Protest Beyond Representation: The Vitalism of Digital Protest Art\u27s Political Aesthetics

The complexities of post-modernity tend to dissolve any facile model of direct cause-and-effect in politics, and yet as a democratic polity, we look for the comfort in knowing that political expression can enact change. Protest art, or acts of creative expression intended to resist dominant powers, forces, and structures, models the potential for political expression to create change that is not immediate, direct, or obvious, but rather moves the social through expressivity and aesthetics. While these features lend themselves to an analysis guided by affect theory, this sub-discipline within communication studies has tended to lack the methodological specificity to reproduce or expand applications. Daniel Stern\u27s vitality pentad acts as a heuristic by which to study rhetorical objects; these objects are studied due to their expressivity, rather than their appeal to reason. Stern excludes still media forms such as photographs and illustrations; however, by looking at the way in which digital artifacts are imbued with movement in its networked path, we can understand that all digital media are time-based. The objects of study speak to the temporal, vital dimensions of digital protest art: Turkey\u27s Vandalina art collective, which places protest stickers on transit cars, demonstrates how force and scale engender feeling of intimacy in public spaces. Iran\u27s Zahra\u27s Paradise, a webcomic-turned-graphic novel, offers differing temporal environments for the reader and weaves its aesthetics into the narrative to create a sense of space and place. Finally, the images of #HandsUpDontShoot, through their directional pull across digital networks, illustrates social media\u27s tendency to remix aesthetic features of older media forms. Major insights drawn from this research speak to the political importance of subject formation--or interventions therein--and vitality forms as a method for rhetorical criticism, which allows the rhetorical critic to be more specific and methodical in applying affect theory to rhetoric. It also challenges the positivist notion that political expression must result in measurable change in order to be validated. Finally, this project addresses the virtual potentiality of digital data and offers a perspective that sees all digital media as time-based

Our Babies[’] Count[er Story]: A Narrative Ethnography of a Baby Loss Remembrance Walk Ritual

The non-profit organization Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (NILMDTS) hosts annual remembrance walks that gather bereaved families to honor babies who have died. Grounded in narrative theory and research on family communication rituals, the present study focused on understanding how the NILMDTS Remembrance Walk counternarrates the experience of baby loss vis-à-vis the master narrative that silences it. Our narrative ethnography included participating alongside approximately 1375–1600 bereaved family members, respectively, in the 2014 and 2015 Remembrance Walks taking place in Littleton, Colorado. Two interwoven counternarratives resisted the master narrative. The communal loss narrative centered community-building for families and the individual loss narrative emphasized the unique identities of babies, as well as their individual family units and members