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A Theory of Digital Rhetoric
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In this collaborative writing project, we theorize digital rhetoric as a way of being both in and about the digital world.
In characterizing digital rhetoric as distinct, we do not intend a fully incompatible or incommensurable field of effect or inquiry. Instead, this field is composed through largely non-linear, dispersed, and broadly accessible technologies that enable the users to be interactive with the creation of the medium itself. Because of these features of digital space, (interactors) have greater liberty to create and share content while also achieving access to others' contributions that expands exponentially with every submission. Because of this growth, we do not posit or attempt a full account of the field of digital rhetoric, but we do hope to discern its potential applications.
A Possible Difference Between Digital Rhetoric and Rhetoric in Digital Environments
Might rhetoric in digital environments function tropologically? That is, might digital rhetoric constitute what Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee in Ancient Rhetorics describe as “an artful substitution” (438). To explore this question further, we must ask: What is artfully substituted for what?
Let’s explore this question by way of a specific trope—that of the hyperbaton. As Sharon Crowley and Deborah Hawhee note, a linguistic hyperbaton proves “a trope that transposes a term to somewhere other than its usual place” (433). The trope of the hyperbaton seems particularly germane to our current line of inquiry because we are primary concerned with an environment, a digital environment, a place. The hyperbaton clarifies what might be the largest undetected trope that currently circulates in rhetoric studies. Indeed, the hyperbaton highlights the tension between two terms (formerly viewed as interchangeable): (1) rhetoric in digital environments and (2) digital rhetoric. Rhetoric in digital environments clearly situates our object of inquiry (rhetoric) in a particular place (a digital environment). Here, there appears to be no confusion about what we are investigating or where we are investigating it. However, we when consider the term digital rhetoric, we note the presence of a hyperbaton, a transposition. In sum, the object of inquiry has been transposed with the place of inquiry.
This artfully substitution impacts rhetoric in digital environments/digital rhetoric scholarship immensely. In particular, it is our view that a proliferation of shoddy scholarship now exists because of the functioning hyperbaton digital rhetoric. When producing this type of scholarship—what we refer to as Digital Rhetor (Ick!)—scholars sacrifice rigorous research methods and methodologies for a concern with the digital environment. Consequently, a theory of digital rhetoric might be the ultimate Post-Modern move—substituting style for substance.
A Definition of Rhetoric
To begin, we must ask, what is it that we mean by "rhetoric"? What definition of rhetoric do we take for our definition of digital rhetoric. The notion of "persuasive symbolic interaction" seems to connote a Burkean view of rhetoric. In fact, Burke seems to be commonly envoked when looking at rhetoric in digital environments. [Add Warnick's invocation of Burke here]. If we define rhetoric in Burkean terms we go beyond looking at ethos, logos, and pathos. Our very notion of what is persuasive shifts. In the Rhetoric of Motives, Kenneth Burke states that “Often we must think of rhetoric not in terms of one particular address, but as a general body of identifications that owe their convincingness much more to trivial repetitions and dull daily reenforcement than to exceptional rhetorical skill.” [add page number] This seems to apply to digital environments in particular as these environments have very much become a matter of "trivial repetition" and "daily reenforcement." So, what is it that keeps us coming back day after day to the same old website? What is it that persuades us to return? Perhaps it is not that we are pursuaded by one outstanding rhetoror, certainly notions of the rhetor as notions of the author, are complicated in digital environments. Instead, following from Burke's definition, the rhetoric of online environments may lie in our identification with a certain online community.
A Definition of Digital Media/ Environments
In order to better understand the work of digital rhetoric, it will be fruitful to further define its site of inquiry: digital media. We are not content in allowing "digital" to be little more than a media delivery method. To be a distinct form of inquiry, the object of digital rhetoric must have a vital, intimate, and atomic existence with(in) digital environments. Also, it is important to remember that the technologies enabling and sustaining these digital environments are not good, not bad, nor are they neutral [citation needed]. As we have seen in Fred Turner's recent chronicle of cyberculture, digital media has more than its fair share of ideological baggage (Counterculture). Any project that situates itself within a digital domain--particularly in the networked, hypertext environment of the internet--would do well to keep Turner's exploration of cyberculture well in mind.
Digital Rhetoric in the Public Sphere
To further this definition of digital rhetoric, we must first look at the concept of the public sphere. How has the public sphere been re-defined in a digital era? Can the Internet be conceived of as a return to the "polis"?
