PEXELS/KAROLINA-GRABOWSKA “[I]f we take everyday rhetoric as our paradigmatic instance (rather than as a particular occurrence of an Aristotelian paradigm), our view of rhetoric starts to change. We begin to see that arguments—and even language—may not be the fundamental grounds of persuasion.”
—J. Muckelbauer, “Implicit Paradigms of Rhetoric: Aristotelian, Cultural, and Heliotropic,” in Rhetoric, Through Everyday Things, [1, p. 37].
“[T]he very act of using the kinds of machines, techniques, and systems available to us generates patterns of activities and expectations that soon become ‘second nature.’ We do indeed ‘use’ telephones, automobiles, electric lights, and computers in the conventional sense of picking them up and putting them down. But our world soon becomes one in which telephony, automobility, electric lighting, and computing are forms of life in the most powerful sense: life would scarcely be thinkable without them.”
—L. Winner, “Technologies as Forms of Life,” in Ethics and Emerging Technologies, [2, p. 55].
Just a few decades after its widespread introduction into society, the smartphone has attained the most rapid adoption of any communications technology to date [3]. As of 2024, roughly 60% of the global population owns a smartphone, and this number will likely continue to grow [4]. Ownership rates are higher still in the United States (91% [5]) and Canada (84%1 [6]). At this point, the idea of living without a smartphone is almost unthinkable for many people. Of course, as Winner’s [1, p. 55] epigraph notes, this process holds true for all media and technologies: as they pass from the forefront of thought and become “second nature,” life becomes “scarcely … thinkable without them.” The smartphone is no exception. After a boom of research interest, especially from communications scholars during the 2000s and 2010s, the smartphone has faded from the forefront of academic inquiry. However, what has not faded is the role that the smartphone plays in everyday life.2 While discussions of the device have recently been overshadowed by emerging developments in the areas of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality, the smartphone is here to stay. Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, it has begun to occupy an increasingly central position in the lives of many users, serving as “an instrument of everyday action” whose importance can be largely attributed to its ability to “facilitat[e] the mundane aspects of our lives” [7, p. 2]. Rather than submitting to the notion that the facilitation of the mundane is unimportant, I would argue that it is all the more important due to the “taken-for-grantedness” [7] of this everyday facilitation. Indeed, Fogg [8] points out that many people spend more time interacting with their smartphones than with their partners or children. However, because of the subtle (and not so subtle) ways in which the smartphone is invited into everyday interactions and activities, users are not often able to disentangle the various webs of effects in which they have been caught. In other words, the smartphone’s sheer proximity to users actually prevents them from easily taking stock of the ways that it has integrated into so many areas and aspects of life.
The smartphone’s sheer proximity to users actually prevents them from easily taking stock of the ways that it has integrated into so many areas and aspects of life.
Despite the difficulties with self-diagnosing and assessing the effects of the smartphone, research conducted on mobile communication technologies (smartphones and their precursors) throughout the past three decades has made it abundantly clear that this device (and the platforms and apps that it supports) continues to have a strong impact both for individuals and society more broadly. The findings of psychologist Twenge [9], sociologists Turkle [10] and Aschoff [11], communications theorists from Katz and Aakhus [12] to Vorderer and Klimmt [13] to de Souza e Silva [14], business scholars Ghose [15], Garcia-Swartz and Campbell-Kelly [16], and cultural critics Han [17], Carr [18], and Greenfield [19] all point to dramatic social, psychological, and even economic and political shifts that have risen in tandem with the smartphone. However, existing research has not yet taken into account the inherently rhetorical—persuasive—nature of the smartphone. This device, which has been carefully designed and constructed to make specific types of suasive appeals to users, is the epitome of persuasive technology. As such, taking a rhetorical perspective opens up new avenues for conceptualizing and confronting the smartphone’s impact on users.
Reviving, then, this body of discussion and critique that spans many disciplines, this article prompts readers to consider how the smartphone functions rhetorically to affect its users—in other words, how smartphones function as persuasive, persuading technologies. I hope to spur a broader consideration of the rhetoricity of smartphones as agents of persuasion by here examining a particular aspect of the smartphone that makes it such an effective rhetorical agent: its address. By “address,” I mean the specific way in which the smartphone communicates to users or how it captures and holds users’ attention. By focusing on the address, we can assess how smartphones appeal to users in both the sense of a rhetorical appeal and being appealing to engage with. Investigating this address prompts questions such as: How does the smartphone captivate and engage people? What are the functions and affordances that make it an inviting and even indispensable tool for users?
