Legalization of Marijuana: The Growing Popularity
With the legalization of Marijuana growing popularity throughout the United States, many websites, videos, and Facebook pages are gaining more views and plays on their websites using many different rhetoric styles. The Facebook page, Legalize Marijuana, now has over 2 million likes supporting the page. The audience is obviously for those who support the legalization movement. This page is using many rhetoric tactics to get the reader in supporting the legalization movement.
The arrangement of Legalization of Marijuana is a combination of pictures, news stories, and petitions. There are no categorical patterns but rather a combination of different media types scattered throughout the page. Each of these news stories are linked to a pro-marijuana site called justsaynow.
Its pathos is appealing to the audience’s emotions by posting many news stories with an emotional appeal. Posting stories such as “Marijuana Use in Vogue” is also having an emotional appeal on the audience. Vogue is a trendy popular magazine, reflecting that Marijuana is trendy and popular. It is also posting about race relations when the Facebook page posted about a news story titled; “The War on Drugs has Been Very Effective at Suppressing African-Americans“. This could be an example of Gorgias notion of kairos. With the ordeal in Ferguson, race relations are a hot topic in today’s media.
Legalize Marijuana does attempt to appeal to the logos of the readers by offering facts and statistics. A story that have posted was “Has Medical Marijuana Saved Lives by Reducing Prescription Opioid Overdoses?” which links it to an article that does have its sources cited. Yet, most of the articles only links to the pro-marijuana site and not the scholarly articles. In order to have a full logos appeal on the reader, the page should directly link the scholarly articles and not just a pro marijuana site.
The issue with Legalize Marijuana is it only posts positive news stories and petitions supporting the legalization reflecting an obvious bias. In order to fully understand the whole public issue, the audience should be able to fully understand both sides of the story.
The best use of rhetoric on this Facebook page is not the stories posted but rather the comments. These comments are all pro-legalization. Facebook users who commented will defend and even attack other posters who do not support the legalization movement.
Overall, Legalize Marijuana does have an affective rhetoric on the legalization of Marijuana. By capitalizing on opportune times and using pathos and logos, Legalize Marijuana effectively displays a positive rhetoric on the legalization of marijuana.
https://www.facebook.com/justsaynow?ref=br_tf
http://justsaynow.firedoglake.com/
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/03/opinion/errol-louis-ferguson/
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It is interesting how the Legalize Marijuana movement is using both emotions and facts to appeal to its audience. Also, as you said, they only use the positives, demonstrating some bias. If you only see their messages and not the other side’s, I can understand why you would be convinced. It will be interesting to see what happens with this hot topic over the next few years.
It seems that with public issues like this that have people strongly on one side or another, there really aren’t any sites that post facts from both sides of the issue. They either only focus on things for or against legalizing marijuana instead of posing all the facts from both sides.