Christian R. Weisser implies that engagement with the public sphere necessitates a point of contact. Whereas Weisser locates this point of contact in the composition classroom, as “something that distinguishes composition from many other academic disciplines,” we locate this point of contact in digital environments (Moving Beyond Academic Discourse 43). Admittedly, these points of contact are not mutually exclusive. In fact, many connections exist between the composition classroom and digital environments. Regardless of where one chooses to locate this point of contact with the public sphere, Weisser asserts that “the various locations of public discourse, though always shifting and transient, nonetheless have their own histories and possibilities” (47). In this essay, we seek to explore the shifting and transient nature of digital environments so as to better conceive of the possibilities for contact with the public sphere through public discourse.
This is not a new project. Susan Wells, Irene Ward, and Christian Weisser are three individuals who have explored the connections between technologies and public discourse. While the questions of inquiry remain the same, the site of inquiry is never stable. Much like the Wiki on which we coauthor this article, digital environments are never stable. Consequently, we must qualify all past work on rhetoric in digital environments as we simultaneously qualify our own work on rhetoric in digital environments. While our inquiry might stop growing, the digital environment will not. Accordingly, when our work is finished, completed, and published, it will have already become outdated, decrepit, and, to some degree, devalued.
Writing in 2002, Weisser draws upon the work of Jurgen Habermas and outlines “three institutional criteria that must be met in the establishment of a public sphere” (50). Weisser describes the public sphere as: (1) A site where “little attention is paid to the status of participants;” (2) A site that debates topics that are of “‘common concern’ to the general public;” and (3) A site that is, “at least in principle, inclusive and open to all participants” (50). Although Weisser applies these criteria to Ward’s notion of a“cyberdemocracy,” we might want to apply these criteria to the various digital media which contribute to digital environments.
Liz Losh designated 2006 “The Year of Digital Rhetoric” due to the no longer ignorable role that digital media plays in world politics. This phenomenon stems from “the availability of digital information through distributed computer networks that impacts American political history”. Information is distributed through purposeful, digital interventions at the hand of concerned, cyber-savvy citizens. Losh posits that digital rhetoric forces accountability: Formerly private political scandals, civic leaders’ mistakes, and military misdemeanors are “leaked” to the public using digital technologies. (Recent examples include inappropriate sexual advances made by members of Congress to minors, politicians’ failures to heed warnings related to Hurricane Katrina, and racially charged comments made by state and national leaders but never intended for the public audience.)
Indeed, the rise of “social media and participatory file sharing culture” has had unmistakable bearing on U.S. politics of late, even shifting party control of the House and Senate during recent election years. This, Losh contends, was due to the strategic release of evidence highlighting politician wrong-doing that resulted in changed voter behavior due to lost voter confidence. Politicians and high-ranking military personnel, too, use digital media in order to advance their own campaigns and agendas, as when U.S. Military personnel tried to change prevailing attitudes towards the Iraq War using Internet based propaganda. (How does this conflict with the idea of a “participatory file sharing culture” in which citizens can be involved? Does this negate the citizen’s role?)
Documents, audio recordings, and videos of such happenings are intentionally leaked by members of the press and members of the alternative media – that is to say, any Web user who posts online. In many instances, the “viral popularity” (says Losh) of video and sound files originally broadcast in traditional media outlets find greater viewership on the World Wide Web. “Thanks to easy digital distribution, [such] video[s] [are] viewed by thousands on YouTube and bec[o]me a national news story for broadcast and print media”. These developments have also ushered in a new form of political sabotage. It’s not just the general public making claims against politicians, but rather political strategists from the alternate camp who distribute information without the other party’s consent.
Virtual Communities
Joseph Harris argues that the word “community” is always seen in a positive light and never in a negative light (qtd. in Blanchard). Hearing the word “community” makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. There is never any critical reflection on the term. Hence what Blanchard describes as “the overuse” of the term “virtual community.” For scholars talking about digital rhetoric, it seems that everybody wants to be optimistic about the potential for digital environments to house new kinds of communities, communities that “replace the relationships lost as people became more isolated from their neighbors” and “[increase] democratic participation and other community activism” (Blanchard). However, Blanchard argues that for digital environments to be classified as virtual communities they must allow for the following: group membership, individual influence, support between members, and shared history between members. In other words, participants in a digital environment must feel that they are an integral part of some group in order for that group to be designated as a virtual community.
While it is easy to imagine communities as collectives of like-minded individuals, but Teresa Harrison notes that most groups regarded as communities are characterized by disagreement over fundamental issues. Underscored in this definition is the idea that what is common to a community is not a physical space or place, but a “symbolic system of shared symbols, constructs, and norms of communication (Harrison). This description of community is similar to Lester Faigley’s notion of a discourse community, where members “know what is worth communicating, how it can be communicated, what other members of the community are likely to know and believe to be true about certain subjects, how other members can be persuaded and so on." In a strong sense, communities are grounded in how they communicate with each other. The idea of a virtual community, then, would be gounded in an understanding of virtual or digital communication.