These questions can be fruitfully addressed using a specific branch of digital rhetoric called captology, which is a partial acronym for the study of “computers as persuasive technologies” [8]. While there are many rhetorical approaches that can offer insight into the rhetoricity of the smartphone, captology is a particularly effective exemplar because it bridges human–computer interaction studies and rhetoric, looking at how technological affordances exert persuasive force. I use the term “affordances” here in two senses: “the ways that technologies invite, as well as constrain, the possibilities of certain forms of interactions while acknowledging their socially constructed nature” [20, p. 71] and “the physical properties of objects that enable people perceiving or using those objects to function in particular ways” [21, p. 17]. The affordances discussed in this article are portability, connectivity, and convergence, all of which lend to the smartphone’s “convenience factor” [8]. What this analysis of (some of) the smartphone’s captological features will ultimately demonstrate is that persuasion—most generally defined as “the process of enacting change in behavior or thought”—is achieved not only through human-to-human interactions mediated by technology but through the process of the user interacting with the technology (in this case, the smartphone) itself.
Defining the smartphone
When conducting an analysis with a central “object-to-think-with” [22], it is necessary to first distance oneself from the object by holding it (quite literally, in this case) at arm’s length. Although the locative, connective, and information-based technologies that comprise the smartphone as we know it have been around for many decades, it is only within the past 20 or so years that they converged into the convenient, pocket-sized device so often taken for granted today. The earliest smartphone was released by IBM in 1994 (the IBM Simon); RIM released its first smartphone, the BlackBerry 5810, in 2002. While the BlackBerry had significant uptake, it was not until the arrival of the first iPhone in 2007 that the smartphone as we know it really began to intertwine with the fabric of society. As Friedman [23, p. 31] writes, “As step changes in technology go … the platform birthed around the year 2007 surely constituted one of the greatest leaps forward in history. It suffused a new set of capabilities to connect, collaborate, and create throughout every aspect of life, commerce, and government” [23, p. 31]. Furthermore, in addition to being a physical point of convergence of various communications technologies, smartphones characterize the shift to mobile computing that has allowed digital communications technology to become essentially ubiquitous today.
A major issue with taking only human-to-human rhetoric as legitimate: this narrow focus fails to capture the rich networks of suasion taking place all around us, all the time.
Key features of current smartphones include mobility and the ability to “manage and transmit data” [24] through a “mobile operating system (OS) [that] supports the smartphone and provides the device with advanced computing capacities” [25]; they are, as PCMag [26] notes, a handheld computer crossed with a cellphone that affords the functionality of both tools (computer and telephone) in one palm-sized device. One interesting omission in the definitions above: none mention touch screens as being crucial to the definition of “smartphone.” Yet, touch screens have become ubiquitous in smartphones to the point where a Google search for “nontouch screen smartphone” yields results only for “dumb phones” and “flip phones,” thereby equating the lack of touch screen with a lack of “smart” power. Considering that smartphones are media “windows” (see [27] and [28]) that permit users to accomplish a range of tasks, the emphasis on the amount or size of available screens makes sense. As such, the size of the smartphone and its screen will be a key touchstone in my later rhetorical analysis.
Rhetorical foundations
Throughout the past two millennia, the discipline of rhetoric has adapted and expanded from its origins in the courts of Ancient Greece, where it was employed with the aim of persuading the polis on political or judicial decisions. It is no longer limited to the analysis of human expression and communication but now encompasses visual, social, environmental, technological, and nonhuman phenomena. Such an expansion, as scholars in these subfields have argued, accounts for a better understanding of the layers of persuasion, affect, and influence that arise from interactions between humans, humans and nonhumans, and humans and the world around them. Accordingly, my starting point for this particular rhetorical examination is Muckelbauer’s [1] work on heliotropic rhetoric in Barnett and Boyle’s [29] Rhetoric, Through Everyday Things, a collection that explores the 21st century “return to things” in rhetoric and other humanities and social sciences disciplines. Muckelbauer’s [1] essay explores the potential for persuasion beyond direct linguistic means (i.e., beyond the classic Aristotelian model for argumentation). Once we begin looking beyond explicit modes of persuasion in our everyday lives, Muckelbauer [1, p. 36] says, “It quickly becomes apparent that people are frequently persuaded by things that most of us would not readily call arguments (and that certainly are not primarily linguistic).” He notes that images, sounds, and physical structures can and do exert persuasive force, giving the example of a speed bump, which persuades drivers to slow down (and enacts concrete consequences for failing to heed this “suggestion”).
