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Argumentative Essays About Social Media

This is a comprehensive resource to help you find the perfect social media essay topic. Whether you're navigating the complexities of digital communication, exploring the impact of social media on society, or examining its effects on personal identity, the right topic can transform your essay into a captivating and insightful exploration. Remember, selecting a topic that resonates with your personal interests and academic goals not only makes the writing process more enjoyable but also enriches your learning experience. Let's dive into a world of creativity and critical thinking!

Essay Types and Topics

Below, you'll find a curated list of essay topics organized by type. Each section includes diverse topics that touch on technology, society, personal growth, and academic interests, along with introduction and conclusion paragraph examples to get you started.

Argumentative Essays

Introduction Example: "In the digital age, social media platforms have become central to our daily interactions and self-perception, particularly among teenagers. This essay explores the impact of social media on teen self-esteem, arguing that while it offers a space for expression and connection, it also presents significant challenges to self-image. "

Conclusion Example: "Having delved into the complex relationship between social media and teen self-esteem, it is clear that the digital landscape holds profound effects on individual self-perception. This essay reaffirms the thesis that social media can both uplift and undermine teen self-esteem, calling for a balanced approach to digital engagement."

Introduction Example: "As political landscapes evolve, social media has emerged as a powerful tool for political mobilization and engagement. This essay investigates the role of social media in shaping political movements, positing that it significantly enhances communication and organizational capabilities, yet raises questions about information authenticity. "

Conclusion Example: "Through examining the dual facets of social media in political mobilization, the essay concludes that while social media is a pivotal tool for engagement, it necessitates critical scrutiny of information to ensure a well-informed public discourse."

Compare and Contrast Essays

Introduction Example: "In the competitive realm of digital marketing, Instagram and Twitter stand out as leading platforms for brand promotion. This essay compares and contrasts their effectiveness, revealing that each platform caters to unique marketing strengths due to its specific user engagement and content dissemination strategies. "

Conclusion Example: "The comparative analysis of Instagram and Twitter highlights distinct advantages for brands, with Instagram excelling in visual storytelling and Twitter in real-time engagement, underscoring the importance of strategic platform selection in digital marketing."

Descriptive Essays

Introduction Example: "Today's social media landscape is a vibrant tapestry of platforms, each contributing to the digital era's social fabric. This essay describes the characteristics and cultural significance of current social media trends, illustrating that they reflect and shape our societal values and interactions. "

Conclusion Example: "In portraying the dynamic and diverse nature of today's social media landscape, this essay underscores its role in molding contemporary cultural and social paradigms, inviting readers to reflect on their digital footprints."

Persuasive Essays

Introduction Example: "In an era where digital presence is ubiquitous, fostering positive social media habits is essential for mental and emotional well-being. This essay advocates for mindful social media use, arguing that intentional engagement can enhance our life experiences rather than detract from them. "

Conclusion Example: "This essay has championed the cause for positive social media habits, reinforcing the thesis that through mindful engagement, individuals can navigate the digital world in a way that promotes personal growth and well-being."

Narrative Essays

Introduction Example: "Embarking on a personal journey with social media has been both enlightening and challenging. This narrative essay delves into my experiences, highlighting how social media has influenced my perception of self and community. "

Conclusion Example: "Reflecting on my social media journey, this essay concludes that while it has significantly shaped my interactions and self-view, it has also offered invaluable lessons on connectivity and self-awareness, affirming the nuanced role of digital platforms in our lives."

Engagement and Creativity

As you explore these topics, remember to approach your essay with an open mind and creative spirit. The purpose of academic writing is not just to inform but to engage and provoke thought. Use this opportunity to delve deep into your topic, analyze different perspectives, and articulate your own insights.

Educational Value

Each essay type offers unique learning outcomes. Argumentative essays enhance your analytical thinking and ability to construct well-founded arguments. Compare and contrast essays develop your skills in identifying similarities and differences. Descriptive essays improve your ability to paint vivid pictures through words, while persuasive essays refine your ability to influence and convince. Finally, narrative essays offer a platform for personal expression and storytelling. Embrace these opportunities to grow academically and personally.

Some Easy Argumentative Essay Topics on Social Media

• The Impact of Social Media: Advantages and Disadvantages
• Is Social Media Enhancing or Eroding Our Real-Life Social Skills?
• Should There Be Stricter Regulations on Social Media Content to Protect Youth?
• Social Media's Role in Relationships: Communication Enhancer or Barrier
• Does Social Media Contribute to Political Polarization?
• The Role of Social Media in Shaping Perceptions of Divorce
• The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health: Benefit or Harm?
• Can Social Media Be Considered a Reliable Source of News and Information?
• Is Social Media Responsible for the Rise in Cyberbullying?
• Impact of Social Media on Mental Health
• Does Social Media Promote Narcissism and Self-Centered Behaviors?
• The Role of Social Media in Business Marketing: Is It Indispensable?

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Social Media and College Students' Performance, Mental Health, and Relationships

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Pros and Cons of Social Media: Social Networking

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Social Media Cons and Prons: Evaluating Its Advantages and Disadvantage

The importance of staying safe on social media, impact of social media on our lives, social media: negative effects and addiction, discussion on whether is social media beneficial or harmful for society, negative effects of social media: relationships and communication, social media pros and cons, social media - good and bad sides, a study of the role of social media concerning confidentiality of personal data, how social media causes stereotyping, social media addiction: consequences and strategies for recovery, the role of social media in making us more narcissistic, the effect social media is having on today's society and political atmosphere, digital/social media, censorship in social media, why teenagers are addicted to social media and how it affects them, advantages and disadvantages of social media for society, enormous impact of mass media on children, the role of social media in the current business world, social media is the reason for many of the world’s problems and solutions.

Social media refers to dynamic online platforms that enable individuals to actively engage in the generation and dissemination of various forms of content, including information, ideas, and personal interests. These interactive digital channels foster virtual communities and networks, allowing users to connect, communicate, and express themselves. By harnessing the power of technology, social media platforms provide a space for individuals to share and exchange content, fostering connections and facilitating the flow of information in an increasingly digital world.

In a peculiar manner, the inception of social media can be traced back to May 24, 1844, when a sequence of electronic dots and dashes was manually tapped on a telegraph machine. Although the origins of digital communication have deep historical roots, most contemporary narratives regarding the modern beginnings of the internet and social media often point to the emergence of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) in 1969. The year 1987 witnessed the establishment of the direct precursor to today's internet, as the National Science Foundation introduced the more robust and expansive NSFNET, a nationwide digital network. A significant milestone occurred in 1997 when Six Degrees, the first genuine social media platform, was launched.

Mark Zuckerberg is a notable figure in the realm of social media as the co-founder and CEO of Facebook. Zuckerberg played a pivotal role in transforming Facebook from a small networking platform for college students into a global social media giant with billions of users. His innovative ideas and strategic decisions have reshaped the way people connect and share information online, making him one of the most influential individuals in the digital age. Jack Dorsey is recognized as one of the key pioneers of social media, notably for co-founding Twitter. Dorsey's creation revolutionized online communication by introducing the concept of microblogging, allowing users to share short messages in real-time. Twitter quickly gained popularity, becoming a powerful platform for news dissemination, public conversations, and social movements. Dorsey's entrepreneurial spirit and vision have contributed significantly to the evolution of social media and its impact on society. Sheryl Sandberg is a prominent figure in the social media landscape, known for her influential role as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Facebook.Sandberg played a crucial part in scaling and monetizing Facebook's operations, transforming it into a global advertising powerhouse. She is also recognized for her advocacy of women's empowerment and leadership in the tech industry, inspiring countless individuals and promoting diversity and inclusion within the social media sphere. Sandberg's contributions have left an indelible mark on the growth and development of social media platforms worldwide.

Social Networking Sites: Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace. Microblogging Platforms: Twitter. Media Sharing Networks: Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. Discussion Forums and Community-Based Platforms: Reddit and Quora. Blogging Platforms: WordPress and Blogger. Social Bookmarking and Content Curation Platforms: Pinterest and Flipboard. Messaging Apps: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat.

Facebook (2004), Reddit (2005), Twitter (2006), Instagram (2010), Pinterest (2010), Snapchat (2011), TikTok (2016)

1. Increased Connectivity 2. Information Sharing and Awareness 3. Networking and Professional Opportunities 4. Creativity and Self-Expression 5. Supportive Communities and Causes

1. Privacy Concerns 2. Cyberbullying and Online Harassment 3. Information Overload and Misinformation 4. Time and Productivity Drain 5. Comparison and Self-Esteem Issues

The topic of social media holds significant importance for students as it plays a prominent role in their lives, both academically and socially. Social media platforms provide students with opportunities to connect, collaborate, and share knowledge with peers, expanding their learning networks beyond the confines of the classroom. It facilitates communication and access to educational resources, allowing students to stay updated on academic trends and research. Additionally, social media enhances digital literacy and prepares students for the realities of the digital age. However, it is crucial for students to develop critical thinking skills to navigate the potential pitfalls of social media, such as misinformation and online safety, ensuring a responsible and balanced use of these platforms.

The topic of social media is worthy of being explored in an essay due to its profound impact on various aspects of society. Writing an essay on social media allows for an in-depth examination of its influence on communication, relationships, information sharing, and societal dynamics. It offers an opportunity to analyze the advantages and disadvantages, exploring topics such as privacy, online identities, social activism, and the role of social media in shaping cultural norms. Additionally, studying social media enables a critical evaluation of its effects on mental health, politics, and business. By delving into this subject, one can gain a comprehensive understanding of the complex and ever-evolving digital landscape we inhabit.

1. Social media users spend an average of 2 hours and 25 minutes per day on social networking platforms. This amounts to over 7 years of an individual's lifetime spent on social media, highlighting its significant presence in our daily lives. 2. Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users, with more than 500 million of them using the platform on a daily basis. 3. YouTube has over 2 billion logged-in monthly active users. On average, users spend over 1 billion hours watching YouTube videos every day, emphasizing the platform's extensive reach and the power of video content. 4. Social media has become a major news source, with 48% of people getting their news from social media platforms. This shift in news consumption highlights the role of social media in shaping public opinion and disseminating information in real-time. 5. Influencer marketing has grown exponentially, with 63% of marketers planning to increase their influencer marketing budget in the coming year. This showcases the effectiveness of influencers in reaching and engaging with target audiences, and the value brands place on leveraging social media personalities to promote their products or services.

1. Schober, M. F., Pasek, J., Guggenheim, L., Lampe, C., & Conrad, F. G. (2016). Social media analyses for social measurement. Public opinion quarterly, 80(1), 180-211. (https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/80/1/180/2593846) 2. Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2020). The future of social media in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing science, 48(1), 79-95. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11747-019-00695-1?error=cookies_not_support) 3. Aichner, T., Grünfelder, M., Maurer, O., & Jegeni, D. (2021). Twenty-five years of social media: a review of social media applications and definitions from 1994 to 2019. Cyberpsychology, behavior, and social networking, 24(4), 215-222. (https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/cyber.2020.0134) 4. Ruths, D., & Pfeffer, J. (2014). Social media for large studies of behavior. Science, 346(6213), 1063-1064. (https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.346.6213.1063) 5. Hou, Y., Xiong, D., Jiang, T., Song, L., & Wang, Q. (2019). Social media addiction: Its impact, mediation, and intervention. Cyberpsychology: Journal of psychosocial research on cyberspace, 13(1). (https://cyberpsychology.eu/article/view/11562) 6. Auxier, B., & Anderson, M. (2021). Social media use in 2021. Pew Research Center, 1, 1-4. (https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/04/PI_2021.04.07_Social-Media-Use_FINAL.pdf) 7. Al-Samarraie, H., Bello, K. A., Alzahrani, A. I., Smith, A. P., & Emele, C. (2021). Young users' social media addiction: causes, consequences and preventions. Information Technology & People, 35(7), 2314-2343. (https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ITP-11-2020-0753/full/html) 8. Bhargava, V. R., & Velasquez, M. (2021). Ethics of the attention economy: The problem of social media addiction. Business Ethics Quarterly, 31(3), 321-359. (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-ethics-quarterly/article/ethics-of-the-attention-economy-the-problem-of-social-mediaaddiction/1CC67609A12E9A912BB8A291FDFFE799)

Relevant topics

• Effects of Social Media
• Media Analysis
• Cultural Appropriation
• Sex, Gender and Sexuality
• Social Justice
• Sociological Imagination
• American Identity
• Discourse Community

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Essay on Social Media for School Students and Children

500+ words essay on social media.

Social media is a tool that is becoming quite popular these days because of its user-friendly features. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more are giving people a chance to connect with each other across distances. In other words, the whole world is at our fingertips all thanks to social media. The youth is especially one of the most dominant users of social media. All this makes you wonder that something so powerful and with such a massive reach cannot be all good. Like how there are always two sides to a coin, the same goes for social media. Subsequently, different people have different opinions on this debatable topic. So, in this essay on Social Media, we will see the advantages and disadvantages of social media.

Advantages of Social Media

When we look at the positive aspect of social media, we find numerous advantages. The most important being a great device for education . All the information one requires is just a click away. Students can educate themselves on various topics using social media.

Moreover, live lectures are now possible because of social media. You can attend a lecture happening in America while sitting in India.

Furthermore, as more and more people are distancing themselves from newspapers, they are depending on social media for news. You are always updated on the latest happenings of the world through it. A person becomes more socially aware of the issues of the world.

In addition, it strengthens bonds with your loved ones. Distance is not a barrier anymore because of social media. For instance, you can easily communicate with your friends and relatives overseas.

Most importantly, it also provides a great platform for young budding artists to showcase their talent for free. You can get great opportunities for employment through social media too.

Another advantage definitely benefits companies who wish to promote their brands. Social media has become a hub for advertising and offers you great opportunities for connecting with the customer.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Disadvantages of Social Media

Despite having such unique advantages, social media is considered to be one of the most harmful elements of society. If the use of social media is not monitored, it can lead to grave consequences.

Thus, the sharing on social media especially by children must be monitored at all times. Next up is the addition of social media which is quite common amongst the youth.

This addiction hampers with the academic performance of a student as they waste their time on social media instead of studying. Social media also creates communal rifts. Fake news is spread with the use of it, which poisons the mind of peace-loving citizens.

In short, surely social media has both advantages and disadvantages. But, it all depends on the user at the end. The youth must particularly create a balance between their academic performances, physical activities, and social media. Excess use of anything is harmful and the same thing applies to social media. Therefore, we must strive to live a satisfying life with the right balance.

FAQs on Social Media

Q.1 Is social media beneficial? If yes, then how?

A.1 Social media is quite beneficial. Social Media offers information, news, educational material, a platform for talented youth and brands.

Q.2 What is a disadvantage of Social Media?

A.2 Social media invades your privacy. It makes you addicted and causes health problems. It also results in cyberbullying and scams as well as communal hatred.

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Feb 15, 2023

6 Example Essays on Social Media | Advantages, Effects, and Outlines

Got an essay assignment about the effects of social media we got you covered check out our examples and outlines below.

Social media has become one of our society's most prominent ways of communication and information sharing in a very short time. It has changed how we communicate and has given us a platform to express our views and opinions and connect with others. It keeps us informed about the world around us. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn have brought individuals from all over the world together, breaking down geographical borders and fostering a genuinely global community.

However, social media comes with its difficulties. With the rise of misinformation, cyberbullying, and privacy problems, it's critical to utilize these platforms properly and be aware of the risks. Students in the academic world are frequently assigned essays about the impact of social media on numerous elements of our lives, such as relationships, politics, and culture. These essays necessitate a thorough comprehension of the subject matter, critical thinking, and the ability to synthesize and convey information clearly and succinctly.

But where do you begin? It can be challenging to know where to start with so much information available. Jenni.ai comes in handy here. Jenni.ai is an AI application built exclusively for students to help them write essays more quickly and easily. Jenni.ai provides students with inspiration and assistance on how to approach their essays with its enormous database of sample essays on a variety of themes, including social media. Jenni.ai is the solution you've been looking for if you're experiencing writer's block or need assistance getting started.

So, whether you're a student looking to better your essay writing skills or want to remain up to date on the latest social media advancements, Jenni.ai is here to help. Jenni.ai is the ideal tool for helping you write your finest essay ever, thanks to its simple design, an extensive database of example essays, and cutting-edge AI technology. So, why delay? Sign up for a free trial of Jenni.ai today and begin exploring the worlds of social networking and essay writing!

Want to learn how to write an argumentative essay? Check out these inspiring examples!

We will provide various examples of social media essays so you may get a feel for the genre.

6 Examples of Social Media Essays

Here are 6 examples of Social Media Essays:

The Impact of Social Media on Relationships and Communication

Introduction:.

The way we share information and build relationships has evolved as a direct result of the prevalence of social media in our daily lives. The influence of social media on interpersonal connections and conversation is a hot topic. Although social media has many positive effects, such as bringing people together regardless of physical proximity and making communication quicker and more accessible, it also has a dark side that can affect interpersonal connections and dialogue.

Positive Effects:

Connecting People Across Distances

One of social media's most significant benefits is its ability to connect individuals across long distances. People can use social media platforms to interact and stay in touch with friends and family far away. People can now maintain intimate relationships with those they care about, even when physically separated.

Improved Communication Speed and Efficiency

Additionally, the proliferation of social media sites has accelerated and simplified communication. Thanks to instant messaging, users can have short, timely conversations rather than lengthy ones via email. Furthermore, social media facilitates group communication, such as with classmates or employees, by providing a unified forum for such activities.

Negative Effects:

Decreased Face-to-Face Communication

The decline in in-person interaction is one of social media's most pernicious consequences on interpersonal connections and dialogue. People's reliance on digital communication over in-person contact has increased along with the popularity of social media. Face-to-face interaction has suffered as a result, which has adverse effects on interpersonal relationships and the development of social skills.

Decreased Emotional Intimacy

Another adverse effect of social media on relationships and communication is decreased emotional intimacy. Digital communication lacks the nonverbal cues and facial expressions critical in building emotional connections with others. This can make it more difficult for people to develop close and meaningful relationships, leading to increased loneliness and isolation.

Increased Conflict and Miscommunication

Finally, social media can also lead to increased conflict and miscommunication. The anonymity and distance provided by digital communication can lead to misunderstandings and hurtful comments that might not have been made face-to-face. Additionally, social media can provide a platform for cyberbullying , which can have severe consequences for the victim's mental health and well-being.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the impact of social media on relationships and communication is a complex issue with both positive and negative effects. While social media platforms offer many benefits, such as connecting people across distances and enabling faster and more accessible communication, they also have a dark side that can negatively affect relationships and communication. It is up to individuals to use social media responsibly and to prioritize in-person communication in their relationships and interactions with others.

The Role of Social Media in the Spread of Misinformation and Fake News

Social media has revolutionized the way information is shared and disseminated. However, the ease and speed at which data can be spread on social media also make it a powerful tool for spreading misinformation and fake news. Misinformation and fake news can seriously affect public opinion, influence political decisions, and even cause harm to individuals and communities.

The Pervasiveness of Misinformation and Fake News on Social Media

Misinformation and fake news are prevalent on social media platforms, where they can spread quickly and reach a large audience. This is partly due to the way social media algorithms work, which prioritizes content likely to generate engagement, such as sensational or controversial stories. As a result, false information can spread rapidly and be widely shared before it is fact-checked or debunked.

The Influence of Social Media on Public Opinion

Social media can significantly impact public opinion, as people are likelier to believe the information they see shared by their friends and followers. This can lead to a self-reinforcing cycle, where misinformation and fake news are spread and reinforced, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

The Challenge of Correcting Misinformation and Fake News

Correcting misinformation and fake news on social media can be a challenging task. This is partly due to the speed at which false information can spread and the difficulty of reaching the same audience exposed to the wrong information in the first place. Additionally, some individuals may be resistant to accepting correction, primarily if the incorrect information supports their beliefs or biases.

In conclusion, the function of social media in disseminating misinformation and fake news is complex and urgent. While social media has revolutionized the sharing of information, it has also made it simpler for false information to propagate and be widely believed. Individuals must be accountable for the information they share and consume, and social media firms must take measures to prevent the spread of disinformation and fake news on their platforms.

The Effects of Social Media on Mental Health and Well-Being

Social media has become an integral part of modern life, with billions of people around the world using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to stay connected with others and access information. However, while social media has many benefits, it can also negatively affect mental health and well-being.

Comparison and Low Self-Esteem

One of the key ways that social media can affect mental health is by promoting feelings of comparison and low self-esteem. People often present a curated version of their lives on social media, highlighting their successes and hiding their struggles. This can lead others to compare themselves unfavorably, leading to feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem.

Cyberbullying and Online Harassment

Another way that social media can negatively impact mental health is through cyberbullying and online harassment. Social media provides a platform for anonymous individuals to harass and abuse others, leading to feelings of anxiety, fear, and depression.

Social Isolation

Despite its name, social media can also contribute to feelings of isolation. At the same time, people may have many online friends but need more meaningful in-person connections and support. This can lead to feelings of loneliness and depression.