Examples of Digital Rhetoric
Blogs
One type of digital media that has garnished a great deal of discussion is the weblog (blog). Blogs started in the late 1990s and have gained popularity through websites such as LiveJournal and Blogger. As a genre, blogs are still changing and emerging, but in the "Introduction: Weblogs, Rhetoric, Community, and Culture," Gurak et al. provide some useful definitions for what the genre of the blog is at this time. They state, "what characterizes blogs are their form and function: all posts to the blog are time-stamped with the most recent post at the top, creating a reverse chronological structure governed by spontaneity and novelty." Content, however, can vary greatly depending on the blog. So can authorship. As Gurak et. al note, blogs can " combine musings, memories, jokes, reflections on research, photographs, rants, and essays," among other things. Blogs can have one author or multiple authors. In some cases, they are communities in and of themselves, in other cases, they are locked so that only those invited can read them.
Although Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepard attempt to define blogs as a genre, these texts do not all respond to the same rhetorical exigency. This makes them particularly difficult to pin down in terms of digital rhetoric. The relationship between blogs and the public sphere is especially problematic. One thing that blog researchers are not always able to account for is the issue of access with blogs. On LiveJournal, a large number of users have their journals marked "friends only" so that the public at large cannot read their writing, yet even these blogs seem to fit our definition of redefining the public sphere. No longer is Julie writing her deep, dark personal thoughts in a journal with a heart-shaped locket that she hides under her bed - now, she is blogging them. Even if she limits her audience, the chances are high that she still writes journal entries for others to read. The nature of what is personal and what is public is thus reconcieved, even if public access is limited by the author.
Stigma Communication
Rachel Smith describes the process of how stigma communication motivates people to bond in-group members. Here I want to demonstrate how that might work in the context of a digital environment, particularly in the promotional blog for the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Stigma messages as bearing four attributes in providing cues that (1) distinguish people and (2) categorize them as a separate social entity. They also (3) link this group to physical and social peril and (4) imply blame on the part of members of the group for belonging to that group and their linked peril. These cues encourage the activation of stereotypes, induce affective reactions, and the associated action tendencies (Smith 463).
Perhaps the most blatant example of this is in a blog entry dated October 31st, 2007, titled “Darwinism: The Imperialism of Biology?” Stein wastes no time in referring to Karl Marx as “evil,” and subsequently compares Darwin to Marx as being the product of the ideologies of his time—which here are portrayed as imperialist. Thus, stigma communication is already established within the first few paragraphs of the entry: “Imperialism had a short but hideous history–of repression and murder,” and:
"Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process."
Ignoring the falsity of these claims for the moment, what we see here is basically an attempt to distinguish a group (Darwinists), to categorize them as a separate entity (as members of an antiquated ideology), and to link them to physical and social peril (imperialism, the Holocaust). Blame has already been established in the preceding entries. An actual discussion of the merits of evolutionary biology is precluded on moral grounds—by dehumanizing an opposing camp, Expelled is rhetorically guarded against counterclaims.
The Rhetoric of Dimissal: How instability works
Barbara Warnick, in her 2007 study Rhetoric Online, states that “critics should not look to the communication platform or its features as per se good or bad when making attributions about how its use affects society. Instead, they should consider how its affordances are shaped and applied by users…” (22). Her definition of “affordances,” however, to me seems to emphasize only what we might regard as positive traits: interactivity, speed, intertextuality, etc. She later lists a number of perceived shortcomings that the Web has as a persuasive medium: its instability, its potential to contribute to the decline of certain forms of literacy, and unequal access (27). It is my contention that these traits can actually be used to rhetorical advantage; by limiting access or silencing opposing viewpoints, these shortcomings can further the promotion of identification that Burke felt was integral to persuasion: “we are clearly in the region of rhetoric when considering the identifications whereby a specialized activity makes one a participant in some social or economic class. ‘Belonging’ in this sense is rhetorical” (A Rhetoric 28). Web authors can foster this identification through any number of the positive and interactive means that Warnick describes, but there are also a number of tactics that utilize the Web’s more unstable features to engage in what I term a rhetoric of dismissal.
How might a digital environment be used to preemptively quell discussion? What strategies may be employed? How does this sort of quelling benefit the author?
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QuoteBank:
[submit quotes below that are likely to warrant inclusion in this essay;
deposit and withdrawal at will.]
"...collaborative constitution is necessarily an uncertain, unpredictable endeavour. It resists easy formulation. Concepts are contextual. Experimentation is key, and experience is crucial. Those who insist on predefined outcomes and lists of deliverables will only be disappointed. But such agents of administrative anxiety are essential for the collaborative constitution of creativity. See these procedural types as conflict generators that wish to police the borders of reason and the act of action. Don’t be concerned about the registration of denial. The negative affect will undoubtedly take hold and propel your investigation in one direction or many."
