In this paper, we demonstrate how studying the rhetorics of ChatGPT prompt writing on social media can promote critical AI literacies. Prompt writing is the process of writing instructions for generative AI tools like ChatGPT to elicit desired outputs and there has been an upsurge of conversations about it on social media. To study this rhetorical activity, we build on four overlapping traditions of digital writing research in computers and composition that inform how we frame literacies, how we study social media rhetorics, how we engage iteratively and reflexively with methodologies and technologies, and how we blend computational methods with qualitative methods. Drawing on these four traditions, our paper shows our iterative research process through which we gathered and analyzed a dataset of 32,000 posts (formerly known as tweets) from X (formerly Twitter) about prompt writing posted between November 2022 to May 2023. We present five themes about these emerging AI literacy practices: (1) areas of communication impacted by prompt writing, (2) micro-literacy resources shared for prompt writing, (3) market rhetoric shaping prompt writing, (4) rhetorical characteristics of prompts, and (5) definitions of prompt writing. In discussing these themes and our methodologies, we highlight takeaways for digital writing teachers and researchers who are teaching and analyzing critical AI literacies.

We present the first large-scale computational study of political delegitimization discourse (PDD), defined as symbolic attacks on the normative validity of political entities. We curate and manually annotate a novel Hebrew-language corpus of 10,410 sentences drawn from Knesset speeches (1993-2023), Facebook posts (2018-2021), and leading news outlets, of which 1,812 instances (17.4\%) exhibit PDD and 642 carry additional annotations for intensity, incivility, target type, and affective framing. We introduce a two-stage classification pipeline combining finetuned encoder models and decoder LLMs. Our best model (DictaLM 2.0) attains an F$_1$ of 0.74 for binary PDD detection and a macro-F$_1$ of 0.67 for classification of delegitimization characteristics. Applying this classifier to longitudinal and cross-platform data, we see a marked rise in PDD over three decades, higher prevalence on social media versus parliamentary debate, greater use by male than female politicians, and stronger tendencies among right-leaning actors - with pronounced spikes during election campaigns and major political events. Our findings demonstrate the feasibility and value of automated PDD analysis for understanding democratic discourse.

In the predawn darkness of June 13, Israel launched a "preemptive" attack on Iran. Explosions rocked various parts of the country. Among the targets were nuclear sites at Natanz and Fordo, military bases, research labs, and senior military residences. By the end of the operation, Israel had killed at least 974 people while Iranian missile strikes in retaliation had killed 28 people in Israel. Israel described its actions as anticipatory self-defence, claiming Iran was mere weeks away from producing a functional nuclear weapon.

Since 2022, versions of generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude have been trained using a specialized technique called Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) to fine-tune language model output using feedback from human annotators. As a result, the integration of RLHF has greatly enhanced the outputs of these large language models (LLMs) and made the interactions and responses appear more "human-like" than those of previous versions using only supervised learning. The increasing convergence of human and machine-written text has potentially severe ethical, sociotechnical, and pedagogical implications relating to transparency, trust, bias, and interpersonal relations. To highlight these implications, this paper presents a rhetorical analysis of some of the central procedures and processes currently being reshaped by RLHF-enhanced generative AI chatbots: upholding language conventions, information seeking practices, and expectations for social relationships. Rhetorical investigations of generative AI and LLMs have, to this point, focused largely on the persuasiveness of the content generated. Using Ian Bogost's concept of procedural rhetoric, this paper shifts the site of rhetorical investigation from content analysis to the underlying mechanisms of persuasion built into RLHF-enhanced LLMs. In doing so, this theoretical investigation opens a new direction for further inquiry in AI ethics that considers how procedures rerouted through AI-driven technologies might reinforce hegemonic language use, perpetuate biases, decontextualize learning, and encroach upon human relationships. It will therefore be of interest to educators, researchers, scholars, and the growing number of users of generative AI chatbots.