Addiction and Overuse

Finally, social media can be addictive, leading to overuse and negatively impacting mental health and well-being. People may spend hours each day scrolling through their feeds, neglecting other important areas of their lives, such as work, family, and self-care.

In sum, social media has positive and negative consequences on one's psychological and emotional well-being. Realizing this, and taking measures like reducing one's social media use, reaching out to loved ones for help, and prioritizing one's well-being, are crucial. In addition, it's vital that social media giants take ownership of their platforms and actively encourage excellent mental health and well-being.

The Use of Social Media in Political Activism and Social Movements

Social media has recently become increasingly crucial in political action and social movements. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have given people new ways to express themselves, organize protests, and raise awareness about social and political issues.

Raising Awareness and Mobilizing Action

One of the most important uses of social media in political activity and social movements has been to raise awareness about important issues and mobilize action. Hashtags such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, for example, have brought attention to sexual harassment and racial injustice, respectively. Similarly, social media has been used to organize protests and other political actions, allowing people to band together and express themselves on a bigger scale.

Connecting with like-minded individuals

A second method in that social media has been utilized in political activity and social movements is to unite like-minded individuals. Through social media, individuals can join online groups, share knowledge and resources, and work with others to accomplish shared objectives. This has been especially significant for geographically scattered individuals or those without access to traditional means of political organizing.

Challenges and Limitations

As a vehicle for political action and social movements, social media has faced many obstacles and restrictions despite its many advantages. For instance, the propagation of misinformation and fake news on social media can impede attempts to disseminate accurate and reliable information. In addition, social media corporations have been condemned for censorship and insufficient protection of user rights.

In conclusion, social media has emerged as a potent instrument for political activism and social movements, giving voice to previously unheard communities and galvanizing support for change. Social media presents many opportunities for communication and collaboration. Still, users and institutions must be conscious of the risks and limitations of these tools to promote their responsible and productive usage.

The Potential Privacy Concerns Raised by Social Media Use and Data Collection Practices

With billions of users each day on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, social media has ingrained itself into every aspect of our lives. While these platforms offer a straightforward method to communicate with others and exchange information, they also raise significant concerns over data collecting and privacy. This article will examine the possible privacy issues posed by social media use and data-gathering techniques.

Data Collection and Sharing

The gathering and sharing of personal data are significant privacy issues brought up by social media use. Social networking sites gather user data, including details about their relationships, hobbies, and routines. This information is made available to third-party businesses for various uses, such as marketing and advertising. This can lead to serious concerns about who has access to and uses our personal information.

Lack of Control Over Personal Information

The absence of user control over personal information is a significant privacy issue brought up by social media usage. Social media makes it challenging to limit who has access to and how data is utilized once it has been posted. Sensitive information may end up being extensively disseminated and may be used maliciously as a result.

Personalized Marketing

Social media companies utilize the information they gather about users to target them with adverts relevant to their interests and usage patterns. Although this could be useful, it might also cause consumers to worry about their privacy since they might feel that their personal information is being used without their permission. Furthermore, there are issues with the integrity of the data being used to target users and the possibility of prejudice based on individual traits.

Government Surveillance

Using social media might spark worries about government surveillance. There are significant concerns regarding privacy and free expression when governments in some nations utilize social media platforms to follow and monitor residents.

In conclusion, social media use raises significant concerns regarding data collecting and privacy. While these platforms make it easy to interact with people and exchange information, they also gather a lot of personal information, which raises questions about who may access it and how it will be used. Users should be aware of these privacy issues and take precautions to safeguard their personal information, such as exercising caution when choosing what details to disclose on social media and keeping their information sharing with other firms to a minimum.

The Ethical and Privacy Concerns Surrounding Social Media Use And Data Collection

Our use of social media to communicate with loved ones, acquire information, and even conduct business has become a crucial part of our everyday lives. The extensive use of social media does, however, raise some ethical and privacy issues that must be resolved. The influence of social media use and data collecting on user rights, the accountability of social media businesses, and the need for improved regulation are all topics that will be covered in this article.

Effect on Individual Privacy:

Social networking sites gather tons of personal data from their users, including delicate information like search history, location data, and even health data. Each user's detailed profile may be created with this data and sold to advertising or used for other reasons. Concerns regarding the privacy of personal information might arise because social media businesses can use this data to target users with customized adverts.

Additionally, individuals might need to know how much their personal information is being gathered and exploited. Data breaches or the unauthorized sharing of personal information with other parties may result in instances where sensitive information is exposed. Users should be aware of the privacy rules of social media firms and take precautions to secure their data.

Responsibility of Social Media Companies:

Social media firms should ensure that they responsibly and ethically gather and use user information. This entails establishing strong security measures to safeguard sensitive information and ensuring users are informed of what information is being collected and how it is used.

Many social media businesses, nevertheless, have come under fire for not upholding these obligations. For instance, the Cambridge Analytica incident highlighted how Facebook users' personal information was exploited for political objectives without their knowledge. This demonstrates the necessity of social media corporations being held responsible for their deeds and ensuring that they are safeguarding the security and privacy of their users.

Better Regulation Is Needed

There is a need for tighter regulation in this field, given the effect, social media has on individual privacy as well as the obligations of social media firms. The creation of laws and regulations that ensure social media companies are gathering and using user information ethically and responsibly, as well as making sure users are aware of their rights and have the ability to control the information that is being collected about them, are all part of this.

Additionally, legislation should ensure that social media businesses are held responsible for their behavior, for example, by levying fines for data breaches or the unauthorized use of personal data. This will provide social media businesses with a significant incentive to prioritize their users' privacy and security and ensure they are upholding their obligations.

In conclusion, social media has fundamentally changed how we engage and communicate with one another, but this increased convenience also raises several ethical and privacy issues. Essential concerns that need to be addressed include the effect of social media on individual privacy, the accountability of social media businesses, and the requirement for greater regulation to safeguard user rights. We can make everyone's online experience safer and more secure by looking more closely at these issues.

In conclusion, social media is a complex and multifaceted topic that has recently captured the world's attention. With its ever-growing influence on our lives, it's no surprise that it has become a popular subject for students to explore in their writing. Whether you are writing an argumentative essay on the impact of social media on privacy, a persuasive essay on the role of social media in politics, or a descriptive essay on the changes social media has brought to the way we communicate, there are countless angles to approach this subject.

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How To Write Discursive Essays

• Essay Writing Lower Secondary

1. What is a Discursive Essay?

A discursive essay is an essay which involves a discussion. You’re encouraged to examine different perspectives on the issue so that the discussion you provide is a balanced one! You are on the right track if your essay sheds light on the issue by looking at it from different viewpoints.

But before you go on reading… You might want to download a pdf copy of this article as it is quite long!

Click the blue download button, enter your email, and the pdf file will be delivered to your inbox! (Remember to check spam!)

  Click here to Download

2. How do I Identify a Discursive Essay Topic?

Let’s take a look at some of the discursive essay topics from past year papers:

2021 O-Level: “Young people are changing the world for the better.” What is your opinion?

• 2019 O-Level: “Most young people today are obsessed with fame and imitating celebrities.” What are your views?

In recent years, “What is your opinion?” and “What are your views?” are common signposts used to indicate a discursive essay topic. However, there are also instances where such questions are not used. Consider:

• 2012 O-Level: People all over the world are living longer. What are the advantages and disadvantages of their increased life expectancy?
• 2010 O-Level: What important lessons in life are learned away from school?

So note that the question can still indicate discursive writing even when it does not contain “What is your opinion?” or “What are your views?”

3. What is the Difference Between a Discursive Essay, an Argumentative Essay and an Expository Essay?

Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s look at the differences in requirements for a discursive and an argumentative essay.

Argumentative: you are required to take an explicit stand on the issue. Your essay is structured in a manner that argues towards this stand. When writing an argumentative essay, your goal is to persuade, to convince the reader to be in support of your stand.

Discursive: you are not required to take an explicit stand on the issue. In other words, you do not need to pick a side. You may choose to pick a side; that’s perfectly fine! Just note that the goal here is not to persuade or to convince; it is to provide the reader with a balanced discussion by examining the issue from various viewpoints.

Now that you’ve learnt how to identify a discursive question and gotten a better idea of what it requires, let’s look at how to plan a discursive essay.

4. How do I Approach or Structure a Discursive Essay?

Some essays require  a binary approach , meaning to say you tackle the issue by addressing the positive and the negative aspects of the question at hand. 

Here is how you can plan your body paragraphs for such topics:

Now, it’s your turn! Try planning an outline for the following topics:

• 2017 O-Level: It is often said that people
• are too concerned with getting things and spending money. What is your opinion? 

On the other hand, there are topics which are not suited for such a binary approach. Consider questions such as:

• Give 3 x features (1 per body paragraph)
• Give 3 x important lessons (1 per body paragraph)

5. How do I Brainstorm Ideas for a Discursive Essay to Achieve a Balanced Discussion?

Give yourself 10 minutes to do a proper planning. It’s useful to approach the issue at hand by exploring its significance and relevance in different spheres and domains : Education, Ethics or Morals, Technology, Law etc.

Instead of giving 3 different points from an education perspective, why not broaden your scope and look at the issue from not just an educational perspective, but also a technological perspective and an ethical perspective?

This is what makes for a matured, holistic response. 

Let’s use the following topic as an example:

If you run out of ideas, you can also examine two sides of a coin in a single domain. For example, you’ll see that in the example, that for the technological sphere, there are instances of youths making and  not changing the world for the better.  

Now that the brainstorming is done, let’s put pen to paper and start writing!

6. How do I Write an Introduction for a Discursive Essay?

• Share an insight or observation regarding the issue. Why is this issue worth discussing? What are the implications of the issue? You can also use 5W1H questions to help you generate ideas.
• Define your scope of discussion and if needed, define the keywords in the topic by setting out what is meant by, for instance, “young people” and “for the better”.

You can ask yourself these questions to help you with your intro:

• Who are “young people”?
• In which domains are youths making significant impact?
• Why do some people believe that they are making the world a better place?
• Why do other people not trust youth to positively impact the world?
• What is my thesis?

Simply answer these questions + include your thesis. Voila, you have a solid introduction!

7. How do I Write the Body Paragraphs for a Discursive Essay?

Students, you must have heard of the PEEL method by now. We introduce the POINT in the first sentence, ELABORATE on the point, then substantiate with EVIDENCE or EXAMPLES , and finally, we round it all off by LINKING back to the point.

It sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?

Each body paragraph should only discuss one main idea , and only one! Introduce the main idea in your topic sentence (the first sentence of your body paragraph), not after you’ve given your example or when you’re wrapping up the paragraph.

A good topic sentence is straightforward and clear .

Here is an example of a coherent and concise topic sentence:  

• In the sphere of education, youth activists are making positive changes by advocating to make education available to girls in less developed societies.

After you have crafted your topic sentence, it’s time to elaborate on your main point. A well-developed body paragraph elaborates by delving deeper into the main point and substantiating with relevant examples or evidence.

For our point on “education”, consider asking and answering the following questions:

• Education imparts knowledge and skills to girls, which then grants more employment opportunities. In turn, they break free from the poverty cycle.
• Don’t stop here! Make sure to link back to the idea of “making the world a better place”.
• This means lower poverty rates in the world and society also benefits from the contributions that the girls go on to make in the workforce.

Important Reminders:

a. Your essay  must not be example-driven ! It must always be point-driven. 

b. Remember to make the link from your examples/ evidence back to your topic sentence. This illustrates the relevance and strength of your evidence and reinforces your main point. 

For our example, a coherent body paragraph could look like this: 

8. How to Write a Conclusion for a Discursive Essay?

Many students just reiterate the points in conclusion. But that is… you guessed it, boring. Last impression lasts!   You want to provide an insight to this issue to demonstrate your maturity of thought. Apart from summarising your points, link your conclusion back to the introduction so that your essay comes a full circle. You can also use a quote or thought-provoking question for readers to make their own conclusion.

Students, this is how you tackle a discursive essay. Try applying these tips to one of the topics above!

Visit other related articles on Writing Samurai:

How to write argumentative essays.

• 7 Exam-Smart Tips For Language Editing
• 9 Tips for English Summary Writing
• Practice Past Years O-Level English Essay Questions
• Exam Smart Tips for Secondary English Paper 1 and Paper 2

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• Published: 28 October 2021

Discursive structures and power relations in Covid-19 knowledge production

• Mario Bisiada   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3145-1512 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  8 , Article number:  248 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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• Cultural and media studies
• Language and linguistics

This article critically examines the discourse around the Covid-19 pandemic to investigate the widespread polarisation evident in social media debates. The model of epidemic psychology holds that initial adverse reactions to a new disease spread through linguistic interaction. The main argument is that the mediation of the pandemic through social media has fomented the effects of epidemic psychology in the reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic by providing continued access to commentary and linguistic interaction. This social interaction in the absence of any knowledge on the new disease can be seen as a discourse of knowledge production, conducted largely on social media. This view, coupled with a critical approach to the power relations inherent in all processes of knowledge production, provides an approach to understanding the dynamics of polarisation, which is, arguably, issue-related and not along common ideological lines of left and right. The paper critiques two discursive structures of exclusion, the terms science and conspiracy theory , which have characterised the knowledge production discourse of the Covid-19 pandemic on social media. As strategies of dialogic contraction, they are based on a hegemonic view of knowledge production and on the simplistic assumption of an emancipated position outside ideology. Such an approach, though well-intentioned, may ultimately undermine social movements of knowledge production and thus threaten the very values it aims to protect. Instead, the paper proposes a Foucauldian approach that problematises truth claims and scientificity as always ideological and that is aware of power as inherent to all knowledge production.

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The first truly global, digitally mediated event

The Covid-19 pandemic is the first truly global event:

Not the Black Plague, not the transatlantic slave trade nor the two World Wars, not the 9/11 terrorist attacks have affected everyone, on every continent, as instantly and intimately and acutely as the spread of coronavirus, uniting us as we fear and think and hope about the same thing. (Badhken, 2020 )

While other events of historical magnitude had a global impact, they “were not experienced by the entire world at the same time” (Milanović, 2020 )—though this experience takes a different form for each of us, in terms of both our personal reaction and that of the country we live in. What unites these personal experiences is that they have been largely digital because, apart from being the first truly global event, it is also “the first epidemic in history in which people around the world have been collectively expressing their thoughts and concerns on social media” (Aiello et al., 2021 , p. 1). So our first global event is also the one “where we never met face-to-face in real-time with other people who lived through it” (Milanović, 2020 ).

Social media turned into the prime channel of the public sphere in quarantined societies, and a rigid and noxious polarisation evidently dominates the discourse (European Court of Human Rights, 2021 ; Yang, 2021 ). The question of why a crisis that should unite us in our communal struggle against a virus has produced such a divided society has put the spotlight on social media, which are still commonly assumed to be geared to create polarisation. The banning of @realdonaldtrump from Twitter may be read by future media scholars as to the beginning of an era of control of social media, as the end of Silicon Valley companies’ innocence as mediators of discourse. Since the global communities’ engagement in a fight against information disorder may produce other bans and regulations of free speech on public networks, the discussion of the role of social media as a public sphere will take important turns in the coming years.

In Rosenberg’s ( 1989 , p. 2) terms, as particular societies construct their characteristic responses following dramaturgic forms, epidemics are extraordinary opportunities to gain an “understanding of the relationship among ideology, social structure, and the construction of particular selves”. To understand “our contemporary reaction to a traditional stimulus”, we must distinguish between what is unique and what seems to be universal to pandemic responses (Rosenberg, 1989 , p. 2). This article tries to take the first step towards this goal through a critical approach to the discourse on the Covid-19 pandemic. An aspect unique to this pandemic is that it has been mediated primarily by social media. How this has shaped the response will be subject to extensive study in years to come, and the large amount of language data this has produced will be of great interest to social media discourse analysts. I propose that the mediating role of social media has provided the opportunity to approach the pandemic through the mode of knowledge production practice that is already exhibited by social movements. Contests over this knowledge production, however, led to a polarisation that cannot be explained comprehensively by common partisan affiliations but that should be understood to be interpretative, that is, predominantly issue-related. I argue that this polarisation has caused, and is caused by, among other things, discursive structures of exclusion, specifically through the hegemonic use of terms such as conspiracy theories and science . The following section will begin this argument by introducing the model of epidemic psychology that I adopt to understand our reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Epidemic psychology and the virtual public sphere

Strong ( 1990 ) proposes the “epidemic psychology” model to describe the early reaction to new fatal diseases. He comments on the “striking problems that large, fatal epidemics seem to present to social order; on the waves of fear, panic, stigma, moralising, and calls to action that seem to characterise the immediate reaction” and the “extraordinary emotional maelstrom which seems, at least for a time, to be beyond anyone’s immediate control” (Strong, 1990 , p. 249), descriptions that fit our experience in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic quite well. Strong sees the capacity of language to enable coordinated action among large groups of people, our “shared intentionality” (Tomasello, 2008 , p. 343), as the key factor in epidemic psychology, making human societies “complex and, though elaborately organised, still potentially subject to fundamental change, simultaneously massively ordered and extraordinarily fragile” (Strong, 1990 , p. 256).

Most social action is based on routine: Strong ( 1990 , p. 257) cites Alfred Schütz’s idea that everyday life is “a matter neither of rationality nor irrationality, but of routine”. Similarly, Berger and Luckmann ( 1966 , p. 172) have argued that “the most important vehicle of reality-maintenance is casual conversation”, which “can afford to be casual precisely because it refers to the routines of a taken-for-granted world. The loss of casualness signals a break in the routines and, at least potentially, a threat to the taken-for-granted reality” (Berger and Luckmann, 1966 , p. 172). Such a threat to routine can lead to “epidemic psychology in which contagious waves of panic rip unpredictably through both individuals and the body politic, disrupting all manner of everyday practices, undermining faith in conventional authority” (Strong, 1990 , p. 257). In sum,

the human origin of epidemic psychology lies not so much in our unruly passions as in the threat of epidemic disease to our everyday assumptions, in the potential fragility of human social structure and interaction, and in the huge diversity and elaboration of human thought, morality and technology; based as all of these are upon words rather than genes. (Strong, 1990 , p. 258).

With language at the heart of epidemic psychology, the threshold at which epidemic psychology sets in may be lower in the digital age due to greater connectedness and thus exposure to language and conversation. The study of language use on social media is thus fundamental to understanding the social processes and transformations that will result from the Covid-19 pandemic. The Internet and social media are by now fundamentally important for all types of linguistic acts including casual conversation and coordinated social action. We produce and receive more language on a daily basis than ever (McCullock, 2019 , p. 2). In Foucauldian terms, social media provides the environment of commentary that keep alive a large amount of discourses which would otherwise disappear (Foucault, 1981 , pp. 56–57), thus creating the impression that particular knowledges are established. If we consider social media “important engines of context collapse, rather than enablers of ideological segregation” (Bruns, 2019 , p. 99), it should come as no surprise that the symptoms of epidemic psychology described by Strong ( 1990 ) set in so quickly and transversally in our societies (see, e.g. Esses and Hamilton, 2021 ; Aiello et al., 2021 ).

Social media use has increased vastly during the Covid-19 pandemic (Nguyen et al., 2020 ), and it is the connectedness through social media that makes this pandemic unlike any other (Aiello et al., 2021 ; Madrigal, 2020 ; Tsao et al., 2021 ). The possibility to experience it in a socially distanced way is afforded to us only by our digitalised world. As Harari ( 2021 ) observes, “[i]n 1918, […] if you ordered the entire population of a country to stay at home for several weeks, it would have resulted in economic ruin, social breakdown and mass starvation. In contrast, in 2020, […] automation and the Internet made extended lockdowns viable, at least in developed countries”. How viable they are in terms of long-term effects remains to be seen, and, as Harari ( 2021 ) rightfully notes, even this digital world could not function without “the crucial role that many low-paid professions play in maintaining human civilisation: nurses, sanitation workers, truck drivers, cashiers, delivery people”. Given this fundamental importance of digital access, the #StayHome narratives of lockdown life have been particularly developed-world, digitalised, middle class, childless narratives. But the key point is that “after 2020, we know that life can go on even when an entire country is in physical lockdown” (Harari, 2021 ).

How will this new importance of social media affect society? Whether virtual public spaces also constitute a virtual public sphere has long been discussed (for an overview, see Bruns and Highfield, 2016 ). While using social media empowers users by broadcasting their opinions more widely, “the same anonymity and absence of face-to-face interaction that expands our freedom of expression online keeps us from assessing the impact and social value of our words” (Papacharissi, 2002 , p. 16). In fact, this sense of empowerment may misrepresent the true impact of our opinions (Papacharissi, 2002 , p. 17) and also of those held by others: Because a few vocal users can create a lot of activity, browsing social media may give us a distorted view of society, making it appear more polarised than it actually is.