"A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction" (149).
"By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs" (150).
[note about the Haraway quotes: they're being included because they seem to raise interesting questions about what happens to us when we interact with digital rhetoric.] "Setting cyberspace aside for a moment, let’s look at virtual reality (VR), which was coined by Jaron Lanier. Whereas the term cyberspace may have had its origins in Gibson’s cyberpunk science fiction, Howard Rheingold and Michael Heim suggest that VR had its origins in science (Vitanza 2)."
"Therefore, when we are in VR, we can experience both cyberspace and virtual reality (Vitanza 3)."
"For many including Plato and even Aristotle, this illusion of being elsewhere is not good. However, many people argue that when we are actually in VR (!) we are not imitating a real action but are in a completely different, if virtual reality (Vitanza 3)."
Working Bibliography:
Burke. A Rhetoric of Motives. [finish citation]
Miller, Carolyn, and Dawn Shepherd. "Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog." Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. Eds. Laura Gurak, et al. http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/
Laura Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman. "Introduction: Weblogs, Rhetoric, Community, and Culture." Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/
Vitanza, Victor J. CyberReader: Abridged Edition. Boston: Pearson Longman, 2005.
Weisser, Christian R. Moving Beyond Academic Discourse: Composition Studies and Public Sphere. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2002.
Digital Rhetoric and the concept of Progress
If we apply these general reflections [on the need of new methods] to the various sciences, we can find in each of them examples of progressive improvement that will remove any doubts about what we may expect for the future.” Antoine-Nicolas de Condorcet, The Progress of the Human Mind, p.186.
More than two centuries have passed since Condorcet, while hiding from the Jacobin’s anger, wrote the Progress of the Human Mind. In the years after his death, the vision of combining scientific enlightenment and social change suggested the dominant progressive doctrine of the West, to be celebrated in the political and industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century. Opposition, however, to the esprit philosophique -through the forging of an equally modern world-picture, had begun from the middle of the eighteenth century. Since the beginnings of the end of the Old Regime, concepts of progress and decline have co-existed as part and parcel of the same discourse. Indeed, they have been constantly constructing and reinventing one another.
In our case, there are a couple of points that we might want to look at in terms of correlating the ideal of progress with the historical evolution of a rhetorical theory. First, besides some early "suggestions" of the concept, the ideal of progress in its contemporary guise did not arise until the so-called early modern times. Indeed, the writings of Francis Bacon seem to suggest the locus classicus of the notion's first crystallized manifestation (J.B. Bury, 1924).
Accordingly, our first point would be that the characteristically modern concept of progress was absent from classical antiquity and, thus, from the Aristotelian tradition of rhetoric as we have discussed it in this class.
Our second point would be to look into the conditions that gave rise to the traditional progressivist spirit and to examine how those relate with the development of a rhetorical theory. Among the factors that entailed the structuring of modern conceptions of progress one traces the following: (See also Zilsel 1942, 1945 and Keller, 1950)
1. The gradual attenuation of scriptural authority, as well as of the authority of "great figures of science" i.e. (Aristotle; Galen).
2. The "de-individualization" of science, as it was manifested by the dispersal of Ionian type philosophical schools.
3. The gradual introduction of an ideology of practical use, to say nothing about the spirit of cooperation
It is interesting, therefore, to look into how notions of rhetoric and progress have co-evolved given that rhetoric emanated within a context where "scientific progress" was absent. In addition, one realizes that the former is currently practiced within a matrix that is constituted by elements that gave rise to the latter.
When making changes or additions to the text it would be best to type in the text editor of your choice rather than directly into the Wiki. That way, if there are conflicted changes that are not clearly resolved via the safety measures in place to prevent incompatible edits, then you will be able to maintain your own changes and incorporate them manually. Also, this will help you avoid annoying browser errors.
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A Theory of Rhetoric in Digital Environments or Digital Rhetor(ick)
In this collaborative writing project, we theorize digital rhetoric as a way of being both in and about the digital world.
In characterizing digital rhetoric as distinct, we do not intend a fully incompatible or incommensurable field of effect or inquiry. Instead, this field is composed through largely non-linear, dispersed, and broadly accessible technologies that enable the users to be interactive with the creation of the medium itself. Because of these features of digital space, (interactors) have greater liberty to create and share content while also achieving access to others' contributions that expands exponentially with every submission. Because of this growth, we do not posit or attempt a full account of the field of digital rhetoric, but we do hope to discern its potential applications.
