Pre-requisites
There is no prior knowledge needed for students to follow this lecture. However, students may have taken courses such as research methods, rhetorics or persuasive communications that may provide them with additional support in the lecture.
Explanation of activity
Building on an Aristotelian pedagogical approach, this lecture will teach students to analyse the rhetorical situation of a text or video using the SPACE MCAT mnemonic, which is an adapted version of SPACE CAT from the American College Board’s AP Language course.
The rhetorical situation is any set of circumstances that involves at least one person using some form of communication to modify the perspective of at least one other person.
Students will analyse the rhetorical situation which includes the Speaker, Purpose, Audience, Context and Exigence (the timeliness/urgency of the situation). Together these words spell out SPACE. Once students understand the rhetorical situation, they move on the MCAT. First they find the Messages that are in the text or video, and then further analyse the rhetorical Choices, the rhetorical Appeals (ethos, pathos, logos) and determine the Tone of those messages (MCAT). (See figure 1).
Figure 1: A visualisation of the SPACE MCAT framework, Tjahja (2024)
Teacher materials
Relevant reading:
- Roskelly, H. (no date) What Do Students Need to Know About Rhetoric? CollegeBoard.
- Bitzer, L.F. (1968) ‘The Rhetorical Situation’, Philosophy & Rhetoric, 1(1), pp. 1–14.
Further reading:
- Pokharel, R. (2021) Remapping the Rhetorical Situation in Networked Culture. 1st edn. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Student Materials
- Miller, C. (2024) ‘The Everyday Function of Rhetoric’. Available at: https://pressbooks.palni.org/writingfordigitalmedia/chapter/the-everyday-function-of-rhetoric/
Assessing and Evaluation
The SPACE MCAT framework provides an empirical understanding whether students are able to understand information by taking specific steps to analyse and interpret information.
In assessing if students have understood the materials, educators should reflect on the following:
- Students are able to identify the different SPACE MCAT components
- Students are able to critically evaluate the information in the SPACE MCAT components to identify information that should be fact checked or source verified
- Students are able to identify persuasive techniques
- Students are curious and actively seek the validity and reliability of information/sources
- Students are able to implement scientific research methods
- Students are able to question or identify that information used technological tools (such as deepfake technology)
- Students are able to identify whether the text or video is one of the 9 types of disinformation using SPACE MCAT
To evaluate student understanding of the materials, educators can engage in the following examinations:
- Written exams which uses the SPACE MCAT framework to analyse a text or video
- Assignments which uses the SPACE MCAT framework to analyse a text or video using the Internet, or in collaboration with other students
Analysis of Student Understanding
In this section, we review the ability of students to critically reflect on the SPACE M CAT Framework concepts.
Speaker
Students are able to find background information about the speaker. However, when analysing the speaker, they aim to justify the speaker (this can be both positively or negatively), and do not seek to contextualise the speaker. For example, in the TED Talk “Your body language may shape who you are”, the students identified that Dr Amy Cuddy is a world-renown social psychologist therefore she is knowledgeable. However, they did not contextualise that she is the second author on the research. The first author has prominently disputed the research and conducted verification experiments that disproves the research.
Source
Students do not consider the source, or they superficially acknowledge the source. They realise the source is there but do not link the relevancy of the source to the rest of the available information. This leads often to making assumptions in other parts of the framework because they do not contextualise within the source, but the whole world. For example, while analysing a TED talk, they refer to its online audiences first because this is what they are familiar with, so they assume that the TED talk audience (that they see in the video) are anybody interested in the topic. However, the on site audience at TED talk conferences are by application (and membership fee), and the attendees are scientists, CEOs, designers, intellectuals, entrepreneurs, artists. Therefore there is a non-specific audience based on wealth and status. This changes the concept of access and availability.
Furthermore, students do not acknowledge spreader content. When they watch a video, they refer to the original speaker speaking in the original location. For example, there are many third party accounts that repost for a particular purpose, for example, a health clinic resharing a video of a doctor talking about ozempic. The original video may have aimed to spread awareness, but the purpose of the reshare is to encourage people to purchase ozempic at their health clinic.
Purpose
Students easily identify the different messages and arguments in text or visual media, however they do struggle with identifying the purpose, even if it is directly indicated in the item.
Audience
Students will make up who the audience is based on the message, and not draw from the speaker and the source. For example, on the topic “powerposing”, they identified people who are interested in confidence building, yet at the same time they identified that it is a TED talk, which has an audience which is from a particular status not a particular interest-area.
Context/Constraints:
Students can accurately find background information about the item, and are able to quickly identify whether the item is one of the 7+2 types of misinformation, or whether the item is a deepfake using different tools such as Truly Media
Exigence (timeliness/urgency of the topic)
Students find it difficult to contextualise why it is important that the speaker raises this issue at this moment, this is aligned with them not being able to identify the purpose of the item
Messages
Students are able to list every argument
rhetorical Choices
We did not seek to test the ability to memorise a variety of rhetorical devices, however, they should be able to recognise them where they can. It may be good to give one or two examples such as rhetorical questions and metaphors.
rhetorical Appeals
Students struggle with identifying ethos. Generally, if a speaker is a form of expert, they immediately assume that they have ethos although the speaker did not make an ethos argument. Students also don’t question logos arguments, if there are references, they believe that the point is validated.
Tone
In short texts, students struggle to find tone, notably satire.
Modulations
- To teach this class in two lectures. To first address SPACE in one class, and MCAT in the second class
- It is easier to start with unemotional examples, but you can escalate to contentious examples (such as current elections or war disinformation)
Links to related activities
- Be Our Guest: how to have meaningful conversations when you do or don’t have the background of the story (exercise)
- The Danger of a Single Story: how to have meaningful conversations about what you know (from what you were taught or what you grew up with) vs what individuals experience in real life (and coinciding this with your own knowledge) (exercise)
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June 18, 2025