Muckelbauer’s [1, p. 36] broad conclusion is that “everyday physical structures may not exactly be arguments … but they are undoubtedly persuasive,” and thus, “it is important to consider these types of objects as crucial components of rhetoric.” His discussion of the extra-lingual modes of persuasion at work in everyday life highlights a major issue with taking only human-to-human rhetoric as legitimate: this narrow focus fails to capture the rich networks of suasion taking place all around us, all the time. It is crucial that scholars and users of technology take seriously the notion that objects can exert suasive forces, albeit in very different ways than humans do. At the same time, we should remember that the smartphone’s persuasive power—though generated through interactions with the device itself—is, at base, due to the very human intentions embedded within the device’s design and functionalities. Considering the smartphone solely as a “thing” operating outside of human awareness and intention overwrites this key factor. Therefore, to bring this foundational layer of intentionality to the forefront, I turn to captology.
We should remember that the smartphone’s persuasive power-though generated through interactions with the device itself-is, at base, due to the very human intentions embedded within the device’s design and functionalities.
Captology
The concept of captology comes from social scientist Fogg’s [8] studies on human–computer interaction and persuasion. It refers to “the design, research, and analysis of interactive computing products created for the purpose of changing people’s attitudes or behaviors” [8, p. 5]. Captology focuses specifically on intentions rather than outcomes, exploring “the intersection between persuasion in general (influence, motivation, behavior change, and so on) and computing technology including design, research, and program analysis of interactive computing products” [8, p. 13]. It is one of the two approaches that Mateus [30] identifies as constitutive of the empirical (as opposed to theoretical) side of digital rhetoric, along with Bogost’s [31] “procedural rhetoric.”
Mateus [30, p. 12] defines digital rhetoric as rhetoric “concerned with the study of persuasion in digital environments including computers, videogames, websites, and discourse on new media.” There are numerous definitions which differ from and exceed that given by Mateus (by Lanham [32], Losh [33], Zappen [34], and others), but what I am particularly interested in is Mateus’ [30] identification of empirical means of studying persuasion in online environments. That is, rather than studying persuasion only within digital environments (such as on social media sites or news apps), empirical approaches consider how digital technologies themselves are persuasive by “measur[ing] and classif[ying] the persuasive processes involved in computational systems” [30, p. 12]. These approaches are thus highly useful for looking beyond onscreen content to determine the underlying mechanisms by which technologies exert persuasive force. Indeed, Fogg’s [8] main interest is in how computing systems can be made more persuasive on an instinctual level by circumventing traditional dialectical rhetoric and instead focusing on instances of persuasion that occur subconsciously. (To illustrate this distinction, phone designers are not delivering a concrete or literal message to users through the devices they design; rather, the smartphone itself is the active agent in the user-device relationship because of how it has been designed to elicit certain responses.)
Since the publication of Fogg’s [8] Persuasive Technologies in 2002, such design tactics and strategies have become much more prevalent and openly discussed. Concepts such as “deceptive patterns” [35], “nudge theory” [36], and “esthetic design power” [37] are just a few examples of how captology has been taken up in digital design practices. Kender and Frauenberger’s [37, p. 367] notion of esthetic design power is especially similar in that it focuses on design features; however, it accounts for both “the intended and unintended influences that the form of a designed artifact has, consciously and unconsciously, on users to behave in a certain way in their interactions with the artifact and beyond.” This definition is an expansion and slight divergence from Fogg’s [8, p. 17] original emphasis on the “ planned persuasive effects of computer technologies” and so is outside the scope of this article. Captology visibilizes these “planned persuasive effects” by making visible both the intentions of designers and the intended effects of the end product in the hands of users. That is to say, the application of captology to smartphones reveals some of the intentional persuasive aspects “baked in” to the smartphone that emerge from the motives, values, and ideals of the humans who make and shape these devices. The following analysis will consider some of these affordances and the resulting patterns of use that emerge from their persuasive presence.
The Smartphone: A constant and captological presence
“When you pack a mobile persuasive technology with you, you pack a source of influence. At any time (ideally, at the appropriate time), the device can suggest, encourage, and reward; it can track your performance or lead you through a process; or it can provide compelling factual evidence or insightful simulation.”
—B. J. Fogg, Persuasive Technologies [8].