A case in point is the (now deleted) Twitter thread that made Eric Feigl-Ding famous: He summarised a paper about the new coronavirus with the words “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD—the new coronavirus is a 3.8!!!” and called this infectiousness “thermonuclear pandemic level bad” (24 January 2020). In a response thread on Twitter, science writer Ferris Jabr shows that Feigl-Ding’s thread “missed essential context and contains numerous errors” and argues that his “claim that ‘we are now faced with the most virulent virus epidemic the world has ever seen’ and that the new coronavirus is 8x as infectious as SARS is completely untrue” ( https://twitter.com/ferrisjabr/status/1220963553911271424 ). Feigl-Ding’s viral thread thus

exemplified a deep problem on Twitter: The most extreme statements can be far more amplified than more measured messages. In the information sphere, while public-health researchers are doing their best to distribute scientific evidence, viral Twitter threads, context-free videos, and even conspiracy theories are reaching far more people. (Madrigal, 2020 )

Some argue, however, that it’s exactly this recognition of constant evolution that should inform modern science, that Feigl-Ding has just understood how social media work and “committed the unpardonable sin of failing to act on Twitter like enough of a scientist—you know, terrified of getting something wrong, because science never does ” (Science+Story, 2020 ). As social media come under increasing pressure through debates over misinformation, one task the pandemic sets us is to work towards a virtual public sphere that goes beyond the imagined communities (Anderson, 1983 ) or virtual spheres “consist[ing] of several spheres of counterpublics that have been excluded from mainstream political discourse, yet employ virtual communication to restructure the mainstream that ousted them” (Papacharissi, 2002 , p. 21).

Most theorisations on the virtual public sphere consider it in conjunction with the non-virtual sphere. The new situation we face now is the temporary quasi-disappearance of physical interactions. As I have argued in this section, while epidemic psychology had been constrained in previous pandemics by the sheer absence of contact, it is now able to continue unchecked, simply because a lockdown no longer keeps us from conversing with the world. The public sphere has been forcibly moved into the virtual space, for a short yet decisive amount of time: Public shaming of “irresponsible” people, insults (“Covidiot”), dubious model predictions and all the other effects of epidemic psychology could be observed. This, as I argue in the following section, has made the Covid-19 pandemic a phenomenon of communal knowledge production practice.

The Covid-19 pandemic as process of knowledge production

The Covid-19 pandemic is a unique phenomenon of knowledge production practice in the history of humanity because the phenomena of epidemic psychology described by Strong ( 1990 ) are for the first time mediated by a global network, that is, social media. The knowledge production in the Covid-19 pandemic resembles, in an accelerated form, that of climate change. Our first global event also gave us the opportunity to learn together, in real time, across the globe. Social media turn not only politics from a closed space into “a conversation that can be joined by outsiders” (Ausserhofer and Maireder, 2013 , p. 306), but also science, by way of knowledge production practices. There has long been a discussion in the philosophy of science on how knowledge gets subsumed into “scientism”, defined as “the conviction that we can no longer understand science as one form of possible knowledge, but rather must identify knowledge with science” (Habermas, 1972 , p. 4). The Covid-19 pandemic has placed science along with its hegemonies in the spotlight of society, and it is thus informative to reflect on the relation between science and knowledge.

As a response to public fear, the Covid-19 pandemic has followed the model of epidemic psychology in generating an “exceptionally volatile intellectual state” (Strong, 1990 , p. 254), as little is known about the new disease (Davey Smith et al., 2020 ) and there was uncertainty about whether “a new disease or a new outbreak is trivial or whether it is really something enormously important”, leading to “collective disorientation” (Strong, 1990 , p. 254). This volatile intellectual state and disorientation have created discourses of knowledge production (Casas-Cortés et al., 2008 ; Della Porta and Pavan, 2017 ; Pavan and Felicetti, 2019 ), defined as “practices through which local and highly personal experiences, rationalities, and competences get connected and coordinated within shared cognitive systems which, in turn, provide movements and their supporters with a common orientation for making claims and acting collectively” (Pavan and Felicetti, 2019 , p. 3).

Such practices create what Foucault ( 1980 ) calls local, subjugated knowledges, defined as an “autonomous, non-centralised kind of theoretical production, one that is to say whose validity is not dependent on the approval of the established regimes of thought” (Foucault, 1980 , p. 81). While such theoretical production consists of “local, discontinuous, disqualified, illegitimate knowledges”, it does not constitute a right to ignorance or non-knowledge: it is opposed “not to the contents, methods or concepts of a science, but to the effects of the centralising powers which are linked to the institution and functioning of an organised scientific discourse” (Foucault, 1980 , p. 84). More recently, Fischer ( 2000 ) has shown how local contextual knowledge by citizens can help solve complex social and environmental problems. One example of these from the current pandemic are mutual aid groups (Engler, 2020 ; Mahanty and Phillipps, 2020 ; Sitrin and Colectiva Sembrar, 2020 ). However, the often centralising, heavy-handed or even authoritarian responses of governments, coupled with blanket policies that reflected little trust in the intelligence or autonomy of its citizens, hindered such knowledge production movements. Citizens were delegated to a passive role while a selected group of experts led the response, which mirrors the dynamics experienced by environmental movements (Fischer, 2000 , pp. 92–93).

A ready response to this volatile intellectual state tends to be that educated citizens should trust in science and condemn those who believe conspiracy theories, who spread fake news, who usher in an era of post-truth. Such a response, however, is often undergirded by a simplistic understanding of ideology, by the idea that we can and must somehow combat ideology and promote scientific truth through critical scrutiny of language and discourse in the media. Foucault criticised the usefulness of the notion of ideology for the fact that it “always stands in virtual opposition to something else which is supposed to count as truth” (Foucault, 1980 , p. 180). Rather than exploring a knowable reality, scientific enquiry has been described as constructive practice, that is, “oriented toward ‘making things work’ successfully and embedded in a reality which is highly artificial and essentially self-created” (Knorr-Cetina, 1977 , p. 670). In other words, assuming some kind of “false consciousness” within ideology presupposes the existence of a “consciousness which is not false (the position of critique)” (Mills, 2004 , p. 29), but such a position does not exist: “All knowledge is determined by a combination of social, institutional and discursive pressures” (Mills, 2004 , p. 30).

The dominating theoretical approaches to critical discourse studies hold that, through an awareness of linguistic/ideological oppression based on neo-Marxist or rationalist analysis, people are empowered to bring about social change and thus achieve emancipation (Hart and Cap, 2014 , p. 2). While this is a useful approach to studying language and social change, Pennycook ( 2001 , pp. 36–41) criticises such “emancipatory modernist” approaches as potentially patronising and argues that they lack the means to respond to the awareness of ideological oppression. Emancipatory modernist approaches to discourse are often grounded in a simplistic view of ideology juxtaposed with some “knowable reality” and hold the problematic notion that “scientific knowledge of reality can help us escape from the falsity of ideology” (Pennycook, 2001 , p. 41), a rationale that is itself often used by populist agitators (Bruns, 2019 , p. 114). Messianic attempts to help people see the light often fail, overlooking that many discourse practices aim to “explore others’ reaction to one’s identity and have it confirmed in interactions, including hostile reactions that confirm one’s status as a critical outsider” (Krämer, 2017 , p. 1302), thus cementing the very status one seeks to challenge into an emancipated position of its own. When studying epidemic psychology and the uncertain intellectual state it produces, it is thus more important than ever to remember that all language is political (Gee, 2011 , p. 10), all knowledge production is ideological and there is no truth or knowledge outside ideology (Pennycook, 2001 , p. 89).

As is the case with climate action, science’s indeterminacy, its raising more questions than it could answer, has led to its politicisation (Fischer, 2000 , p. 95). My argument in this section has been that, in the volatile intellectual state the Covid-19 pandemic has caused, the hegemonies of knowledge production, while always existing below the surface, have been made exceptionally visible. The restlessness of hypermediativity, fuelled by a constant generation and availability of data, allowed everyone to conduct “fact-based” statistical analyses and share them, around the clock. The fast exchange through social media and the way it empowers users to broadcast opinions and knowledge to wide audiences have caused a politicisation and polarisation of scientific debates (Clarke, 2020 ; Bhopal and Munro, 2021 ). In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic as a process of knowledge production, it is necessary to differentiate the concept of polarisation a bit further, as I will do in the next section.

Interpretative polarisation

In this paper, I understand polarisation as a dynamic phenomenon, driven by “interpretative” polarisation, “the process wherein different groups in a society contextualise a common topic in starkly different ways” so that “frames used by one camp are deemed unfounded, inappropriate, or illegitimate by other camps” (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2020 , p. 2). Social media are so rooted in our daily lives that they receive attention from a range of disciplines, and many commentators still purport that social media “foster extreme viewpoints by design” (Bhopal and Munro, 2021 ) and are thus inherently geared to produce polarisation.

A range of evidence argues against this deterministic view, however. In a review of a range of studies, Tucker et al. ( 2018 , pp. 15–16) argue that “[t]he consumption of political information through social media increases cross-cutting exposure, which has a range of positive effects on civic engagement, political moderation, and the quality of democratic politics, but also facilitates the spread of misinformation”. Bruns ( 2019 ) has cast doubt on Pariser’s ( 2011 ) concept of the “filter bubble”, and the popular idea that social bots on Twitter “pretend to be a human user and [are] operated by some sinister actor to manipulate public opinion” seems unfounded according to recent research (Gallwitz and Kreil, 2021 ). Frequent use of ever more available social media diversifies individuals’ networks, which may alleviate concerns about echo chambers on social media (Lee et al., 2014 ), though may not necessarily “create more informed citizens” (Papacharissi, 2002 , p. 15), or a public sphere as such: While social media use “may reduce ideological polarisation as a result of leading to higher cross-cutting exposure, it may simultaneously increase affective polarisation because of the negative nature of these interactions” (Tucker et al., 2018 , p. 21), of which the Covid-19 pandemic has provided many.

In the absence of knowledge on the disease, the reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic subverted the established ideological standpoints. The range of ideological persuasions observed at anti-lockdown protests and the fact that liberal thinkers argue for closed borders while conservative thinkers question night-time curfews and police presence shows that the conflict cannot be thought along the usual partisan lines. Research on polarisation has argued for the recognition of various dimensions of opinion polarisation: Where new issues arise, people are prepared to deviate from their regular partisan or ideological direction (Wojcieszak and Rojas, 2011 ). Studies suggest that partisan/ideological affiliation is not as directly influenced by knowledge as issue-related opinions:

[K]nowledge is found to predict the variance of two issue-related measures of polarisation, whereas there is no such association between knowledge and partisan/ideological polarisation. This is consistent with previous research that the more knowledgeable are likely to move to more extreme issue positions by counter arguing claims incompatible with their political predisposition. (Lee et al., 2014 , pp. 716–717)

People evaluate objects that they encounter frequently along different lines to rare but impactful objects: differing findings for party/ideology and issue-related polarisation suggest that the underlying mechanism of partisan and ideological polarisation is distinct from that of issue-related processes (Tucker et al., 2018 , pp. 40–48). This recognition shows that studies or surveys linking attitudes towards the Covid-19 pandemic to partisan affiliations are not entirely informative.

In a study of how citizens evaluate arguments about contested issues, Taber and Lodge ( 2006 ) find that prior attitudes decisively guide how new information is processed:

Far from the rational calculator portrayed in enlightenment prose and spatial equations, homo politicus would seem to be a creature of simple likes and prejudices that are quite resistant to change. […] Skepticism is valuable and attitudes should have inertia. But skepticism becomes bias when it becomes unreasonably resistant to change and especially when it leads one to avoid information as with the confirmation bias. (Taber and Lodge, 2006 , pp. 767–768)

The “boundary line between rational skepticism and irrational bias” (Taber and Lodge, 2006 , p. 768) is a key issue in discussions about the Covid-19 pandemic, and one that can perhaps not be established in a normative way.

To address the question of why a newly arisen issue that could not be addressed by existing political schemes has polarised society so quickly, we may argue, then, that different contextualisations of the same issue have produced different evaluations in people (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2020 ). While people can generally process multiple frames and evaluate different angles, this ability may be hampered where “competing groups rely exclusively on contrasting frames and reject (or are unaware of) those frames underlying divergent preferences”, which may lead to “contrasting interpretations that sustain irreconcilable positions”. It is this configuration that, I argue, leads to interpretative polarisation, which may make “meaningful conversation between groups almost impossible” (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2020 , p. 2) and reinforce political polarisation.

Examples of such contrasting interpretations abound. The term lockdown has had differing definitions in each country, which led to shadings such as hard/soft lockdown . The term new normal was perhaps meant to anchor hygiene measures in people’s thoughts, but is seen by many as an attempt to normalise draconian restrictions and situations that are clearly anything but normal. The dichotomy of health vs economy is another example of how the same issue can be presented in different lights, depending on the angle one takes.

Interpretative polarisation can explain why partisan analysis does not apply to the Covid-19 pandemic as an extraordinary phenomenon whose epidemic psychology, as I have argued so far, made necessary new reflections, a process of knowledge production. The Covid-19 pandemic challenges existing ideological boundaries, so an analysis of its discourse requires an approach that goes beyond seeing ideology as a given structural object and instead analyses hegemonies and power struggles inherent in all discourses of knowledge production.

Discursive structures of exclusion

Exclusion through dialogic contraction.

An oft-repeated charge in debates on the Covid-19 pandemic is that particular voices or opinions have been ignored or excluded from the debate, that particular things cannot be said. This is then countered by the reminder that there is free speech, that anyone can publish anything after all. Both positions forget that discourses are generally considered to be “principally organised around practices of exclusion” (Mills, 2004 , p. 11): Any notion of what seems natural to say or what seems unsayable is the result of such exclusion practices, of “battles ‘for truth’” where, in the words of Foucault, “by truth I do not mean ‘the ensemble of truths which are to be discovered and accepted’, but rather ‘the ensemble of rules according to which the true and the false are separated and specific effects of power attached to the true’” (Foucault, 1980 , p. 132).

Foucault ( 1981 , pp. 52–54) proposes three procedures of exclusion: prohibition, the division of reason/madness and the opposition between true/false (the “will to truth”). The argument that nobody is excluded because everyone is free to publish anything misunderstands practices of discursive exclusion by reducing them to the first of those principles (prohibition) while ignoring the existence of the other two. Based on Bakhtin’s concept of “centripetal-centrifugal struggle”, Baxter ( 2011 ) argues that, as it is “difficult to presume that all discourses are equal in the play for meaning, […] competing discourses are not equally legitimated. Some are centred (the centripetal) and others are marginalised (centrifugal). In the instance of monologue, all but a single totalising discourse is erased” (Baxter, 2011 , p. 14). Thus, the struggles of exclusion are regular phenomena of hegemony in discourse, made visible through the extraordinary process of knowledge generation. The fact that free speech is constrained and certain things become dominant in discourses while others become unsayable is a product of competing power relations in a discourse (see Mills, 2004 , p. 64). These power relations, as usual in Foucauldian thought, are not inherently negative or positive, but potentially dangerous if not questioned, which is the aim of this section.

In what follows, I investigate two discursive structures of exclusion via dialogic contraction that originate in the emancipatory modernist approach to ideology in discourse identified above: First, the reference to an abstract authority ( the science ) and second, accusations of conspiracy theories . I understand dialogic contraction with reference to Bakhtinian dialogism (for an introduction, see Robinson, 2011 ) as used in various theories of discourse analysis such as Appraisal Theory (Martin and White, 2005 ) and Relational Dialectics Theory. In the latter, discourses (defined roughly as systems of meaning or “voices”) compete in discursive struggle, on a cline between monologic and idealised dialogic (Baxter, 2011 ). While in idealised dialogism all discourses are given equal weight, monologism consists of “a discursive playing field so unequal that all but one monologic, authoritative discourse is silenced” (Baxter, 2011 , p. 9). This model is useful for analysing the discourse on the Covid-19 pandemic because it reflects the accusation that the public debate has increasingly become monologic, with the authoritative discourse of the respective political leaders and their close circles of experts in the dominant position.

One of the first demands on social media at the beginning of the pandemic was that people should be quiet and “let experts talk”. These calls were meant to reduce noise in the discourse, a defence mechanism to the heated reactions in the networks, in line with early reactions of epidemic psychology. They were initial reactionary attempts to exclude voices from commenting on what was from the beginning a complex social crisis that concerns everyone. Attempts to restrict the discourse to “experts” only later crystallised into the two frequent formulas that we should follow the science and that we must combat conspiracy theories .

This simplistic binary choice juxtaposing the science/experts/evidence with conspiracy theories/fake news is at the heart of the dialogic contraction in the Covid-19 pandemic. It makes it seem as though the only available positions are either to believe Covid-19 to be a global threat that eclipses all other threats or to deny its existence altogether, thus mirroring labellings used in the climate debate, which “isolate, exclude, ignore, and dismiss claim-makers of all types from constructive dialogue” (Howarth and Sharman, 2015 , p. 239).

These strategies of dialogic contraction work by appealing to taken-for-granted truths (science is good, populism is bad) and to an imagined neutral position outside ideology, power and discourse. This position is workable in routine debates, where challenges are either confined to academic circles or addressed by societies’ “general politics of truth” (Foucault, 1980 , p. 131). In an epistemologically disruptive event such as the Covid-19 pandemic, however, as I argue in this article, the role of science in the public enters the spotlight, epistemic psychology challenges our established routines, and discursive structures of dialogic contraction towards a monologic extreme rapidly translate into social polarisation.

Critical approaches to discourse that are conscious of and able to consider power relations as they emerge from discursive practice thus seem better suited to study our present situation. To study language with the aim of explaining power rather than just reveal it, we must show how power operates in discourses rather than how it is held by particular, pre-categorised actors or institutions (Pennycook, 2001 , p. 93). As Katsambekis and Stavrakakis ( 2020 ) argue:

In many cases, understanding the policies of certain actors through the lens of ‘populism’ […] and the vague notion of a ‘populist threat to democracy’, often adopted in typical anti-populist discourses, seems to be diverting attention from other imminent dangers to democracy, most importantly: nativism, nationalism, authoritarianism, racism. (Katsambekis and Stavrakakis, 2020 , p. 7)

Having established discursive structures of exclusion as inherent to all discourse, I now discuss two strategies of dialogic contraction that I consider to be fundamental to the polarisation that we have seen in this pandemic and that let us answer why a global health crisis and the knowledge production that ensued, where we are all on the same side, has become such a polarising topic.

The science as legitimating authority

A central claim made by most leaders throughout the Covid-19 pandemic has been that they “follow the science” (Pérez-González, 2020b ; Stevens, 2020 ; Pierce, 2021 ). In his first prime-time address to the nation on 11 March, Joe Biden said, “we know what we need to do to beat this virus. Tell the truth. Follow the scientists and the science”. What is unclear about such statements is what exactly “the science” refers to. Sweden, under Anders Tegnell’s advice, also “follows the science”, and the rate of agreement of the Swedish scientific community, when asked whether scientific advice had been taken into account, does not differ from that reported for other countries (Rijs and Fenter, 2020 ). Yet the Swedish approach, generally described as at best “unorthodox”, differs radically to that of many other countries, and mentioning “Sweden” in a current social network discussion is a safe way of being delegitimised as a reasonable discourse actor (Torjesen, 2021 ).

This suggests that the reductive notion of the science , like the similar formula the evidence (see Furedi, 2020 ), is defined based on particular principles of authority, established, though not overtly specified, by dominant discourse actors. It disclaims the multivoicedness, interdisciplinarity and plurality of processes of knowledge production (Knorr-Cetina, 1999 ) and serves as a discursive strategy of dialogic contraction, an expression of discursive hegemony: “The debate becomes polarised and binary: if the science says yes to face coverings, then challenging the orthodoxy or even questioning its universality becomes heretical” (Martin et al., 2020 , p. 506).

Taylor ( 2010 ) conducts a corpus-assisted study of the use of the term the science in UK press articles between 1993 and 2008. Referring to Aristotle’s model of rhetoric and argumentation, she argues that science , instead of being used as part of logos, providing logical proof, “is increasingly used as a part of ethos, that is, persuasion at the interpersonal level”, projecting a particular stance towards the audience and appealing to an unspecified or unexplained authority, “making the writer’s personal character appear more credible by enroling ‘science’ on their side of an argument” (Taylor, 2010 , p. 222). This is especially the case where authors “refer to some unspecified, autonomous, authoritative entity” such as the science (Taylor, 2010 , p. 236). These findings are echoed by Pérez-González’s ( 2020a , p. 13) study of a corpus of a wide range of climate change blogs, where bloggers attempt to construct authoritative voices of consensus by using the the science formula.

