Media Rhetoric

This book illuminates the rhetorical work performed by contemporary representations of a specific type of postfeminist hero who has garnered a lot of cultural capital: women who are smart, capable, physically agile and fit, and proficient with weaponry and technology. Employing critical/cultural and feminist approaches, Heather Hundley, Roberta Chevrette, and Hillary Jones engage with a range of theories including intersectionality, critical race theory, postmodernism, and posthumanism to examine a range of contemporary texts, including Kill Bill, Volumes I and II; The Hunger Games films; Wonder Woman; Atomic Blonde; Proud Mary; The Bionic Woman; Deus Ex; Dark Matter; and Caprica. Contributing to a robust existing conversation about postfeminist media as well as tracing how representation has changed in recent years, Hundley, Chevrette, and Jones contend that portrayals of dangerous dames offer limitations and opportunities for audiences. Specifically, should audiences read these characters as evidence of a postfeminist apocalypse, they may heed warnings of the limited interpretations offered. Yet as more women serve as role models and gain public attention, particularly regarding their assets and abilities, they provide important equipment for living for navigating around patriarchal constraints raised by postfeminism, neoliberalism, and humanism.

Available at:
-Peter Lang
https://www.peterlang.com/document/1057643
-Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Dames-Representing-Female-Bodied-Postfeminist/dp/1433163012

This Foreword, about robots, written in both poetry as well as prose, introduces the edited collection _Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary Culture and Society_, edited by Steven J. Thompson (IGI Global, 2018). The link on the thumbnail cover at
https://www.igi-global.com/book/_/179222 will take you directly to the published Foreword, which is open access. The attached PDF, sent directly to me from IGI-Global to use here, is presented with written permission of the publisher.

The chapter looks comparatively at the representations of Romanian immigrants in the British newspapers positioned for or against Brexit during the 2016 referendum debate, and discusses the claims made on the basis of such representations and the different modes of engaging the audiences.

This article brings together and contextualises some ostensibly disparate ‘readings’ of political speeches from Australia and the United States, both good examples and not-so-good examples, to examine a characteristic that prevails in all public communication, and which is especially noticeable in politics.  That characteristic is the nexus between the poetic and the political in all public language.  In this case, it is grounded in a distinction between political speakers-as-performers and the advisors who script many of their performances for them.  The dynamics of this relationship are critical influences on the more publicly explicit relationship between speakers and their audiences.  Consequently, these dynamics are critical to our understanding of political discourse, and of public communication more broadly.

In recent years, humanists and social scientists have shown increasing interest in human-animal relations – to the point where many now speak of an ‘animal turn’ in the humanities and social sciences. Across history, psychology, anthropology, literature, sociology, philosophy, and law, an interdisciplinary field of human-animal studies has been forming. Certain common themes run through this diverse field, not least the reproduction of human-animal difference, and the conditions and the implications thereof.

Despite the long history of language use as a marker of such difference, the academic quest to investigate the boundary between human and nonhuman has, somewhat surprisingly, not taken root within rhetorical studies – at least not until now. For this edited volume, we therefore call for chapters that investigate the place of nonhuman animals in the purview of rhetorical theory; what it would mean to communicate beyond the human community; how rhetoric reveals our ‘brute roots.’ In other words, this book invites contributions which enlighten us about likely or possible implications of the animal turn within rhetorical studies. Would such a turn imply, for instance, that rhetoric needs a nonanthropocentric reconfiguration? The question, perhaps, is this: What difference would it make to the discipline if we assumed that nonhuman forms of communication were as interesting as human ones?

The espionage allegations leveled against U.S. Foreign Service Officer Felix S. Bloch never led to his arrest, although the allegations were widely circulated in the media in July and August 1989. This paper describes how the anonymously leaked allegations have become accepted as real news.