A Possible Difference Between Digital Rhetoric and Rhetoric in Digital Environments
Might rhetoric in digital environments function tropologically? That is, might digital rhetoric constitute what Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee in Ancient Rhetorics describe as “an artful substitution” (438). To explore this question further, we must ask: What is artfully substituted for what?
Let’s explore this question by way of a specific trope—that of the hyperbaton. As Sharon Crowley and Deborah Hawhee note, a linguistic hyperbaton proves “a trope that transposes a term to somewhere other than its usual place” (433). The trope of the hyperbaton seems particularly germane to our current line of inquiry because we are primary concerned with an environment, a digital environment, a place. The hyperbaton clarifies what might be the largest undetected trope that currently circulates in rhetoric studies. Indeed, the hyperbaton highlights the tension between two terms (formerly viewed as interchangeable): (1) rhetoric in digital environments and (2) digital rhetoric. Rhetoric in digital environments clearly situates our object of inquiry (rhetoric) in a particular place (a digital environment). Here, there appears to be no confusion about what we are investigating or where we are investigating it. However, we when consider the term digital rhetoric, we note the presence of a hyperbaton, a transposition. In sum, the object of inquiry has been transposed with the place of inquiry.
This artfully substitution impacts rhetoric in digital environments/digital rhetoric scholarship immensely. In particular, it is our view that a proliferation of shoddy scholarship now exists because of the functioning hyperbaton digital rhetoric. When producing this type of scholarship—what we refer to as Digital Rhetor (Ick!)—scholars sacrifice rigorous research methods and methodologies for a concern with the digital environment. Consequently, a theory of digital rhetoric might be the ultimate Post-Modern move—substituting style for substance.
A Definition of Rhetoric
To begin, we must ask, what is it that we mean by "rhetoric"? What definition of rhetoric do we take for our definition of digital rhetoric. The notion of "persuasive symbolic interaction" seems to connote a Burkean view of rhetoric. In fact, Burke seems to be commonly envoked when looking at rhetoric in digital environments. [Add Warnick's invocation of Burke here]. If we define rhetoric in Burkean terms we go beyond looking at ethos, logos, and pathos. Our very notion of what is persuasive shifts. In the Rhetoric of Motives, Kenneth Burke states that “Often we must think of rhetoric not in terms of one particular address, but as a general body of identifications that owe their convincingness much more to trivial repetitions and dull daily reenforcement than to exceptional rhetorical skill.” [add page number] This seems to apply to digital environments in particular as these environments have very much become a matter of "trivial repetition" and "daily reenforcement." So, what is it that keeps us coming back day after day to the same old website? What is it that persuades us to return? Perhaps it is not that we are pursuaded by one outstanding rhetoror, certainly notions of the rhetor as notions of the author, are complicated in digital environments. Instead, following from Burke's definition, the rhetoric of online environments may lie in our identification with a certain online community.
A Definition of Digital Media/ Environments
In order to better understand the work of digital rhetoric, it will be fruitful to further define its site of inquiry: digital media. We are not content in allowing "digital" to be little more than a media delivery method. To be a distinct form of inquiry, the object of digital rhetoric must have a vital, intimate, and atomic existence with(in) digital environments. Also, it is important to remember that the technologies enabling and sustaining these digital environments are not good, not bad, nor are they neutral [citation needed]. As we have seen in Fred Turner's recent chronicle of cyberculture, digital media has more than its fair share of ideological baggage (Counterculture). Any project that situates itself within a digital domain--particularly in the networked, hypertext environment of the internet--would do well to keep Turner's exploration of cyberculture well in mind.
Digital Rhetoric in the Public Sphere
To further this definition of digital rhetoric, we must first look at the concept of the public sphere. How has the public sphere been re-defined in a digital era? Can the Internet be conceived of as a return to the "polis"?
Christian R. Weisser implies that engagement with the public sphere necessitates a point of contact. Whereas Weisser locates this point of contact in the composition classroom, as “something that distinguishes composition from many other academic disciplines,” we locate this point of contact in digital environments (Moving Beyond Academic Discourse 43). Admittedly, these points of contact are not mutually exclusive. In fact, many connections exist between the composition classroom and digital environments. Regardless of where one chooses to locate this point of contact with the public sphere, Weisser asserts that “the various locations of public discourse, though always shifting and transient, nonetheless have their own histories and possibilities” (47). In this essay, we seek to explore the shifting and transient nature of digital environments so as to better conceive of the possibilities for contact with the public sphere through public discourse.
This is not a new project. Susan Wells, Irene Ward, and Christian Weisser are three individuals who have explored the connections between technologies and public discourse. While the questions of inquiry remain the same, the site of inquiry is never stable. Much like the Wiki on which we coauthor this article, digital environments are never stable. Consequently, we must qualify all past work on rhetoric in digital environments as we simultaneously qualify our own work on rhetoric in digital environments. While our inquiry might stop growing, the digital environment will not. Accordingly, when our work is finished, completed, and published, it will have already become outdated, decrepit, and, to some degree, devalued.
