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Twenty-first-century Western culture is characterized by profound transformations in its forms of collective organization. While traditional institutions of Western liberal democracies still wield significant political power, new forms of collective agency - most visible in progressive social protest movements, but also in the global rise of populism - have increasingly put pressure on established systems of collective organization. The contributors to this volume explore the social, political, and aesthetic forms that collective agency takes in the twenty-first century across a variety of media, including social platforms such as TikTok, multiplayer video games, and contemporary lyric poetry.
How to understand a media environment in crisis, and how to make things better by approaching information ecologically. Our media environment is in crisis. Polarization is rampant. Polluted information floods social media. Even our best efforts to help clean up can backfire, sending toxins roaring across the landscape. In You Are Here, Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner offer strategies for navigating increasingly treacherous information flows. Using ecological metaphors, they emphasize how our individual me is entwined within a much larger we, and how everyone fits within an ever-shifting network map. Phillips and Milner describe how our poisoned media landscape came into being, beginning wit...
A rhetorical examination of the rise of populist conservatism
Wearable technology, including smartwatches, biometric trackers, and body cameras, are often touted as helpful tools that record, produce, and analyze data about daily life to improve our individual habits and health or to solve serious public issues. In this book, James N. Gilmore argues that these lofty promises mask forms of surveillance and power. Charting the implementation of wearables in areas of accessibility, health, sports, labor, law enforcement, and infrastructure, Gilmore demonstrates how these devices have been positioned as authoritative means for producing knowledge about human activity. Drawing on news reporting, advertising, film and television, company reports, and legal policies, he shows how this knowledge production reproduces three distinct modes of power: normalcy, surveillance, and solutionism. Bringers of Order empowers readers to examine the complicated ways our devices reshape how we think about our lives and our ethics and why we should resist companies analyzing our personal data.
Using the tools of rhetorical criticism, the authors detail how memetic persuasion operates, with a particular focus on the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump. Make America Meme Again reveals the rhetorical principles used to design Alt-right memes, outlining the myriad ways memes lure mainstream audiences to a number of extremist claims.
In a surveillance culture, the ubiquity of audio-visual recording devices has enabled the unprecedented documentation of private indiscretions, scandalous conversations, and obscene behaviors performed by both ordinary and high-profile people. From former President Donald J. Trump's lewd banter on the infamous Access Hollywood video and leaked audio of celebrity racist tirades to outburst of violent hate speech posted daily to YouTube, contemporary media culture is awash in obscene performances of transgressive white masculinity. Such exposés are screened and viewed under the assumption that revealing secret prejudices will necessarily realize the promises of democracy and bring about a pos...
Inviting Understanding: A Portrait of Invitational Rhetoric is an authoritative reference work designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the theory of invitational rhetoric, developed twenty-five years ago by Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin. This theory challenges the conventional conception of rhetoric as persuasion and defines rhetoric as an invitation to understanding as a means to create a relationship rooted in equality, immanent value, and self-determination. Rather than celebrating argumentation, division, and winning, invitational rhetoric encourages rhetors to listen across differences, to engage in dialogue, and to try to understand positions different from their own. Organized into the three categories of foundations, extensions, and applications, Inviting Understanding is a compilation of published articles and new essays that explore and expand the theory. The book provides readers with access to a wide range of resources about this revolutionary theory in areas such as community organizing, social justice activism, social media, film, graffiti, institutional and team decision-making, communication and composition pedagogy, and interview protocols.
Eight stories about extraordinary action carried out by ordinary people When you want to effect positive change against structural and systemic problems, where do you begin? In Peace by Peace Lisa Silvestri uses interview-based storytelling to explore the catalytic moments that led ordinary people to address social, political, and economic issues in their communities ranging from the West Bank to West Baltimore. The source of their audacity is practical wisdom, an Ancient Greek virtue that Silvestri revives for twenty-first century application. In the face of challenges like environmental exploitation, global conflict, and ongoing fights for social justice, Peace by Peace offers deeply informed insight into how we can move past debilitating cynicism to create actionable change.
How a city government in central Mexico evolved from waging war on graffiti in the early 2000s to sanctioning its creation a decade later, and how youth navigated these changing conditions for producing art. The local government, residents, and media outlets in León, Mexico, treated graffiti as a disease until the state began sponsoring artistic graffiti through a program of its own. In Voices in Aerosol, the first book-length study of state-sponsored graffiti, Caitlin Frances Bruce considers the changing perceptions and recognition of graffiti artists, their right to the city, and the use of public space over the span of eighteen years (2000–2018). Focusing on the midsized city of León,...
"It's no secret that superhero comics have historically included problematic depictions of women, racial and sexual minorities, and others who do not fit the standard straight white male model of a hero. Rather than focus on these negative depictions, Langsdale wants to take a more positive approach by looking at recent comics that can be called feminist, with female heroes and creators of all genders that tell new types of stories within the genre. Although these books have usually been marginalized and have suffered premature cancellation, she argues that this marginalization has enabled innovative stories to be told in ways that not only advance the genre but also interact with contempora...