While scientific discourse in general is rarely characterised by consensus, it is much less so in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. A review of studies shows that a lot of research on the issue has been biased or of low quality (Raynaud et al., 2021 ). Critiques of bias in the acceptation and rejection of evidence have long existed (Stevens, 2007 ) and are echoed in a cross-country report on populism in the Covid-19 pandemic:

“Experts” are not neutral actors that will save liberal democracy from “bad populists”. […] [T]he pandemic has rather revealed the deeply political character of scientific input in critical junctures as well as the very political agency of experts themselves. […] It becomes apparent then that exactly as populists do not form a coherent bloc in the pandemic, experts too cannot be treated as a unified front, thus the dichotomy “ experts vs populists” is exposed as fundamentally flawed once more in the context of the ongoing crisis. (Katsambekis and Stavrakakis, 2020 , pp. 7–8)

Many righteous approaches to the Covid-19 pandemic, but also to the climate emergency, succeed in identifying ideologically motivated harmful practices, but succumb to the emancipatory modernist lack of self-reflexivity on whether its messages, which are meant to convince the targeted audience, do not just patronise it, as discussed above. Populists will respond to this not by accepting that they are wrong, but by rejecting the entire frame of knowledge: “We’ll probably also start to hear calls for climate lockdowns. I know, right now that sounds completely preposterous, but don’t these kooky ideas always find a way to bleed into the mainstream? […] Don’t worry though, they’re just following the science ” (Miller, 2021 ).

It is understandable to want to reinforce a society that bases its actions on informed opinion, especially in the age of Trumpism. However, it is the very reductionism of an approach that makes an unspecified truth-claim to the science and disqualifies everything else as unreasonable that allows populist actors like Trump to gain power by turning the same simple strategy on its head. The postmodernist challenges of a simplified, messianic notion of the science remain valid. The formula represents a simplistic and hegemonic view of what “science” is and threatens to turn it into a buzzword of discursive exclusion and disciplining, undermining equal engagement in knowledge production.

Conspiracy theory as a sanctioning device

The second structure of exclusion I discuss is the term conspiracy theory . Husting and Orr ( 2007 ) critique this term as a metadiscursive “vocabulary of motive in struggles over the meaning of social and political worlds, events, and ideas” ( 2007 , p. 132). In simple terms, its use signifies a discursive move of “going meta”, that is, “elect[ing] to step back from the immediacy of a question to question the questioner’s motives, or tone, or premises, or right to ask certain questions, or right to ask any questions at all” (Simons, 1994 , p. 470). Invoking the label conspiracy theory thus has the function of “shifting the focus of discourse to reframe another’s claims as unwarranted or unworthy of full consideration” (Husting and Orr, 2007 , p. 129). While research has put into question whether applying the label has any negative effect on the targeted actor’s beliefs (Wood, 2016 ), the accusation of conspiracy theory seeks to discursively expel actors from the community of reasonable interlocutors, thus “protecting certain decisions and people from question in arenas of political, cultural, and scholarly knowledge construction” (Husting and Orr, 2007 , p. 130) by reverting the focus of attention onto the questioner.

This discursive structure is often used in “cultures of fear” that “generate new mechanisms of social control” (Husting and Orr, 2007 , p. 128). Considering that many European countries are still in constant alert mode from terrorism, the description of such a culture fits the past year quite well:

fear and threat become the means for media, politicians, and corporations to sell commodities, buy votes, and justify policies reducing civil rights and promoting war (Altheide, 2000 ). As a mythos of consensus has turned into a mythos of fear, we would expect to find new interactional mechanisms to shield authority and legitimacy from challenge or accountability. (Husting and Orr, 2007 , p. 130)

More recently, Husting ( 2018 ) identifies two problems with current academic and journalist discourse around conspiracy. First, a cognitive approach, which “attempts to diagnose traits like character and intelligence, intent on identifying hidden, usually individualised causes of constructing, believing in, and circulating conspiracy theories” (Husting, 2018 , p. 111). By psychologising the subjects of its analysis in this way, “it misses the political work done by the labels themselves” and overstates their coherence to argue for their danger to society (Husting, 2018 , p. 112). Husting argues that this cognitive analysis expresses a neoliberal responsibilisation of the individual in various ways to “follow expert advice to optimise well-being and health of body, mind, and polis” (Husting, 2018 , p. 113). As citizens, we “regulate ourselves by regulating, judging, and contemning others, and keeping our own thoughts and styles of reason and emotion clear” (Husting, 2018 , p. 123). The disputes over truth, falsity and conspiracy theories thus “serve to construct, circulate, and enact a ‘well-tempered’ citizen in liberal politics” (Husting, 2018 , p. 113).

The second problem Husting ( 2018 ) identifies with current conspiracy theory discourse is its affective register. According to dominant analyses, conspiracy theorists “step out of the sphere of reason and logic, and enter the terrain of the emotional and the psychotic” (Husting, 2018 , p. 117). Yet conspiracy discourse is itself “a form of emotional and political engagement driven by contempt and laced with anger and fear” by policing the boundaries of reasonable political doubt and theorising an “uncorrupted democratic sphere” (Husting, 2018 , p. 117) outside ideology. By constructing conspiracy theories as threats to the order of the state and to the uncorrupted citizen, conspiracy theory discourse falls victim to the same pseudo-messianic discursive approach it seeks to unravel.

In a study of Wikipedia edits of the article on the German word for conspiracy theory, Verschwörungstheorie , Vogel ( 2018 ) argues that the term is not used with a descriptive, analytical function, but is part of an established metadiscursive accusatory, stigmatising and disciplinary pattern to sanction views from a position or epistemology outside the collectivism and the “sayable” in the ingroup, whose validity is assumed to be taken for granted (Vogel, 2018 , p. 281). As Husting ( 2018 , p. 120) says, “[o]nce the label ‘conspiracy theory’ sticks to someone, it impugns their intellectual and moral competence and relieves hearers of the need to consider the validity of her or his claims”. The use of the term, thus, lacks a problematisation of one’s own supposed neutrality. Its use is hegemonic, not analytical.

Vogel ( 2018 ) studies Wikipedia discourse specifically, but his observations are transferable to general social media discourse. And in the pandemic knowledge production, the epistemological conditions and power relations among participants within such knowledge production movements (Esteves, 2008 ) are comparable. Due to the shift of the public sphere into the digital as discussed above, most people will have experienced debates in online worlds along with everything this entails.

In a comprehensive survey of the usage of conspiracy theory , Butter ( 2018 ) writes that, while the Internet and social media have made conspiracy theories more visible and fast-moving, they are no more frequent or influential than they used to be because they are still regarded as “stigmatised knowledge”. In the wake of the current surge of populism combined with the fragmentation of society through the Internet, Butter ( 2018 , p. 18) argues, the fragmented public sphere and the different notions of truth condition the current debate in which some are afraid again of conspiracies while others are still worried about the fatal effects of conspiracy theories. The dialogic contraction we are arguably seeing can thus be traced to a particular constellation of fears for the public sphere combined with the fear of the pandemic.

In sum, value-laden terms such as conspiracy theory are attempts to exercise discursive power over others by excluding them from being reasonable participants in the debate, both in everyday interactions by users and in official government acts. Mechanisms that define limits of the sayable “weaken public spaces that are central for interaction, contest, and deliberation: the spaces where we define our world” (Husting and Orr, 2007 , p. 147).

In this section, I have discussed two structures of exclusion by dialogic contraction: the science and conspiracy theory . These are common terms in everyday discourse, but, as I have shown, their appropriateness for academic study and debate is questionable due to their hegemonic nature and unreflected reference to accepted and sanctioned knowledge. This is not to say, of course, that we should endorse conspiracy theories or reject science. The aim is rather to become aware of how all types of knowledge are related to power. I am not interested here in evaluating the veracity of particular discourses on the Covid-19 pandemic (cf. Husting and Orr, 2007 , p. 131), or even in whether conspiracy theories are dangerous or not, but in the mechanisms whereby one discourse becomes considered dominant and thus supported by financial and social capital whereas the other becomes confined to the margins of society (Mills, 2004 , p. 17).

In this paper, I have adopted the model of epidemic psychology, which functions fundamentally through linguistic interaction, and argued that social media use has fomented its effects in the reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic by providing sustained access to commentary and linguistic interaction. I have suggested that this social interaction in a context of a volatile intellectual state can be seen as a discourse of knowledge production, conducted largely on social media. This view, along with the power relations it implies, provides an approach to understanding the dynamics of polarisation as interpretative, outside established partisan lines. To understand the polarisation better, I have discussed two discursive structures of exclusion, the terms the science and conspiracy theory , which have characterised the knowledge production discourse of the Covid-19 pandemic on social media. I have argued that these are strategies of dialogic contraction which are based on a hegemonic view of knowledge and a simplistic view of ideology based in the emancipatory modernist view of language that represents the currently dominant form of discourse analysis.

With this line of argument, I have intended to make sense of the Covid-19 pandemic discourse and take a step towards understanding the polarisation in our societies. As I have argued, this polarisation is due to discourse practices and not attributable to social media technology. The Covid-19 pandemic has forced us to reflect on many things, not just ourselves, but also the way we study society and (means of) communication. A great amount of data is being collected (see, e.g. Chen et al., 2020 ) and many studies will investigate the role of language and social media in the social transformation we are going to see in the coming years. I hope that the literature review conducted in this article has contributed some reflections on pertinent concepts and possible methodologies, or at least heuristics, for these future studies to consider.

From the perspective of discourse studies, I have endorsed the practice of Critical Applied Linguistics (Pennycook, 2001 ), which identifies both strengths and weaknesses of current approaches to discourse and seeks to improve on them by a greater foundation in critical theory and by a series of paradigmatic characteristics to problematise practice. Arguments are to be sought in texts, not in author profiles, so constructing corpora of texts harvested in “conspiracy theory” or “anti-vaxxer” forums or that consist of “fake news” means starting from a value position, a truth claim that can only confirm ideologies we already look for, but hardly explain their working in society. As Butter and Knight ( 2016 , p. 23) argue, “the aim of producing empirical, value-neutral research on the phenomenon of ‘conspiracy theory’ is misguided, because the term itself is not value-neutral”.

Categories such as “class”, “gender”, but also “identity” are often assumed to “exist prior to language”, to be reflected in language use, when really they need to be explained themselves, with language being a part of this explanation (Cameron, 1995 , p. 15). Like other conflicts, the polarisation in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic has unveiled “the processes of norm-making and norm-breaking, bringing into the open the arguments that surround rules […] and how unquestioned (‘conventional’) ways of behaving are implicitly understood by social actors” (Cameron, 1995 , p. 17). It is this kind of processes that should be studied from a self-reflexive position that is aware of its own subjection to ideology and power relations.

A promising approach might be found in the Critical Disinformation Studies syllabus (Marwick et al., 2021 ), which argues, among other things, that fake news do not originate in extremism, but that “strategic disinformation and its cousin ‘propaganda’ are state and media industry practices with very long histories”, so instead of “plac[ing] the responsibility on individuals to become better consumers of media”, this approach seeks to “foreground questions of power, institutions, and economic, social, cultural, and technological structures as they shape disinformation”. Research shows that greater public awareness of how science communication works increases the acceptance of scientific findings regardless of partisan ideologies (Weisberg et al., 2021 ).

The process of knowledge production on social media I envision in this paper in many ways resembles what is taking place in climate action and environmentalism (Pérez-González, 2020a ). One might counter that the pandemic response cannot be called a social movement, but has been more of an emergency response to a problem that was always short-lived, and much more fast-paced than climate change, so is not perfectly comparable. But the knowledge production conducted on social media, and some of the movements born from this (see Sitrin and Colectiva Sembrar, 2020 ), provides a blueprint for environmentalism, a social movement that could benefit from the same kind of knowledge-practice. Some see the Covid-19 pandemic as a “test run” for the climate emergency, as there is hope “that the great mobilisations of state resources currently being unspooled to address Covid-19 prove the possibility of a comparable or greater mobilisation against ecological catastrophe” (Clover, 2021 , p. S28). Nevertheless, the climate emergency has only recently been labelled thus and its perceived and mediatised urgency does not match that of Covid-19, though of course its destructive potential is far greater. The debate on science and knowledge in our societies and the ways in which these discourses are structured and mediated in social networks are thus of prime importance.

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This work is part of the project Frames and narratives of translation and of migration in Europe , funded by the Spanish Ministry for Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU) and the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), with grant number PID2019-107971GA-I00.

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How to Write a Discursive Essay: Awesome Guide and Template

Interesting fact: Did you know that the term "discursive" is derived from the Latin word "discursus," which means to run about or to traverse? This reflects the nature of a discursive essay, as it involves exploring various perspectives, moving through different points of view, and presenting a comprehensive discussion on a given topic.

In this article, you will find out about a discursive essay definition, learn the difference between a discourse and an argumentative essay, gain practical how-to tips, and check out a discursive essay example.  

What Is a Discursive Essay

A discursive essay definition is a type of formal writing that presents a balanced analysis of a particular topic. Unlike an argumentative essay, which takes a firm stance on a single perspective and seeks to persuade the reader to adopt that viewpoint, a discursive essay explores multiple sides of an issue. 

The goal of a discursive essay is to provide a comprehensive overview of the subject, presenting different arguments, counterarguments, and perspectives in a structured and organized manner.

This type of essay encourages critical thinking and reasoned discourse. It typically includes an introduction that outlines the topic and sets the stage for the discussion, followed by a series of body paragraphs that delve into various aspects of the issue. The essay may also address counterarguments and opposing viewpoints. 

Finally, a discursive essay concludes by summarizing the key points and often leaves room for the reader to form their own informed opinion on the matter. This form of writing is commonly assigned in academic settings, allowing students to demonstrate their ability to analyze complex topics and present a well-reasoned exploration of diverse viewpoints. In case you find this type of composition too difficult, just say, ‘ write my paper ,’ and professional writers will take care of it. 

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Difference Between a Discursive Essay and an Argumentative

The main difference between discursive essays and argumentative lies in their overall purpose and approach to presenting information.

• Discursive: The primary purpose of a discursive essay is to explore and discuss various perspectives on a given topic. How to write a discursive essay is about providing a comprehensive overview of the subject matter by presenting different arguments, opinions, and viewpoints without necessarily advocating for a specific stance.
• Argumentative: In contrast, an argumentative essay is designed to persuade the reader to adopt a particular viewpoint or take a specific action. It presents a clear and focused argument in favor of the writer's position, often addressing and refuting opposing views.

Tone and Language:

• Discursive: The tone of a discursive essay is generally more balanced and objective. It allows for a more open exploration of ideas, and the language used is often neutral and formal.
• Argumentative: An argumentative essay tends to have a more assertive tone. The language is focused on presenting a compelling case from the writer's perspective, and there may be a sense of conviction in the presentation of evidence and reasoning.
• Discursive Essay: A discursive essay typically follows a more flexible structure. It may present multiple points of view in separate sections, allowing for a free-flowing exploration of the topic.
• Argumentative Essay: When learning how to write an argumentative essay, students usually follow a more rigid structure, with a clear introduction, thesis statement, body paragraphs that present evidence and arguments, and a conclusion that reinforces the writer's stance.

Conclusion:

• Discursive Essay: The conclusion of a discursive essay often summarizes the main points discussed and may leave room for the reader to form their own opinion on the matter.
• Argumentative Essay: The conclusion of an argumentative essay reinforces the writer's position and may include a call to action or a clear statement of the desired outcome.

While both types of essays involve critical thinking and analysis, the key distinction lies in their ultimate goals and how they approach the presentation of information. 

Types of Discursive Essay

Before writing a discursive essay, keep in mind that they can be categorized into different types based on their specific purposes and structures. Here are some common types of discursive essays:

Opinion Essays:

• Purpose: Expressing and supporting personal opinions on a given topic.
• Structure: The essay presents the writer's viewpoint and provides supporting evidence, examples, and arguments. It may also address counterarguments to strengthen the overall discussion.

Problem-Solution Essays:

• Purpose: Identifying a specific problem and proposing effective solutions.
• Structure: The essay introduces the problem, discusses its causes and effects, and presents possible solutions. It often concludes with a recommendation or call to action.

Compare and Contrast Essays:

• Purpose: Analyzing similarities and differences between two or more perspectives, ideas, or approaches.
• Structure: The essay outlines the key points of each perspective, highlighting similarities and differences. A balanced analysis is provided to give the reader a comprehensive understanding.

Cause and Effect Essays:

• Purpose: Exploring the causes and effects of a particular phenomenon or issue.
• Structure: The essay identifies the primary causes and examines their effects or vice versa. It may delve into the chain of events and their implications.

Argumentative Essays:

• Purpose: Presenting a strong argument in favor of a specific viewpoint.
• Structure: The essay establishes a clear thesis statement, provides evidence and reasoning to support the argument, and addresses opposing views. It aims to persuade the reader to adopt the writer's perspective.

Pro-Con Essays:

• Purpose: Evaluating the pros and cons of a given issue.
• Structure: The essay presents the positive aspects (pros) and negative aspects (cons) of the topic. It aims to provide a balanced assessment and may conclude with a recommendation or a summary of the most compelling points.

Exploratory Essays:

• Purpose: Investigating and discussing a topic without necessarily advocating for a specific position.
• Structure: The essay explores various aspects of the topic, presenting different perspectives and allowing the reader to form their own conclusions. It often reflects a process of inquiry and discovery.

These types of discursive essays offer different approaches to presenting information, and the choice of type depends on the specific goals of the essay and the preferences of the writer.

How to Write a Discursive Essay

Unlike other forms of essay writing, a discursive essay demands a unique set of skills, inviting writers to navigate through diverse perspectives, present contrasting viewpoints, and weave a tapestry of balanced arguments. 

You can order custom essay right now to save time to get ready to delve into the art of crafting a compelling discursive essay, unraveling the intricacies of structure, language, and critical analysis. Whether you're a seasoned essayist or a novice in the realm of formal writing, this exploration promises to equip you with the tools needed to articulate your thoughts effectively and engage your audience in thoughtful discourse. 

Discursive Essay Format

The format of a discursive essay plays a crucial role in ensuring a clear, well-organized, and persuasive presentation of multiple perspectives on a given topic. Here is a typical discursive essay structure:

1. Introduction:

• Hook: Begin with a captivating hook or attention-grabbing statement to engage the reader's interest.
• Contextualization: Provide a brief overview of the topic and its relevance, setting the stage for the discussion.
• Thesis Statement: Clearly state the main argument or the purpose of the essay. In a discursive essay, the thesis often reflects the idea that the essay will explore multiple viewpoints without necessarily taking a firm stance.

2. Body Paragraphs:

• Topic Sentences: Start each body paragraph with a clear topic sentence that introduces the main point or argument.
• Presentation of Arguments: Devote individual paragraphs to different aspects of the topic, presenting various arguments, perspectives, or evidence. Ensure a logical flow between paragraphs.
• Address Counterarguments: Acknowledge and address opposing viewpoints to strengthen the overall credibility of your essay.
• Supporting Evidence: Provide examples, statistics, quotations, or other forms of evidence to bolster each argument.

3. Transitions:

• Logical Transitions: Use transitional phrases and words to ensure a smooth and logical flow between paragraphs and ideas. This helps readers follow your line of reasoning.

4. Conclusion:

• Restate Thesis: Summarize the main argument or purpose of the essay without introducing new information.
• Brief Recap: Provide a concise recap of the key points discussed in the body paragraphs.
• Closing Thoughts: Offer some closing thoughts or reflections on the significance of the topic. You may also leave room for the reader to consider their own stance.

5. Language and Style:

• Formal Tone: Maintain a formal and objective tone throughout the essay.
• Clarity and Coherence: Ensure that your ideas are presented clearly and that there is coherence in your argumentation.
• Varied Sentence Structure: Use a variety of sentence structures to enhance readability and engagement.

6. References (if applicable):

• Citations: If you use external sources, cite them appropriately according to the citation style required (e.g., APA, MLA).

Remember, flexibility exists within this format, and the specifics may vary based on the assignment requirements or personal writing preferences. Tailor the structure to suit the demands of your discourse and the expectations of your audience.

Introduction

A discursive essay introduction serves as the gateway to a thought-provoking exploration of diverse perspectives on a given topic. Here's how to structure an effective discursive essay introduction:

• Begin with a compelling hook that captures the reader's attention. This could be a striking statistic, a thought-provoking quote, a relevant anecdote, or a rhetorical question. 
• Offer a brief context or background information about the topic. This helps orient the reader and sets the stage for the discussion to follow. 
• Clearly state the purpose of the essay. This often involves indicating that the essay will explore various perspectives on the topic without necessarily advocating for a specific stance. 
• Provide a brief overview of the different aspects or arguments that will be explored in the essay. 
• Conclude the introduction with a clear and concise thesis statement. 

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Writing a discursive essay involves crafting the body of your discursive essay. The number of paragraphs in the body should correspond to the arguments presented, with an additional paragraph dedicated to the opposing viewpoint if you choose to disclose both sides of the argument. If you opt for this approach, alternate the order of the body paragraphs—supporting arguments followed by counterarguments.

Each body paragraph in your discursive essay should focus on a distinct idea. Begin the paragraph with the main idea, provide a concise summary of the argument, and incorporate supporting evidence from reputable sources.