Writing in 2002, Weisser draws upon the work of Jurgen Habermas and outlines “three institutional criteria that must be met in the establishment of a public sphere” (50). Weisser describes the public sphere as: (1) A site where “little attention is paid to the status of participants;” (2) A site that debates topics that are of “‘common concern’ to the general public;” and (3) A site that is, “at least in principle, inclusive and open to all participants” (50). Although Weisser applies these criteria to Ward’s notion of a“cyberdemocracy,” we might want to apply these criteria to the various digital media which contribute to digital environments.
Liz Losh designated 2006 “The Year of Digital Rhetoric” due to the no longer ignorable role that digital media plays in world politics. This phenomenon stems from “the availability of digital information through distributed computer networks that impacts American political history”. Information is distributed through purposeful, digital interventions at the hand of concerned, cyber-savvy citizens. Losh posits that digital rhetoric forces accountability: Formerly private political scandals, civic leaders’ mistakes, and military misdemeanors are “leaked” to the public using digital technologies. (Recent examples include inappropriate sexual advances made by members of Congress to minors, politicians’ failures to heed warnings related to Hurricane Katrina, and racially charged comments made by state and national leaders but never intended for the public audience.)
Indeed, the rise of “social media and participatory file sharing culture” has had unmistakable bearing on U.S. politics of late, even shifting party control of the House and Senate during recent election years. This, Losh contends, was due to the strategic release of evidence highlighting politician wrong-doing that resulted in changed voter behavior due to lost voter confidence. Politicians and high-ranking military personnel, too, use digital media in order to advance their own campaigns and agendas, as when U.S. Military personnel tried to change prevailing attitudes towards the Iraq War using Internet based propaganda. (How does this conflict with the idea of a “participatory file sharing culture” in which citizens can be involved? Does this negate the citizen’s role?)
Documents, audio recordings, and videos of such happenings are intentionally leaked by members of the press and members of the alternative media – that is to say, any Web user who posts online. In many instances, the “viral popularity” (says Losh) of video and sound files originally broadcast in traditional media outlets find greater viewership on the World Wide Web. “Thanks to easy digital distribution, [such] video[s] [are] viewed by thousands on YouTube and bec[o]me a national news story for broadcast and print media”. These developments have also ushered in a new form of political sabotage. It’s not just the general public making claims against politicians, but rather political strategists from the alternate camp who distribute information without the other party’s consent.
Virtual Communities
Joseph Harris argues that the word “community” is always seen in a positive light and never in a negative light (qtd. in Blanchard). Hearing the word “community” makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. There is never any critical reflection on the term. Hence what Blanchard describes as “the overuse” of the term “virtual community.” For scholars talking about digital rhetoric, it seems that everybody wants to be optimistic about the potential for digital environments to house new kinds of communities, communities that “replace the relationships lost as people became more isolated from their neighbors” and “[increase] democratic participation and other community activism” (Blanchard). However, Blanchard argues that for digital environments to be classified as virtual communities they must allow for the following: group membership, individual influence, support between members, and shared history between members. In other words, participants in a digital environment must feel that they are an integral part of some group in order for that group to be designated as a virtual community.
While it is easy to imagine communities as collectives of like-minded individuals, but Teresa Harrison notes that most groups regarded as communities are characterized by disagreement over fundamental issues. Underscored in this definition is the idea that what is common to a community is not a physical space or place, but a “symbolic system of shared symbols, constructs, and norms of communication (Harrison). This description of community is similar to Lester Faigley’s notion of a discourse community, where members “know what is worth communicating, how it can be communicated, what other members of the community are likely to know and believe to be true about certain subjects, how other members can be persuaded and so on." In a strong sense, communities are grounded in how they communicate with each other. The idea of a virtual community, then, would be gounded in an understanding of virtual or digital communication.
Examples of Digital Rhetoric
Blogs
One type of digital media that has garnished a great deal of discussion is the weblog (blog). Blogs started in the late 1990s and have gained popularity through websites such as LiveJournal and Blogger. As a genre, blogs are still changing and emerging, but in the "Introduction: Weblogs, Rhetoric, Community, and Culture," Gurak et al. provide some useful definitions for what the genre of the blog is at this time. They state, "what characterizes blogs are their form and function: all posts to the blog are time-stamped with the most recent post at the top, creating a reverse chronological structure governed by spontaneity and novelty." Content, however, can vary greatly depending on the blog. So can authorship. As Gurak et. al note, blogs can " combine musings, memories, jokes, reflections on research, photographs, rants, and essays," among other things. Blogs can have one author or multiple authors. In some cases, they are communities in and of themselves, in other cases, they are locked so that only those invited can read them.
