Aaron Hess

Resistance Up in Smoke: Analyzing the Limitations of Deliberation on YouTube

In September of 2006, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) appeared on the popular video website, YouTube, posting eight of its television commercials. YouTube members responded with a variety of video posts and comments that challenged both the content and structure of the message offered by the ONDCP. Using this controversy as a focal point, this essay is a dual analysis of the discursive content and structural features of YouTube. The response from the YouTube community is characterized in terms of vernacular and outlaw discourse, following Sloop and Ono (1997). Through strategies of re-posting and parodying the original videos and discussions on comment boards between members, select YouTubers dispute the logic of prohibition in Americas war on drugs, resisting the ONDCP message. However, the structural limitations of the medium of YouTube and the overwhelming use of YouTube for entertainment diminish the response. Ultimately, YouTubes dismissive and playful atmosphere does not prove to be a viable location for democratic deliberation about serious political issues.

In digital remembrance: vernacular memory and the rhetorical construction of web memorials

In this study, I examine four web memorials to explore the material construction of memory on the internet. Using Blairs arguments about the rhetorical materiality of memorials, I seek to understand the vernacular responses to 9/11 in the form of individually crafted web memorials. I argue that vernacular web memorials contain dual rhetorical functions of being memorials themselves as well as the tributary markers found at other national monuments. Additionally, webmastered memorials highlight the vernacular strategies of narrative memory, which recall the individual responses and calls to action after 9/11. The internet both fosters the use of vernacular commemoration and hampers it through the use of commercially registered domain names. First, web memorials assist in the creation of vernacular commemorative communities in the form of web-rings. Second, however, the durability of the digital monuments is challenged by the very form they take due to their potentially ephemeral nature.

Critical-Rhetorical Ethnography: Rethinking the Place and Process of Rhetoric

Rhetorical scholarship has relied upon textual criticism as a method of examining discourse. However, in the critical turn, rhetorical theory and praxis have been reconsidered, especially in regard to the types and locations worthy of rhetorical examination. Looking toward vernacular rhetorical discourses, rhetorical scholars examine locally situated discourses as they articulate against oppressive macrocontexts. In this essay, I offer critical-rhetorical ethnography as a method for exploring such discourses in the field of argumentation, using the concepts of invention, kairos, and phronesis. The method offers rhetorical scholars a set of theoretical and methodological guidelines for observing and participating within vernacular advocacy. Finally, I use my time with the health advocacy group, DanceSafe, as an exemplar of the method, illustrating its ability to gauge rhetorical effects, advocacy, and learned wisdom.

“You Don't Play, You Volunteer”: Narrative Public Memory Construction in Medal of Honor: Rising Sun

Narrative and ludological analysis suggests that Electronic Arts’ Medal of Honor: Rising Sun constructs a narrative of World War II that selectively retells history and constructs an Orientalist representation of the Japanese Empire. The gaming environment exists as an interactive museum that immerses gamers into history so that they experience warfare in their homes. Combining newsreels, fictional letters from home, and interviews with veterans of the “Good War,” Medal of Honor: Rising Sun retells a history that omits details of Japanese internment or atomic weapons. The intertwined themes of personal revenge for the loss of a family member and historical revenge for the attack on Pearl Harbor guide gamers through an “educational” experience of the war. Finally, its failure to simulate violence means that Medal of Honor: Rising Sun invites a critical blindness to commemorating war.

Convergent Critical Rhetoric at the “Rally to Restore Sanity”: Exploring the Intersection of Rhetoric, Ethnography, and Documentary Production

This essay offers convergent critical rhetoric as an approach to critical television studies. Constructed through a combination of rhetoric, ethnography, and documentary filmmaking, the approach encourages critics to utilize the logic of production to illuminate participatory practices in media. We use the “Rally to Restore Sanity,” hosted by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, as an exemplar. Through a combination of an academic essay and a short film, we examine the voice of participants at the rally, who questioned the polarized climate of the modern television industry. Using our approach, we found that attendee participation in the spectacle enacted a critique of “The Media” and the politics of profit-motivated news production. We close the essay with a discussion of limitations and future directions of the approach.