The argument comes in two parts and, at a general level, is straightforward. The first part depends on first identifying and tracing this pattern of thought taking place in the scholarship. Following this trajectory reveals that while the scholarship has added considerably to a refined understanding of the environment surrounding kairos, it has not furthered the inventive potential of kairos because it has been overly invested in how kairos arises from historical and cultural forces. Traditionally, kairos has been seen as a “timely” concept, and in the traditional manner, invention emerges from the timeliness of a cultural and historical situation. Consequently, invention can thus be said to be largely determined by the environment and history to which it belongs. The grouping I follow below has added to the understanding of the complexity of that environment, but it has done so at the cost of thinking of how to add to the understanding of invention. The second part hopes to invigorate studies in kairic invention by drawing the reader’s attention to those aspects that lie outside these historical and cultural forces. What if invention was considered from a bolder perspective? What if it was thought of as the potential to shift historical courses through the injection of something new or alien into a system or situation? What if invention was thought of as innovative potential to change the course of history rather than being determined by it? Why has rhetoric accepted the determination that rhetorical invention deals merely with finding the known while, at least since Francis Bacon, new knowledge has become the province of the sciences? The second line of argument, then, is to rethink kairos at the level of its silent and hidden potential. I go on to show that taking advantage of the radically innovative potential of kairos. requires attention to its untimely dimension.

Jill Schostak and I wrote this book as part of our evolving interest in doing research radically.  By radically we mean engaging with people's voices to learn how to create the conditions for social justice and for democratising all the organisations of everyday life.  We draw on our own research but also on the ways in which the media is used to shaw people's voices and behaviours.  We explore all the ways in which the desires and demands of elites are inscribed upon minds and bodies as well as how writing may create the conditions for counter inscriptions.  Writing research is to engage politically.  Whether it is the Arab Spring re-inscribing hopes for freedom, the Occupy Movement or young people challenging orthodoxies at home or in classrooms through use of the media, it is the power of writing in its broadest sense that makes the difference.

This paper is focused on the contextual use of the term "whataboutism" in contemporary American politics, specifi cally in the language of political news commentary. After tracking the word's emergence in political discourse, some analysis of the term's recent use in examples of commentary articles is done to explore what the term means as a rhetorical device that structures political conversations in the media and shapes political identities in the public sphere. Overall, "whataboutism" is found to be part of an asymmetrical media ecosystem polarizing the American electorate, and one of the rhetorical tools systematically used in maintaining political group divisions. How "whataboutism" is deployed in political discourse and then grappled with or normalized by journalists is emblematic of trends in American journalistic discourse after the election results of 2016, and the term's newfound prevalence is illustrative of the degree to which American identities have become politically tribalized.
Niniejszy artykuł koncentruje się na kontekstowym użyciu terminu "whataboutism" [pl. "a za to u was"] we współ-czesnej polityce amerykańskiej, szczególnie w języku komentarzy politycznych. Po prześledzeniu występowania tego słowa w dyskursie politycznym, przeprowadzono analizę jego użycia w wybranych artykułach komentujących bieżącą sytuację, w celu zbadania, jak termin ten funkcjonuje jako retoryczne narzędzie, które porządkuje polityczne rozmowy w mediach i kształtuje tożsamość polityczną w sferze publicznej. Ogólnie rzecz biorąc, "whataboutism" okazuje się być częścią asymetrycznego ekosystemu medialnego, polaryzującego amerykański elektorat oraz jednym z retorycznych narzędzi, systematycznie stosowanych w celu utrzymania podziałów politycznych. Sposób, w jaki "whataboutism" jest wykorzystywany najpierw w dyskursie politycznym, a następnie normalizowany w dyskursie dziennikarskim, symbolizuje trend, który pojawił się w amerykańskim dziennikarstwie po wyborach prezydenckich w 2016 roku. Powracająca popularność tej retorycznej strategii świadczy o pogłębiającej się trybalizacji amerykańskiej tożsamości politycznej. License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 international (CC BY 4.0). The content of the license is available at

Dieses Buch fragt nach der spezifisch visuellen Rhetorik des Fernsehjournalismus und versteht Fernsehnachrichtenmacher als Instanzen der strategischen Selbstdarstellung, die für sich ein professionelles, seriöses und glaubwürdiges Image reklamieren. Untersucht wird dies am Beispiel des Irakkriegs 2003, der als ein ausgesprochener Bilder- und Fernsehkrieg gilt, in dem um die Gunst der Fernsehzuschauer gerungen wurde. Die Berichterstattung von ARD, RTL, n-tv und CNN International an den ersten Tagen des Krieges macht die feinen Unterschiede in der Image-Darstellung deutlich. Diese beziehen sich etwa auf den Auftritt von Kriegskorrespondenten als Augenzeugen, auf die Beobachtung oder Aufführung des Kriegsgeschehens in der Liveberichterstattung oder auf die Nutzung des Studios oder des Kriegsschauplatzes als Schaubühne für die Selbstinszenierung.