This analysis explores the constellation of captological affordances and “planned persuasive effects” that enable the smartphone’s constant presence and address. In my estimation, there are three key captological affordances that make the smartphone persuasive on a material (physical, in-the-palm-of-your-hand) level. First, smartphones are small and light enough to accompany users almost anywhere (in simpler terms, they are portable). Second, unlike previous communication technologies or media, even what Innis [38] identified as “space-biased” media like books and newspapers that were designed for portability, smartphones are always (or at least are designed to be) connected, which means that the address, or potential for being addressed, is ever-present. Third, the smartphone merges (converges) the capabilities of many other forms of media into one convenient, hand-held device, which increases its centrality in daily life. In sum, smartphones are more present and more multifunctional than any past communications technology, which lends them a “convenience factor” [8] that strengthens their persuasive hold on users.
The ease with which the smartphone can be transported is, again, a captological and rhetorical affordance-its compact size invites users to welcome it into more interactions, both onscreen and off.
Portability
One of the key captological aspects of the smartphone is the constancy of its presence on users’ bodies, which is made possible by its discreet size and the portability that this size enables. Portability, from a captological perspective, is itself a suasive physical property of the smartphone because it means that users can easily bring their devices almost anywhere they go. From the beginning, the smartphone was intended to remain in hand and on hand. Indeed, as Steve Jobs [39] asserted in his 2007 MacWorld keynote address, with the design of the iPhone 1, Apple “designed something wonderful for your hand … [that] fits beautifully in the palm of your hand.” As Cooley [40, p. 28] explains explains in Finding Augusta, “In a very immediate and visceral way, the design of our handhelds pleases. For many hands, these devices do feel like ‘natural’ extensions of the body.” Of course, Cooley then notes that “many hands” does not mean “all hands”—a fact highlighted, for instance, by backlash to the large screen sizes of the 2018 XS iPhone line, which led to repetitive strain injuries for some female users [41].
On the topic of size, it is interesting to note that despite the technical freedom designers now have to downsize devices, recent smartphone screens have tended to increase in size. While the iPhone 1 came out with a 4.5-in screen in 2007 (which would, ostensibly, fit into the palm of most hands), a screen of that size is now much less common than the 5.8–6.2-in screens that we see on newer models. This increase in screen size mirrors the increasing number of uses to which a smartphone can be put, as my discussion of convergence in the following Section will address. Yet, compared to laptops or tablets, even the biggest smartphone is comparatively compact. If smartphones were bigger or more fragile or required special handling during transport, they would not be able to exert a persistent hold over users. They are, certainly, far more convenient, generally, to tote around than the former technologies, which require two hands (and often an external tool, such as a stylus, mouse, or keyboard) to operate effectively. The ease with which the smartphone can be transported is, again, a captological and rhetorical affordance—its compact size invites users to welcome it into more interactions, both onscreen and off. However, size alone does not assure the smartphone’s persuasive and pervasive address; for that, its connectivity is crucial.
Connectivity
Although past media could be portable (scrolls and pamphlets) and others could offer connection over long distances (telegraph and radio), it was not until the development of the Internet and mobile computing that the current level of connectivity became possible. What impact does this constant connectivity have in everyday life? What makes people notice it, and what makes it important for the way people are addressed by their smartphones? The short answer is that a smartphone’s ability to connect to other devices (re)positions users as nodes within an ever more complex web of interaction. These connections take place both obviously—as in intentional messages sent to other users—and discreetly, such as with GPS and Wi-Fi location tracking. It is connectivity that keeps users on their phones and their phones on them, which makes people consistently reachable and able to reach others (whether individual others or massive online audiences).
Using the language of marketing, the smartphone’s connectivity can be seen as enabling two different types of interaction: pushes and pulls. When we think of smartphones as having a “rhetorical address,” it is the push factor that comes to mind, exemplified in the aptly named “push notification.” The fact that a smartphone can give “suggest[ions], encourage[ment], and reward[s],” as well as “track your performance or lead you through a process,” is part of the push factor that it exerts [8, p. 186]. A smartphone ceaselessly conveys information—even when the user did not specifically request it—due to behind-the-scenes algorithms that convert actions in subsequent action items and prompts in almost real time. It is because of these pushes (or “nudges,” as Thaler and Sunstein [36] would call them) that users are frequently being addressed by their devices in a barrage of vibrations, notifications, and sounds. To be clear, I am not concerned here with the content of the nudges so much as the fact that they take place at all; in this way and perhaps most obviously, the phone is the agent of persuasion by drawing attention to itself, appealing to the user to respond.
