Toward a Grammar of the Blogosphere: Rhetoric and Attention in the Networked Imaginary

This dissertation explores the rhetorical imaginary of internetworked societies by examining three cases where actors in the blogosphere shaped public deliberation. In each case, I analyze a trope that emerged organically as bloggers theorized their own rhetorical interventions, and argue that these tropes signal shifts in how citizens of networked societies imagine their relations. The first case study, on the blogosphere's reaction to Trent Lott's 2002 toast to Strom Thurmond, examines how bloggers "flooded the zone" by relentlessly interpreting the event and finding evidence that eventually turned the tide of public opinion against Lott. Flooding the zone signifies the inventional possibilities of blogging through the production of copious public argument. The second case study, focusing on the 2003 blogging of the Salam Pax, an English-speaking Iraqi living in Iraq on the precipice of war, develops the idea of "ambient intimacy" which is produced through the affective economy of blogging. The ambient intimacy produced through blogging illustrates the blurring of traditional public/private distinctions in contemporary public culture. The third case study, on the group science blog RealClimate, identifies how blogs have become sites for translating scientific controversies into ordinary language through a process of "shallow quotation." The diffusion of expertise enabled by the interactive format of blogging provides new avenues to close the gap between public and technical reasoning. The dissertation concludes by examining the advent and implications of "hyperpublicity" produced by ubiquitous recording devices and digital modes of circulation

A Short Burst of Inconsequential Information : Networked Rhetorics, Avian Consciousness, and Bioegalitarianism

This essay uses the concept of “avian consciousness” to reconsider assumptions about human communication and theorize networked rhetorics. By adopting an ornithomorphic frame, I critically read Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist as an exploration of overlaps between human and avian consciousness. I then argue that avian consciousness provides a richer metaphor for understanding networked rhetorics than autistic consciousness, which is an increasingly dominant trope for explaining interaction with digitally networked media. I explore how Twitter, explicitly modeled on avian communication, can be understood as circulating information in ways analogous to the contact and assembly calls of birds. The essay concludes by noting that seeing avian features in human communication diminishes the perceived gap between human and nonhuman animal, holding out hope for a more bioegalitarian relationship between species