Miniature Rhetoric
Ethos and Pathos of Political Influencers in YouTube Video Thumbnails
Abstract
YouTube has transcended its role as a video-hosting platform to become a complex space for cultural production and even political debate. In this context, video thumbnails that serve as visual “covers” attract audiences and construct persuasive discourses. This study investigates how these illustrations contribute to rhetorical construction in videos, analyzing their role in articulating ethos (character) and pathos (emotional appeal), principles of Classical Rhetoric. Thumbnails from 8 political analysis channels with distinct ideological spectrums were selected to understand how they reinforce persuasive strategies. The methodology employed is Visual Rhetoric, which identifies argumentative construction within symbolic structures. The results indicate that thumbnails function as visual syntheses of video arguments while combining elements to enhance the creator’s authority and stimulate reactions, making them components of the persuasive discourse architecture.
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Rhêtoriké- digital rhetoric journal is an Open Access journal.All its contents are available free of charge, at no cost to you or your institution.You can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without prior permission from the editor or the author.
Rhêtoriké- digital rhetoric journal, LabCom.IFP, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.By submitting your work to the journal, you confirm that you are the author and that you own the copyright, that the content is original and previously unpublished, and that you agree to the licensing terms.
