Abstract This article forwards the concept of affective inertia to understand how caucasity, or emboldened whiteness, motivates rhetorical (in)action. Specifically looking at the viral case of “BBQ Becky,” I argue the historic momentum of both settler colonialism and anti-Blackness propel contemporary performances of emboldened white femininity. The videoed interactions between Jennifer Schulte (Becky) and Michelle Dione Snider (videographer) illustrate how scenarios of property afford white cisgender women particular roles of constrained privilege when in public spaces. Turning to the dynamics of white feminine caucasity, I position Snider's performance of “race traitor” as one equal and opposite to Schulte's “damsel in distress,” thus interrupting Schulte's inertia. Of importance is how the women perform to divergent ends while being capacitated by the same affective inertia.

Abstract The Center for Countering Digital Hate in 2021 identified Rashid Buttar, Joseph Mercola, and Ben Tapper as members of the “Disinformation Dozen,” responsible for pseudoscientific social media content and vocal advocates against the COVID-19 vaccines. Despite regulatory efforts to de-platform them, these influential entrepreneurs (two osteopathic physicians and a chiropractor) persist. Analyzing their messages, this essay demonstrates how anti-vaccination arguments in the wake of the pandemic align pseudoscience and masculinity using the logic of secrecy and revelation. This contrasts significantly with pre-pandemic arguments against vaccines, notably childhood immunizations such as the MMR and MMRV, which drew on feminized discourses of maternal instinct. The insights of our essay inform two areas of inquiry, primarily: the study of anti-vaccination advocacy, specifically its gendered assumptions and warrants; and the study of contemporary rhetorics of secrecy, specifically the political alignments of pseudoscience and gendered public aggression.

Abstract In August 2022, the U.S. restaurant chain Cracker Barrel introduced a meatless sausage patty—the “Impossible Sausage”—to its breakfast menu. A viral social media backlash against the restaurant ensued. Using Fabio Parasecoli's theory of gastronativism as a theoretical lens, we perform a critical rhetorical analysis of online commentaries regarding Cracker Barrel's Impossible Sausage with an eye toward synecdochic representation. We contend that the online “culture war” that ensued within and beyond Cracker Barrel's social media pages is representative of plant-based meat alternatives’ gastropolitical resonance in U.S. American identity construction. Two synecdoches emerge through our analysis, the Cracker Barrel restaurant as right-wing sacred space embedded in “tradition” and the Impossible Sausage as a leftist, progressive, contagious intrusion into this space. Discourses of faux-Southern identity, right-wing appeals to traditional ways of life, and white masculine victimhood are entrenched in these synecdochic tropes. Understanding the Cracker Barrel's meatless menu debacle as a manifestation of gastronativist synecdoche demonstrates the ideological significance of meat and plant-based meat in contemporary U.S. political imaginaries. Given plant-based foods’ increasing popularity among health- and environmentally conscious consumers, rhetoricians concerned with the intersections of food, power, and identity should take note of how flesh (non)consumption symbolically (re)constructs U.S. American gastropolitical identities.

Abstract Russian disinformation activities imitate divisive U.S. political discourse within a polarized social media ecosystem. As part of a multipronged response, U.S. citizens have been urged to increase their personal vigilance and to identify inauthentic messages, hence flagging foreign-made disinformation by studying its content. However, by applying Taylor's concept of “imitation (in)security” to a set of Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA) Facebook and Instagram advertisements, this article explains why content-centered approaches to combatting disinformation need to be reimagined. Building upon imitation (in)security, we propose that the strength of the IRA disinformation campaign was not its ability to foist falsehoods upon unsuspecting Americans, but, rather, its uncanny imitation of prevalent themes, images, and arguments within American civic life. Our analysis of IRA-generated advertisements targeting U.S. military veterans demonstrates how IRA “trolls” were imitating American communication patterns to amplify existing positions within a deluge of messages marked by polysemy. Our analysis suggests readers should be less concerned by such Russian-made imitations than was suggested in much of the breathless 2016 post-election coverage, for the traction of such disinformation hinges on domestic crises and injustices that long predate Russian interference. Pointing to foreign-made social media content stokes a sense of threat and crisis—the essence of national insecurity and a main objective of the IRA's efforts—yet our actual security weaknesses are homemade.

