Media Affordances as Dialogue Rules: A Corpus-Driven Analysis of Ethos-Centered Argumentation in TV Debates and Social Media

Abstract

Abstract This article investigates how the structural affordances of communication media alter the interactional pragmatics of political argumentation. Through a diachronic, mixed-methods analysis of the 2016 and 2024 U.S. presidential campaigns, we compare synchronous broadcast television debates with asynchronous social media (Twitter/X) discourse. Combining manual annotation of argumentative moves with automated sentiment and incivility scoring, we demonstrate that platform architectures rewrite the rules of political argumentation. In TV debates, institutional constraints incentivize self-referential supports of ethos (face enhancing acts) and pragmatic mitigation of uncivil language. Conversely, Twitter’s algorithmic affordances like quote-tweeting incentivize aggressive attacks on opponents’ ethos (face threatening acts) and digital impoliteness. Furthermore, we observe a difference in how speakers build ethotic arguments: TV demands contrastive ethos positioning, whereas social media primarily facilitates lay testimony. Ultimately, this study provides evidence that media affordances are associated not only with differences in rhetorical style but also with variation in the interactional objectives manifested in political discourse.