The Commenting Persona: Reception Theory
and the Digital Rhetorical Audience
The Commenting Persona: Reception Theory
and the Digital Rhetorical Audience
Author(s): Ryan KorSubject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Accent Publisher
Keywords: Digital Audience; Reception Studies; Rhetoric; New Media; Online Persona.
Summary/Abstract: This article explores the implications of integrating a reception-based approach to audience studies into the current conception of the rhetorical audience. It asserts that by tracing the contours of online audience response to a rhetorical text, a “commenting persona” emerges that can speak on behalf of the text’s actual audience. This commenting persona, then, fills a gap in the popular “persona” theory of the rhetorical audience by locating a persona that resides outside of the rhetorical text, rather than being a projection created within the text. The article hopes to provide a theoretical framework for rhetorical scholars to integrate reception theory into their analysis of the after-life of rhetorical text and the response by the actual audiences that consume them.
Journal: Journal of Media Research - Revista de Studii Media
- Issue Year: 11/2018
- Issue No: 30
- Page Range: 55-70
- Page Count: 16
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF