Alvarez 1

Camila Alvarez

Meeghan Faulconer

ENC 1102

20 October 2019

Rhetorical Elements: Artists Communicating through Social Media Sites

Instagram launched in October 2010 and has steadily been growing since then (Mosseri).

It is a picture-based platform where people can post and share pictures, videos, stories,

boomerangs, gifs, and the like on their accounts for free. Additionally, people can send direct

messages to chat with others on the application. In recent years, Instagram has become a

platform for markets and brands as well. Through the application, businesses have taken the

liberty to advertise their shops and products to a wider audience. Among those businesses is the

art market. Instagram has made direct content creator and audience communication accessible

for numerous artists.

Instagram has created a business account that many artists use nowadays to help build an

audience and gain customers by allowing the artists to regulate their market analytics, product

sales, and performance statistics (Mosseri). However, with the growth of accessibility through

social media, competition among the art community has increased along with the expectation of

the artist’s availability. A survey conducted by MTV of music listeners between the ages 19-25

showed that artists are expected to constantly be available, especially on social media (Baym 14).

This communication among artists and their audience, whether they are aware of it or not, has

formed a genre of rhetoric. Scott Consigny claims rhetoric should involve “receptivity”—the

ability to respond to the conditions and demands of individual situations (Grant 265). This is
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essentially what artists are doing through their social media accounts by reacting and responding

to the feedback their audiences give them. Because of the popularity this relatively new

movement of marketing art through social media has, research has been conducted to understand

the communication involved in maintaining a market on these platforms.

Amalia Foka, in her research of ranking artists through social media mining, collected

data of artists on Twitter by treating them as brands. What she found was that while markets can

strategize techniques through stock market behavior, that is not applicable to the art market

because art as a product has no set value and its price is affected by the artist’s appreciation and

recognition by the art community (Foka 415). Rather than advertising their products like any

other business would, artists have to gain appreciation and loyalty of their followers and they do

this mainly by relational labor (Baym 16). Relational labor is “regular, ongoing communication

with audiences over time to build social relationships that foster paid work” (Baym 16). Artists

are not paid to connect with their fans, but it is seen as an investment. By building relationships

with their audience, artists can use their loyalty for monetization.

The communication presented through social media networks in general, not just with

artists, uses rhetorical devices such as pathos, ethos, and logos when engaging in a discourse

(Berlanga 128). As mentioned previously, communication is a major aspect in an artist’s

profession, and nowadays an artist’s communication is natively digital (Carradini 136). The

advantage of using social media as a platform for interaction comes from its expressive

potentiality of discourse through the usage of writing, multimedia, fixed image, video, etc.

(Berlanga 131). Wei-Lung Chang conducted a study comparing four Twitter users, two

politicians and two celebrities, to see how much sentiment ratio affected the influence they had

on social media (1138). What they found was that sentiment analysis can objectively adjust the
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quality of a post generating more social influence (Chang 1150). In other words, the quality of

the post relies more on the sentiment behind it than the topic itself to have a larger impact on the

reader. With this concept, by building an emotional relationship with their audience, artists can

have a larger social influence on social media.

Instagram has enabled artists to build a supporting community among them through its

easy accessibility of engaging with an audience. This movement has begun a new form of

marketing art with novel strategies in place. The artist’s relationship with their audience is a key

concept in generating a sense of unity in founding a community. There is a specific genre of

communication artists use on social media to connect with their followers. However, while there

has been a considerable amount of research done of artists’ presence on social media and their

relationship with their audience, there has been limited research focusing on the rhetorical

devices artists when interacting with their communities.

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Annotated Bibliography

Baym, Nancy K. “Connect with Your Audience! The Relational Labor of Connection.” The

Communication Review, Vol. 18 Issue 1, pp. 14-22, Jan-Mar 2015, DOI:

10.1080/10714421.2015.996401. Accessed 6 October 2019.

Nancy Baym writes in this article how part of an artist’s job is maintaining ongoing

interactions. This ongoing communication between artists and their audience is referred to as

relational labor and has become almost expected of artists on social media platforms. In

fostering their relationship with their audiences, artists should balance their own competing

economic and social needs with their audiences’ needs to connect with them and each other.

