/tags/methods/ Recent content in Methods on Keren Wang Hugo en-us Sun, 14 Sep 2025 21:00:04 +0000 /teaching/2025/09/teaching-lesson-7-rhetorical-artifacts/ Sun, 14 Sep 2025 21:00:04 +0000 /teaching/2025/09/teaching-lesson-7-rhetorical-artifacts/ <header> <p class="byline">Posted by: Keren Wang</p> <p class="intro"><strong>Before you start this lesson, please READ:</strong> Berger, Arthur Asa. 2024. <em data-end="247" data-start="145">Media and Communication Research Methods: An Introduction to Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches</em>. 3rd ed. Chapter 4, “Rhetorical Analysis.” Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. <a class="decorated-link" data-end="353" data-start="316" href="https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071939017" rel="noopener" target="_new">https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071939017</a>.</p> </header> <section id="overview"> <h2>1. Overview</h2> What do you think of when you hear the word “<strong>artifact</strong>”? In rhetorical scholarship, the term “artifact” is not limited to historical objects or museum pieces. Instead, it encompasses various texts, speeches, symbolic objects, and events produced by humans. <p>In communication research, one key difference between rhetorical and critical methods and other qualitative research methods is that, while qualitative methods such as interviews, observations, and focus group studies revolve around studying human subjects, rhetorical scholars analyze rhetorical artifacts, or “texts” that have already been produced.</p>