In Situ Rhetoric: Intersections between Qualitative Inquiry, Fieldwork, and Rhetoric

This special issue examines intersections between qualitative and rhetorical inquiry through (re)introducing rhetorical fieldwork. We define rhetorical fieldwork as a set of approaches that integrate rhetorical and qualitative inquiry toward the examination of in situ practices and performances in a rhetorical field. This set of approaches falls within the participatory turn in rhetorical studies, in which rhetorical scholars increasingly turn to fieldwork, interviews, and other forms of participatory research to augment conventional methodological practices. The special issue highlights four original articles that employ, exemplify, and reflect on the value of rhetorical fieldwork as a form of critical/cultural inquiry. In this introduction, we not only introduce the key themes and articles in the special issue but also compile our take on the state of the art of rhetorical fieldwork in an effort to introduce this form of research practice to those who have not encountered it before.

Democracy through the Polarized Lens of the Camcorder: Argumentation and Vernacular Spectacle on YouTube in the 2008 Election

YouTube was commonly used to display evidence of negative campaigning in the 2008 election. This essay tracks the use of YouTube against supporters of John McCain, focusing on how argumentation is constructed through the video blogging site. Thirty-two videos were examined through a rhetorical analysis of argument focusing on the argumentation strategies, construction of ethos, and intertextual referencing. Ultimately, l argue that the videos construct a form of spectacle, dialectically reliant upon mainstream media frames and market-based logics of viewership. The concept of vernacular spectacle is offered as a rhetorical and argumentative construction of the polarized other that is produced by and affects participatory political culture.

Simply more than swiping left: A critical analysis of toxic masculine performances on Tinder Nightmares

Launching in September 2012, Tinder has become a popular phenomenon in the world of online dating and hookup culture. Simultaneously, it carries notorious reputation for being home to hypersexual and toxic masculine expressions. This analysis examines Tinder Nightmares, an Instagram page featuring failed attempts at hooking up, as a site that promotes counter-disciplining the deliberate toxic masculine performances on Tinder. Through a Foucauldian lens, we argue that this page delimits the toxic masculine performances through the outward display of crude performances, the showcasing of witty responses from Tinder users, and the extension of counter-discipline through digital circulation practices on the page. Given that Tinder is a location-aware app, the discipline offered through Tinder Nightmares surfaces in interpersonal, physical, and networked spaces, as Tinder users become multiply implicated public subjects of shame across media platforms.

Unearthing the Native Past: Citizen Archaeology and Modern (Non)Belonging at the Pueblo Grande Museum

Portrayals of the US Southwests Native American inhabitants as “primitive” relics have been shaped by the intertwining practices of archaeological collection and museum display. Focusing on the Pueblo Grande Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, this essay analyzes the interpellation of museum visitors as citizen archaeologists, a process that re/produces racialized discourses through rhetorics of science and time. It is argued that as visitors excavate remnants of the past they engage an archaeological vision that reinforces dominant constructions of “modern” citizenship. This vision maintains colonial histories by disallowing Native peoples both authorship of the past and belonging in the present.

Setting Aside the “Wise Latina?”: Postracial Myths, Paradoxes, and Performing Enculturation in the Sotomayor Confirmation Hearings

Discourses of “postracialism” surfaced after the 2008 election and continue to percolate in public discussion. Yet, whiteness discourses persist in reifying centered and marginalized positions in American society through the prism of race. Through critical rhetorical analysis, this essay examines the confirmation hearings of Justice Sonia Sotomayor to argue that while celebrated for her achievements, Sotomayor is directed to “set aside” her Latina heritage. Consequently, she performs her own enculturation into the court, a stark contrast to her previous statements regarding the role of race on the bench. We offer the concepts of performative enculturation and joint improvisation as how Sotomayor utilized her hybridized identity to be confirmed.