Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric Sep 2010 Open Access

Viral Advocacy: Networking Labor Organizing in Higher Education

Kevin Mahoney

Abstract

The emergence of blogs and social networking sites open new areas of study in composition and rhetoric, adding literate spaces and foregrounding multimodal communication. While assessments of these technologies range from celebratory to ominous, their ubiquity and their integration into our rhetorical situation is undeniable. I suggest that labor activists in higher education have new opportunities to organize, communicate, and campaign utilizing these new rhetorical networks. I argue for a notion of “viral advocacy” for organizing in new digital spaces. Based on an on-going project using social media in my faculty union’s advocacy work, I demonstrate some possibilities for using social media for rhetorical advocacy.

Journal
Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric
Published
2010-09-01
DOI
10.59236/rjv10i1pp57-75
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Topics
modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism multimodality social media literacy studies
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References (8)

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