The politics of social media: Utilizing political candidates’ Instagram posts to teach political argumentation and visual argument analysis

Analysis of political and visual arguments is a key exercise traditionally included in undergraduate argumentation courses. This activity teaches students how to identify and analyze political candidate arguments presented on visual social media platforms, demonstrating how argumentation theory applies to social media campaigns. In the exercise, students identify an active political candidate’s Instagram account and select a recent post for analysis, focusing primarily on evaluating the visual arguments created within the post. After the analysis, students present their findings to the class, including evidence of the most compelling visual arguments identified. This activity incorporates the use of a familiar visual medium to help students connect wargumentation theories and concepts with relevant social media messages they may encounter in their daily lives. It also capitalizes on students’ existing use of popular visual social media to introduce basic argumentation theory, political communication practices, and visual argument analysis techniques. This single-class activity is useful in undergraduate communication courses related to argumentation, political communication, and social media messaging. Relevant courses can include argumentation and advocacy, political argumentation, or visual argument analysis units of any course. For example, this activity can be successfully deployed in an Introduction to Political Communication course’s unit on the use of visual media during political campaigns. The learning objectives of this activity are: (1) to analyze visual arguments as they appear on social media and (2) to identify specific elements of strong and weak political arguments on a visually dominant social media platform.

政治论证与视觉论证（political and visual arguments）是本科论证学课程（undergraduate argumentation courses）中传统的核心实践环节。该实践旨在教授学生如何识别与分析视觉社交媒体平台（visual social media platforms）上的政治候选人竞选论证，并阐释论证学理论（argumentation theory）如何应用于社交媒体竞选活动（social media campaigns）。
在该实践中，学生需先定位活跃政治候选人的Instagram账号，并选取近期发布的一则帖文开展分析，重点评估该帖文所承载的视觉论证内容。完成分析后，学生需向全班展示其研究发现，包括所识别出的最具说服力的视觉论证的佐证材料。
本实践环节借助学生熟悉的视觉媒介，帮助其将论证学理论与概念（argumentation theories and concepts）与日常生活中可能接触到的相关社交媒体内容建立关联。同时，该环节依托学生日常常用的主流视觉社交媒体（visual social media），向其传授基础论证学理论、政治传播实践方法与视觉论证分析技巧。
这一单课时实践环节可应用于与论证学、政治传播及社交媒体传播相关的本科传播学课程。相关课程可涵盖论证与倡导、政治论证，或是任意课程中的视觉论证分析教学模块。例如，该实践可顺利应用于《政治传播导论》（Introduction to Political Communication）课程中关于政治竞选期间视觉媒介应用的教学模块。
本实践环节的教学目标为：(1) 分析社交媒体平台上呈现的视觉论证；(2) 在视觉主导型社交媒体平台上，识别出优质与劣质政治论证的具体特征。