Abstract This essay performs a critical rhetorical analysis of out-of-court texts pertaining to Naruto v. Slater, colloquially known as the “Monkey Selfie Lawsuit.” By veering from a legal positivist perspective on law and turning toward theories of the public screen, it argues that while People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) formally lost its case on appeal, it successfully litigated their case in the court of public opinion. It further offers the concept of the “litigious event”—a staged lawsuit designed for mass media dissemination—to explain my perspective. By latching onto the already-viral monkey selfies at the center of the copyright dispute, PETA took advantage of the public screen by bringing a private, logocentric civil suit into a public, image-based digital sphere. Increased coverage of the case allowed PETA's legal team to harness the power of digital media to disseminate important arguments about legal rights for animals. Naruto v. Slater functioned as a trial for media, as a strategic lawsuit for public participation—in other words, as a strategically sound and rhetorically powerful litigious event.

Abstract We argue that part of Rhetoric & Public Affairs’ future should center public-facing scholarship in rhetorical studies. We begin by chronicling some of the work colleagues are doing to bridge expert and lay publics: podcasts, popular and trade press interviews, social media content development and management, and activist engagements. Centering public-facing scholarship creates several notable shifts: (1) it changes the “so what?” for traditional scholarship by inviting scholars to think about audiences outside of journal readership; (2) it opens space for different stylistic conventions in scholarly writing; and (3) it indicates that nonexpert audiences are valuable as readers. We note the considerable barriers to entry to public scholarship including gatekeeping, framing public scholarship for tenure, and training. We contend that Rhetoric & Public Affairs could lead other journals through an updated definition of impact that takes into account contemporary modes of circulation and sharing, should accept pieces written for nonexpert readers in rhetoric, and should consider, if possible, making available for public reading one scholarly article every month or every quarter.

Abstract Algorithms have never been more influential, yet our collective understanding of how they transform massive networks of cultural power has not kept pace. This is especially true when it comes to economic algorithms, which operate as black boxes largely inaccessible to the majority of citizens whose worlds they continuously reshape. This essay offers a rhetorical approach to reading algorithms—not only to challenge the positivism and mathematical realism that naïvely apotheosizes algorithms and algorithmic culture but more importantly to become critical informants, scholars who can open up these black boxes for fellow citizens, examine the hidden assumptions therein, and study how they actively transform our social-material worlds. The essay’s exemplar is the 2008 financial crisis and a little-known algorithm called the Li Guassian copula, which played a major role in the spread of subprime mortgages. I argue that this copula puts on spectacular display the power of algorithms as principles of composition—actants that materially expand our social collectives even as they marginalize human agency and practical judgment with forms of technological rationality that, in the case of the Li copula, concentrated the networks of structured finance around a single decision apparatus, rendering those networks both larger and, contra conventional wisdom, more fragile.

Research Article| December 01 2012 Jackie Joins Twitter: The Recirculation of "Campaign Wife" Melody Lehn Melody Lehn Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2012) 15 (4): 667–674. https://doi.org/10.2307/41940629 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Melody Lehn; Jackie Joins Twitter: The Recirculation of "Campaign Wife". Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 December 2012; 15 (4): 667–674. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41940629 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2012 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract In this essay, I contend that political culture and campaign journalism during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign was "pornified." Examination of broadcast journalism, viral videos, online commentary, political pop culture, andget-outthe-vote campaigns reveals the ways in which pornographic metaphors, images, and narratives infiltrated U.S. political culture during the 2008 presidential primary and general election season. I assess the media framing of candidates Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, as well as that of female voters as a group, arguing that the emergence of the pornification frame signals a backlash against the gains women have made in the U.S. political system.