Arguing through best practice: the role of argumentation from example in activists’ social media posts on sustainable fashion
(2023) Discourse Studies : an interdisciplinary journal for the study of text and talk — Vol. 25, n° 4, p. 530-548 (2023)
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- Abstract
- Examining a multilingual dataset of Twitter and Instagram messages posted by a variety of actors (NGOs and individual activists, small brands, and others) during the 2020 and 2021 Fashion Revolution Week campaigns for a more sustainable fashion system, we analyze frequently occurring discursive representations and self-representations that include individual mentions of persons or small brands. We show that individual mentions are mostly proposed in the tweets and Instagram messages posted by small brands and that they count as argumentation from example. Arguments based on a locus from example are part of two simultaneous argumentative patterns, responding to different issues and using two different maxims, respectively based on induction and from a principle “from truth to possibility”; in the latter case, brands represent themselves as best practice cases, showing that a more sustainable fashion system is possible because it is already happening. Our findings contribute to explaining how the activity type of digital activism successfully integrates multiple goals of different actors (citizens, NGOs, brands) in the campaigning by offering the possibility of simultaneous argumentation.
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Citations
Greco, S., Mercuri, C., De Cock, B., & Schär, R. (2023). Arguing through best practice: the role of argumentation from example in activists’ social media posts on sustainable fashion. Discourse Studies : an interdisciplinary journal for the study of text and talk, 25(4), 530-548. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614456231163422 (Original work published 2023)