Kirkpatrick, Marshall. "Facebook's Zuckerberg Says the Age of Privacy is Over." 2010. Read, Write, Web.
Wong, Phil. "Conversations About the Internet #5: Anonymous Facebook Employee." 2010. The Rumpuss.
Zimmer, Michael. "Zuckerber's Remarks Aren't Surprising, Nor New, Nor True." 2010. MichaelZimmer.org
Even if every given term is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a term, it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality --Burke Language is Symbolic Action
Connections abound! So Gurak does some interesting work with two case studies of online protests, Lotus and Clipper, noting the differences in community ethos, social action, texts and accountability. Context, Gurak argues, shapes how the individual anxieties about privacy and information accountability become full-scape online community debate, resulting in action against both private corporations and government agencies and individuals. Drawing on ancient rhetorical concepts of ethos and delivery, Gurak ties to give a general sweep of events as well as examine the intricacies that shaped each event. Gurak ultimately argues that 1) Lotus & Clipper illustrate actions of online communities, 2) both exemplify a new rhetorical entity: use of language stemmed from social action or “use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation” in a virtual space of new speed and reach (5).
While I understand the need to highlight how ancient rhetorical concepts play out in different spaces or events, I question whether the word "new" is really appropriate when we discuss online communication as a rhetorical entity? What is new about the fact that Gurak discusses the online debate about Lotus & Clipper as stemming from an exigence of public concern about an issue (privacy and information circulation)? Or what is innovative about the fact that information was then chosen and debated based on a sense of (extremely limiting) community ethos? After information went through a narrowing process, it was tailored to the community ethos, layered with assumptions about who cared about privacy and info circulation? Once there was a common value established (I'll touch on the implications of this verb in a minute) and trust was established (why wouldn't there be trust because they all presumably wanted the same thing?), social action was taken in form that best fit the rhetorical situation. And delivery was measured by community, message and perceived action that needed to be taken. I really don't mean to be reductive or dismissive, but how is this not "a good man speaking well [about stuff he knows about]"?
Gurak troubles that question and its assumptions by addressing credibility of information that circulates in communities of presumably homogeneous ethos. It would seem that emotion, fear and shared hatred brought folks together more than the truth about how Lotus and Clipper were or could actually function. And I found the moderator of the Privacy Forum Digest making some powerful rhetorical appeals about the nature of accuracy of information, taking the "high road" rather than appeasing emotional reactions, and the political versus ideological benefits of the game of sheer volume. And yet, here we see the vestiges of that old-school rhetoric again: that to seek the truth, we must do it through eloquence, moral fastidiousness and good behavior.
So I find myself stuck in a moment of not knowing what I believe in more: the ability for a community to band together and make emotional appeals to each other (preaching to the choir kind of thing), or the necessity of reason when debating, employing and delivering persuasion. What makes this dichotomy all the more frustrating is its gendered implications. That women are (forever?) connected to the emotive realm of persuasion, whereas men (naturally?) are equated to rationality is frustrating as hell. I appreciated Gurak's discussion of gender through discourse when it comes to online communication because we very quickly forgot the work of linguists who examined how gender has been reinforced, perceived and situated in lingual practices, and, as Gurak highlights, when you are dealing with online communication discourse is the visible marker of gender more so than the body. So I really appreciated that she addressed these issues which are always already present and have carried the exclusivity of the polis debate from the space of the polis to the space of the online group.
So I fail to see how apart from speed and place (which Gurak tries to divorce rhetoric from), the web functions as a particularly "new" space. Seems like same of situation, just a different day.
Finally, I chose the verb established and began this post with Burke because I am very interested in Gurak's choice to use community rather than explore implications of "the public" (damn you Habermas!) in that while the usenet groups often function as communities, it seems that she is really addressing ethos via the imagined public and its ethical values. Not sure if this is a distinction that is moot, but I'll take a stab at it anyway. It seems that community functions more to describe the confines of space and accessibility: if I am a computer user interested in privacy, I join certain listserves, usegroups and discussion boards, some free and open, but some not. Then when Lotus info drops, I circulate it to other areas with similar people interested in the issues that Lotus raises. Now, I'm not arguing that Lotus doesn't represent a host of issues, but as Burke notes, its not the complete issue Lotus that matters, but which screen we are reading it through. In the case of Lotus, that screen is privacy concerns. So I distribute it to my fellow computer and privacy community members. But the delivery, ethos and rhetorical appeals all seem to be more align with the public which I imagine on several levels: 1) the public that Lotus is gathering information for, 2) the public that has access to such information, 3) the public that then has interests and circulates that information and 4) then the community that is pissed enough to take social action against the event. It seems more logical to me to see the first three concentric circles on the level of imagined public because there is not guarantee that the people within these events actually have something in common (after all, Lotus had information for both trailer park residence and urban trendy couples, which is a pretty disparate group). It is when the issue is debated as something everyone has in common, in which everyone is pissed about in the same way, and everyone has a vested interested in changing that I feel it is representative to call the people a community.
To me its the same that Kirkpatrick, Zimmer and Wong address: the Facebook population might be considered a community, but founder Zuckerberg (and all three writers in response) is talking about how Facebook reflects trends in "the larger public" Zuckerber uses words like "people" and "public" when he discusses his stance on privacy (which is the other half of the public dichotomy, no?) policies and what users want. So while he is arguing that Facebook reflects the public, he cements or solidifies that the rhetorical appeals he makes are in response to a conception of "the public": what it wants, how it functions, what it demands from technology, and how Facebook should address that as a company giving consumers a product.
So while Gurak tries to divorce online communication from place and ancient notions of ethos and delivery, which I applaud and found hella intriguing, I can't help but wonder if "deliver" and "ethos" don't always already involve ancient conceptions. In other words, the only thing that seems "new" about Internet communication is our invested recapitulation that it is indeed "new".
3 comments:
Addendum to post: I now understand more clearly why she uses the term "community" and why she distinguishes that, but I think the divide between public and community marks the shift she identifies as "cyberspace exigence: 1) general concern exists in public mind and 2) concern is then brought into focus through kairotic or opportune introduction of a representative product, concept or other tangible symbol" (45).
For me, it is when an issue of general concern shifts from "the public" to "the community" that it becomes an issue worth debate and social action. So I would call it rhetorical exigence and it is seen not in technology for me, but the move from public to communal. I think I'm going to explore this in my Lois project as well.
Amber you make some really interesting points and agree with you in that I'm not sold on the "newness" either. I'm especially interested in the shift from public to community, seems to me it may just be a matter of semantics. I don't mean to be reductive here but isn't it rhetorical to imagine a "community" rather than the unpredictable "public?" It really makes me think of how FB markets itself in general and the illusion of a "private" and/or tight community that is evident. I imagine this will bring out some interesting conversation.
That's funny Nicole, because I was going to conclude my post with "this may just be semantic hogwash..." but as I was writing it just didn't seem that simplistic. Plus I reminded myself that if they were synonymous, we wouldn't have two different words with two different designations: community and the public are not the same, and the langauge in Gurak is loaded with shifting references. So, I know what you mean and I share that sentiment, but I think the FB stuff shows how the division matters, which you point to.
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