This study explores the sound of populism by integrating the classic Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) features, which capture the emotional and stylistic tones of language, with a fine-tuned RoBERTa model, a state-of-the-art context-aware language model trained to detect nuanced expressions of populism. This approach allows us to uncover the auditory dimensions of political rhetoric in U.S. presidential inaugural and State of the Union addresses. We examine how four key populist dimensions (i.e., left-wing, right-wing, anti-elitism, and people-centrism) manifest in the linguistic markers of speech, drawing attention to both commonalities and distinct tonal shifts across these variants. Our findings reveal that populist rhetoric consistently features a direct, assertive ``sound" that forges a connection with ``the people'' and constructs a charismatic leadership persona. However, this sound is not simply informal but strategically calibrated. Notably, right-wing populism and people-centrism exhibit a more emotionally charged discourse, resonating with themes of identity, grievance, and crisis, in contrast to the relatively restrained emotional tones of left-wing and anti-elitist expressions.

After publishing my third book in early April, I kept encountering headlines that made me feel like the protagonist of some Black Mirror episode. "Vauhini Vara consulted ChatGPT to help craft her new book'Searches,'" one of them read. "To tell her own story, this acclaimed novelist turned to ChatGPT," said another. "Vauhini Vara examines selfhood with assistance from ChatGPT," went a third. The publications describing Searches this way were reputable and fact-based.

In the face of rapidly advancing AI technology, individuals will increasingly rely on AI agents to navigate life's growing complexities, raising critical concerns about maintaining both human agency and autonomy. This paper addresses a fundamental dilemma posed by AI decision-support systems: the risk of either becoming overwhelmed by complex decisions, thus losing agency, or having autonomy compromised by externally controlled choice architectures reminiscent of ``nudging'' practices. While the ``nudge'' framework, based on the use of choice-framing to guide individuals toward presumed beneficial outcomes, initially appeared to preserve liberty, at AI-driven scale, it threatens to erode autonomy. To counteract this risk, the paper proposes a philosophic turn in AI design. AI should be constructed to facilitate decentralized truth-seeking and open-ended inquiry, mirroring the Socratic method of philosophical dialogue. By promoting individual and collective adaptive learning, such AI systems would empower users to maintain control over their judgments, augmenting their agency without undermining autonomy. The paper concludes by outlining essential features for autonomy-preserving AI systems, sketching a path toward AI systems that enhance human judgment rather than undermine it.

'Live Action' journalist Savannah Craven Antao speaks out after being punched by an interviewee on'The Will Cain Show.' Pro-life activist Savannah Craven Antao believes the Democratic Party's recent rhetoric about "punching" at their Republican opponents contributed to the attack that left her bloody during a recent interview. Antao, a young pro-life influencer who was punched in the face by a woman she was interviewing in New York City earlier this month, pointed to Rep. Jasmine Crockett's, D-Texas, recent line about Democrats "punching" as inspiring the attack that happened to her. "She said, 'I think that you punch,'" Antao told Fox News Digital. "'I think you're okay with punching.' So yeah – pretty much just describes the left at this point. They're totally fine with just using force like that to hurt people if they don't agree with them."

Markowicz previously explained why they wrote the book in a Fox News Digital opinion piece, noting that in 2021, then-Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe said, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." "Taken on its own, the comment might even be benign. Sure, parental involvement in education had always been a prediction of student success. A 2010 study called'Parent Involvement and Student Academic Performance: A Multiple Mediational Analysis' by researchers at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro found'children whose parents are more involved in their education have higher levels of academic performance than children whose parents are involved to a lesser degree." But should parents be designing a curriculum?

The prevalence of multi-modal content on social media complicates automated moderation strategies. This calls for an enhancement in multi-modal classification and a deeper understanding of understated meanings in images and memes. Although previous efforts have aimed at improving model performance through fine-tuning, few have explored an end-to-end optimization pipeline that accounts for modalities, prompting, labeling, and fine-tuning. In this study, we propose an end-to-end conceptual framework for model optimization in complex tasks. Experiments support the efficacy of this traditional yet novel framework, achieving the highest accuracy and AUROC. Ablation experiments demonstrate that isolated optimizations are not ineffective on their own.