Journal Two

President Donald Trump had 2 tweets circulate the internet on January 22nd, the first, "Watched Protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election! Why didn't these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly."

and the second, "Peaceful protests are a hallmark of our democracy. Even if I don't always agree, I recognize the rights of people to express their views." 

In Lloyd F Bitzer's "The Rhetorical Situation," Bitzer discusses the definitions of rhetorical situation, the relevance of exigence in a rhetorical situation, and the utterances that come after an exigence. Bitzer believes that exigence and a rhetorical situation are based in fact, unwavering in their position when claimed. He also claims that rhetorical situation comes out of events taken place in popular culture or in shared ideologies, and President Trump's inauguration can be seen as a large event that enacted rhetoric. The context of these two tweets happens to be the Women's March that took place Saturday January 21st in protest of President Donald Trump's inauguration. So these tweets if Bitzer was analyzing them could be considered as utterance coming from the exigence of the protest itself. His change in tone, to Bitzer, could be due to the fact he has become President and cannot tweet "un-presidential" things like his first tweet. 

In Jenny Edbauer's "Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies", she argues that a rhetorical situation can change in the correct environment, very contradictory to Bitzer's ideology. Edbauer may claim the change from President Donald Trump was rooted in a change in opinion, maybe he figured they probably did vote just not for him seeing as he lost the popular vote by 3 million people. Edbauer's concept of exigence revolves around a multitude of opinions while Bitzer's relies on a singular fact, which although is a solid idea for a time before technology, now with the internet and the vast amount of opinions a true "fact" for rhetorical situations is difficult and maybe impossible to find. 

I personally believe Edbauer's concepts on rhetorical situation and how it centers around rhetorical ecologies is a more well-rounded and modern take on rhetorical situation when compared to Bitzer.