The pervasiveness of gossip has us constantly asking: what’s the tea? Such observations are particularly true when we consider the increasing roles of celebrity culture, politics, and misinformation on social media and online sources. What is the power of gossip that compels us to crave the intimate details of major cultural figures? How do we dissect gossip from a rhetorical standpoint to consider what constitutes “good” gossip from “bad”? And, how does learning such strategies make us more information literate? By looking at how media deploys rhetorical strategies in their writing to (re)frame information, we will consider what drives audiences to consume certain information over others, how to produce these genres, and ultimately the ethics of gossip in both written and oral forms. This course is a 4-credit course, which means that students are expected to do at least 58 hours of course-related work each week during the 3 weeks of the Winter Session. Students will be required to write at least 20 pages throughout the session, completing such major assignments as rhetorical analyses of digital media, argumentative essays, and pop culture news articles.