ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the interplay between digital tools and the aesthetics of mediated arguments. Teacher education students do not need just digital skills, but also critical thinking about the affordances—the potentials and limitations—of software used for producing text. Communication with digital media creates levels through interplay between hardware, software, and meaningware. The students were assigned to producing digital argumentation texts—every year with different sets of digital tools. A majority of the digital argumentation products in our project maintained a non-personal style. In argumentation in the public sphere, verbal modes generally prevail. The audiovisual and argumentation form differ to some extent from the Free Bus production. Software reveals the affordances of various media-specific means of expression, and our case studies demonstrate how it affects the aesthetics of the digital argumentation. The software used in the three case studies affects the aesthetics of the digital argumentation in various ways. The three case studies they are written—spoken, non-verbal—verbal, and live—recorded.
