Communication Design Quarterly Jan 2015 Open Access

Rhetorical functions of hashtag forms across social media applications

Alice R. Daer Arizona State University ; Rebecca F. Hoffman Microsoft Research New England (United States) ; Seth Goodman Phoenix College

Abstract

This study examines an ethnographically-collected set of social media posts from 5 applications in order to understand the rhetorical functions of something we call "metacommunicative" hashtags (e.g., #PackersGottaWinThisOne, #thisweddingisawesome). Through a process of inductive analysis, we identified recurring genre functions that are both context-specific to applications' ecologies and, at the same time, "stabilized enough" (Schryer, 1993, p. 204) to warrant the use of rhetorical genre theory as a tool for understanding their communicative purposes

Journal
Communication Design Quarterly
Published
2015-01-13
DOI
10.1145/2721882.2721884
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Topics
rhetorical criticism genre theory social media
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References (6) · 1 in this index

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     ↗
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  1. Tracy S.J. (2013). Qualitative Research Methods: Collecting Evidence Crafting Analysis Communicating Impact. …
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