Abstract:
Facebook, as a popular representative of the social network site genre, has
changed the way that social network site users manage their on- and offline social lives
and communication, and creates a new rhetorical situation in which users create and
perform their identity roles to an unknown audience. This new rhetorical situation
requires connectivity, integration, and an understanding of both self as a performer of
identity and as a member of a greater audience of other performers.
Facebook creates Facebook-specific social action. This social action can be seen
in how users manage their social information, communicate, and gather and share
information.
This thesis is framed by Lloyd F. Bitzer’s theory on elements of rhetorical
situation (exigence, constraints, audience, and author) and is inspired by Carolyn Miller
and Dawn Shepherd’s genre study of blogs, “Blogging as Social Action: A Genre
Analysis of the Weblog.” Bitzer’s theory and Miller and Shepherd’s method
assist in demonstrating that social network sites, and Facebook specifically, are
functioning rhetorically and are a fitting rhetorical response to American social
exigences.
