The Rhetoric of Digital Presentation Tools in Politics: The Case of Visual Knowledge in President Obama’s Enhanced State Of the Union

Abstract

President Barack Obama's State of the Union speeches were distributed online as so–called Enhanced versions, where the television images of Obama delivering the speech were accompanied by pictures, graphs, and tables used to convince the audience about the factual state of affairs in the United States. The article explores this combination of the rhetoric and epistemology of visuality and information design on the one hand and political oratory on the other. The article demonstrates how the Enhanced State of the Union is a hybrid genre using visuals to create a rhetoric of reification and reality, apparently aiming not to argue but only to establish facts.