Barbara Warnick

Online Ethos Source Credibility in an “Authorless” Environment

As recently as 5 years ago, Web users were being advised to gauge Web site credibility by examining author credentials and expertise. Recent research shows, however, that users instead rely on a combination of factors such as design look, site structure, and usefulness of information when they judge Web sites. This article argues that this reliance on distributed credibility may be appropriate in a Web environment where authorship, credentials, and information sources are often not readily available for examination.

The narrative paradigm: Another story

The narrative paradigm, recently proposed as a model for rhetorical criticism, is problematic because of internal contradictions and inconsistencies. In the paradigm, the status of traditional rationality and the extent to which it is to be applied are unclear. The conditions in which the universal audience, the particular audience, and the critic are to serve as the source for critical judgment are also unclear. When we have only the immanent facts of the text (its narrative) and the personal judgment of the critic to rely on, we lack independent sources for judging the adequacy of a critics claims about the text.

Web-Based Memorializing after September 11: toward a Conceptual Framework

Web-based memorializing is an emerging set of social practices mediated by computer networks, through which digital objects, structures, and spaces of commemoration are produced. Based on in-depth analysis of eight Web sites produced to memorialize victims of the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, we demonstrate that Web-based memorializing bears a diverse array of characteristics, only some of which are consistent with offline memorializing. Our analysis suggests that although Web sites produced by institutions or organizations may differ somewhat in form and content from those produced by individuals, public and private modes of memorializing observed offline are interpenetrated on the Web. Finally, we identify communal functions served and contributions to public memory made via Web-based memorializing, and propose a conceptual framework for use in future studies of Web-based memorializing practices.

Appearance or Reality? Political Parody on the Web in Campaign '96

The World Wide Web and other forms of Internet communication provide a new venue for political discourse. The present study surveyed Web postings relevant to the 1996 presidential race between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. It identified two types of sites. Nonparodic or serious sites emulated traditional news such as is found in newspapers, periodicals, and television news documentaries. Parodic sites sought to entertain rather than inform the reader and to hold reader attention. Parodic sites ostensibly exposed candidates’ questionable practices by way of allegation, innuendo, expose, parody, and slander. To expose deceptive practices, the authors of parodic Websites themselves engaged in deception. Political parodic Websites presented a postmodern communication environment where the identity of the author, the stability of the text, and the audience itself were all fragmented. Browsing these political Websites was a recursive activity where one could participate in pseudo polls, sign bogus petitions, and p...

Looking to the Future: Electronic Texts and the Deepening Interface

Since the initial appearance of rhetorical analysis of text-based and hypertext communication, the rhetoric of technology has evolved along with the new media forms it studies. This essay reviews critical consensus that calls for a move away from printcentric criticism. It advocates innovative methods for criticism of electronic texts, such as emphasis on comparative media analysis, visual representation, and attention to the programming and codification of electronic texts.

Rhetorical criticism of public discourse on the internet: Theoretical implications

The Internet and access to it have grown exponentially in the past three years. Georgia Techs Graphic, Visualization, and Usability Center reports that, since January 1994 when its first survey of Internet users was conducted, the Internet has grown from 1250 servers to over one million servers. There are over thirty million users of the Internet in the United States alone (Graphic, Visualization, and Usability Center). The versatility of the medium has increased along with its size, as the addition of Java technology and other features has increased the dynamism and interactivity of Web sites and as conveyance via television has increased access. Mass communications scholars and our colleagues in interpersonal, organizational, and small group communication have been studying computer-mediated communication [CMC] for some time. Mass communications researchers have been concerned with a number of questions-how First Amendment protections and intellectual and property rights transfer from print to CMC; what factors play a role in attracting audiences to Internet sites; what strategies can be used to determine accuracy of information on the Internet; and so forth (McChesney; Morris and Ogan; Reeves and Nass). Interpersonal communication researchers have studied the development and maintenance of relationships online (Walther; Parks and Floyd), while small group researchers have examined the dynamics of group process in computer-mediated environments (Savicki, Lingenfelter, and Kelley; Rafaeli and Sudweeks). In addition to these, there have been many other forms of communication research studying Internet discourse and interaction. But rhetorical critics and theorists are latecomers to the scene. There are many possible reasons for this. Many humanists have been slow to take up interest in discourse in electronic environments, perhaps because they suspect that critical work and critical theory will need to be changed to suit the new communication environments, and this is true because in a hypertext environment, author, audience, and text are dispersed. While such dispersion can and does occur in other modalities, computer-mediated discourse is particularly prone to it. The function of the author as originator of a message can be suppressed in groupauthored, disguised, or anonymous Internet postings. As I will show later, identifying the nature and reactions of audiences is made more difficult in computer-mediated environments. And when text becomes hypertext, the text itself is dispersed and assimilated and loses its stability. As Ted Friedman (73) noted,

Judgment, probability, and Aristotle's rhetoric

Aristotle discussed various forms of rationality in the Organon and other works. Aristotle held that in making judgments, the soul used five means— intelligence, episteme (scientific knowledge), sophia (theoretical wisdom), techne (art), and phronesis (practical wisdom). The nature of rhetoric as a techne employed in persuasion and grounded in probabilities distinguishes it from discourse in natural science, metaphysics, and philosophy. Aristotles comparative study of the reasoning used by each of these means enables us to recognize rhetorics uniqueness.

Masculinizing the Feminine: Inviting Women On Line Ca. 1997

This essay uses rhetorical critical methods to examine how persuasive appeals to women to come on line have marginalized and excluded some women even as they invited them to become involved. Authors of many trade books and gateway web sites have interpellated women using such masculinized gender traits as aggressiveness, opportunism, and technical proficiency. They have tacitly devalued such traits as hesitancy, fear, and technological ignorance. Their use of narrative and dissociation constructed female readers as late arrivals on a new frontier who are unprepared for a hostile male‐dominated environment. Their persuasive appeals can be contrasted with the discourse of web sites for young women, teens, and girls. These sites provided noncommercial forums for social support, humor, self‐expression, and advice‐forums that could be degendering the computer by engendering new uses for computer‐mediated communication.

A Ricoeurian Approach to Rhetorical Criticism.

This essay proposes an approach to rhetorical criticism which features the relationship between a message and a culturally‐distanced interpreter or critic. Paul Ricoeurs approach is applied to an interpretation of the Gettysburg Address to illustrate how henneneutics reveals the underlying meaning and cultural significance of enduring texts.

Argument schemes and the construction of social reality: John F. Kennedy's address to the Houston ministerial association

In his 1960 speech to the Houston Ministerial Association, John F. Kennedy convinced many voters that, as a Catholic president, he would act independently of the Catholic Church in such matters as federal aid to schools, human reproduction, and religious tolerance. Through detailed analysis of the schemes used by Kennedy in this address, this essay explains how he used arguments from division to distance himself from the Vatican, inclusion to align himself with the liberal American Catholic view, the rule of justice to urge equal treatment, and reciprocity to argue for religious tolerance. Because of its capacity to reveal a texts hidden agenda, the nature of its response to other texts, and the mechanisms by which it shapes audience perceptions, analysis of schemes offers an invaluable resource for rhetorical criticism.