Rhetoric Online is a systematic examination of the forms and nature of Web-based public discourse in the fields of social activism, political campaigning, and other venues where rhetorical discourses are addressed to public audiences. Warnick develops and adapts existing rhetorical theories to the study of Web-based persuasive discourse in the public sphere.
Barbara Warnick
Communication counterpublics digital aesthetics Heineman identity interactivity Internet intertextuality Journalism Studies Media Media media activism Online Persuasion political campaigns
«Barbara Warnick is the foremost rhetorical critic who has taken seriously the need to adapt rhetorical theory to the study of public communication on the internet. In this book she advances her previous work by developing a critical approach specific to the online environment. The book is smart, focused, and well informed. Its attention to research in multiple fields – public communication, composition studies, technical communication, human-computer interaction, literary criticism – will make the book useful to scholars and students in these and other fields.» (Carolyn R. Miller, SAS Institute Distinguished Professor, Director, Ph.D. in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media, North Carolina State University)
«Professor Barbara Warnick has once again focused her sharp analytical lens on the rhetoric of digital discourse. With its emphasis on the public sphere, credibility, and interactivity, this new book provides us with a sound framework for both a critical and a heuristic view of the Internet. Using the concepts and examples presented here, we understand the Internet in all of its persuasive subtlety and we see ways in which our design choices – textual, visual, political – could be more adaptive to this new rhetorical space. An important book for rhetorical studies and Internet studies alike.» (Laura J. Gurak, Ph.D., Professor and Head, Department of Writing Studies, University of Minnesota, author of ‘Persuasion and Privacy in Cyberspace and Cyberliteracy’)
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