Naked Politics: Nudity, Political Action, and the Rhetoric of the Body by Brett Lunceford, examines the rhetorical power of the unclothed body as it relates to protest and political action. This study explores what the disrobed body communicates, and how others are invited to make sense of this display. The actions examined range from grassroots protests to those of professionalized social movement organizations. Specifically, Lunceford examines PETA and the use of chained women and the Running of the Nudes; lactivists, or women engaging in public breastfeeding as protest action in both online and physical space; the World Naked Bike Ride’s worldwide protest against oil dependency and attempt to raise awareness of the vulnerability of cyclists; and a contest held on College Humor that invited women to write their preferred presidential candidate on their exposed breasts and send the picture to them to post on the site. Although these actions may seem to have little in common beyond their use of body exposure, they all share the notions that something can happen when you take your clothes off and that the act of disrobing can have social and political consequences. Moreover, these groups illustrate the often paradoxical views of the exposed body—by both the participants and the observers—and how such bodies operate in the public sphere. Even when the voice is silent, the body still speaks; Naked Politics considers what is being said.

Protest rhetoric has always provided a prime example of how communication can work to change the human condition, but strategies of protest have evolved as the United States has transformed into an information economy. Although protest remains “on the streets,” it has also moved into the digital realm. This essay builds on the work of Franklyn Haiman by considering the ethical and rhetorical dimensions of hacktivism (politically motivated computer hacking). After briefly tracing the historical development of hacktivism, I discuss several recent politically motivated website defacements and denial of service attacks, concluding that Haiman’s argument that the rhetoric of the streets should be held to different rhetorical and ethical standards still holds true in the online world.

The current political landscape seems rife with partisanship and toxic rhetoric. Although this is certainly nothing new, there has been an increase in rhetoric that suggests that citizens take up arms against the government. In the wake of the shooting at a political rally held by Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the media began asking whether violent rhetoric could lead to violent acts and politicians began to call for greater civility in political discourse. This essay examines the rhetoric of Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle to explore the rhetorical implications of a worldview that deeply distrusts the government and considers armed insurrection as an appropriate corrective to a government run amok

The standards and practices in journalism that best serve democratic deliberation remain a matter of intense scrutiny in the digital age. The United States has a long history of journalists exposing self-interested behaviors of political or corporate elites with investigative journalism. With online media, journalistic practices encompass fact-checking against a variety of sources, and countering the claims of other journalists from competing outlets. This article aims at delimiting the rhetorical properties of an emerging genre of YouTube counter-journalism. The study reports on a rhetorical and eristic analysis of the main patterns of countering in a sample of videos posted on YouTube on the subject of the US presidential campaign in spring 2020. The analysis reveals some ways in which YouTube journalists break down the dominant media narratives and present counterclaims and critiques, which is usually accompanied by fact-checking, showcasing evidence and providing alternative exp...

The standards and practices in journalism that best serve democratic deliberation remain a matter of intense scrutiny in the digital age. The United States has a long history of journalists exposing self-interested behaviors of political or corporate elites with investigative journalism. With online media, journalistic practices encompass fact-checking against a variety of sources, and countering the claims of other journalists from competing outlets. This article aims at delimiting the rhetorical properties of an emerging genre of YouTube counter-journalism. The study reports on a rhetorical and eristic analysis of the main patterns of countering in a sample of videos posted on YouTube on the subject of the US presidential campaign in spring 2020. The analysis reveals some ways in which YouTube journalists break down the dominant media narratives and present counterclaims and critiques, which is usually accompanied by fact-checking, showcasing evidence and providing alternative explanations or counterarguments. However, counter-journalism is not free from eristic devices that may misrepresent political issues for the subscribers.

Rhetorical scholarship, if it is to remain relevant, must be actively applied to current events. This essay proposes an alternate mode of scholarship, one that takes advantage of the online medium and integrates the speed of journalism with the rigors of scholarly analysis. Such a mode of scholarship dissemination is not meant to replace the current journal system; rather it serves a different end—that of providing scholarship to the public as a whole. I argue that scholarly analysis of current events will enrich the dialogue that is already taking place in the public sphere and help citizens to more fully take part in democratic practice.