Sustaining a relationship with their audiences is not compensated, but rather expected from

artists. It is seen as an investment towards building an audience that will sustain a career.

This article therefore studies the “media labor” produced from artists on social media in an

effort to understand the social movement it is shaping as a result. This article highlights how

social media has impacted the relationship between artists and their audiences and how

maintaining that interaction has become a larger part of their labor than it has ever been. I can

use the research done in this paper to defend my claim that an artist’s communication with

their followers on social media is a specific genre.

Berlanga, I. et al. “Ethos, Pathos and Logos in Facebook. User Networking: «Rhetor» of the 21st

Century.” Comunicar, (Communicate) n. 41, v. 21, 2013, Scientific Journal of Media

Education; ISSN: 1134-3478; pages 127-35. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3916/C41-2013-12.

Accessed 17 October 2019.

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Berlagna writes in this article about the lack of research done on the classical origins of

communication being reflected in modern communication. They use classical perspectives to

observe the communicative processes on the internet (mainly social media platforms). They

focus on the usage of persuasive language (ethos, pathos, logos) and rhetorical devices. The

ability to be extremely expressive on social media have managed to unleash creativity and

humanist aspects on these platforms. This adds to the strength of a commentator’s

persuasiveness. Focusing on the presence of rhetoric on Facebook they found that the users

of these platforms apply communicative tactics defined by historical Rhetoricians from

Greco-Roman antiquity. The study of three typified cases and content analysis of discourse

created on Facebook allowed them to interlace modern rhetoric and communication,

occurring from the rise of online networks. They believe implementing more deep, critical

thinking would benefit the communication between people online. This article proved my

belief that rhetorical devices are being used on social media. Gathering this information, I

plan on connecting it to the genre of communication artists use —mainly focusing on ethos

and pathos.

Blumenfeld, Zach. “Selling the Artists, Not the Art: Using Personal Brand Concepts to Reform

Copyright Law for the Social Media Age.” Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts, 2019, pp.

242-75, DOI: 134947965. Accessed 8 October 2019.

Zach Blumenfeld addresses in his article the issue that has arisen for artists with the

expansion of social media usage. Artists’ work is being replicated and spread without giving

credit to the creator whether in the shape of memes or merchandise. It has become a norm

within the culture that artists are no longer upset at the lack of credit, rather they refuse to

have their artwork be associated or altered with something they do not represent (hate
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groups, political parties, etc.). Blumenfeld speaks about the different laws in place, which

ones work and which do not, and how social media acts according to the laws placed to

protect artists. This research has helped me gain a deeper understanding of how social media

has impacted the arts and in what ways the laws and regulations among the art community

have had to adapt (and are still adapting) to protect the artists.

Carradini, Stephen. “Artist Communication: An Interdisciplinary Business and Professional

Communication Course.” Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, Arizona

State University, USA, Sage, 2019, Vol. 82(2), pp. 133-52, DOI: 136897868. Accessed 6

October 2019.

This article’s main focus is on incorporating the arts into business and professional

communication scholars to increase workplace communication. The paper fills the gaps

about how artists include business and professional communication in their careers. By

addressing arts situations – such as crafting email pitches to producers, taking promotional

photography, creating crowdfunding promotions, and the like – students can learn about

business and professional communication genres. Teaching artists communication can

benefit business and professional communication courses by incorporating natively digital

communication genres into the assignments and work. While this paper is focused on

business communication and improving it, the author listed some interesting and helpful

points when speaking about how artists communication defers from any other form of

communication. It has given me a better understanding of how important communication is

in an artist’s profession.
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Chang, Wei-Lun. “Impact on Emotion: A Blended Model to Estimate Influence on Social

Media.” Springer Science + Business Media, LLC, part of Spring Nature 2018, 13 February

2018, pp. 1137-51, DOI: 10.1007/s10796-018-9824-0. Accessed 5 October 2019.

