media are niche, specialized, and partisan media (McCombs et al., 2014).

2. For the purposes of this essay, we use the term “echo chamber” not as a term of art provided by those engaged in scholarly projects of network analysis (e.g., Smith et al., 2014), but rather because Sunstein and others have made “echo chamber” into a generalized discursive marker used as a kind of shorthand for revealing anxieties about group polarization in the era of social media. Similarly, in critiquing this “echo chamber,” we are not seeking to articulate a new replacement metaphor to articulate social media networking.

3. Some Tweets were coded for two or three categories.

4. Some Twitter users choose to create a username that enables a level of autonomy to speak out without having such comments traced back to themselves. However, in many cases in our study, users did not shy away from including personal information, which might be due to perceived social capital (even if only as a social media “troll”). As Kwon and Adler (2014) argued in their essay that synthesized a decade of research on the subject, whatever other disagreements there might be regarding the concept of “social capital” as it shows up across a range of scholarship, “it is difficult to avoid the impression that the basic thesis—that social ties can be efficacious in providing information, influence, and solidarity—is no longer in dispute” (p. 419). Thus, in crafting a Twitter reputation (even if more as villains than friends), users may be motivated to identify themselves, no matter how controversial or provocative the content of their post. Furthermore, many other social media sites enable such anonymity (including many Facebook users who do not use their actual full name as their profile). Nevertheless, future scholarship should examine whether there are any consistent relationships between including one’s personal information and one’s willingness to speak out against one’s communities.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chang Wan Woo

Chang Wan Woo is an associate professor in the School of Communication Studies at James Madison University and a coordinator for the sport communication minor program.

Matthew P. Brigham

Matthew P. Brigham is an assistant professor in the School of Communication Studies at James Madison University and teaches primarily in the advocacy program.

Michael Gulotta

Michael Gulotta works at William Hill and previously taught general communication courses at James Madison University.