Sneha Modi 19 April 2013 Erin Dietel-McLaughlin Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric Reflective Paper: Multimedia Satire My original

idea for my Multimedia Satire was to address the influence social media has on todays society. As I was coming up for the concept for this satire, I realized that social media, while it affects all aspects of our lives, has had a significant impact on the language we use. In day-to-day conversation, it is common to hear people using Internet slang as well as incorporating language that serves a purpose on certain social networks, but not in day-to-day conversations. The overarching purpose of this piece is to show how social media has impacted our life and how language conventions that are made solely for one outlet have come into use in many other areas, even in areas where these conventions dont really make sense. My focus then shifted to Twitter, where a whole different language is used to communicate, such as hashtags. As I kept thinking about this idea, I realized that hashtags are not the only language convention that has made it past the barriers of Twitter. I decided to focus my argument on the various language conventions of social media and their affect on our present day society. The central claim of this argument is that social media has changed our language into one that uses various abbreviations from the Internet in our day to day lives and has turned our language into short, inarticulate blurbs, rather than the eloquent language that has been used in well-expressed documents of a bygone era. To properly satirize this idea, I used the genre of a Twitter page. Even though Twitter is an appropriate place to use this type of language, I thought that using it would truly highlight the

claims I am attempting to make. I thought that this genre was the best to parody my subject because it uses these language conventions and abbreviations in the medium they were designed for, but changes the context of these tweets to something that would probably not be discussed on a social network. In addition, I think by using a Twitter page as my genre, I was clearly able to parody how short and to the point our society has become, instead of spending time on eloquent language and drawn out thoughts. I also think that by using famous texts that were originally supposed to reach the masses makes the point that Twitter and other social networks have replaced carefully written speeches or documents meant to address the public. To demonstrate the differences between todays language and the eloquent language that was common in the past, I decided to combine a document that used very eloquent language and the Twitter genre. I did some research on famous speeches and documents, famous for their writers and the language used. I looked at speeches by Lincoln, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and famous documents After some deliberation, I decided to use the Declaration of Independence, because not only is the document famous for the language, but the writers, the Founding Fathers, also seem to have a prim and proper air about them. They are known to be elegant and sophisticated writers and men. I thought that my claim would be best illustrated by using this document, because it is essentially a whole document elaborating on what could be said in one sentence: We declare ourselves free. I have tried to illustrate the use of this type of language and brevity through the tweets of the founders. Their use of abbreviations that we encounter daily now demonstrates not only the way emotions and feelings are expressed through short acronyms but also how language from social media has entered our daily conversations. For example, Thomas Jefferson tweets, Only got two weeks to write this #YOLO. Obviously, the acronym YOLO (You Only Live Once)

was never in use during Jeffersons time. However, we can imagine that Jefferson might tweet something like this if he were drafting the Declaration today, especially because YOLO is an overused acronym that has popped up all over social media. In addition, I have the Founding Fathers use acronyms like #FML, #smh, and LOL to describe their feelings or what they are doing at the moment. I also incorporated mentions of other websites like Instagram, Facebook, and Amazon to show how the Internet has become such an important part of our lives. I did some research on the roles each of these Founding Fathers played in creating the Declaration. I sort of gave each one a personality through their tweeting styles and even adjusted their profile pictures and descriptions to reflect how they could describe themselves to the social media world. Furthermore, I researched the events leading up to the declaration, the process of drafting the declaration itself, and finally the approval of the document. I chronologically tweeted these events to make the Twitter feed seem realistic, as if the Founding Fathers could have really used Twitter to discuss the document and communicate their ideas and thoughts. However, like most Twitter users, I wanted to make them seem slightly realistic too, so I included tweets about online shopping, being bored, or the weather outside. This is meant to show how social media is involved with other aspects of life besides communicating. The Founding Fathers not only use Twitter to communicate but they also use it to express their thoughts and feelings, like most people do on social networks today. This satires audience is the majority of society today, specifically towards the younger generation. It is a critique of the social-networking savvy generations widespread use of Internet lingo. Those whose lives revolve around social media and are culprits of using social media language outside of the genre may feel alienated by this satire. The younger generation may not even understand how this is a satire because the Internet is involved in all aspects of their lives.

However, many will realize that this is a satire on what our society has become due to social media. The process of creating this satire was quite extensive. I did the previously mentioned research on the events leading up to the approval of the Declaration of Independence and on the Founding Fathers. Then I drafted tweets on paper, rewriting some of them according to the feedback of my peers. They suggested that I include even more informal language, including slang, nicknames, and modern day terms, to make this a really current depiction of what happened back in 1776. I had no trouble thinking of tweets and phrases I wanted the Founding Fathers to use. However, I did run into some issues when actually tweeting. Because the project is meant to be read chronologically, I had to constantly log in and out of the three different accounts, to make sure the Fathers were replying to each others tweets at the right times. A few times, I had to delete some tweets and tweet them again later because the Twitter feed was slightly out of order. Even though this was slightly tedious, I think that paying close attention to the order of the tweets really made a difference in the final product, because it maintained some sort of order and the reader could clearly understand what was being discussed. In the end, I hope the message of this satire comes across through the way these tweets are crafted and the humor included in them. The intent is not to criticize the people who are addicted to social media but rather to criticize the way our language has changed and what it has become due to social media and the advent of the Internet. By incorporating a well-written document that took weeks of writing and editing with a Twitter feed that includes thoughts that are basically blurted out in seconds (without any editing), I hope to satirize the way language has changed in our society.

Works Cited "Chronology of Events." ushistory.org. Web. 11 Apr. 2013. <http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/timeline.htm>. "Declaration of Independence - Text Transcript." National Archives and Records Administration. Web. 9 Apr. 2013. <http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html>. "John Adams." ushistory.org. Web. 11 Apr. 2013. <http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/signers/adams_j.htm>. "Quick Biography of Benjamin Franklin." ushistory.org. Web. 10 Apr. 2013. <http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/info/>. "Thomas Jefferson | The White House." The White House. Web. 10 Apr. 2013. <http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/thomasjefferson>.

Works Consulted "Declaration of Independence - Text Transcript." National Archives and Records Administration. Web. 9 Apr. 2013. <http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html>. Instagram Twitter