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For reasons unknown to me, Virtual Reality has wholly captured my interest over the past year. In a previous course, I was able to explore this interest through a paper that discussed VR from a philosophical perspective, referencing the works of Barthes, Derrida, and Haraway to build a postmodernist theory of the experiences offered by this technology.

Through writing this paper, I found that current research on modern VR technologies seems lacking, especially research focusing on how VR communication and socializing fits into the well-established literature of digital rhetorics. While there appears to have been interest at the onset of VR tech in the late 90s, there is little research into VR that takes the technology’s modern capabilities into consideration.

Therefore, I’d like to continue my research into VR by analyzing literature surrounding digital rhetoric and VR, enmeshing the two and understanding how VR bolsters or evolves our current understanding of online communication. I would explore how the feeling of physical embodiment alters our online lives, emphasizing the vast potential of identity construction and experimentation in VR. As VR is a heavily visual-based technology, I would also tie visual rhetoric heavily into my analysis.

With our current state of social distancing and quarantining, research like this seems increasingly pertinent as our social species struggles to stay connected and close. VR offers users the ability to meet face-to-face, without the risk of spreading germs or the need to travel.

My research on digital rhetoric will reference the works of James Zappen and Sherry Turkle, who have written foundational works that will help define the role VR takes in online communication. I will also pull from the research of Rosanne Stone and Marjorie Worthington, authors who have written about the dissolution of boundaries between body and technology. Finally, I may reference Valerie Smith’s visual enthymeme as a basis on which VR operates to facilitate virtual “lived experiences.”

Although I’ve been studying rhetoric for several years now, it still comes as a shock sometimes when I realize just how much I still allow language to influence and structure my thinking. It’s been well-established that rhetoric essentially shapes the fabric of our reality. This week’s readings include several rhetorical analyses by various authors that reinforce this idea. By positing language that influences our collective experiences, those with powerful voices shape our reality through the words they use to describe it. Tools of rhetoric, like metaphor and metonymy, give rise and power to hegemonies that construct our lives. This idea is demonstrated by Duerringer in his article “Class Structure and the Movement of Capital: The Rhetoric of Supply Side Economics.”

Duerringer highlights the power of two metaphors, class as vertical strata and money as liquid, that, when combined, form a powerful metaphor that influences public thinking in favor of supply-side economics – a policy with a bad track records and worse implications for those in poverty. Through the mapping of class to vertical space and the conceptualizing of wealth as liquid, this conceptual metaphor necessarily applies the laws of physics to ideas that have no actual physicality. Of course, money isn’t gravitationally pulled down through class strata by verticality alone. The universal acceptance of these metaphors, however, make the argument for trickle-down economics appear logical and natural, feeding into the continuation of tax cuts for the ultra wealthy. They also make alternate views and counterarguments appears less intuitive. At this point, metaphors like these strengthen myths that keep real economic mobility out of the grasp of the average American.

I appreciated Duerringer’s offers of substitutions for the prevailing trickle-down wealth metaphor. He provides metaphors like capitalist-as-hostage-taker, money-as-food- and patron-as-job-creator to nullify the influence of the hegemonic grasp of the current narrative of wealth. While money-as-liquid and other frequently-used metaphors strengthen the position of the rich and seemingly pull the wool over the eyes of the poor, these alternative metaphors cast a more negative light on the seemingly benevolent job-creators at the top of the upper class.

There are likely many other metaphors that obscure the dire realities of socio-economic realities in our country and the world at large. Problems arise when these metaphors become so engrained into our perspectives, we fail to see alternate ways in which to engage with reality. In the Duerringer piece, this means current prevailing wealth narratives center those in poverty at fault for their own poor state, rather than those at the top of the class strata. I can see this potentially coming into play in metaphors that reinforce racial or gendered stereotypes. When metaphors like these come to influence the hegemonies that govern society, it becomes ever more important to craft language that subverts those notions. This also shows that we must give more heed to marginalized voices that often question and rebel against this hegemony.

This week’s texts offered a variety of perspectives into the vast cultural landscape that the internet has become. Werry’s “Imagined Electronic Community” offers some insight into the formation and increasing influence of online spaces, as well as the part they were beginning to play in commerce at the time of writing. Though a bit dated, Werry introduces some concepts that explain “how representations of online community shift over time.” Clearly, with the ever-shifting nature of online environments, his arguments could be extended for applicability to the current online culture.

In particular, I found the exploration of the internet as unexplored frontier to be relevant to our modern use of the internet, especially with recent threats to Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is a concept that, until around 2017, was upheld by US ISPs. It outlines an open use conception of the internet, where ISPs cannot throttle, ban, or otherwise limit user access to the internet based on payment plans or other means. With the appointment of Ajit Pai as chairman of the FCC, Net Neutrality had a very real threat in a place of power, and internet users flew up in outrage at the possibility of having internet access limited at the hands of ISPs. This threat to Net Neutrality likened ISPs to gatekeepers of the internet, allowing companies to control the content that users had access to.

Often, I would see people interacting online, lamenting about how the “Wild West” days of the internet were coming to an end. Coincidentally, this ties into the frontier narrative indicated in Werry’s piece. To apply Canter & Siegel’s concept in a more modern context, native users of the internet felt as though their frontier had been so far encroached upon by the pioneers, the very fabric of their environment was changing irreversibly. The negative view of these internet natives as described by Canter and Siegel aligns with the perspective of ISPs, who clearly see the Internet as a place to be tamed and controlled for business interests.

