Place meanings and national parks: A rhetorical analysis of social media texts

Abstract

Many national parks now use social media to communicate their special qualities of place and guide visitors’ experiences. But, how do they actually construct effective social media messages that resonate with their audiences? To answer this, we used rhetorical discourse analysis to examine a one-year sample of texts from the Facebook posts of three large U.S. national parks. Rhetorical discourses are persuasive; their contents, forms and styles of organization can be studied to understand how social and cultural practices of meaning-making are enacted by communicators in an effort to influence audiences. In this study, we applied Aristotle’s three modes of argumentation (ethos, logos, and pathos) to guide the rhetorical analysis. Results show that agencies primarily provided emotion-laden and informational materials for social media followers in making claims about place and about visitor experiences. Four rhetorical themes about the uniqueness of park places, the management of people, parks and significant life moments, and time and timelessness, were identified. These contributed to an overall discourse about parks and spirituality that seemed intended to reaffirm the perspectives of existing audiences of park visitors. Understanding the rhetorical-discursive qualities of social media messages, however, can help agencies adjust their communication strategies to reach more diverse audiences while deploying a wider range of rhetorical approaches. For park managers the following aspects are of high relevance. - Social media presentations can extend and enhance a national park’s relationship with publics. - Park management agencies use emotion, logic and organizational credibility to construct social media claims. - Parks’ social media texts are rhetorical (persuasive), relying primarily on emotional claims and information dissemination. - Visitor-generated stories re-posted on a park’s social media site can expand both park’s and audiences’ social and cultural perspectives. - Study parks’ social media texts presented rhetorical discourses of spirituality that reinforced traditional place relationships and ways of engaging with national parks. - Social media postings are often directed to people who already visit the park; wider use of rhetorical ideas for more diverse audiences are needed.