Although Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepard attempt to define blogs as a genre, these texts do not all respond to the same rhetorical exigency. This makes them particularly difficult to pin down in terms of digital rhetoric. The relationship between blogs and the public sphere is especially problematic. One thing that blog researchers are not always able to account for is the issue of access with blogs. On LiveJournal, a large number of users have their journals marked "friends only" so that the public at large cannot read their writing, yet even these blogs seem to fit our definition of redefining the public sphere. No longer is Julie writing her deep, dark personal thoughts in a journal with a heart-shaped locket that she hides under her bed - now, she is blogging them. Even if she limits her audience, the chances are high that she still writes journal entries for others to read. The nature of what is personal and what is public is thus reconcieved, even if public access is limited by the author.
Stigma Communication
Rachel Smith describes the process of how stigma communication motivates people to bond in-group members. Here I want to demonstrate how that might work in the context of a digital environment, particularly in the promotional blog for the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Stigma messages as bearing four attributes in providing cues that (1) distinguish people and (2) categorize them as a separate social entity. They also (3) link this group to physical and social peril and (4) imply blame on the part of members of the group for belonging to that group and their linked peril. These cues encourage the activation of stereotypes, induce affective reactions, and the associated action tendencies (Smith 463).
Perhaps the most blatant example of this is in a blog entry dated October 31st, 2007, titled “Darwinism: The Imperialism of Biology?” Stein wastes no time in referring to Karl Marx as “evil,” and subsequently compares Darwin to Marx as being the product of the ideologies of his time—which here are portrayed as imperialist. Thus, stigma communication is already established within the first few paragraphs of the entry: “Imperialism had a short but hideous history–of repression and murder,” and:
"Alas, Darwinism has had a far bloodier life span than Imperialism. Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process."
Ignoring the falsity of these claims for the moment, what we see here is basically an attempt to distinguish a group (Darwinists), to categorize them as a separate entity (as members of an antiquated ideology), and to link them to physical and social peril (imperialism, the Holocaust). Blame has already been established in the preceding entries. An actual discussion of the merits of evolutionary biology is precluded on moral grounds—by dehumanizing an opposing camp, Expelled is rhetorically guarded against counterclaims.
The Rhetoric of Dimissal: How instability works
Barbara Warnick, in her 2007 study Rhetoric Online, states that “critics should not look to the communication platform or its features as per se good or bad when making attributions about how its use affects society. Instead, they should consider how its affordances are shaped and applied by users…” (22). Her definition of “affordances,” however, to me seems to emphasize only what we might regard as positive traits: interactivity, speed, intertextuality, etc. She later lists a number of perceived shortcomings that the Web has as a persuasive medium: its instability, its potential to contribute to the decline of certain forms of literacy, and unequal access (27). It is my contention that these traits can actually be used to rhetorical advantage; by limiting access or silencing opposing viewpoints, these shortcomings can further the promotion of identification that Burke felt was integral to persuasion: “we are clearly in the region of rhetoric when considering the identifications whereby a specialized activity makes one a participant in some social or economic class. ‘Belonging’ in this sense is rhetorical” (A Rhetoric 28). Web authors can foster this identification through any number of the positive and interactive means that Warnick describes, but there are also a number of tactics that utilize the Web’s more unstable features to engage in what I term a rhetoric of dismissal.
How might a digital environment be used to preemptively quell discussion? What strategies may be employed? How does this sort of quelling benefit the author?
Let me suggest that you begin by looking at a specific concept (… or assumption, idea, implication, rhetorical element, word) embedded in this definition and offer an argument as to how it shapes our theory of digital rhetoric.
You are free to revise any and all elements of this text at any time;
this includes outright elimination or quarantining of ailing texts.
Be merciful. But, be just.
---
QuoteBank:
[submit quotes below that are likely to warrant inclusion in this essay;
deposit and withdrawal at will.]
"...collaborative constitution is necessarily an uncertain, unpredictable endeavour. It resists easy formulation. Concepts are contextual. Experimentation is key, and experience is crucial. Those who insist on predefined outcomes and lists of deliverables will only be disappointed. But such agents of administrative anxiety are essential for the collaborative constitution of creativity. See these procedural types as conflict generators that wish to police the borders of reason and the act of action. Don’t be concerned about the registration of denial. The negative affect will undoubtedly take hold and propel your investigation in one direction or many."
Rossiter, Ned. "YourSpace is my time..."
http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=260
Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. 149-181.
"A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction" (149).
"By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs" (150).
[note about the Haraway quotes: they're being included because they seem to raise interesting questions about what happens to us when we interact with digital rhetoric.]