In the concluding paragraph of the body, present potential opposing arguments and counter them. Approach this section as if engaging in a debate, strategically dismantling opposing viewpoints.

While composing the body of a discursive essay, maintain a cohesive narrative. Although individual paragraphs address different arguments, refrain from titling each paragraph—aim for a seamless flow throughout the essay. Express your personal opinions exclusively in the conclusion.

Key guidelines for writing the body of a discursive essay:

• Remain Unbiased: Prioritize objectivity. Evaluate all facets of the issue, leaving personal sentiments aside.
• Build Your Argumentation: If you have multiple arguments supporting your viewpoint, present them in separate, well-structured paragraphs. Provide supporting evidence to enhance clarity and credibility.
• Use an Alternate Writing Style: Present opposing viewpoints in an alternating manner. This means that if the first paragraph supports the main argument, the second should present an opposing perspective. This method enhances clarity and research depth and ensures neutrality.
• Include Topic Sentences and Evidence: Commence each paragraph with a topic sentence summarizing the argument. This aids reader comprehension. Substantiate your claims with evidence, reinforcing the credibility of your discourse.

By adhering to these principles, you can construct a coherent and well-supported body for your discursive essay.

Conclusion 

Writing an effective conclusion is crucial to leaving a lasting impression on your reader. Here are some tips to guide you in crafting a compelling and impactful conclusion:

• Begin your conclusion by summarizing the key points discussed in the body of the essay. 
• Remind the reader of your thesis statement, emphasizing the primary purpose of your discursive essay. 
• Address the broader significance or implications of the topic. 
• Explain why the issue is relevant and underscore the importance of considering multiple perspectives in understanding its complexity.
• Reiterate the balanced nature of your essay. Emphasize that you have explored various viewpoints and arguments without necessarily taking a firm stance.
• Reinforce the idea that your goal was to present a comprehensive analysis.
• If applicable, suggest possible recommendations or solutions based on the insights gained from the essay.
• Encourage the reader to reflect on the topic independently. 
• Pose open-ended questions or invite them to consider the implications of the arguments presented. 
• Resist the temptation to introduce new information or arguments in the conclusion.
• Keep the tone of your conclusion professional and thoughtful. 
• Conclude your essay with a strong, memorable closing statement.
• Carefully review your conclusion to ensure clarity and coherence. Edit for grammar, punctuation, and overall writing quality to present a polished final product.

By incorporating these tips into your discursive essay conclusion, you can effectively summarize your arguments, leave a lasting impression, and prompt thoughtful reflection from your readers. Consider using our term paper writing service if you have to deal with a larger assignment that requires more time and effort.

Yays and Nays of Writing Discourse Essays

In learning how to write a discursive essay, certain do's and don'ts serve as guiding principles throughout the writing process. By adhering to these guidelines, writers can navigate the complexities of presenting arguments, counterarguments, and nuanced analyses, ensuring the essay resonates with clarity and persuasiveness.

• Conduct thorough research on the topic to ensure a well-informed discussion.
• Present multiple perspectives on the issue, exploring various arguments and viewpoints.
• Maintain a balanced and neutral tone. Present arguments objectively without expressing personal bias.
• Structure your essay logically with a clear introduction, body, and conclusion. Use paragraphs to organize your ideas effectively.
• Topic Sentences:
• Include clear topic sentences at the beginning of each paragraph to guide the reader through your arguments.
• Support your arguments with credible evidence from reputable sources to enhance the credibility of your essay.
• Use transitional words and phrases to ensure a smooth flow between paragraphs and ideas.
• Engage in critical analysis. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different arguments and viewpoints.
• Recap key points in the conclusion, summarizing the main arguments and perspectives discussed in the essay.
• Carefully proofread your essay to correct any grammar, spelling, or punctuation errors.
• Don't express personal opinions in the body of the essay. Save personal commentary for the conclusion.
• Don't introduce new information or arguments in the conclusion. This section should summarize and reflect on existing content.
• Don't use overly emotional or subjective language. Maintain a professional and objective tone throughout.
• Don't rely on personal opinions without sufficient research. Ensure that your arguments are supported by credible evidence.
• Don't have an ambiguous or unclear thesis statement. Clearly state the purpose of your essay in the introduction.
• Don't ignore counterarguments. Acknowledge and address opposing viewpoints to strengthen your overall argument.
• Don't use overly complex language if it doesn't add to the clarity of your arguments. Strive for clarity and simplicity in your writing.
• Don't present ideas in a disorganized manner. Ensure that there is a logical flow between paragraphs and ideas.
• Don't excessively repeat the same points. Present a variety of arguments and perspectives to keep the essay engaging.
• Don't ignore the guidelines provided for the essay assignment. Follow any specific instructions or requirements given by your instructor or institution.

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Discursive Essay Examples

Discursive essay topics.

Writing a discursive essay on a compelling topic holds immense importance as it allows individuals to engage in a nuanced exploration of diverse perspectives. A well-chosen subject encourages critical thinking and deepens one's understanding of complex issues, fostering intellectual growth. 

The process of exploring a good topic enhances research skills as writers delve into varied viewpoints and gather evidence to support their arguments. Moreover, such essays contribute to the broader academic discourse, encouraging readers to contemplate different facets of a subject and form informed opinions.

• The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Employment.
• Should Social Media Platforms Regulate Content for Misinformation?
• Exploring the Ethics of Cloning in Contemporary Science.
• Universal Basic Income: A Solution for Economic Inequality?
• The Role of Technology in Shaping Modern Education.
• Nuclear Energy: Sustainable Solution or Environmental Risk?
• The Effects of Video Games on Adolescent Behavior.
• Cybersecurity Threats in the Digital Age: Balancing Privacy and Security.
• Debunking Common Myths Surrounding Climate Change.
• The Pros and Cons of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).
• Online Education vs. Traditional Classroom Learning.
• The Impact of Social Media Influencers on Consumer Behavior.
• The Ethics of Animal Testing in Medical Research.
• Universal Healthcare: Addressing Gaps in Healthcare Systems.
• The Role of Government in Regulating Cryptocurrencies.
• The Influence of Advertising on Body Image and Self-Esteem.
• Renewable Energy Sources: A Viable Alternative to Fossil Fuels?
• The Implications of Space Exploration on Earth's Resources.
• Is Censorship Justified in the Arts and Entertainment Industry?
• Examining the Impact of Globalization on Cultural Identity.
• The Morality of Capital Punishment in the 21st Century.
• Should Genetic Engineering be Used for Human Enhancement?
• Social Media and Its Influence on Political Discourse.
• Balancing Environmental Conservation with Economic Development.
• The Role of Gender in the Workplace: Achieving Equality.
• Exploring the Impact of Fast Fashion on the Environment.
• The Benefits and Risks of Autonomous Vehicles.
• The Influence of Media on Perceptions of Beauty.
• Legalization of Marijuana: Addressing Medical and Social Implications.
• The Impact of Antibiotic Resistance on Global Health.
• The Pros and Cons of a Cashless Society.
• Exploring the Relationship Between Technology and Mental Health.
• The Role of Government Surveillance in Ensuring National Security.
• Addressing the Digital Divide: Ensuring Access to Technology for All.
• The Impact of Social Media on Political Activism.
• The Ethics of Animal Rights and Welfare.
• Nuclear Disarmament: Necessity or Utopian Ideal?
• The Effects of Income Inequality on Societal Well-being.
• The Role of Education in Combating Systemic Racism.
• The Influence of Pop Culture on Society's Values and Norms.
• Artificial Intelligence and Its Impact on Creative Industries.
• The Pros and Cons of Mandatory Vaccination Policies.
• The Role of Women in Leadership Positions: Breaking the Glass Ceiling.
• Internet Privacy: Balancing Personal Security and Data Collection.
• The Impact of Social Media on Youth Mental Health.
• The Morality of Animal Agriculture and Factory Farming.
• The Rise of Online Learning Platforms: Transforming Education.
• Addressing the Digital Gender Gap in STEM Fields.
• The Impact of Global Tourism on Local Cultures and Environments.
• Exploring the Implications of 3D Printing Technology in Various Industries.

By the way, we have another great collection of narrative essay topics to get your creative juices flowing.

Wrapping Up

Throughout this guide, you have acquired valuable insights into the art of crafting compelling arguments and presenting diverse perspectives. By delving into the nuances of topic selection, structuring, and incorporating evidence, you could hone your critical thinking skills and sharpen your ability to engage in informed discourse. 

This guide serves as a roadmap, offering not just a set of rules but a toolkit to empower students in their academic journey. As you embark on future writing endeavors, armed with the knowledge gained here, you can confidently navigate the challenges of constructing well-reasoned, balanced discursive essays that contribute meaningfully to academic discourse and foster a deeper understanding of complex issues. If you want to continue your academic learning journey right now, we suggest that you read about the IEEE format next.

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26 Planning a Discursive Essay

Discursive essay – description.

A discursive essay is a form of critical essay that attempts to provide the reader with a balanced argument on a topic, supported by evidence. It requires critical thinking, as well as sound and valid arguments (see Chapter 25) that acknowledge and analyse arguments both for and against any given topic, plus discursive essay writing appeals to reason, not emotions or opinions. While it may draw some tentative conclusions, based on evidence, the main aim of a discursive essay is to inform the reader of the key arguments and allow them to arrive at their own conclusion.

The writer needs to research the topic thoroughly to present more than one perspective and should check their own biases and assumptions through critical reflection (see Chapter 30).

Unlike persuasive writing, the writer does not need to have knowledge of the audience, though should write using academic tone and language (see Chapter 20).

Choose Your Topic Carefully

A basic guide to choosing an assignment topic is available in Chapter 23, however choosing a topic for a discursive essay means considering more than one perspective. Not only do you need to find information about the topic via academic sources, you need to be able to construct a worthwhile discussion, moving from idea to idea. Therefore, more forward planning is required. The following are decisions that need to be considered when choosing a discursive essay topic:

• These will become the controlling ideas for your three body paragraphs (some essays may require more). Each controlling idea will need arguments both for and against.
• For example, if my topic is “renewable energy” and my three main (controlling) ideas are “cost”, “storage”, “environmental impact”, then I will need to consider arguments both for and against each of these three concepts. I will also need to have good academic sources with examples or evidence to support my claim and counter claim for each controlling idea (More about this in Chapter 27).
• Am I able to write a thesis statement about this topic based on the available research? In other words, do my own ideas align with the available research, or am I going to be struggling to support my own ideas due to a lack of academic sources or research? You need to be smart about your topic choice. Do not make it harder than it has to be. Writing a discursive essay is challenging enough without struggling to find appropriate sources.
• For example, perhaps I find a great academic journal article about the uptake of solar panel installation in suburban Australia and how this household decision is cost-effective long-term, locally stored, and has minimal, even beneficial environmental impact due to the lowering of carbon emissions. Seems too good to be true, yet it is perfect for my assignment. I would have to then find arguments AGAINST everything in the article that supports transitioning suburbs to solar power. I would have to challenge the cost-effectiveness, the storage, and the environmental impact study. Now, all of a sudden my task just became much more challenging.
• There may be vast numbers of journal articles written about your topic, but consider how relevant they may be to your tentative thesis statement. It takes a great deal of time to search for appropriate academic sources. Do you have a good internet connection at home or will you need to spend some quality time at the library? Setting time aside to complete your essay research is crucial for success.

It is only through complete forward planning about the shape and content of your essay that you may be able to choose the topic that best suits your interests, academic ability and time management. Consider how you will approach the overall project, not only the next step.

Research Your Topic

When completing a library search for online peer reviewed journal articles, do not forget to use Boolean Operators to refine or narrow your search field. Standard Boolean Operators are (capitalized) AND, OR and NOT. While using OR will expand your search, AND and NOT will reduce the scope of your search. For example, if I want information on ageism and care giving, but I only want it to relate to the elderly, I might use the following to search a database: ageism AND care NOT children. Remember to keep track of your search strings (like the one just used) and then you’ll know what worked and what didn’t as you come and go from your academic research.

The UQ Library provides an excellent step-by-step guide to searching databases:

Searching in databases – Library – University of Queensland (uq.edu.au)

Did you know that you can also link the UQ Library to Google Scholar? This link tells you how:

Google Scholar – Library – University of Queensland (uq.edu.au)

Write the Thesis Statement

The concept of a thesis statement was introduced in Chapter 21. The information below relates specifically to a discursive essay thesis statement.

As noted in the introduction to this chapter, the discursive essay should not take a stance and therefore the thesis statement must also impartially indicate more than one perspective. The goal is to present both sides of an argument equally and allow the reader to make an informed and well-reasoned choice after providing supporting evidence for each side of the argument.

Sample thesis statements: Solar energy is a cost -effective solution to burning fossil fuels for electricity , however lower income families cannot afford the installation costs .

Some studies indicate that teacher comments written in red may have no effect on students’ emotions , however other studies suggest that seeing red ink on papers could cause some students unnecessary stress. [1]

According to social justice principles, education should be available to all , yet historically, the intellectually and physically impaired may have been exempt from participation due to their supposed inability to learn. [2]

This is where your pros and cons list comes into play. For each pro, or positive statement you make, about your topic, create an equivalent con, or negative statement and this will enable you to arrive at two opposing assertions – the claim and counter claim.

While there may be multiple arguments or perspectives related to your essay topic, it is important that you match each claim with a counter-claim. This applies to the thesis statement and each supporting argument within the body paragraphs of the essay.

It is not just a matter of agreeing or disagreeing. A neutral tone is crucial. Do not include positive or negative leading statements, such as “It is undeniable that…” or “One should not accept the view that…”. You are NOT attempting to persuade the reader to choose one viewpoint over another.

Leading statements / language will be discussed further, in class, within term three of the Academic English course.

Thesis Structure:

• Note the two sides (indicated in green and orange)
• Note the use of tentative language: “Some studies”, “may have”, “could cause”, “some students”
• As the thesis is yet to be discussed in-depth, and you are not an expert in the field, do not use definitive language
• The statement is also one sentence, with a “pivot point” in the middle, with a comma and signposting to indicate a contradictory perspective (in black). Other examples include, nevertheless, though, although, regardless, yet, albeit. DO NOT use the word “but” as it lacks academic tone. Some signposts (e.g., although, though, while) may be placed at the start of the two clauses rather than in the middle – just remember the comma, for example, “While some studies suggest solar energy is cost-effective, other critical research questions its affordability.”
• Also note that it is based on preliminary research and not opinion: “some studies”, “other studies”, “according to social justice principles”, “critical research”.

Claims and Counter Claims

NOTE: Please do not confuse the words ‘claim’ and ‘counter-claim’ with moral or value judgements about right/wrong, good/bad, successful/unsuccessful, or the like. The term ‘claim’ simply refers to the first position or argument you put forward (whether for or against), and ‘counter-claim’ is the alternate position or argument.

In a discursive essay the goal is to present both sides equally and then draw some tentative conclusions based on the evidence presented.

• To formulate your claims and counter claims, write a list of pros and cons.
• For each pro there should be a corresponding con.
• Three sets of pros and cons will be required for your discursive essay. One set for each body paragraph. These become your claims and counter claims.
• For a longer essay, you would need further claims and counter claims.
• Some instructors prefer students to keep the pros and cons in the same order across the body paragraphs. Each paragraph would then have a pro followed by a con or else a con followed by a pro. The order should align with your thesis; if the thesis gives a pro view of the topic followed by a negative view (con) then the paragraphs should also start with the pro and follow with the con, or else vice versa. If not aligned and consistent, the reader may easily become confused as the argument proceeds. Ask your teacher if this is a requirement for your assessment.

Use previous chapters to explore your chosen topic through concept mapping (Chapter 18) and essay outlining (Chapter 19), with one variance; you must include your proposed claims and counter claims in your proposed paragraph structures. What follows is a generic model for a discursive essay. The following Chapter 27 will examine this in further details.

Sample Discursive Essay Outline 

The paragraphs are continuous; the dot-points are only meant to indicate content.

Introduction

• Thesis statement
• Essay outline (including 3 controlling ideas)

Body Paragraphs X 3 (Elaboration and evidence will be more than one sentence, though the topic, claim and counter claim should be succinct)

• T opic sentence, including 1/3 controlling ideas (the topic remains the same throughout the entire essay; it is the controlling idea that changes)
• A claim/assertion about the controlling idea
• E laboration – more information about the claim
• E vidence -academic research (Don’t forget to tell the reader how / why the evidence supports the claim. Be explicit in your E valuation rather than assuming the connection is obvious to the reader)
• A counter claim (remember it must be COUNTER to the claim you made, not about something different)
• E laboration – more information about the counter claim
• E vidence – academic research (Don’t forget to tell the reader how / why the evidence supports the claim. Be explicit in your E valuation rather than assuming the connection is obvious to the reader)
• Concluding sentence – L inks back to the topic and/or the next controlling idea in the following paragraph

Mirror the introduction. The essay outline should have stated the plan for the essay – “This essay will discuss…”, therefore the conclusion should identify that this has been fulfilled, “This essay has discussed…”, plus summarise the controlling ideas and key arguments. ONLY draw tentative conclusions BOTH for and against, allowing the reader to make up their own mind about the topic. Also remember to re-state the thesis in the conclusion. If it is part of the marking criteria, you should also include a recommendation or prediction about the future use or cost/benefit of the chosen topic/concept.

A word of warning, many students fall into the generic realm of stating that there should be further research on their topic or in the field of study. This is a gross statement of the obvious as all academia is ongoing. Try to be more practical with your recommendations and also think about who would instigate them and where the funding might come from.

This chapter gives an overview of what a discursive essay is and a few things to consider when choosing your topic. It also provides a generic outline for a discursive essay structure. The following chapter examines the structure in further detail.

• Inez, S. M. (2018, September 10). What is a discursive essay, and how do you write a good one? Kibin. ↵
• Hale, A., & Basides, H. (2013). The keys to academic English. Palgrave ↵

researched, reliable, written by academics and published by reputable publishers; often, but not always peer reviewed

assertion, maintain as fact

The term ‘claim’ simply refers to the first position or argument you put forward (whether for or against), and ‘counter-claim’ is the alternate position or argument.

Academic Writing Skills Copyright © 2021 by Patricia Williamson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Write a Discursive Essay

November 17, 2023

A discursive essay is a type of academic writing that presents both sides of an argument or issue. Unlike an argumentative essay where you take a clear stance and defend it, a discursive essay allows you to explore different perspectives and provide an objective analysis. It requires careful research, critical thinking, and the ability to present logical arguments in a structured manner.

In a discursive essay, you are expected to examine the topic thoroughly, present evidence and examples to support your points, and address counterarguments to demonstrate a balanced understanding of the issue. The purpose is not to persuade the reader to take a particular side, but rather to present a comprehensive view of the topic. By mastering the art of writing a discursive essay, you can effectively convey complex ideas and contribute to meaningful discussions on various subjects.

What’s different about writing a discursive essay

Writing a discursive essay differs from other types of essays in several ways. Here are some key differences to consider when approaching this particular form of academic writing:

• Explores multiple perspectives: Unlike an argumentative essay, a discursive essay examines different viewpoints on a given topic. It requires you to gather information, analyze various arguments, and present a balanced view.
• Structured presentation: A discursive essay follows a clear structure that helps organize your thoughts and arguments. It typically consists of an introduction, several body paragraphs discussing different arguments, and a conclusion.
• Impartiality and objectivity: While other essays may require you to take a stance or defend a particular position, a discursive essay aims for objectivity. You should present arguments and evidence without bias and demonstrate a fair understanding of each viewpoint.
• Importance of research: Good research is essential for a discursive essay. You should gather information from reliable sources, consider various perspectives, and present evidence to support your ideas.
• Addressing counterarguments: In a discursive essay, it is crucial to acknowledge and address counterarguments. By doing so, you show a comprehensive understanding of the topic and strengthen your own argument.
• Use of transitions: To maintain coherence and provide a smooth flow of ideas, appropriate transitions should be used to link paragraphs and signal shifts between arguments.

By recognizing these key differences and adapting your writing style accordingly, you can effectively write a discursive essay that engages the reader and presents a well-rounded discussion of the topic.

Step-by-Step Discursive Essay Writing Guide

Selecting a topic.

Selecting a topic for a discursive essay is a crucial first step in the writing process. Here are some considerations to help you choose an appropriate and engaging topic:

• Relevance: Select a topic that is relevant and holds significance in the current context. It should be something that sparks interest and discussion among readers.
• Controversy: Look for topics that have multiple perspectives and controversial viewpoints. This will allow you to explore different arguments and present a balanced analysis.
• Research opportunities: Choose a topic that offers ample research opportunities. This ensures that you have access to reliable sources and enough material to support your arguments.
• Personal interest: It is easier to write about a topic that you are genuinely interested in. Consider your own passion and areas of expertise when selecting a subject for your essay.
• Scope and depth: Ensure that the chosen topic is neither too broad nor too narrow. It should provide enough scope for thorough analysis and discussion within the word limit of your essay.