Conversely, the pull factor refers to the latent potential stored in a smartphone: the information platforms, search engines, social media sites, and other elements that draw users in. This is a much more subtle, but no less effective, approach to attract users’ attention—one that at least gives the appearance of greater user agency and initiative because the user is making an independent inquiry as opposed to responding to an address. As Vorderer and Klimmt [13, p. 55] explain, “During periods when owners of these devices are currently not devoting their attention to them, smartphones and other mobile hardware continue to collect incoming messages, to update status information of these owners’ interests (e.g., on weather, stock prices, or the functioning of appliances back at home), and to stay ready for immediate use.” In other words, awareness of everything going on “behind the scenes” creates a frequent desire for users to log in and see what they have missed.
The pull factor is further enhanced by user-friendly interfaces that are captologically enjoyable or easy to engage with—for example, the “infinite scroll” feature that many social media platforms make use of. This feature, developed in 2006 by Aza Raskin (“who has now made a second career out of his regret for it,” according to Culp [42]), relies on the user “pulling” the screen up in search of new content, which is delivered in a matter of milliseconds. Because of the endless nature of the scroll function—which, by definition, asserts that there is no end, no bottom to the rabbit hole—users can continually go in search of new information. Once a user has been pulled in to search for information or products, they are often exposed to an increased number of relevant pushes, too. In this way, pushes and pulls feed off one another, creating ever more persuasive appeals as they turn (in both a general sense and Muckelbauer’s [1] heliotropic sense) the user this way and that.
Beyond these pushes and pulls, how does connectivity operate behind the scenes and below the notice of everyday users in a persuasive manner? The conversation now turns to the work of Zuboff [43], Crary [44], Farman [45], Chun [46], and other scholars of privacy and data. Looking more critically at the smartphone’s connectivity, we see that it is often used for tracking purposes. Location-based services rely on the stream of signals received from users’ phones to determine how busy a given store is, what ads to display, and when to expect precipitation. In this sense, connectivity creates a more seamless and persuasive experience for users, whose phones seem to always have the information that they need at the time they want it. Furthermore, as Farman [45] and Harris [47] note, smartphones become more helpful as they gather more data on what people do and where they go. The smartphone’s constant connectivity affords users frequent chances to add input into various systems (whether by leaving reviews, checking in at a location, tapping to pay for the bus, and so on). The constant connectivity coupled with user input also means that smartphones can begin anticipating future participation by providing tailored recommendations or information. Oftentimes, what users see on their screens is influenced by their previous patterns of connectivity, as is the case with Google Maps highlighting certain stores or types of venues (and not others) based on users’ previous locations. (For a full—and frightening—examination of issues of privacy and surveillance, see [43].) Through these repeated interactions, the smartphone’s “ethos,” or character, is reinforced as that of a helpful companion who consistently provides just what the user is looking for.
Convergence
The next key affordance is the fact that the smartphone represents a convergence of many other forms of media, meaning that there are far more ways that this technology “invites” users into “the possibilities of certain forms of interactions” [20, p. 71]. The term “convergence” comes from Jenkins [48, pp. 2 and 3] who defined it as “the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want.” The smartphone is a perfect example of the convergence of new media. Communications scholar Helles [49, p. 16] notes that smartphones offer “the parallel presence of more or less all media on a single, mobile platform,” which are all “available in every instance of medium choice”; this allows users an “unprecedented level of discretionary power to select and combine media in communication.” Users can easily flip between several different channels of communication, each selected specifically for their desired audience: phone calls for grandparents, Facebook Messenger for high school friends, Slack channels for coworkers, FaceTime for partners, and the list goes on.
In Fogg’s view (and others like Eyal [50] and Thaler and Sunstein [36]), having many forms of communicative affordance available at one’s fingertips is advantageous because it increases the number of opportunities for persuasive communication. Fogg [8] is particularly interested in how designers, advertisers, and producers can capitalize on opportunities to reach users and persuade them to take specific action. He gives the example of healthcare apps, which monitor and remind users to take their medication at the correct time with a pushed notification—just one more way that the smartphone converges previous media and even begins to fulfill roles formerly held by human beings. Given the right settings and information, the smartphone can (but should not necessarily) take on the role of a doctor, coach, friend, teacher, or therapist. The increasing prevalence of AI chatbots designed to fulfill these various roles further supports the argument for keeping smartphones “always on/always on us” [51]. The convergence not only of different types of media and communication formats but also of the social world into a digitized format means that users rarely have to look farther than arm’s length for entertainment, advice, information, or conversation.