This article examines Chaim Zhitlowsky’s (1865-1943) use of the “internal” Jewish space of the Yiddish press to critique the American melting pot and present his alternative “internationalist” model. He also attempted to raise the consciousness of immigrant Jews by analyzing the reasons for their failure to embrace what he defined as “progressive nationalism.” His application of Eastern European autonomist ideas to the American context offers a provocative critique of cosmopolitan tendencies in progressive politics, in Jewish circles and beyond.

The social world is made of rhetorical practices that constitute our sense of self. We are always using some kind of rhetoric exhorting others to understand our thoughts and influencing them to adopt new forms of doing and thinking. Central to persuasive communication today are Media. They not only help shape rhetoric, they are also a key means of disseminating rhetorical discourses. Media Rhetoric expression marks a fundamental stage of human communication and the development of civilization where Media became key rhetorical actors and social players. In this essay the scope of Media Rhetoric is briefly presented along with a discussion of two central fields of Media Rhetoric today -advertising and digital rhetoric. By focusing on two case-studies – a print advertising campaign by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) and the QuitNow app – I demonstrate how persuasive strategies evolved in mediatized societies. Closing the article, some notes on Media Rhetoric from a Policymaking perspective are offered and reasons advanced to consider it, in the near future, as an important object of public attention.

As Editor-in-Chief at The Freelance Netizen™ online magazine, I edit, peer-review and supervise peer review services for all article and editorial submissions.

The Freelance Netizen™ explores the interdisciplinary connections between Information & Communication Technologies and the history of information culture, civil rights and social action. It critically addresses digital mediums as the intercultural confluence of global dialectics. A typical editorial at TFN magazine might explore the present and future directions of Intercultural Information Ethics and its crossroads with the latest WikiLeaks debate.

TFN magazine provides a crossroads between the academic applications of philosophy, technology and interculture with current events, looking to philosophies of communication and information as a platform for addressing questions of digital ontology. TFN magazine is currently exploring, alongside the International Centre for Information Ethics, applications of global citizenship in a digital era with a specific address of digital citizenship and the netizen.

The objective of TFN magazine is to further expertise in intercultural editing and writing for academic and scholarly communications and current events, both on a local and global scale, by researching and structuring innovative dialogue towards a citizen engagement of Information & Communication Technologies (ICTs) through an understanding of the nature of information.

Jared Bielby,
Editor-in-Chief, TFN
Co-chair, ICIE
Editor, IRIE
www.jaredbielby.com