Remember, the topic sets the foundation for your discursive essay. Take time to consider these factors and select a topic that aligns with your interests, research capabilities, and the potential to present a well-rounded discussion.

Possible Discursive Essay Topics:

• The impact of social media on society.
• Should euthanasia be legalized?
• Pros and cons of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
• The influence of technology on human interactions.
• Is homeschooling more beneficial than traditional schooling?
• The effects of climate change on the environment.
• Should animal testing be banned?
• The advantages and disadvantages of globalization.
• The ethics of capital punishment.
• The legalization of marijuana: pros and cons.

Write the Thesis Statement

The thesis statement in a discursive essay serves as the central argument or main claim that sets the tone for the entire essay. It typically appears in the introductory paragraph and guides the reader’s understanding of the essay’s purpose and direction. Here are some key points to consider when crafting an effective thesis statement for a discursive essay:

• Clear stance: The thesis statement should clearly express your position or viewpoint on the topic. It should present a concise statement that reflects your overall argument or analysis.
• Controversy: The thesis statement should highlight the controversy or debate surrounding the topic. It should indicate that there are multiple perspectives to be explored and that you will discuss them in a balanced manner.
• Specificity: The thesis statement should not be too vague or general. It should address a specific aspect of the topic that you will focus on in your essay.
• Clarity: The thesis statement should be clear and easy to understand. It should provide a clear sense of direction for the reader, indicating the main points that will be discussed in the essay.
• Strong and compelling: The thesis statement should be strong and compelling, capturing the attention of the reader. It should be a statement that provokes thoughtful analysis and discussion.

By considering these factors, you can develop a thesis statement that effectively sets the tone for your discursive essay and captures the essence of your argument or analysis.

Conducting Research

Conducting thorough research is a critical step in writing a discursive essay. Here are some essential tips to help you effectively gather information and sources:

• Define your research question: Clearly define the question or issue you want to explore in your essay. This will guide your research and help you stay focused.
• Use a variety of sources: Gather information from a diverse range of sources, such as books, scholarly articles, reputable websites, and academic journals. This will ensure a well-rounded and comprehensive understanding of the topic.
• Evaluate the credibility of sources: Assess the reliability and credibility of each source before including it in your essay. Consider factors such as author credentials, publication date, peer-reviewed status, and the reputation of the source.
• Take organized notes: As you read and review your sources, take organized notes to keep track of key points, quotes, and references. This will make it easier to cite sources accurately later.
• Analyze and synthesize information: Analyze the information you have gathered and synthesize it into coherent arguments. Identify common themes, patterns, and conflicting viewpoints that will form the basis of your essay.
• Address counterarguments: Remember to consider and address counterarguments in your research. Engaging with opposing viewpoints will strengthen your arguments and demonstrate a well-rounded understanding of the topic.

By following these research strategies, you can gather reliable and varied sources to support your discursive essay, ensuring a balanced and well-informed discussion of the topic.

Writing the Introduction

The introduction sets the tone and direction for a discursive essay, providing context and background information on the topic. Here are some key elements to include when writing the introduction to a discursive essay:

• Grab the reader’s attention: Use a hook or attention-grabbing statement to draw the reader in and generate interest in the topic.
• Introduce the topic: Clearly state the topic and provide some background information to contextualize the issue.
• Define key terms: Define any key terms related to the topic that may be unfamiliar to the reader.
• Present the thesis statement: Clearly state your main argument or claim, which sets the tone for the rest of the essay.
• Outline the structure: Briefly outline the main points or arguments that will be addressed in the essay.
• Write in a discursive style: Use a discursive style of writing in the introduction that presents multiple viewpoints on the topic.

By including these elements, you can craft an effective introduction to your discursive essay that engages the reader, establishes the context for the topic, and clearly presents your thesis statement. Remember to present a balanced analysis of multiple viewpoints, maintaining the discursive style of the essay.

Presenting Arguments and Counterarguments

Presenting arguments and counterarguments is a crucial aspect of writing a discursive essay. Here are some strategies to effectively structure and present your arguments and counterarguments:

• Identify key arguments: Begin by identifying the main arguments or perspectives related to the topic. These arguments will form the basis of your essay and provide a framework for your analysis.
• Develop supporting evidence: Gather relevant evidence, examples, statistics, or expert opinions to support each argument. This evidence should be well-researched and credible to strengthen your claims.
• Present arguments in a logical order: Organize your arguments in a logical and coherent manner. You can choose to present each argument separately, dedicating individual paragraphs to each one or use a point-counterpoint approach where you counter each argument with a counterargument.
• Address counterarguments: Acknowledge and include counterarguments in your essay to demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the topic. Refute counterarguments by presenting contrasting evidence or providing a persuasive rebuttal.
• Provide balanced analysis: While presenting arguments and counterarguments, ensure a balanced analysis that gives due weight to each viewpoint. Avoid bias and strive for objectivity by presenting evidence from various perspectives.
• Use transition words and phrases: Utilize appropriate transition words and phrases to guide the reader through the presentation of arguments and counterarguments. Examples include “on the one hand,” “however,” “in contrast,” “nevertheless,” etc.

By following these strategies, you can effectively present arguments and counterarguments in your discursive essay, demonstrating a comprehensive understanding of the topic and engaging the reader in a thoughtful analysis.

Writing the Body Paragraphs

When writing the body paragraphs of a discursive essay, it’s important to present a balanced and well-structured analysis of the topic. Here are some key strategies to consider:

• Organize your paragraphs: Each body paragraph should focus on a single argument or idea. Start with a clear topic sentence that introduces the main point of the paragraph.
• Provide evidence and examples: Support your arguments with evidence, facts, statistics, or examples from credible sources. This will enhance the validity and persuasiveness of your arguments.
• Use logical reasoning: Present clear and coherent reasoning to connect your evidence with your main argument. Use logic and critical thinking to explain the relevance and significance of your evidence.
• Consider opposing viewpoints: Acknowledge potential counterarguments and address them within your body paragraphs. Refute counterarguments using logical and evidence-based reasoning.
• Use paragraphs for different viewpoints: If you’re discussing multiple perspectives or arguments within the same essay, dedicate separate paragraphs to each viewpoint. Clearly indicate transitions between paragraphs to maintain a coherent flow.
• Include topic sentences and transitions: Begin each paragraph with a topic sentence that clearly states the main idea. Use transitional words and phrases to guide the reader smoothly from one paragraph to the next.

Remember, in a discursive essay, the body paragraphs should explore various arguments and perspectives related to the topic, providing a balanced analysis and supporting evidence. By following these strategies, you can construct well-organized and compelling body paragraphs for your discursive essay.

Incorporating Evidence and Examples

Effectively incorporating evidence and examples is crucial in a discursive essay to support your arguments and strengthen your analysis. Here are some strategies to consider when integrating evidence:

• Choose credible sources: Gather evidence from reputable and reliable sources such as scholarly articles, books, authoritative websites, or academic journals. This ensures the validity and credibility of the evidence.
• Use a variety of evidence: Draw from a range of sources to provide a well-rounded perspective on the topic. This can include facts, statistics, expert opinions, case studies, or historical examples.
• Provide context: When presenting evidence, provide context to help the reader understand its significance. Explain the relevance of the evidence to your argument and how it supports your main points.
• Analyze and interpret evidence: Avoid simply regurgitating evidence. Instead, analyze and interpret it, explaining how it supports your argument and contributes to your overall analysis.
• Quote and paraphrase effectively: When using direct quotes, ensure they are relevant and support your argument. Use accurate paraphrasing to summarize and restate ideas from your sources.
• Cite your sources correctly: Properly cite your sources using a citation style appropriate for your academic field, such as APA, MLA, or Chicago. This gives credit to the original authors and avoids plagiarism.

By incorporating evidence and examples effectively, you can provide a solid foundation for your arguments in a discursive essay, enhancing your credibility and persuasiveness.

Addressing Counterarguments

Addressing counterarguments is an essential component of a discursive essay as it demonstrates critical thinking and strengthens your overall argument. Here are some strategies to effectively address counterarguments:

• Identify counterarguments: Identify the main counterarguments or opposing viewpoints related to your topic. This shows that you have considered different perspectives on the issue.
• Understand the counterarguments: Thoroughly analyze and understand the counterarguments before addressing them. This will help you develop a strong response based on evidence and reasoning.
• Refute the counterarguments: Present a persuasive rebuttal to counterarguments by providing evidence or logical reasoning that challenges or disproves them.
• Anticipate objections: Address potential objections or criticisms that readers might have. Proactively refute these objections by providing additional evidence or presenting alternative perspectives.
• Acknowledge validity: Recognize the validity of certain counterarguments or aspects of opposing viewpoints. This demonstrates fairness and strengthens your overall argument by showing that you have carefully considered all sides.
• Use transitional phrases: Use transitional phrases such as “however,” “although,” or “on the other hand,” to seamlessly introduce counterarguments and your responses.

By effectively addressing counterarguments, you can strengthen your own argument and demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of the topic. Engaging with opposing viewpoints in a fair and persuasive manner enhances the overall credibility and impact of your discursive essay.

Concluding the Discursive Essay

Concluding your discursive essay is an opportunity to summarize your main points and leave a lasting impression on the reader. Here are some strategies to effectively conclude your essay:

• Restate your thesis statement: Begin your conclusion by restating your thesis statement in a concise and clear manner. This reminds the reader of your main argument and reinforces its significance.
• Summarize your main points: Provide a brief summary of the main points you discussed in the body paragraphs. This helps to reinforce the key arguments and evidence presented throughout the essay.
• Emphasize the significance of your argument: Highlight the importance and relevance of your argument in relation to the broader context or real-world implications. This helps to leave a lasting impact on the reader.
• Address counterarguments: Briefly acknowledge the counterarguments you addressed in the essay and reiterate why your main argument is stronger or more compelling.
• Offer a final thought or call to action: Conclude your essay by offering a final thought, reflection, or call to action that encourages the reader to further consider the topic or take action.
• Provide closure: End your conclusion by providing a sense of closure to the essay. This can be achieved by offering a conclusive statement or returning to an anecdote or example mentioned earlier in the essay.

By following these strategies, you can effectively conclude your discursive essay, leaving a strong and memorable impression on the reader while summarizing the key points and reinforcing the significance of your argument.

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Social Media Techno-Discursive Design, Affective Communication and Contemporary Politics

• Original Paper
• Open access
• Published: 18 April 2018
• Volume 11 , pages 427–442, ( 2018 )

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• Majid KhosraviNik 1  

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The paper examines the intersection of technological design of Social Media communication, the notion of post-politics-affective turn in contemporary (Western) societies and the rise of populism as a trend in political communication. Following on conceptualizations for a Social Media approach to a broadly defined critical discourse studies framework (KhosraviNik, in: Kalyango and Kopytowska (eds) Why discourse matters: negotiating identity in the mediatized world, Peter Lang, New York, 2014 , in: Flowerdew and Richardson, Routledge handbook of critical discourse studies, Routledge, London, 2017b ), the paper attempts to integrate discussions on affective nature of communication in participatory web ecology and consequences of algorithmic regimentation of meaning bearing resources (e.g., news and entertainment) on Social Media. Issues around quality and distribution of digital discursive practices and their relations to traditional perceptions of rational politics, within the internalised ethos of visibility-as-legitimacy, are critically elaborated and examined. While the rise of right wing populism (e.g., Trump presidency, Brexit vote) should primarily be explicated within qualities of the context on the ground, i.e., the deliberate and well-orchestrated misplacement of real grievances in society through discursive operation and manipulation (KhosraviNik in Insight Turk 19(3):53–68, 2017a ), it is equally important to critically elaborate the function and consequences of (digital) media practices as a main part of this socialization context. The overall argument here is that the hyper-normalization and triumph of neo-liberal rationality together with new media technological affordances, design and requirements have created a momentum for the growth of haphazard populist politics, i.e., the valorization of affective relevance over rational significance.

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Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

The paper examines the links between technological design of Social Media communication, the notions of post-politics-affective turns in contemporary (Western) societies and the rise of populism as a trend in political communication. Populism has been discussed in terms of its discursive content, anti-establishmentarianism, and its affective rather than argumentative characteristics. In other words, it has been studied both as political/ideological content as well as a style of communication. Right wing populism has particularly been on the rise in the West in recent years (Richardson 2013 ; Wodak et al. 2013 ) evidenced by electoral gains in France and Germany, Brexit vote and the presidency of Donald Trump in the US. As far as the politics on the ground is concerned, the rise of populism is rooted in hyper-normalization of offshoots of neo-liberal life order (KhosraviNik 2017a ), e.g., extreme individualism, competitive (rather than deliberative) persuasion and foregrounding of relatability over rationality . In political communication, this translates to rise of personality politics, triumphant of affect over argumentation and reduction of democratic project to media(tised) performance. In fact, there is a strong suggestion that we are now in a post-politics, post-ideology era, i.e., grand narratives of politics have lost credibility and resonance.

In line with the promotional mantra of Social Media, i.e., the democratization of access, the current political discourses maintain an appeal to some form of (caricature) democratic practice along the lines of claims to empowerment of the ‘ordinary citizens’, re-connection with politics, grass-root mobilization, etc. Incidentally, these constitute the core characteristics of new digital media technologies as well which work with the logic of regimes of popularity building through engagement of prosumers (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010 ). The appeal of affective political engagement and the rise of Social Media personality politics are, on the one hand, predicated on internalization of the equation: visibility/popularity is legitimacy (derived from accumulated symbolic power, i.e., power is legitimacy) and, on the other hand, works as a revolt against the perceived monolithic nature of traditional mass media/politics. Both these elements overlap with the populist vociferous claims of revolting against the media and political establishments. The design values and processes at work in Social Media technologies, their political economic model, their starting assumption of post-ideological status of contemporary societies and obsoleteness of critical structural politics are constitutively aligned with promoting an affective-driven, anti-establishment, anti-elite/expert, everyday/banal politics. In a similar vein, the extreme individualization and the corporate algorithmic manipulation of news and information pave the way for normalization of a populist perception of public communication and collective identity—in political as well as all other domains.

The algorithmic surveillance of Social Media is not an ideological machine in a traditional sense, i.e., it appears to be neutral, automatic and machine controlled. It aspires to claim that there is no human interference in fine grain regimentation of content catered for millions of individual prosumers. This works within the frame and contributes to the legitimacy of post-politics, post-ideology arguments, especially in Media and Technology research approaches. This paper attempts to understand the link between the contemporary politics, new media technologies and their impacts on social understanding of traditional politics as a realm of rationality and enlightenment. Hyper-normalization and triumph of neo-liberal rationality in late modern societies and new media affordances have created a momentum for the growth of haphazard populist politics in every sense. Social Media at the age of behavioral advertising are the epitome of preference of affective relevance over rational significance. Trump performance in the US is a prime example of this trend, not only for the content of his populist right wing views and the typical strategic misplacements of working class grievances (KhosraviNik 2017b ), but also because he has successfully reduced the entirety of political practice to a form of obsessive and whimsical Social Media practice.

The essence of politics in modern time, i.e., in post-enlightenment era, is (aspiring to) rationality and deliberative argumentation. The historical antecedent of such strong adherence to objective rationality in modern western philosophy could be traced to the reactions against the monopoly of church and religion in the Middle Ages who would habitually employ affective means to control masses (Papacharissi 2015 : 11). This is also linked to an established orientalist trope, which presupposes that western mentality is driven by rationality in thought hence argumentation versus the essential emotionality of Eastern subjects/thought. Many western thinkers have based their social, political and cultural conceptualization on an inherent priority of the rational over the affective. This is the presupposed assumption in construction of entire modern polity as well as all various aspects of political structure and relations of democratic understanding of legitimacy and power. This remains the constant driving aspirational impetus in the face of various forces, which do impact the processes adversely and sway it from the ideal functioning of democratic process including major obstacles posed by the political economic order and increasing normalization of market-based rationality. In the meantime, politics has always been understood as both argumentative content as well as style of communication. This is essentially because politics is about persuasion and persuasion naturally pertains to the questions of what (is being communicated) as well as how (it is being communicated) as previously argued in critical discourse studies inter alia (KhosraviNik 2010 , 2015a , b ). It is also a fact that certain styles of political communication are more attuned to specific political tendencies, e.g., the links between authoritarianism and populism. In the same vein, right wing populism discourses are characterized by a set of common and recurring discursive strategies, albeit in varying degrees of intensity and scale. Firstly, there is the call for a swift and radical shift from a globalization rationale towards a national and nativist politics. This discursive strategy criticizes the normalized economic politics in the west, i.e., economic liberalism, free movement of capital and labor, and deregulation of financial markets—even though, all these are usually reduced to an anti-immigration rhetoric in populist discourse (KhosraviNik 2017a ; Marsdal 2013 ).

Social Media technologies have affected norms of political communication in general and political activism in particular. Now, ordinary users can be part of production, consumption and distribution of content with few or no barriers in the form of traditional gate-keeping practices (KhosraviNik 2014 , 2017b ). With an oversimplified take on the democratization project, the perception of free access has come to be celebrated as a new frontier for democratic circulation of forms of media content; nevertheless, the potentials of the participatory web in civil, political and social mobilization cannot be categorically dismissed. It is a fact that various groups of ordinary to professional text producers, i.e., bloggers, followers, raters, sharers, likers, as well as traditional journalists, form nodes in an information environment with the potential to organize themselves for various progressive aims. This is not only about transferring content and values per se, but it is about being a site for formation and substantiation of these values, information and worldviews that is discourse (KhosraviNik 2017b ). New Media technologies and communicative affordances continue to impact social and political fabrics of societies in (sometimes radically) different ways. Specifically in the context of the Middle East, with (largely) restricted public spheres, the communicative affordances of Social Media have provided opportunities for new forms of citizen activism, construction of alternative identities and deliberations despite the contentious relations of political regimes with the new technology (KhosraviNik and Zia 2014 ; KhosraviNik and Sarkhoh 2017 ; KhosraviNik and Kelsey forthcoming). The new technologies have (arguably) empowered ordinary civilians to engage in political and cultural communications and to contribute to expression, formation and dissemination of discourses away from (usually closed) official channels (KhosraviNik and Zia 2014 ).

Despite the crucial differences in social fabrics and political practices in global contexts, the breeding ground, characteristics and discursive strategies of populist nationalist discourses have striking similarities. In essence, populist nationalist discourse pivots around a real or constructed problem in the social, economic and political status quo. It revolves around discursive construction of a homogenously perceived Self, e.g., Us (the British) versus a homogenously perceived other, e.g., Them (the immigrants, Muslims or by extension EU nationals). Such discourses often fill the gap created by the public’s disenchantment with official politics (Wodak and KhosraviNik 2013 ) while presenting themselves as the indigenous, socially relevant, and righteous alternative to worldviews of the (constructed) establishment. Populist rhetoric is overtly preoccupied with the notion of (re)gaining the (lost) power to actualize a romanticized perception of the past. Trump’s vote was partly due to a perception of difference, which, as mentioned before, harvested the outcome of a deliberately misplaced real grievance , orchestrated through a discursive operation and manipulation. The trend towards unquestionable capitalist rationale as the only norm and viable option of governance is also infused and relegated to all the other aspects of live worlds of citizens. This is where the style, dynamic and logics of competition, economic derive and extreme individualism are taken up in provisions of goods and services and even worse, it permeates into life domains which had not previously been viewed as a realm of neo-liberal subjugation, e.g., education, health care and life experience. This overwhelming individual marketing approach dismantles society as a collective and when it hits the domain of politics, it replaces facts with validation of favorable opinion. Footnote 1

The hyper-normalization of a neo-liberal life order has translated itself into approaches in political science and cultural studies which have started to do away with radical critic and turned into approaches which claim to pay attention to micro-level analysis of political communication, e.g., the rise of personal politics and individualistically oriented studies on behavior and affect theory. Despite the fact that there are also critical works within this paradigm, a lot of these approaches do not require or have the inclination to critically engage with the macro-structural issues. Macro-structural considerations would consider questions such as why people act the way they do, or why personality and media management of public faces are increasingly becoming more important than the policy and rational deliberation, why the electorates are weary of big politics discussions and young generations are disillusioned with politics, why large populations see politics as irrelevant to their lives and why sensitivities and public knowledge around democratic structure, values, rights are dwindling, why university students do not show significant interest in understanding the basics of democracy or the need for structural critique?

