Assignment: Write a 3-4 page rhetorical analysis of social media debate/argument.
Purpose of the Assignment: The Rhetorical Analysis assignment prompts you to work towards three goals. First, you will craft a thesis statement that identifies a particular rhetorical strategy or combination of strategies the rhetor implements to persuade a primary audience (and any additional secondary audiences) towards a claim/argument. Second, you will support your thesis statement by offering and analyzing textual evidence from the chosen essay that reveals how the rhetor is moving the audience to these ends. Third, you will evaluate the effectiveness of these rhetorical strategies considering their success in moving the intended audience.
Writing the Rhetorical Analysis:

You will need to find and select a debate that has played out on social media. My preference is that you choose a Twitter debate so that you can provide the thread. When you analyze this argument, your goal is to identify and examine the rhetor’s rhetorical strategies and how these strategies help to achieve the overarching purpose of the piece. Thus, you will need to explain to your readers how the rhetor persuades their audience, whether or not the rhetor’s strategies are effective, and why you think so. To provide a thorough analysis for your readers, you’ll need to research the rhetor, the topic the rhetor wrote about, the audience the rhetor addressed, and the historical context during which the rhetor wrote. In other words, you will need to understand and inform your readers about the rhetorical context in which the rhetor composed this document.
Once you research your chosen text’s rhetorical situation, you will be ready to identify and analyze the rhetor’s specific rhetorical strategies as well as evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. You will examine the rhetor’s use of rhetorical appeals and discuss how those moves meet (or don’t meet) the needs and expectations of the audience. Therefore, to compose your analysis, you’ll establish your own thesis statement—your own argument about one or more of the rhetor’s rhetorical strategies. You will then support this thesis statement with evidence from the text to demonstrate to your audience that your argument about this persuasive piece of writing is a reasonable one.  
It is important to note that when you compose your analysis, you should avoid simply pointing to a rhetor’s use of appeals, style, arrangement strategy, etc. Instead, you’ll want to compose your analysis by discussing both the purpose and effect of the rhetorical moves you’re focusing on, asking: (1) Why did the rhetor choose this particular strategy? (2) What effect does this rhetorical move have on the audience? By considering these questions, you will effectively evaluate the choices the rhetor makes when attempting to reach their audience. It is important to note as well that you do not need to cover every appeal and persuasive strategy. You should focus on a strategy or combination of strategies you found most compelling or prevalent.
In your introduction, you should set up the genre of a rhetorical analysis. Remember, you are introducing an analysis of a rhetor’s argument—not your own argumentative essay on an issue. Your introduction should orient readers to the piece under consideration, the rhetor, and the rhetorical situation. Then you’ll want to move onto your thesis statement where you pinpoint a specific rhetorical strategy or combination of strategies that you are going to analyze and evaluate throughout the body of the essay using examples from the text. Your thesis statement should go beyond, “this rhetor uses ethos, pathos, and logos.” Instead, choose a strategy that you find compelling and argue for why this strategy is an important one to focus on given the overarching rhetorical project of the piece. In other words, you want to explain how X strategy specifically propels the rhetorical project of the piece. The conclusion to your rhetorical analysis should speak to the value of taking on this examination; you want to underscore to your audience the importance of coming to know how the rhetor’s particular strategy or combination of strategies worked (or didn’t).