http://www.thefreelancenetizen.com

"Abstract:
Die Graböffnungen, die im Herbst 1918 begonnen wurden, waren nicht nur ökonomisch motiviert, sondern hatten eine wichtige politische und weltanschauliche Funktion, da sie eine Säkularisierung vorantrieben. Die vskrytija waren Entweihung und Demystifizierung von heiligen Stätten; aus einer materialistischen Perspektive sollte demonstriert werden, dass auch die Gebeine der Heiligen verwesen, was nicht immer gelang, da die Gräber zum Teil leer waren oder die russischen Gläubigen vor Ort gegen die Exhumierung protestierten bzw. die Sichtbarkeit im Detail nur für die unmittelbar um das Grab Stehenden gegeben war; als performative Handlung gelangen die vskrytija also selten, u.a. auch deshalb, da die Zahl der Augenzeugen zu gering war. Erst in ihren medialisierten Formen (Film, Foto, Protokoll) konnten die vskrytija ihre Funktion erfüllen: Sie ermöglichten einem breiten Publikum die Teilnahme an einer von der Sowjetmacht initiierten symbolischen Handlung der Offenlegung der intimsten Bereiche der orthodoxen Kirche, die als eine wichtige Stütze des Vorgängerregimes geschwächt werden sollte.
Eine Vervielfachung „fiktiver Zeugen“ geschah v.a. im Rahmen der ersten Anläufe zur „Gottlosenpropaganda“, die mit Hilfe der Zeugenschaft der Filmkamera ein größeres Publikum zum Zeugen am geöffneten Grab machen konnte. Die Kamera verwendet rhetorische Verfahren der evidentia, die in ihrer Sachzugewandtheit das Präsentieren von Details sucht. Diese im Entstehen begriffene filmische ars oratoria bewegt sich entlang den Verfahren der Affektierung, die eine Überzeugung durch emotionale Erschütterung gewährleisten wollen. In der Montage des Films vom April 1919 wurden Bilder von Menschenmengen mit Nahaufnahmen des Inhalts der Gräber und der die Exhumierung durchführenden Geistlichen zusam¬men¬geschnitten. Dies waren für die Filmchronik, die solche „Satzfiguren“, d.h. den Einstellungswechsel, nicht kannte, neue Verfahren. Kulešov und Vertov schufen und erprobten hier ein rhetorisch inspiriertes „Alphabet“ des Avantgardefilms.
Die Auswahl des Grabs als Objekt der Handlung für einen Film knüpft an Schauergattungen an, die gern mit „eindringlichen Phantasiebildern“ zur „Verlebendigung von Totem (vgl. kinetische Metapher, Prosopopoiie)“ (Plett) arbeiten. Das Öffnen oder Offenhalten von Gräbern bzw. dann auch das Ausstellen von Leichnamen ist eine Aktivität, die im Zusammenhang zu sehen ist mit zwei entgegengesetzten Tendenzen in der frühen sowjetischen Kultur: der aufklärerischen und der okkulten bzw. para-religiösen oder aber nekrophilen.
Die Detailaufnahmen und der auf barocke Weise vorgeführte Schädel machen die Filmchronik Vskrytie moščej Sergija Radonežskogo zu einem belehrenden Aufklärungsfilm mit karnevalesken Zügen. Aus semiotischer Sicht aufschlussreich ist die Wahl eines metonymischen und materiellen Objekts, die zugleich den einstweiligen Verzicht auf ein eigentlich ikonoklastisches Vorgehen gegen die Bilderverehrung bedeutet.
Die überregionale mediale Verbreitung einer optischen Evidenz sollte ein aufgeklärtes und atheistisches Weltbild einführen. Ein Bestandteil dieser säkularen Haltung war die atheistische Verfremdung theologischer Diskurse, die mit dem karnevalesken Gestus Hand in Hand geht. Diese verfremdende Haltung regt einen materialistisch-mechanischen Blick des Kamerauges in sakrale Räume und damit eine Entzauberung des Jenseits an. Um noch einmal auf Renate Lachmanns Zitat zu Prokopovičs Rhetorik zu kommen: Die „kulturelle Funktion“ dieses Exempels einer utilitaristischen Rhetorik im Jahre 1919 hatte – ähnlich wie in der petrinischen Reform – „die Rhetorisierung des öffentlichen Lebens (die das private massiv tangiert)“, zum Ziel, d.h. das Auslöschen der religiösen Gefühle mit Hilfe eines Massenmediums. Die Verfilmung und Montage des vskrytie durch die ehrgeizige Filmavantgarde „schafft die Allpräsenz einer Macht, die mit nunmehr nicht sprachlichen, sondern visuellen Mitteln alles bewältigt, alles zu ihrem Thema macht.“ (Lachmann 1994, 204)
Contents:
Graböffnungen als Frühform antireligiöser Propaganda – Zeugenschaften am 11.4.1919 in Sergiev Posad - Die Mönche und der Zeuge am Grab  - Die rhetorische Satzfigur der evidentia im Film: Sachzugewandtheit, Detaillierung, 'Verlebendigung' - Die Vorgeschichte der Exhumierung des Sergij und Lenins Segen für die filmische Evidenz - Zur Autorschaft des Films. Erinnerungen an die Drehaufnahmen - Demonstratio ad oculos in der Nahaufnahme: Augen-Zeugen – Kino-Auge - Mošči und theologisches Hintergrundwissen der Kommissare

This study resumes elements of pioneering research initially conducted in Internet addiction and dependency (Thompson, 1996). Further study of Internet phenomena over the 15 years since, has taken the author into the realm of iconic mediated messaging as a struggle between global media, terrorism, and the viewer (Thompson, 2010). Having grown in access and privilege within the consumer Web -- initial concerns over usage and expectations as laid out in 1996 whereby Internet addiction and dependency were determined to be more along the lines of investment and empowerment vs. self-destructive habit -- the maturation process from initial usage to full-fledged Internet literacy has been fraught with obstacles, yet with deep reward.

As a scholar well-versed in interdisciplinarity and cybercultures, and having moved away from the fears of Internet addiction to the reality of empowerment, one recognizes a plethora of reasons why Internet literacy has molded scholarship and individual into a new creation of cybernetic origin: cyberspace provides and subscribes opportunity for humans to communicate as more than the sum of their parts. In the process of literacy change and alteration over this time period, there has also been adjustment in the cyber network, which has been fed both the good and bad that humanity has been able to conjure and upload: a vast, endless, exponential archive of every human conception.