The de-politicization of communication as politics is also a dominant trend in increasing digital participatory platforms. Social Media presented a shift in communication dynamic, i.e., amalgamation of mass and interpersonal communication which has resonated suitably with the train of scholarly thought in affect studies and their conceptualization. For many proponents of such affective turn in social sciences, the ‘turn to affect becomes a decisive shift away from current conceptions of critical theory, away from research based on discourse and disembodied talk and texts, towards more vitalist, ‘post-human’ and processed-based perspectives’ (Wetherell 2012 : 3). The argument is that modern societies have started to show uneasiness against grand narratives, extreme objectivity in reporting human experience. Consequently, there is a shift in the foundational assumption that politics is concerned with argumentative content and rational discourse. Most of these trends have been afforded by mass communicative technologies in a range of their textual practices from for example BBC’s approach in reporting news to a range of entertainment programs. This is similar to notion of first-person media in reference to the rise of reality TV. Similar argument can be put forward in explaining the blogging explosion in early years of millennium and the subsequent changes in digital content production afterwards. It is also a valid point to note that while deliberation and rationality has been the canonical elements of political debate, democracies have been and continue to be ‘messy affairs that are driven by aspirations of rationality, caught up in the daily mise-en-scene of ethos, pathos and logos’ and that citizens’ ‘typical daily responses to political developments are a mix of emotion with fact-informed opinion’ (Papacharissi 2015 : 26). In any case, it is given now that the bulk of Social Media spaces are essentially affective communicative contexts with the centrality of sharing and connection. The research shows that there is very little argumentative content even when Social Media are appropriated for serious political causes (KhosraviNik and Zia 2014 ). This is not to say that Social Media communication does not contain, allude to or draw on any argumentative train of thought (topoi) but that there is little or no argumentative content resembling a productive deliberation. Critical discourse analysis/studies as an established critical approach focused on communication content as well as contexts of production and consumption (Wodak and Meyer 2016 ; KhosraviNik 2017b ) is predicated on the premise to attempt to explain how meaning bearing content and behavior are used to create consent or political views. As such, it is only prudent for the approach to integrate approaches in studying the affects/emotions in its argumentation analytical models (Reisigl and Wodak 2016 ; KhosraviNik and Unger 2016 ). Nevertheless, the affective turn in its strong conceptualization ‘involves more than adding emotions to the inventory of social research topics. It signifies a more extensive ontological and epistemological upheaval, marking a moment of paradigm change’ (Wetherell 2012 : 3) which in effect, with the exception of what can be categorized as critical affective social studies (e.g., Pedwell 2014 ; Ahmed 2014 ), defines itself in contrast to discourse-based studies albeit by viewing discourse within an essentially poststructuralist frame, i.e., not necessarily CDA per se. The extreme affective conceptualization shies away from notions such as critique, ideology and shades of social constructivism to the advantage of a de-politicalized, super-localized analysis. This is not to cast away the potential of affective analysis in attempting to understand how people are moved, and what attracts them and more importantly ‘how social formations grab people/how do the roller coaster of contempt, patriotism, hate and euphoria power public scenes’ (Wetherell 2012 : 2) which are the crucial aspects of contemporary societies and their behavior (see Wodak et al. 2013 ). Yet, in their backlash against social constructivism, there remains little room to conceptualize power in social formations as power is, in essence, about discourse (KhosraviNik 2014 ). As far as this view is concerned, any political matter, be it big P politics or small P political, i.e., personal is political, is about power. It is about resisting, engaging, challenging a social formation, a normalized identity; a discourse. Psychological analyses of emotions and affects within an extreme individualistic ontology would not lend themselves easily to conceptualization of the collective , unless they are merged with critical social theory.

The relevance and usefulness of affective analysis should be acknowledged, not because it is the most recent ‘turn’ in cultural studies and/or social sciences but in that it is attending to aspects of research theorization which relates to the way contemporary societies are behaving politically and more importantly the way Social Media communication has come to either impact the society in that direction or be a symptomatic realization of such change in itself. I approach this from a practical point of view and the way it can contribute in understanding of what is going on in the political debates, actions and democratization project as a whole, within a socially oriented, critical analysis of communication which is CDS to me (KhosraviNik 2017b ). However, the mere fact of change in theoretical approach for the sake of change is obviously not ground breaking in and by itself. In other words, defining affect as something which is merely just not discourse is hardly useful—that is, if the research is socially committed.

For a Social Media space, discourse, emotive and the action, i.e., discursive practice (actions of digital marks including) should all be considered together. In traditions of classic discourse approaches, language in and within itself gets priority whereby the rationality and argumentative powers are foregrounded as the main power to persuasion and resonance. This is why there is substantial development of models and tools for analyzing argumentation, fallacies and critical engagement with the degree and quality of rationality in the language use. In the context of digital media technologies, the argumentative content is less central compared to the affective content. Therefore, persuasiveness is more sought after at the triangle of discourse, digital action and the affective state of the individual users. At the interface of participatory web affordance and the user, users have the (perception of) chance of being able to act completely individualistic and are encouraged to prioritize their affective moods, e.g., rage, fear, etc. while in the past these affective qualities of individuals would be filtered, controlled and moderated by various systems of mass media gate-keeping. For example, newspapers would not trust and rely on a non-professional individual’s (perhaps one-sided and misguided) assertions and would tend to evaluate the argumentative value and content whereas, in Social Media, such an individual would see no barrier for not only expressing themselves but also gaining credibility through popularity of expressions of their argumentatively incoherent but affectively loaded and strong emotive proposition. Coherence is after all a cognitive disposition as far as the audience is concerned. This is exactly why notions of discourse are important. Discourse is what gives coherence to seemingly fragmented expressions. Discourse is the scaffolding for scattered subjective utterances. In this sense, Social Media platforms not only empower and validate individual’s emotive understanding of the affairs but also encourage a dynamic of communication that rewards such behavior with a form of perceived validation.

The post-ideological, post-politics ethos is a dominant trend in Social Media research and theorization. Notions like participation, democratization, and individualism are appropriated, perhaps not even deliberately, to discuss a utopian context of communication brought about by digital affordances. Influential sociological analysis of the impact of Social Media postulates that we have now entered a form of socialization called network society which ‘present a qualitative change in human experience’ (Castells 2009 : 509). Participatory culture is the term Jenkins puts forward to conceptualize the amalgamation of users, audiences, consumers and fans in creation of cultural content. Papacharissi argues that networked digital structures of expression of connection are overwhelmingly characterized by affects and uses the term ‘networked publics’ as ‘publics that are restructured by networked technologies and, therefore, simultaneously are (1) the space constructed through networks technologies and (2) the imagined collective that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology and practice ( 2015 : 39).

The affective characteristics of Social Media communication are both a reflection of the change of interest in society in terms of the shift to value first-person media as well as being the effect of the way the Social Media technologies are structurally designed. The users’ engagement with Social Media technologies seem to occur in a multi-layered collapsed context (Boyd 2008 ). This affords endless opportunities for the users’ affective performance to appeal to audiences or textual consumers who may have not even been envisaged at the initial state of triggering communication. What follows from this is the tendency to emphasize the affective-subjective content of the communicative from one hand and the use of provocation as a way to make one’s performance more authentic and real—much similar to the way reality is constructed in reality TV. It is also not entirely wrong to consider affective communication as a form of political expression. ‘Affect conveys the intensity with which an opinion is felt, and when expressed, it can intensify the sense of empowerment experienced by the individual releasing the thought, emotion, or act to the public (Papacharissi 2015 : 113–114). Even though it is not necessarily deliberative, it can be potentially a powerful political act. Much similar to earlier works in feminism and gender identity, ‘affective gestures infuse the story telling of the self with emotive impressions that enhance performances of the self but may also entrap the self in a continuous loop of (mediated) affect’ (Papacharissi 2015 : 114). In essence, the contentious argument here is that political discourse should not be viewed, considered and evaluated only by the degrees the communication can contribute to deliberation and to the extent Social Media spaces can be deemed as part of public sphere in its classic understanding. But that affective expression is also political because it relates to power and empowerment of the individual. ‘Style is performance and performance is power’ while in the meantime, ‘claims to power are performed’ (Papacharissi 2015 : 114). It is sensible to view affective expressions as part of political discourse not (just) because these are affective publics but (also) as an outcry of marginalization process that the overwhelming global normalization of neo-liberalism has caused. Capitalism has always had strong scaffolding rationality whereby the values, norms and logics of market are presented and inculcated as not only reasonable but as the only way of envisaging the life world, e.g., the notions of economic development, competition and increasing corporatization of social life and commodification of products, service and life experiences. This macro logic has been hegemonic and invisibly enforced everywhere. This could explain the empowerment process of affective expressions and doing away with the usual overwhelming rationality. At the political level, such affective tendency is only craved in the context that there is strong but incoherent grievances in society in a way that the available normal pubic sphere does not provide suitable platforms for such expressions. This could also explain the anti-intellectual anti-science and in short anti-rationality revolt in recent elections in the UK and USA (KhosraviNik 2017a ). This takes us back again to qualities of the wider society or thick context (Couldry 2012 ) and in fact relates to traditional social issues of class and identity politics. It is apt to argue that any attempt in theorization of affective communication as political would inadvertently take us back to social context and critique in one way or another. De-politicalized, descriptive and super-localized approaches which advocate a post-politics context for the contemporary era are mainly derived (and contribute to) the understanding that within a normalized economically colonized political sphere nothing can/should/does change; hence, engagement with politics in that sense is a moot endeavor. The process of normalization of post-political context is both a top-down macro and bottom up micro process. The post-politics actively denies that the real politics is about policy, argumentation and overarching principles and happily reduces it to media appearance, likeability, psychological connection and relatability in the context that media industry vigorously continues to make advances in colonizing the entirety of official politics. One driving force and culmination of such post-ideological manipulation in practice are reflected and constituted in the logics and dynamic of interaction on Social Media and participatory web.

Social Media are being used for a plethora of everyday uses and with increasing penetration both in terms of the number of users and depth of engagements. There is obviously a substantial entertainment aspect to the use of digital media. While the big P politics and structural debates around it have not really benefited from these spaces, i.e., in terms of enhancing the quality of political debate and deliberation, the politics as everyday practice has been hugely impacted by Social Media (Zayani 2015 ). Entertainment industry had already been working with regimes of rating, popularity and competition as their canon of business practice before Social Media. As such, Social Media everyday politics and political engagement have also been influenced and in fact structured around similar frames. It is only ironic that the current president of the most powerful country in the world is a former TV personality obsessed with rating and winning by popularity metrics. One would not refer to the conducts of a given entertainment business as populist when it aspires to get higher rating through any means available including extreme displays of affective expressions and affective connections, etc. However, in politics that would be characterized as populist. The reason is simply the fact that politics has traditionally been defined as a realm of arguments, rationality and very calculated decision making rather than emotionality. So it is not too far-fetched to consider communication on Social Media as populist in essence and influenced by business model. Populism in politics is the realm of media savvy political performers who make colorful claims for grass-root mobilization. Incidentally, media performance, the claim to empowerment of ordinary citizens, re-connection with politics, grass-root mobilization all constitute the core claimed characteristics of new digital media technologies which work with the logic of regimes of popularity building through ‘likes’, ‘shares’ and ‘followers’, etc. Personality politics on Social Media not only feeds into a highly simplified equation of popularity as legitimacy but at the same time acts as a revolt against the perceived monolithic nature of traditional mass media and grand discourses/rationalities. In contrast to rigidity of mass media in terms of their monopoly over discursive power, the nature, location and dynamic of discursive power in Social Media or broadly speaking participatory web are fluid, changeable, and circular (KhosraviNik 2017b ; Unger et al. 2016 ) in a way that users are at the same time, producers, consumers and distributors of the content. Although the utopian hopes for enhancement of real public deliberation via the Social Media and democratization of public sphere have not materialized, these platforms can still play a significant role for niche politics and non-mainstream representations (Copsey 2003 ). The fact remains that given the nature of populism as a style of communication, the new digital participatory technology is an apt space for construction, promotion and dissemination of such politics. This is not to say that the new communication technologies of participatory web have caused the current shift to right wing populism. The shift has its own roots in practical democratic deficit, i.e., socio-political contexts of relevant societies. Nonetheless, the values and processes at work in Social Media spaces, the political economy of platforms, and their assumption of post-ideological era and obsoleteness of critical politics are in line for promoting an affective-driven, anti-establishment, and fringe politics. Such politics is not built upon argumentation, i.e., rational deliberation in Habermasian sense but it is largely based on affective communication which foregrounds what individuals feel, believes and likes over facts, arguments and logics.

In the meantime, the extreme individualization and the central logic of equating visibility/popularity with legitimacy in Social Media along with the corporate algorithmic manipulation of news feeds create a fertile ground for populist perception and enclaves of like-mindedness (though not similar in all platforms) because algorithms prioritize relevance over significance. This is primarily a commercial technique designed to increase sales revenues but nevertheless they also apply to any socio-political important issue in the form of news and semiotic content as well. This is not necessarily and directly the overarching aim that the Social Media platform owners pursue but a natural side effect of their operations. The leading core principle for Social Media operation is to increase media consumption. The more users consume, engage with, and contribute to the platform the more there is added value for the platform. On the one hand, the users’ use of media turns them into a member of audience for various kinds of advertisements directed at them and as such increases the value of the platform. On the other hand, any form of engagement, use, interaction, contribution, sharing content and information, linking, etc. is considered the trade currency, i.e., information to be used for commercial purposes, e.g., for more precision targeted advertising, distribution of advertising content, and various market research operations (KhosraviNik 2017b ). As such, the platforms constantly seek solutions to enhance use and contributions from users. This is the guiding force for various kinds of algorithmic rearrangement of the content visible to individual users. For example, Facebook news feed of every individual is catered around the ‘knowledge’ that the platform has already gathered on the user (through their entire digital consumptions on all gadgets and platforms) and the predictions it can make about their political views, interests, issues, vulnerabilities, belief systems, etc. As such, the platform works based on the principle of relevance rather than significance. That is, the platform shows the user what it predicts to be liked/enjoyed by the user rather than following a public service logic of delivering news to public in terms of reflecting the world out there to the whole public, i.e., media as the fourth estate. By taking into account the dominant affective mode of communication, like-minded users would predominantly see each other’s reactions, news, links, commentaries; a process which would lead to echo chambers and intensification of the belief systems. All forms of interactions on Social Media function as a form of promotion of that content. Whether it is ‘liking’ or ‘commenting’ or ‘sharing’ or ‘tagging’ they all help that content to become more important and get more exposure so it is natural if we avoid engaging with views that we do not like/approve. In other words, there is a technological design with a consequence of eco chambers. This is also due to dominance of economic logic on digital spaces; otherwise, the participatory web could alternatively be used as public sphere for deliberation or expression of suppressed identities. In line with affective impetus of popularity and legitimacy building, digital enclaves of like-mindedness are not about new ideas of (critical) perspective, they are about how well or effectively group members reiterate the same idea/belief. Hence, the result is intensification of opinions at best, which partly explains the fake new phenomenon. Algorithmic manipulations types ‘range from purposes as mundane as deciding the color of a button, to decisions as significant as which news article is shown to the public. These decisions are in increasingly central to social, political and civic processes’ (Tufekci 2015 : 205). They are gatekeepers but they are different from their offline, non-interactive and non-computational counterparts, e.g., in newspapers. In mass media, there is subjectivity and human factor and obviously possible manipulation. Ideology is there but it is not automatic and can be attributed to certain (powerful) groups of people (e.g., what van Dijk refers to as ‘symbolic elites’) who can be held accountable for decisions they make. This process is automatic and (arguably) a non-human operation in digital media. There is no human subjectivity at the local levels of operation but the entire operation is geared towards enhancement of consumption (of Social Media) and increasing the contribution of users to the platforms. This is apart from the paid-for adverting that is becoming increasing common on Social Media as well.

There is also the fact that Social Media technologies do not recognize society as a collective public out there unless through their own frame of publics of digital prosumers. While in mass media operations, everybody gets the same product (news, shows, films, etc.); Social Media shows different things to different users. There is no easy way to research the final product, i.e., representation of the world in Social Media as it is individually catered for. In similar vein, the research shows that the general public is not sufficiently aware of the quality and extent of such individually tailored representations on participatory web and in cases they do, there is little that they can imagine about it. Algorithmic manipulations are nothing short of new forms of gate-keeping operations with integral consequences in construction of representational realities, i.e., discourses among users. Algorithmic gate-keeping is the process by which ‘such nontransparent algorithmic computation tools dynamically filter, highlight, suppress, or otherwise play an editorial role—fully or partially—in determining: information flows through online platforms and similar media’ among other effects (Tufekci 2015 : 208).

The algorithmic surveillance of Social Media is not an ideological machine in traditional sense, i.e., it is mainly automatic and machine controlled whereby human factor does not normally interfere with the regimentation. Algorithms are able to act as stealthy, extremely potent gatekeepers unaccompanied by transparency and visibility (Tufekci 2015 : 209). Algorithmic data and interpretation can now understand information which might have not been openly disclosed, e.g., sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views, personality traits, intelligence, happiness, use of addictive substance, parental separation, age, and gender and a lot other aspects (ibid: 210). Algorithms shape the perception of the world out there for users along the lines of what they assume is beneficial for the platform commercial goals.

The dynamic of discursive power, i.e., snowball effect of discourse foci, is unpredictable on Social Media communicative paradigm (KhosraviNik 2014 , 2017b ). The guiding strategy in Social Media design is to loop back users’ digital behaviors and reactions in a way that statistics and volume of interactions, e.g., ‘likes’, ‘comments’, ‘sharing’, etc. are used to populate certain topics, texts, sites, or news items. This is why Social Media phenomena expand exponentially and swiftly. Throughout this process, there is no in-built fact checking mechanism. In other words, certain news, which may have come to dominate the web, can easily be false or intentionally fabricated for certain political impact. Social Media are about visibility/popularity not facts. They do not have the design capacity with regard to veracity of the content. In fact, as far as the dominant rational of Social Media are concerned, there is no logical incentive or sensible room for integration of such concerns into the technological design. Yet there is an unprecedented accumulation of discursive power in such technological regimentation of content. The current design rules out factuality in favor of resonance with audiences; hence, there is a strong digital nudge for users/ordinary members of the public to automatically equate visibility/popularity of a piece of news to its creditability. This is the very essence of an epistemological shift brought about by the triumph and hyper-normalization of market logic of exchange value. The essence of Social Media is creditability gained by visibility/popularity in a context where popularity results in commercial gains regardless of the consequences. This is about extending commercial domain logic, i.e., higher demand is higher value to sphere of politics, which could amount to disastrous results. In other words, Social Media could actually function as spaces for democratic practice, but the dominance of commercial rationality has diminished this potential and, in many ways, destroyed this capacity. Obviously, these effects are different in different Social Media platforms, e.g., compare Facebook with Twitter but nevertheless, the central logic of corporatized participatory web is the same. Once again this is about colonization of what could be appropriated as new public sphere by corporate forces and a digital version of market economy, which is plaguing the ideal potential of the new media spaces. This is the same force, which is an increasing threat to traditional mass media as well.

The New Media technology literature is full of undertones of claims to post-ideological era, partly coming from media deterministic understanding and partly impacted by new psychological approaches. In many trends of thoughts notions like ideology, discourse and representations are cast aside as being irrelevant in the study of New Media technology. However, the claim to post-ideology is already a strictly ideological stance at its core. In most cases, this is about assuming the triumph of market economy and neo-liberalism over all aspects of social and personal life including media technologies. Post-ideology thesis in the meantime trivializes the democratic struggles and values in a way that the whole democratization project is deliberately and misleadingly reduced to forms of direct opinion gathering mechanism. This simplified understanding of democracy reduces it to merely a polling mechanism and disregards the requirements of systems of checks and balances, liberal civil laws, civil society apparatus, fourth estate media etc., which are part and parcel of the original democratic thought and enlightenment. In many ways, Social Media sensations are inherently populist phenomenon. This is not a problem in and by itself but the permeation of the principle of visibility-equals-legitimacy and the claim that Social Media are empowering the voiceless can have counterparts in structural politics of populism in which the populists predominately make anti-establishment claims, disregard for norms and values inherent in democracies and usually make pledges to overthrow the system in the benefit of ‘the real people’. The problem is not in the practice; it is about the philosophical essence that Social Media implicitly push forward. You could argue that democracy is about gaining popularity which is right but the point always missed is that democracy is not just about gaining popularity, it is about having a viable apparatus for rational argumentation and expression of all ideas, e.g., a healthy civic media system. It is about having systems of fact checking and accountability, division of powers, anchorage to central civil principles, etc. Social Media seem to have removed all requirements of democracy and dangerously reduced it to a participatory reality TV. In that sense, Social Media politics has created a fertile space of growth of populist politics or a form of haphazard populist ground in every sense. Trump performance in the US is a prime example of this trend both in terms of the content of his discourse as well as the centrality of Social Media practice in his operation.

