week2o

Chapter six in the Kent book also talks a lot about using ethos, pathos and logos in your writing. Ethos is a rhetorical device that appeals to the audience by proving the credibility of the author. When people are able to trust the author the can become more easily persuaded by them. Pathos is a rhetorical device that appeals to the audiences' emotions. When the author uses stories and examples that the reader is passionate about or has an emotional connection with they are more likely to be persuaded. The other rhetorical device Kent talks about is logos. Logos is appealing to the audience by using true facts and statistics. This makes the audience more easily persuaded because it shows the author is knowledgeable in the subject.

These three different strategies to persuasion are very important and I can see how this is so because I've learned about them since I was a junior in high school studying for my English AP test. There are examples of them everywhere; in a speech, a debate or in writing.

Social media is also an important thing that uses these three things to persuade. Blogging has become a very popular way for people to give out or receive information. In a website I found they list the top 15 most popular blogs. http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/blogs

-Some of the blogs that are included in this are; The Huffington Post, Gawker and Fanhouse. These blogs use logos in their news stories by showing dates, times and statistics of the different newsworthy events they are writing about. They use ethos by being a well known online newspapers or sports sites that people have been reading for years. The information they write about is correct and people want to read correct information. They also use pathos when writing some of their stories. The journalists for these blogs know how to appeal to the audiences emotions in stories that people are passionate about.

-There are also other blogs such as; TMZ and Perez Hilton. These blogs are social media blogs that talk about famous people and all the drama behind them. Even though these blogs aren't as newsworthy as the other ones, they still use rhetorical devices. TMZ is a trusted celebrity site that does a great job with using ethos. There are a lot of fake celebrity gossip magazines and websites, but TMZ is known for being correct and factual. Perez Hilton always speaks his mind and his blog is more opinion than facts, but he uses pathos by getting the audiences' attention and making them interested in the subjects he's talking about.

Rhetorical devices are an important part of social media and every day speech.