What have we learned in the last 15 or so years as a species interacting with the virtual species that has seemingly aligned itself with our purposes and future, a future that has taken on the permanent persona of an ever-presence in which we are? This study evaluates emerging information literacy trends, the media, and individual participatory freedoms and consequences that confront those trends within the Internet.

Scandinavian rhetoricians often use the term “retorikken”, which is the definite form of the noun “rhetoric”. We use it to refer to “the rhetorical art”; in practical usage, however, the term often seems to carry an implicit norma- tive and directive undertone, as if rhetoric is one voice stating indisputable things: “(the) rhetoric says that ...”, or “in (the) rhetoric we always ...”. We presume unity and seldom discuss in a scholarly way what the art of rheto- ric is or should be – at least that was the case ten years ago, when I first published this article.
The genesis and substance of the text originated from my position as a PhD scholar at a media studies department, where I was working on a dissertation on visual rhetoric. It seemed that the research questions I tried to answer could not properly be addressed using the prevailing research paradigms. This situation has now changed, but hopefully my article still addresses some fundamental and perpetual issues in rhetorical research. Since the publication of the article.

In the wake of the disastrous destruction and terror the Nazi regime brought to the world, German society generally guards itself against populism. Yet, with the success of right-wing populist movements all over Europe, Germany is once again confronted with the rise of right-wing attitudes, in particular with a right-wing populist party named Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD). After outlining the history of right-wing movements in Germany, this article focuses on the mediasphere of the AfD and gives a more detailed analysis of the rhetoric of two central AfD politicians: Björn Höcke’s “Dresden Speech,” delivered in January 2017, which can be seen as a model of populist rhetoric, and social media-based rhetoric of provocation by Alice Weidel. The case studies of these two politicians illustrate that political speech is of high importance within populist movements and explain the complex cross-media strategy used by the AfD to promote their ideology of exclusion and racism.

Freedom of expression is under attack on a global scale, extending into the digital archive where its moments and events are accessible and ever-ready for rhetorical discourse. Incidents and retaliations for free expression today are fully extended and exponentially propagated as news and propaganda in cyberspace; yet, once the high-definition television networks have moved past a topic and all the talking heads have had their say, they selectively and corporately continue to speak, to shout, from within the digital realm.

As the Internet information archive grows with endless human input, it exists as a permanent storehouse for the beautiful and the banal, and remains to become a primary source for the future of the definition of information rights. While access, censorship, and privilege are new propaganda tools of governments and nations, the media machine grabs at every potential story for sustainable profit and gain, and the ubiquitous network of nodes and relays becomes the critical arena for control and dissemination of data.

Furthermore, information related to the current battle for freedom of expression as well as for adoption and expression of sharia law suddenly adds a humanistic vs. spiritual dimension, respectively, to the already existing psychosocial environ of cyberspace as current culture wars continue to buy, influence, and persuade Web denizens on the issues.

While the handling of these matters informs their future direction, courts and policies have yet to address them adequately and consistently. Globally speaking, little-to-nothing is in place to regulate the rhetorical discourse surrounding issues of freedom of expression apart from traditional media taking on the role, largely in Europe, of insisting on the freedom to create and share data across media channels as a basic human right. This has had violent consequences as individuals have risen to the occasion to ensure that this corporate freedom does not infringe on their individual religious rights.

Control of cyberspace plays a critical role in the freedom of information rights. While governments and nations may determine access and privilege on regional scales, global initiatives could take precedence over them, but created and enacted by whom and to what ends? Since Europe is a key battleground for these issues, important case studies of the European response provide clues for what may be ethically appropriate application for framing and informing the ubiquitous digital archive on information rights and eventual practical policy initiatives for freedom of expression rights in cyberspace.

This research analyzes media from two news campaigns coming out of the War with Iraq during the Summer of 2004. The first campaign contains iconic imagery from the abduction
of American Paul Johnson, killed by Muslim extremists in Saudi Arabia. The second campaign contains video from the torture by American soldiers of prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison.

These are cross-mediated messages that have since been pushed into the global news archives, though they are highly emblematic constructs that actually have a profound effect on a struggle for power, voice, and knowledge. In each of these related, though situationally opposed, media disclosures, helpless captives in the panopticon yield to the control of their merciless disciplinarians as they wield their weaponry under the everwatchful eye of the digital camera, all before a potential audience of millions of seemingly helpless viewers.