Social Media are characterized as the realm of affects, connections and personal sharing. In turn, it is argued that it is now the age of affective (rather than deliberative) politics, i.e., the age of prioritizing feelings over facts. It is the age where rationality takes a back seat in favor of relationality. New digital media are not the cause of this turn. There are sociological and cultural reasons for populist tendencies in the west and indeed around the globe. There are wider ontological shifts in politics and the world imaginary, which have caused this turn. Social Media are both the product and at the same time perpetuator of such preference. That is why their guiding logic resonates with contemporary people. Social Media at the age of behavioral adverting are the epitome of preference of relevance over significance. Social Media are about your life, what you like, what you feel and they cater towards what you prefer by constantly monitoring your online behavior. This is of course done to maximize profit through targeted adverting and promotions. Social Media do not show you the world out there, they construct a world to your liking and as such they are breeding ground for echo chambers, and constructions of filter bubbles where all like-minded people get together and reinforce their own perception of the realities and priorities rather than engaging with other views. Having said all the above, this is wrong to assume that Social Media have had a causal effect on the shift to right wing populism. Politics is primarily about the society, its internal struggles and shifts in social contexts. Any analysis of role of media in politics is primarily instituted in society. Technologies of communication are also part of this social context as well-being means of political discourse and practice. In the same vein, the rise of right wing populism (i.e., the support from the underclass) is basically a protest against normalization of neo-liberal economy, economic globalization, pursuit of growth, disregarding issues around distribution of wealth and the constant normalization of such practices, which has constituted a democratic deficit in the west. Yet, the political impact of techno-discursive design of media in general and Social Media in particular should be considered in this equation, not the least in terms of their mutual impact. Algorithms are ideologically laden systems, which work with a normalized market logic in line with the increasing corporatization of digital platforms. Algorithms may not care about the politics per se but they do have a political impact in the way they regiment the content for users and general public. Computer systems are not automatic and free from ideology in their design. They are deliberately organized around a form of digital market economic perspective, e.g., a misconstrued interpretation of gift economy through the processes of playbour and digital labour (Fuchs 2014 ) but at the same time making claims to empowerment of ordinary people and democratizing of access to symbolic and representational resources and identity performances. In pursuing that they have interest in projecting a post-political facade. Research approaches in media and technology and waves of research influenced by affect theory with their psychological overtone seem to work on propagated assumptions that envisage the society devoid of the classic political struggles. What remains is that as far as the critical and socially oriented commitment of research is taken into account, e.g., in Social Media critical discourse studies, contextualization of research cannot do without notions of power, and discourse. It is very evident that affective aspect is a crucially relevant aspect of research on Social Media. In other words, new approaches in critical discourse analysis should meaningfully engage with these aspects and literature. However, it remains unclear how an epistemological and ontological neutralization of approaches in critical media studies would be a step forward in the field. On the other hand, it is one thing to acknowledge that the affective side of communication has always been part of human communication and one of the important features in persuasion and discourse studies, but it is another thing to aspire to explain the turn to post-rationality and pot-deliberation as step forward in western understanding of polity and democratic understanding.

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KhosraviNik, M. Social Media Techno-Discursive Design, Affective Communication and Contemporary Politics. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 11 , 427–442 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-018-0226-y

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130 New Prompts for Argumentative Writing

Questions on everything from mental health and sports to video games and dating. Which ones inspire you to take a stand?

By The Learning Network

Note: We have an updated version of this list, with 300 new argumentative writing prompts .

What issues do you care most about? What topics do you find yourself discussing passionately, whether online, at the dinner table, in the classroom or with your friends?

In Unit 5 of our free yearlong writing curriculum and related Student Editorial Contest , we invite students to research and write about the issues that matter to them, whether that’s Shakespeare , health care , standardized testing or being messy .

But with so many possibilities, where does one even begin? Try our student writing prompts.

In 2017, we compiled a list of 401 argumentative writing prompts , all drawn from our daily Student Opinion column . Now, we’re rounding up 130 more we’ve published since then ( available here as a PDF ). Each prompt links to a free Times article as well as additional subquestions that can help you think more deeply about it.

You might use this list to inspire your own writing and to find links to reliable resources about the issues that intrigue you. But even if you’re not participating in our contest, you can use these prompts to practice the kind of low-stakes writing that can help you hone your argumentation skills.

So scroll through the list below with questions on everything from sports and mental health to dating and video games and see which ones inspire you to take a stand.

Please note: Many of these prompts are still open to comment by students 13 and up.

Technology & Social Media

1. Do Memes Make the Internet a Better Place? 2. Does Online Public Shaming Prevent Us From Being Able to Grow and Change? 3. How Young Is Too Young to Use Social Media? 4. Should the Adults in Your Life Be Worried by How Much You Use Your Phone? 5. Is Your Phone Love Hurting Your Relationships? 6. Should Kids Be Social Media Influencers? 7. Does Grammar Still Matter in the Age of Twitter? 8. Should Texting While Driving Be Treated Like Drunken Driving? 9. How Do You Think Technology Affects Dating?

10. Are Straight A’s Always a Good Thing? 11. Should Schools Teach You How to Be Happy? 12. How Do You Think American Education Could Be Improved? 13. Should Schools Test Their Students for Nicotine and Drug Use? 14. Can Social Media Be a Tool for Learning and Growth in Schools? 15. Should Facial Recognition Technology Be Used in Schools? 16. Should Your School Day Start Later? 17. How Should Senior Year in High School Be Spent? 18. Should Teachers Be Armed With Guns? 19. Is School a Place for Self-Expression? 20. Should Students Be Punished for Not Having Lunch Money? 21. Is Live-Streaming Classrooms a Good Idea? 22. Should Gifted and Talented Education Be Eliminated? 23. What Are the Most Important Things Students Should Learn in School? 24. Should Schools Be Allowed to Censor Student Newspapers? 25. Do You Feel Your School and Teachers Welcome Both Conservative and Liberal Points of View? 26. Should Teachers and Professors Ban Student Use of Laptops in Class? 27. Should Schools Teach About Climate Change? 28. Should All Schools Offer Music Programs? 29. Does Your School Need More Money? 30. Should All Schools Teach Cursive? 31. What Role Should Textbooks Play in Education? 32. Do Kids Need Recess?

College & Career

33. What Is Your Reaction to the College Admissions Cheating Scandal? 34. Is the College Admissions Process Fair? 35. Should Everyone Go to College? 36. Should College Be Free? 37. Are Lavish Amenities on College Campuses Useful or Frivolous? 38. Should ‘Despised Dissenters’ Be Allowed to Speak on College Campuses? 39. How Should the Problem of Sexual Assault on Campuses Be Addressed? 40. Should Fraternities Be Abolished? 41. Is Student Debt Worth It?

Mental & Physical Health

42. Should Students Get Mental Health Days Off From School? 43. Is Struggle Essential to Happiness? 44. Does Every Country Need a ‘Loneliness Minister’? 45. Should Schools Teach Mindfulness? 46. Should All Children Be Vaccinated? 47. What Do You Think About Vegetarianism? 48. Do We Worry Too Much About Germs? 49. What Advice Should Parents and Counselors Give Teenagers About Sexting? 50. Do You Think Porn Influences the Way Teenagers Think About Sex?

Race & Gender

51. How Should Parents Teach Their Children About Race and Racism? 52. Is America ‘Backsliding’ on Race? 53. Should All Americans Receive Anti-Bias Education? 54. Should All Companies Require Anti-Bias Training for Employees? 55. Should Columbus Day Be Replaced With Indigenous Peoples Day? 56. Is Fear of ‘The Other’ Poisoning Public Life? 57. Should the Boy Scouts Be Coed? 58. What Is Hard About Being a Boy?

59. Can You Separate Art From the Artist? 60. Are There Subjects That Should Be Off-Limits to Artists, or to Certain Artists in Particular? 61. Should Art Come With Trigger Warnings? 62. Should Graffiti Be Protected? 63. Is the Digital Era Improving or Ruining the Experience of Art? 64. Are Museums Still Important in the Digital Age? 65. In the Age of Digital Streaming, Are Movie Theaters Still Relevant? 66. Is Hollywood Becoming More Diverse? 67. What Stereotypical Characters Make You Cringe? 68. Do We Need More Female Superheroes? 69. Do Video Games Deserve the Bad Rap They Often Get? 70. Should Musicians Be Allowed to Copy or Borrow From Other Artists? 71. Is Listening to a Book Just as Good as Reading It? 72. Is There Any Benefit to Reading Books You Hate?

73. Should Girls and Boys Sports Teams Compete in the Same League? 74. Should College Athletes Be Paid? 75. Are Youth Sports Too Competitive? 76. Is It Selfish to Pursue Risky Sports Like Extreme Mountain Climbing? 77. How Should We Punish Sports Cheaters? 78. Should Technology in Sports Be Limited? 79. Should Blowouts Be Allowed in Youth Sports? 80. Is It Offensive for Sports Teams and Their Fans to Use Native American Names, Imagery and Gestures?

81. Is It Wrong to Focus on Animal Welfare When Humans Are Suffering? 82. Should Extinct Animals Be Resurrected? If So, Which Ones? 83. Are Emotional-Support Animals a Scam? 84. Is Animal Testing Ever Justified? 85. Should We Be Concerned With Where We Get Our Pets? 86. Is This Exhibit Animal Cruelty or Art?

Parenting & Childhood

87. Who Should Decide Whether a Teenager Can Get a Tattoo or Piercing? 88. Is It Harder to Grow Up in the 21st Century Than It Was in the Past? 89. Should Parents Track Their Teenager’s Location? 90. Is Childhood Today Over-Supervised? 91. How Should Parents Talk to Their Children About Drugs? 92. What Should We Call Your Generation? 93. Do Other People Care Too Much About Your Post-High School Plans? 94. Do Parents Ever Cross a Line by Helping Too Much With Schoolwork? 95. What’s the Best Way to Discipline Children? 96. What Are Your Thoughts on ‘Snowplow Parents’? 97. Should Stay-at-Home Parents Be Paid? 98. When Do You Become an Adult?

Ethics & Morality

99. Why Do Bystanders Sometimes Fail to Help When They See Someone in Danger? 100. Is It Ethical to Create Genetically Edited Humans? 101. Should Reporters Ever Help the People They Are Covering? 102. Is It O.K. to Use Family Connections to Get a Job? 103. Is $1 Billion Too Much Money for Any One Person to Have? 104. Are We Being Bad Citizens If We Don’t Keep Up With the News? 105. Should Prisons Offer Incarcerated People Education Opportunities? 106. Should Law Enforcement Be Able to Use DNA Data From Genealogy Websites for Criminal Investigations? 107. Should We Treat Robots Like People?

Government & Politics

108. Does the United States Owe Reparations to the Descendants of Enslaved People? 109. Do You Think It Is Important for Teenagers to Participate in Political Activism? 110. Should the Voting Age Be Lowered to 16? 111. What Should Lawmakers Do About Guns and Gun Violence? 112. Should Confederate Statues Be Removed or Remain in Place? 113. Does the U.S. Constitution Need an Equal Rights Amendment? 114. Should National Monuments Be Protected by the Government? 115. Should Free Speech Protections Include Self Expression That Discriminates? 116. How Important Is Freedom of the Press? 117. Should Ex-Felons Have the Right to Vote? 118. Should Marijuana Be Legal? 119. Should the United States Abolish Daylight Saving Time? 120. Should We Abolish the Death Penalty? 121. Should the U.S. Ban Military-Style Semiautomatic Weapons? 122. Should the U.S. Get Rid of the Electoral College? 123. What Do You Think of President Trump’s Use of Twitter? 124. Should Celebrities Weigh In on Politics? 125. Why Is It Important for People With Different Political Beliefs to Talk to Each Other?

Other Questions

126. Should the Week Be Four Days Instead of Five? 127. Should Public Transit Be Free? 128. How Important Is Knowing a Foreign Language? 129. Is There a ‘Right Way’ to Be a Tourist? 130. Should Your Significant Other Be Your Best Friend?

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How to Write an Outstanding Discursive Essay: Structure and Format

A discursive essay or discussing essay is similar to other essays in that it shares information and gives an opinion, but differs because it doesn’t provide any new knowledge or insight.

Instead, the goal of this type of essay is to convince the reader by arguing for your position and providing evidence. This blog post will teach you how to write a discursive essay so you are ready for your next assignment!

Discursive Essay Meaning

What is discursive essay? A discursive essay is a type of argumentative essay that should take the reader through your thought process and reasoning. This type of writing takes on a certain position or argument. It is usually written in order to convince the reader of a particular point of view.

For example, if you are writing about how college should be free for all students, then your stance would be pro-free college education and your goal would be convincing the readers that this idea should become reality.

Discursive writing is one of the most basic forms of writing. It can be used to write about anything from a personal experience, to an opinion on a current event.

Four (4) Steps to follow in Discursive Writing

• Choose a topic.

There are many different types of topics that you can pick from, but before picking one it’s important to make sure the reader will be interested enough in what you have to say about it.

• Formulate introduction:

Secondly, after choosing your subject matter for discussion and research, come up with an introduction based on some introductory questions into why this issue deserves attention or needs solving.

This way readers understand where your argument stems from and how they should take it further by reading more than just what was written here.

• Conclusion part

A strong conclusion is key when coming to any type of discourse because it ties everything together nicely so there isn’t anything left hanging that could confuse anyone who happened upon your writing.

• Examples, data and references

Finally, you can always think of an example or case study to illustrate the issue at hand and provide a real-life scenario for your readers so they understand it better.

Discursive essay Structure, Format and Outline

Introduction

The introduction for a discussing essay is often short, with the writer providing one or two paragraphs to introduce the topic.

This section should also include an explanation of what it means to be “discursively” writing so that readers understand how this text will organize and present information differently than other types of essays.

The majority of your discursive essay paper should consist of reading/writing about your topic in depth with evidence from research included throughout each paragraph.

In addition, you can provide additional content by including quotes from sources who have studied more deeply into the subject at hand; questions that need answering when considering certain aspects of your issue; descriptions about different perspectives on your topic; etcetera. You do not need to follow a strict outline or linear structure in your writing.

The conclusion

Your discursive essay should end with a summary of the key points you have made throughout your paper, and how these pieces of information connect to one another. This is also where you can make an argument for why this issue matters.

This is how discursive essays are typically structured in order to best engage with their audiences and get them thinking about what they’ve just read which leads into understanding on their own about this topic as well as opening up new avenues that could lead towards solving whatever problem may be at hand.

In a nutshell, discourse writing is engaging because its written in such away where arguments come together around one focused subject matter which brings forth introspection from anyone who reads it.

Discourse essay structures help keep everything organized while still being engaging by discussing events related to the argument’s topic.

Tips for Discursive Essay Writing

• Write all aspects of the topic at once
• Research the topic beforehand to make sure you have enough information for your essay and are able to cover all bases
• Write a draft of an outline before moving on to writing the body paragraphs as this will help with structuring, order, and content flow
• Create headings that match each section in your outline so it’s easier when going back over things later or if someone else has to look at it (e.g., Introduction)
• Format with double spaces between sentences unless otherwise specified by assignment instructions
• Use good grammar throughout: Comma after listing items; Quotation marks where needed; Avoid contractions like “I’m” or stay consistent within same sentence
• Include a title, author’s name and date in the header
• Proofread before submitting for review

30+ Original Discursive Essay Topics

• The role of the media in a democratic society.
• The effects of consumerism on the environment.
• Should there be a ban on handgun ownership?
• What is your personal experience with cyberbullying?
• How has technology changed how we communicate and socialize as a society?
• Does religion belong in schools or should it have its own place outside education systems to avoid bias from students who don’t share the same beliefs?
• Is capitalism bad for individuals, corporations, governments and entire societies around the world today?
• How mental illness is perceived and treated in America
• The role of the police officer.
• What the consequences are for people who consume alcohol or drugs
• Why do some people take medication?
• The benefits of living in a multicultural society
• Write an essay on Violence in schools and how it impacts students.
• How to improve public speaking skills
• Discursive Essay on Mental health: what is the difference between physical illness and mental illness?
• What makes someone successful versus unsuccessful.
• Is technology ruining our social lives?
• In what ways can we promote diversity on college campuses without hurting people’s feelings or making them feel like they’re not wanted.
• How does “unlearning” racism work?
• What are some steps that can be taken to un-learn racist behaviour, thoughts, beliefs, etc.?
• Do you think white supremacy groups should have freedom of speech at university protests?”
• The meaning behind tattoos – why do so many people get tattooed now days when historically this was a sign of slavery?
• The potential causes of obesity.
• Discursive Essay on who should be in charge: the government or self-rule?
• Is it worthwhile to save endangered species from extinction?
• What are your thoughts on euthanasia and its legality around the world?
• To what extent do you think gender stereotypes affect individual lives? – Should we work towards lessening these effects, or just let them happen naturally?
• Should all restaurant workers be paid fair wages for their service (especially those who wait tables)? Why/why not? What would this mean for customers’ dining experience at restaurants if they had to pay more than usual per meal/dessert order?”
• How much does social media really impact our teenage generations today and how will that affect society as a whole in the future?
• Applying for college to an institution: What are your chances?
• The importance of education and becoming educated about the world around us.
• Gun Control essay : Why it should be allowed or not permitted.
• Should children have homework on weekends?

Discursive Essay Example

“ The Misunderstanding between Feminists and Transgender Activists over Gender Identity Politics

In our current society, it seems as though feminists are not unified on their stance towards transgender activism based solely off of gender identity politics…Or so says what many people believe without taking into account that there are two different schools of feminism which reflect differing opinions about trans* rights and inclusion within the feminist movement. Some feminists are in favor of including transgender people, while other feminists believe that trans* activism is actually a threat to the feminist movement.

The debate between these two schools of feminism has become so intense and complicated that it can be difficult for someone who is not well-versed in feminist theory to understand what they are fighting about. However, with both sides having strong arguments rooted in past experiences as women, there’s no easy way out .”

Sample 2: Discursive essay on recreational drugs

“So  why should we use recreational drugs?

Most people argue against drugs for many different reasons: moral arguments, health concerns, legal consequences, and so on. This Discursive Essay will examine all of these arguments as well as the idea that drugs are good for society in general

An argument against using recreational drugs is moral concerns because people argue they’re morally wrong; this could be challenged by saying what about alcohol? If we say some things like driving while intoxicated or drinking from a baby bottle when you’re over 18 then there’s no difference with doing illegal substances.

A health concern to consider would be physical ailments such as lung cancer which can happen after smoking weed but it also comes down to how long you smoked for and if you have any family history related problems. The second point about health is mental illnesses such as addiction which depends on individual circumstance.

Legal concerns can range from being caught with drugs in your car to possession charges, and result in fines or jail time. The third point about legal concerns is how the drug affects you which can happen even if it’s not doing anything wrong because people react differently.

Societal implications exist due to culture: some societies may be more accepting of certain substances while others have a stricter view. This may depend on who they are talking to as well and what their position was so this could create an atmosphere where someone might feel pressured into using any substance at all times just for acceptance purposes.

Moral objectives would only really matter for those within that moral objective but if there were two parties then one will think its morally right while another doesn’t see it as being wrong. Morals can be seen as subjective and so this leads to the two parties having different views on a certain action.

Facts, such as when someone is hurting themselves or others due to substance use, are objective facts that don’t rely on feelings but rather sense. When something has an effect then it will have consequences because of how its affecting them physically or mentally which means that if they continue with their actions until these consequences happen then it becomes objectively morally wrong for one’s own sake.

Situations that may affect an individual’s understanding are: personal perspectives, societal views and cultural values. These all play a role in how people understand as well because it can impact their mental state which could have different effects on what they believe to be right from wrong for them personally.

If there is no medication then this will result in negative consequences but not always – if someone takes enough of the drug then they’ll experience withdrawal symptoms like weight loss, nausea and insomnia depending on the type of substance consumed so this would need to be taken into account when writing about drugs. ”

Topic: “ Is technology good or bad ” discursive essay

Technological advances have become so widespread in society that most people will not be able to live without them. Many of these same technological advancements are also linked with the progression of information technology, which has been a major factor in shaping and defining our culture today. With this being said, it is important to ask ourselves whether or not these technologies are good for us? Or should we reconsider how we use certain aspects of technology?

This discursive Essay will discuss five possible pros and cons related specifically to the advancement of technology including social media usage, cyber bullying, reliance on cell phones as well as computer-related activities at work/at home. It will then further explore if there are any other alternatives aside from just relying on devices like laptops or mobile phones.

The pros of technology have been argued to be the convenience it brings. For example, social media has made connecting with people easier than ever before and allows us to get information without having to go out in person or look for a local newspaper article. It also provides entertainment as well as other features that make life simpler. This includes apps like weather forecasting, calculators and even online shopping.

On the flip side, there are negative aspects related to how we use some technologies today such as cyber bullying which is defined as “the new form of face-to-face abuse”. In regards to the reliance on devices like laptops or mobile phones at work/at home; this can cause laziness due to the lack of physical movement.

There are many positives that can come from the internet such as access to information, communication with people who live in different geographical locations and a vast amount of content (both useful and useless). However, we must take caution when it comes to how much time is spent online and what types of things they look at on social media sites like Facebook , Instagram , Twitter , Pinterest , LinkedIn , Reddit and Youtube .

Technology has both positive aspects but also negative ones depending on which side you’re looking at it from. The awesome thing about this topic though is there’s not one answer because everyone carries their own opinion on whether it be good or bad so anyone reading these words should form an opinion themselves by critiquing my thoughts instead of just taking them as the truth .”

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