This article’s goal was to devise a model of social media that can measure and analysis

sentiment and help discover real influential people on social media. The study takes into

consideration not only the ratio of sentiment behind a post but the quality of it as well. They

discovered the meaning of sentiment behind a post, retweet, or reply is more meaningful than

the numbers. For the research, four targets were selected (two politicians and two celebrities)

on Twitter to examine with the model mentioned before. The results showed sentiment ratio

was higher for celebrities than politicians and that various topics have different impacts on

the audience. This article helped defend my initial belief that pathos (emotional appeal) plays

a large role in how artists maintain ongoing interaction and relationships with their followers.

This study showed me that people are equally, if not more, interested in feeling an emotional

connection with the person posting on social media allowing them to have a larger influence

on certain platforms.

Cossu, Alberto. “Beyond Social Media Determinism? How Artists Reshape the Organization of

Social Movements.” Social Media + Society, Sage, January-March 2018, DOI:

10.1177/2056305117750717. Accessed 8 October 2019.

The author talks about how artists and creative workers are and have been engaging in

social movements. The social movements range from experimenting with alternative

economic models and currencies to partnering with institutional and social actors to

supporting neighborhoods and carrying out social research and radical education. Not to

mention, artists continue to produce art even when the budget for art culture is being
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decreased in numerous countries across the world. The article’s goal is to investigate the

organizational and relational aspects of artistic social movement. Using information

conducted from a 2-year-long ethnographic study, author proposes a new understanding of

the organization in modern artistic social movements. The findings in this study has shown

me the persistence among the art community. Faced with challenge after challenge, art

continues to thrive between the cracks in a system not aimed for their success. Social media

is another movement artists have gotten behind and are learning to dominate.

Foka, Amalia F. “An Artist Ranking System Based on Social Media Mining.” Springer Science

+ Business Media, LLC, part of Spring Nature 2018, 5 February 2018, pp. 411-40, DOI:

10.1007/s10791-018-9328-z. Accessed 5 October 2019.

This article’s research is focused on social media mining to extract quantitative and

qualitative data for the art market. For the study artists are treated as brands. The researchers

mine specific Twitter posts that mention certain artists and rank artists as brand equity and

awareness would be measured. User expertise and influence, considered mainly in the

construction of a topic-specific network, is evaluated and later used to rank artists. The

intended ranking system is also evaluated against two other systems. Foka’s research has

shown me that the art market cannot be directly studied as other brands, since an artwork’s

value has no objective value. Art is subjective, and artists have to find a way to monetize and

maintain the attention they receive.

Grant-Davie, Keith. “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents.” Wardle and Downs, pp. 347-

63. Originally published in Rhetoric Review, vol. 15, no. 2, 1997, pp. 264-79. Accessed 11

October 2019.
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In “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents,” Keith Grant-Davie discusses the steps

involved in analyzing rhetorical situations to get a better idea as to why they happen.

Throughout the book, different definitions of a rhetorical situation are presented an

explained. Lloyd Bitzer’s definition of a rhetorical situation is where a writer or speakers

sees a need to change reality and it can be done with rhetoric discourse. A rhetor brings

awareness to an issue within a community of people with discourse to resolve the issue(s).

Grant-Davie dives into each different rhetorical situation and the strategies involved for a

given outcome. For example, rhetorical exigence can be analyzed through a series of natural

steps for interrogating a subject while when working with written or oral communication of a

discourse a rhetor must work within the constraints of the situation. This article helped me

gain a clearer understanding of a rhetorical situation and how to imply that to the rhetoric

used in an artist’s communication with their audience.

Mosseri, Adam. About Us. Instagram. 2019, https://www.instagram.com/about/us/. Accessed 15

October 2019.

Instagram was launched back in October of 2010, and they created a website to share

important information through. They publicly published their terms and conditions, privacy

policies, along with information about their co-founders and overseers. An array of articles

are written and published every few weeks updating the readers about any news happening

on Instagram. They even included a timeline since they began, outlining the major updates

and changes they have undergone each year. I used this source mainly as a reference to

Instagram’s main objective and the possible features available with the application, such as

their business accounts, which defer from personal Instagram accounts.