Als Jargonbegriff aus dem Funk- und Filmbereich suggeriert der Begriff der »Atmo« (engl. ambience) die Verfügbarkeit und Gestaltbarkeit von akustischen Atmosphären – gewissermaßen auf Knopfdruck. Vereinfacht gesagt bezeichnet Atmo bzw. ambience die diffusen Hintergrundgeräusche, die an einem Ort zu hören sind.
So unproblematisch der Begriff im ersten Moment erscheint, in der Praxis wird er kaum hinterfragt. Definiert wird er höchstens relational, d.h. in Abgrenzung zu anderen akustischen Gestaltungselementen: Dialog, Geräusch, Musik.
Wann taucht »Atmo« als Begriff und als mediales Phänomen erstmals auf? Welche technischen Voraussetzungen (Lichtton, Magnettonband, Stereofonie?) waren nötig, um nicht nur einzelne Stimmen oder Geräusche, sondern tatsächlich »Atmos« aufzuzeichnen und wiederzugeben? Und welche Rolle spielte die Atmo als neues Element im Ensemble der etablierten akustischen Gestaltungsmittel?
Im Hörfunk der 1960er Jahre bekommen Hörspiel- und Feature-Autor*innen wie Peter Leonhard Braun mit der neuen Qualität stereophoner Tonbandaufnahmen ein gestalterisches Mittel an die Hand, das weniger symbolisch/zeichenhaft operiert, sondern vor allem ein starkes somatisches/affektives Potential hat. Die heute übliche, intensive Verwendung der Atmo beispielsweise im Kino, wo die »Töne von allen Seiten gleichzeitig auf die Zuschauer ein[stürzen]« (Barbara Flückiger 2001, S. 56), und wo Klang – zumal im Bassbereich – geradezu körperlich erfahren werden kann, ist hier gewissermaßen schon vorgezeichnet. Atmo tritt damit in den 1960er Jahren als historisch neues Element in die etablierten medialen Rhetoriken ein – ein Element, das zwischen Symbol und Soma changiert, und das in diesen Extremen zunächst erprobt werden will und erprobt wird.
Literatur:
Flückiger, Barbara (2001): Sound Design. Die virtuelle Klangwelt des Films. Zugl.: Zürich, Univ., Diss., 1999. Marburg: Schüren.

Advertising of finance institutions and their assorted array of services and products has become a staple of Australian commercial media, with finance companies in this country nearly quadrupling their spending on advertising over the last seven years.  To date, the genre of finance advertising has received little sustained consideration within media studies.  We describe and analyse the arguments and compositional techniques of a range of finance advertisements, considering them as part of wider media coverage and, in effect, promotion of the finance sector, and in terms of their possible role in the formation and spread of a popular finance literacy.  The implication of this literacy in neo-liberal strategies of governance is noted, as are some recent instances of resistance to these.

From December 2012 to June 2014, the San Diego Pacific Arts
Movement sponsored a participatory project known as Drive-By
Cinema (DBC). Refurbishing a U-Haul truck into a mobile cinema
unit, DBC visited more than 36 neighborhood sites and screened
films. In this article, I revisit the DBC project and its act of mobile
cinema exhibition to examine its place-based rhetorics of belonging,
materiality, and history. Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s distinct and
contrasting notions of “place” and “space,” I argue DBC’s radical
mobility temporarily reconfigures places into spaces of social
engagement, putting bodies into contact with history, materiality,
and across racial and gender differences between residents sharing a
neighborhood. In its act of screening in strip-mall parking lots and
U-turning at the border, DBC reveals a neighborhood’s forgotten histories
and the border’s absurdity in facilitating exploitative racialized
and gendered patterns of transnational mobility and labor.

While extremism of the Islamic Jihad movement is on one side of the global power wheel, bashing away at the fabric of democratic societies, constant pounding of Jihadist ideology through the media equally punishes participants of these societies.

Media viewers are often forced to fight back the only way they can, and often as a means of self-preservation, by turning the media off or switching media outlets. Many people resort to letters to the editor, Web blogs, and political rallies to try to change their world.

Somehow, things always seem to maintain balance. That is, until the next global blows come from a radical Islamist and the media carrying his message. Baudrillard said correctly in The Gulf War Did Not Take Place that there is no war without the media, echoing Marshall McLuhan as McLuhan’s ideas meld into the fabric of digital culture.

