ENGL 2546 Rhetorical Principles, Professor Spoel
Oration
An estimated 1.96 billion individuals and over 78% of U.S. Americans have a social media profile. (Statista, 2016) This number does not include the millions of people who aren 't connected on the web, but are connected through the television. Now, as a young, Canadian boy, I was always taught that spreading positivity was better than outputting negativity. Whether I was playing sports, being a leader in my school, or even just going through my everyday routines, I made sure to stay as positive as I could because of the good vibes it promoted all around me. Well, as I 'm sure many of you have noticed, these days the news-media has been spewing out negativity left and right. The 2016 presidential …show more content…
Why is the news-media promoting so much negativity when positive vibes boost the the greatest feeling in the world, to be happy? Well, Wikileaks editor-in-chief, Julian Assange said it perfectly: “If journalism is good, it is controversial by its nature.” (Assange, 2013) As humans, we have the natural tendency to prioritize negative news over the positive. (Soroka, 2014) Present day news-media companies are very aware of this phenomenon and have been abusing the tool that is controversy in order to grow their media presence and ultimately grow their company 's popularity. Aside from that, for those of you who don 't know me well, or don 't remember my brief introduction from our first class, I 'm very into sports, especially basketball. I 've played basketball competitively my entire life and I 'm now spending most of my days training for my part-time career, a professional basketball dunker. As you could imagine, I 'm very confident in my knowledge on the sport of basketball. Additionally, I first discovered the upsetting use of negativity in media when I was the biggest LeBron James fan-girl on earth a few years back. In my opinion it was evident that King James was by far the greatest player in the National Basketball Association, NBA for short, and yet the media would crucify this man for any and every small mistake he did on and off the basketball court. The continuous hate on one of the nicest, hardworking as well as talented ball …show more content…
Also, I don 't believe this negativity is driving the world in the right direction, I understand that for the most part, news-media companies only promote controversies throughout their outputting materials in order to better their ratings, but that doesn 't make it right. Actually, let me ask how many of you kept track of the 2016 American election, even if you just somewhat paid attention to what you saw on your social-media feeds or to what was on the news on TV, raise your hand if you 've been keeping track. Now, of those of you who 've raised your hands, how many of you have heard of Hilary Clinton 's email scandal, or that she 's a liar?... Thank you, now how many of you guys have heard that Trump is a racist?... Okay, how about a sexist?... (expecting most of the class to raise their hands) Well then, that 's fantastic isn 't it? The media made sure we were all very aware that the two “best” candidates for Presidency of the most powerful country in the world were either big fat liars, or racist and sexist men who don 't pay the millions they owe in taxes. I mean, seriously, why couldn 't the media show us the good things that these two candidates had to offer. Not only was this consistent negative output on both candidates bad for the reputations of both Trump and Hilary, it was horrible for Americans as
Oration
An estimated 1.96 billion individuals and over 78% of U.S. Americans have a social media profile. (Statista, 2016) This number does not include the millions of people who aren 't connected on the web, but are connected through the television. Now, as a young, Canadian boy, I was always taught that spreading positivity was better than outputting negativity. Whether I was playing sports, being a leader in my school, or even just going through my everyday routines, I made sure to stay as positive as I could because of the good vibes it promoted all around me. Well, as I 'm sure many of you have noticed, these days the news-media has been spewing out negativity left and right. The 2016 presidential …show more content…
Why is the news-media promoting so much negativity when positive vibes boost the the greatest feeling in the world, to be happy? Well, Wikileaks editor-in-chief, Julian Assange said it perfectly: “If journalism is good, it is controversial by its nature.” (Assange, 2013) As humans, we have the natural tendency to prioritize negative news over the positive. (Soroka, 2014) Present day news-media companies are very aware of this phenomenon and have been abusing the tool that is controversy in order to grow their media presence and ultimately grow their company 's popularity. Aside from that, for those of you who don 't know me well, or don 't remember my brief introduction from our first class, I 'm very into sports, especially basketball. I 've played basketball competitively my entire life and I 'm now spending most of my days training for my part-time career, a professional basketball dunker. As you could imagine, I 'm very confident in my knowledge on the sport of basketball. Additionally, I first discovered the upsetting use of negativity in media when I was the biggest LeBron James fan-girl on earth a few years back. In my opinion it was evident that King James was by far the greatest player in the National Basketball Association, NBA for short, and yet the media would crucify this man for any and every small mistake he did on and off the basketball court. The continuous hate on one of the nicest, hardworking as well as talented ball …show more content…
Also, I don 't believe this negativity is driving the world in the right direction, I understand that for the most part, news-media companies only promote controversies throughout their outputting materials in order to better their ratings, but that doesn 't make it right. Actually, let me ask how many of you kept track of the 2016 American election, even if you just somewhat paid attention to what you saw on your social-media feeds or to what was on the news on TV, raise your hand if you 've been keeping track. Now, of those of you who 've raised your hands, how many of you have heard of Hilary Clinton 's email scandal, or that she 's a liar?... Thank you, now how many of you guys have heard that Trump is a racist?... Okay, how about a sexist?... (expecting most of the class to raise their hands) Well then, that 's fantastic isn 't it? The media made sure we were all very aware that the two “best” candidates for Presidency of the most powerful country in the world were either big fat liars, or racist and sexist men who don 't pay the millions they owe in taxes. I mean, seriously, why couldn 't the media show us the good things that these two candidates had to offer. Not only was this consistent negative output on both candidates bad for the reputations of both Trump and Hilary, it was horrible for Americans as