From a captological perspective, the more features the smartphone offers users, the more it can “hook” [50] users because it is harder to get away from this device that facilitates and supports so many daily interactions. Indeed, one of Fogg’s [8] key tenets of persuasion through computers is that they fulfill many functions for the user, serving as tools, media, and social actors. For the average user, a smartphone can do almost anything that a computer can do, but there is something special about the way these computing affordances coalesce in the smartphone as a handheld device that creates a user experience quite different from that of a computer, despite the two sharing many of the same functionalities.
Convenience
The constant, connected presence of the smartphone—which is itself a convergence of many other technologies—makes it an almost indispensable tool for everyday use. A key benefit of the smartphone is the fact that it is designed to remain “on” at all times, meaning that its default setting is “ ready.” Fogg [8, pp. 188 and 189] calls the fact that such a device is “always available (it is near the user) and responsive (it is instantly on—almost no delay to boot up or load)” the “convenience factor.” The convenience factor is further bolstered by ever-lengthening battery life, increasingly “intuitive” interfaces, touch and facial recognition, voice-activated digital assistants, and quick-loading apps shortcutted to the home screen. Whether users need to find the closest gas station, call a friend to confirm a meeting time, or compare products while shopping, their smartphones can provide near-instant support. The smartphone is, thus, conveniently positioned to help users with the “microcoordination” [7] of both routine and nonroutine elements of daily life. It is persuasive in this sense because it so elegantly enables users to complete so many tasks with so little effort. In a time where productivity and efficiency are becoming increasingly important, the convenience factor is paramount.
Recap
This rhetorical, captology-centered analysis has focused on some of the smartphone’s key captological affordances, asking how they help the device “appeal” to users. As we now know, the first sense of “appeal” (being appealing) comes largely from the simple convenience factor of the smartphone’s size and portability, as well as from the plethora of options for multimodal engagement made possible by the convergence factor. The second meaning of appeal (making appeals) is possible because of how connectivity, combined with convergence, promises a steady stream of relevant and fresh information vying for users’ attention. Through this constellation of factors, the persuasive force of the smartphone as an object and agent becomes apparent. Every aspect of its design is an argument in favor of keeping it on hand (quite literally). By viewing the smartphone as an assemblage of rhetorical tactics designed to persuade users to interact with it and through it, we can open up new understandings for how to both negotiate and navigate those interactions.
Moving the audience to action has always been the goal of rhetoric; with smartphones, however, the types of actions that people are moved to commit are not always ones based on rational responses to recognized appeals but often ones that take place on a semiconscious or subconscious level.
Recap
As Muckelbauer [1, p. 37] emphasizes, even though we may “never be fully aware of all the multiple forces that constitute the rhetorical dimensions of a situation, this does not mean they are irrelevant or that rhetoricians can simply continue to ignore them in favor of focusing on the recognizable argument.” Accordingly, my goal in this article has been to identify the rhetorical dimensions of users’ everyday interactions with their smartphones by highlighting how key affordances enact persuasive power. Upon such an examination, it becomes clear that the ways in which users are encouraged and enabled to interact with their smartphones are rhetorical because the devices are always steering—or “turning,” to use Muckelbauer’s [1] phrasing—people toward certain actions over others.
Moving the audience to action has always been the goal of rhetoric; with smartphones, however, the types of actions that people are moved to commit are not always ones based on rational responses to recognized appeals but often ones that take place on a semiconscious or subconscious level, as Fogg’s [8] captological approach demonstrates. It is for these reasons important that we study the smartphone not just as a tool in the hands of human agents but as a rhetorical agent in and of itself. Indeed, examining how the smartphone is reshaping and reorienting users’ lives toward certain ends is crucial for understanding and anticipating both the present and future of psychological and social life. In doing so, we can shed light on a whole network of persuasion at play in everyday life, one that will only grow more complex and comprehensive in the coming years as communications technologies continue to evolve.
Author Information
Shannon Lodoen is an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott, AZ 86301 USA. Her current research is situated at the intersection of rhetorical studies, communications and media theory, cultural studies, and technology ethics. Lodoen has a PhD in english (rhetoric) from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada. Email: lodoens@erau.edu.
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