The irony of the situation is that with each new bludgeoning media message comes the masochistic urge to want to hear more, get hit more, be more and more astonished. Each polarizing moment comes through the television or video screen with new compelling horrors, promises that predict no end to destruction, and a devastating impact on those persons helplessly caught between the media and its terrorists.

Slavoj Zïzek in The Plague of Fantasies contends that our experiences in cyberspace are making us psychotic because we don’t have “the Master,” or ordering of the symbolic, to tell us what we really want. For Zïzek, with the limitless options available in cyberspace, and without this Master, which offers “protection,” we move out of freedom to the only available alternative, the realm of the psychotic.

Since, for Zïzek -- and Guy Debord, borrowing from Georg Hegel -- resistance must operate within the symbolic order, there is nothing outside but psychosis. So where is the person caught between the media and its terrorists to go for safety? What can the spectator do to protect her/himself and those who are part of his inner circle? Is turning off the radio or television akin to stepping outside the symbolic order? Is the only alternative the lifestyle and destiny of the Unibomber? Is the televised place of symbolic order between the media and its terrorists actually one of safety?

People are not free to shut themselves off from the media, not without consequences. Yet the consequences of being caught in the middle of the psychological war waged equally by terrorists as our enemies and the media as our allies is surely not being conducted without taking its toll, perhaps in the form of neuroses. For Zïzek, participating in cyberspace leads to psychosis, yet there are no psychosocial definitions for participating in electronic media of radio and television, no known adverse effects.

The space occupied by the global media as multinational conglomerates is the binary opposite of the space occupied by terrorists as rogue, rhizomic wanderers, and the rest of the globe’s inhabitants are caught in between the two. We are caught between their oppositional ideologies, between their tactical methods, and also between an extreme suggestion that the two are in a collusion, between their symbiotic relationship, between their dependence upon one another.

The extreme stance by the media to participate in every terrorist declaration buys into the extreme stance by terrorists whereby they expect such participation, and since there is little to no balance from the only side which is capable of exerting balance, we are caught in the middle, shutting off our televisions for the Internet, and, at the risk of sounding extreme, nursing a global neurosis with the pleasures of impending psychosis.

This classroom exercise in technical writing stems from an overarching desire to understand how groups of people might collaborate to evaluate visual rhetoric when only given a piece of the story. Using visual media rhetoric and a series of pedagogical collaboration techniques for communication across the curriculum (CAC) such as ‘quickwrites’ and ‘read-alouds,’ this research develops the concept for media ‘quicritiques’ that provide an outcome of benefit to classroom pedagogical practice including visual thinking that leads to further group collaboration. Results suggest that instructors can apply similar techniques to create technical writing class environments and assignments that are intriguing and rewarding for achievement of certain group collaborative tasks. Results may actually suggest that the investigation of online media as visual rhetoric provides a group dynamic for cohesion, consensus, and willingness for future collaboration.

According to a February 2006 letter written by Jyllands-Posten culture editor Fleming Rose to the Washington Post, the initial 2005 publication of the Muhammad cartoons was a direct response to a curtailing of free speech being experienced in Europe at the time. Publication -- inflamed by competing imams in Europe until it reached a global scale -- resulted in rioting that left more than 130 people dead, death threats, murder attempts against newspaper staffs, newspaper closings or firings of editors in more than 10 countries, and economic repercussions that all quieted the media, shutting down freedom of the presses. The 2008 re-publication of the most famous cartoon containing a bomb in the turban of Muhammad was a further attempt by the editors to assert free speech rights while defending cartoonist Kurt Westergaard against a fatwa calling for his murder.

Fear and safety issues now abound across Europe and the West as editors weigh the merits to potential media critique of anything related to Islam, fearing potentially deadly reprisals. This research critiques the rising acceptance of sharia laws in Europe and the United States as protective devices for Muslims with an overarching concern over the motivational forces driving this action -- namely fear and safety -- during a present age of global war. It leverages the values of debate and discourse for free speech with the religious sensitivities currently at play that relegate freedom of speech to an acquiescence of silence and fear. It considers the losses associated with censorship of free speech and the gains for compliance by radical Islamists -- who despise the West yet bring themselves under its democratic rules for special protections, with large-scale fear of reprisal as the primary incentive for eventual global legal compliance that is silencing important voices in the free marketplace of ideas.