Double-click Rhetoric: Rhetorical Strategies of Communication in the Digital Context

Abstract

This article analyzes the rhetorical strategies involved in the spread of texts created in a digital context. The Internet has initiated a new communicative environment which seeks to shape the contents and circumstances of dissemination of online news and electronic literature. The digital medium affects journalism and literature with a series of rhetorical strategies aimed at persuading the audience to double click (automated interactions, clickbait, trending). These rhetorical strategies are not accepted as valid in conventional media and publishing, however they promote rapid dissemination of digital news, as well as reconfi gure the existing relationships between authors and readers in literary works. Our aim is to explain how the dissemination of these texts can be understood from a rhetorical viewpoint, no matter how much the spread of fake news or the radical change in the electronic literary works can be criticized. We point to the consequences of a communicative context that prioritizes immediacy, anonymity and content democratization. Analyzing selected examples from the Spanish (social) media context will demonstrate how double-click rhetoric relates to fi ctionalization and backgrounding of ethos.