In my view, the natives are in the right and deserve to uphold ownership of and access to the spaces they inhabit. The pioneers, the business owners and ISPs that seek to gain from limiting user access, have chained the free and open spirit of the internet to the limiting architectures of commerce and capitalism. There is a lot more to be said about the application of Canter and Siegel’s metaphor in the modern world, and how it essentially breaks the spirit that drives online communities.

This week’s readings tied nicely together in a way that presented the modern era of digital communication, demonstrating its effect on social consciousness, thought construction, identity, and discourse. Thompson’s “Public Thinking” outlines the ways that digital literacy has had a catalytic impact on the spread of writing ability. Whether through microblogging, forum debates, or fanfiction, the average person is writing dozens of pages more than their predecessors annually. Thompson argues that this has revolutionized the way we think, create, and present ideas, noting that the perceived presence of an audience alone has the effect of improving the efficacy of one’s written arguments tenfold. The constant miasma of discussion and ideas floating around online has lead to an age where people can’t help but get exposed to more ideas and thinking more broadly, and innovation can happen at light speed.

One topic touched upon by Thompson is the vague similarity online discussions have with traditional oral cultures. He illustrates his point through a discussion of the Wikipedia editing process, a collaborative effort between dozens of individuals coming together to discuss and debate the facts about nay given article topic. He shows modern media’s movement away from the vetted experience of experts, and more towards an open environment of discourse. This implies vast online arenas where anyone with expertise can write out their views and ideally, with well-constructed argumentation and strong evidence, people become more educated and can learn from the vast resources of the community as a whole.

…Unfortunately, that’s not normally the way things go. Thompson presents the successful efforts of Ta-Nahesi Coates, who has successfully tempered the trolls and created an online oasis of friendly civil discussion, indicating Coates as the example online communities should follow when attempting to create civil online spaces. A criticism I have with this particular argument (and, to be fair, one that is brought up by Thompson) is that most online spaces are far too large and active to moderate the activity of all users. What’s more is that social media and online networks move users toward division and radicalization.

Sacasas presents a much more pessimistic view of the new age of literacy, invoking characteristics of orality described by Walter Ong to show how social media combines the “worst prior eras of communication.” As disheartening as it is, I find it easier to agree with Sacasas’ view of internet culture. As I read the Ong article first, I found myself already making some of the cognitive connections that Sacasas amplified through the article – mainly that, in all the fast-moving white noise of constant opinions and voices in spaces like Twitter and Reddit, messages that share characteristics of orality tend to catch attention. Strategies like repetition and agonistic argument don’t usually work in written communication. When the brain is taking in a constant stream of information, however, these strategies can make arguments really stand out and reinforce themselves in audiences’ minds, simply because that’s one of the main goals of oral tradition – to be memorable.

After this week, it’s difficult not to feel pessimistic about the state of democracy in the US.  With Tuesday’s State of the Union Address, it was interesting (if not slightly demoralizing) to see some of the concepts outlined by Skinnell and Roberts-Miller in action.  These writers’ research and efforts to outline a standardized rhetorical definition of demagoguery pay off when applied to the current rhetorical atmosphere in politics. 

Ryan Skinnell’s work in “Using Democracy Against Itself: Demagogic Rhetoric as an Attack on Democratic Institutions” is an enlightening, if not depressing, insight into the strategies and limiting effects of demagoguery on democracy itself.  Skinnell attempts to provide a scholarly, agreed-upon definition of demagoguery so that its can bet better examined in the current political climate.  By showing how demagogic argument rests not on the demagogue individually, but on how a society engages in argument, discourse, and decision making, he shows how the anti-establishment will of a demagogue is extended into the people and therefore works against the democratic institutions at stake.  He illustrates how the collective will of the people becomes a monarchy, undermining the check and balances inherent in a democratic government.

President Trump’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday contained inflammatory rhetoric that reflected many of the concepts built into Skinnell’s argument.  A near constant emphasis on the stability and increasing power of the US was present in his speech, with promises that things are only going to get better from here.  His references to the policies that define the Republican in-group (e.g. 2nd Amendment rights, abortion, illegal immigration) were met with unwavering applause and standing ovations from Republican representatives.

The applause nearly drowned out the fallacies interwoven into his speech, however.  Patricia Roberts-Miller’s work on the rhetoric of demagoguery serves to reveal how these fallacies have come to be blindly accepted by Trump’s supporters.  The fact is, the state of argument in our democratic institutions has moved from measured deliberation in the name of public good, to a staunch indifference to the truth in favor of keeping in the in-group.  Trump’s address was rife with the scapegoating and fallacious rhetoric outlined in Roberts-Miller’s piece.  

At one point, he mentioned the victories he’s made in lowering costs of prescription medicine, which was met with a short, weak chant from the Democrats in the room: “HR3, HR3.”  Though I had to look up what they were chanting, which could barely be heard over Republican applause, they were referencing a bill that would allow Medicare to negotiate prescription costs directly with drug manufacturers.  This bill has been passed in the House but remains stuck, unsigned, in the Republican Senate, serving as a direct contradiction to the Trump’s words in his address.  This is just one example of the fallacies inherent in Trump’s speech, overlooked because disagreement with the policies/ideas presented means falling out of the in-group and losing power within the prevailing method of discourse. 

Both of the authors mentioned above have proven important points – the academic study of demagoguery sheds light on the confusing, upsetting state of discourse in this country, and that a knowledge of the strategies used by demagogues may eventually help the populace break out of the binds of demagoguery.  At the end of the day, demagogues do not have the best interests of the people at heart.  They are at the mercy of the people, which makes them weak – as long as those people can learn to engage in discourse that is democratic and critical in nature.