"Therefore, when we are in VR, we can experience both cyberspace and virtual reality (Vitanza 3)."
"For many including Plato and even Aristotle, this illusion of being elsewhere is not good. However, many people argue that when we are actually in VR (!) we are not imitating a real action but are in a completely different, if virtual reality (Vitanza 3)."
Working Bibliography:
Burke. A Rhetoric of Motives. [finish citation]
Miller, Carolyn, and Dawn Shepherd. "Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog." Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. Eds. Laura Gurak, et al. http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/
Laura Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman. "Introduction: Weblogs, Rhetoric, Community, and Culture." Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs. http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/
Vitanza, Victor J. CyberReader: Abridged Edition. Boston: Pearson Longman, 2005.
Weisser, Christian R. Moving Beyond Academic Discourse: Composition Studies and Public Sphere. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2002.
Digital Rhetoric and the concept of Progress
If we apply these general reflections [on the need of new methods] to the various sciences, we can find in each of them examples of progressive improvement that will remove any doubts about what we may expect for the future.” Antoine-Nicolas de Condorcet, The Progress of the Human Mind, p.186.
More than two centuries have passed since Condorcet, while hiding from the Jacobin’s anger, wrote the Progress of the Human Mind. In the years after his death, the vision of combining scientific enlightenment and social change suggested the dominant progressive doctrine of the West, to be celebrated in the political and industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century. Opposition, however, to the esprit philosophique -through the forging of an equally modern world-picture, had begun from the middle of the eighteenth century. Since the beginnings of the end of the Old Regime, concepts of progress and decline have co-existed as part and parcel of the same discourse. Indeed, they have been constantly constructing and reinventing one another.
In our case, there are a couple of points that we might want to look at in terms of correlating the ideal of progress with the historical evolution of a rhetorical theory. First, besides some early "suggestions" of the concept, the ideal of progress in its contemporary guise did not arise until the so-called early modern times. Indeed, the writings of Francis Bacon seem to suggest the locus classicus of the notion's first crystallized manifestation (J.B. Bury, 1924).
Accordingly, our first point would be that the characteristically modern concept of progress was absent from classical antiquity and, thus, from the Aristotelian tradition of rhetoric as we have discussed it in this class.
Our second point would be to look into the conditions that gave rise to the traditional progressivist spirit and to examine how those relate with the development of a rhetorical theory. Among the factors that entailed the structuring of modern conceptions of progress one traces the following: (See also Zilsel 1942, 1945 and Keller, 1950)
1. The gradual attenuation of scriptural authority, as well as of the authority of "great figures of science" i.e. (Aristotle; Galen).
2. The "de-individualization" of science, as it was manifested by the dispersal of Ionian type philosophical schools.
3. The gradual introduction of an ideology of practical use, to say nothing about the spirit of cooperation
It is interesting, therefore, to look into how notions of rhetoric and progress have co-evolved given that rhetoric emanated within a context where "scientific progress" was absent. In addition, one realizes that the former is currently practiced within a matrix that is constituted by elements that gave rise to the latter.
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| taloy | Interactors | 2 | Mar 21 2008, 2:29 PM EDT by aspatriarca | ||
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Thread started: Feb 18 2008, 8:13 PM EST
Watch
Do we want to limit the domain of "digital" only to those "technologies that enable the users to be interactive with the creation of the medium itself"?
There is a great technological divide between digital production and digital consumption. Of course, there are those tech-savy "digi-nats," we'll call them (gives a whole new meaning to "in-digi-nous") that are producers/consumers and there are those environments such as "Wikipedia" in which the technological divide is much narrower. But, we would be remiss to exclude those users without means (ability?) to (re)produce from our analysis. Perhaps, digital rhetoric is a bridging mechanism between digital consumers and producer-consumers. Maybe that liminal space is our "site of inquiry." Hint: Click the "Post a Reply" in order to join in the "conversation." This parlor is getting kinda lonely, but I've got plenty of Cognac to keep me company. Don't mind me.
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| taloy | reclamation | 1 | Mar 21 2008, 2:20 PM EDT by aspatriarca | ||
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Thread started: Feb 10 2008, 11:02 PM EST
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I'm not sure I follow the use of "reclaims" (in the digital rhetoric definition).
Some possible theories: [1] Is digital rhetoric "reclaiming" a public sphere that was once part of digital rhetoric? [2] Is digital rhetoric "reclaiming" a public sphere that was once part of rhetoric (proper)? [3] Is digital rhetoric somehow 'saving' the public sphere by rescuing (or "reclaiming") it from the dregs of "new" media? (In the sense of reclaiming for cultivation purposes. Are we rhetorical agronomists?) Help me out. Where do we need to take this? Where is it going (on its own)?
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