Context: This assignment really had me stumped. I so want each of my classes and all of my classwork to help me towards my dissertation, but I had two problems with this: 1) my specific dissertation focus has been so terribly nebulous and broad throughout my year of coursework and 2) I just couldn't get anything to fit with this goal. Nothing. I was stumped. I sent a long, rambling email to Dr. Rice expressing this and then thought of something I might be able to use: a rhetorical analysis of Humans of New York, a Facebook page I follow and love. So, off I went typing up another email to poor Prof. Rice. This one he responded to and elicited a short email dialogue as I attempted to nail down my idea. Then, through a strange set of events I will not describe, I happened upon a book called The technology of nonviolence: Social media and violence prevention by Joseph B. Bock. I mentioned this to my husband and we had a conversation that lead me to this idea. So, this post is me thinking on paper/screen about this idea because 1) I'm hoping to use it for my Expert Discussion Lead, 2) I'd LOVE to build a publishable paper out of it and 3) I think this may actually be a brand new direction for me to go with my dissertation, which I am SUPER excited about! So, feel free to read, comment, make suggestions, leave encouragements, or simply stop reading here. :)
The little I have read and seen about social media and disaster or violence has argued that social media can help or even prevent these difficult situations. While I don't necessarily believe that is not the case, a recent event in my city has lead me to see the negative influence of social media as well. In the last three weeks, two churches (one Mormon and one Catholic) have been vandalized by someone(s) calling him/her/themselve(s) "The Merry Men." They have graffitied the doors with non-establishment rhetoric. However, a few days ago they hit my old high school. But there was something different about this. The message was the same, but in the morning the school received a bomb thread via email. The police are linking the two acts together, but it is unclear whether or not they are directly related. However, that is not the interesting part: it is what happened the night before that interests me. Before the email was sent or received, there was chatter on Twitter about planned violence on the campus the next day, which sparked panic. A combination of fear (from students, but mainly parents) and extreme distraction lead to over 800 students being dismissed despite the school being deemed safe for the students on the day of the actual bomb threat - the morning after the Twitter chatter.
In this case, the chatter did not prevent or even help the threat; it actually made things worse. A lot worse. Although there is potential in the graffitied rhetoric (which might come to play as I work these things out) I am more interested in the way that this online dialogue emerged and shaped the response to this threat. It was to the point that kids were being kept home or being called back home, and police were so bombarded with calls that they were unable to respond appropriately. The police are uncertain if the two men they arrested who are suspected to be "the Merry Men" are also the ones who made the threat, and there were copy cats that emerged around the time of the social media explosion. I want to further explore the hashtag #merrymen that circulated the threats of violence to better understand the reactions. I want to understand how this new form of rhetoric moves, develops, and grows. I also have some developing long-term ideas of what to do with this, but I am a bit reluctant to put them in a fully-accessible venue like this one. However, I'm hoping that an analysis of the chatter itself might reveal something about power, control, and fear mongering.
I wonder if this is related in any way to the rhetoric of reconciliation. Might look at Mendela's work and the reconciliation commission. It's the other end of panic, of course; who is to blame, and how do you move forward once there is genocide or incredibly inhumane acts? What sparks panic? I was struck by how much the media seemed to want violence to take place during the Ferguson events. They feed off the panic, in a way.
ReplyDeleteDr. Rice,
ReplyDeleteI definitely see that, too. The media has been more concerned with sensationalism in the last - I don't know - few decades than a factual representation of what is going on in the world. Now social media is dipping it's toe in the waters. However, the interesting thing is how much we the people seem to want that panic and violence, too. Sure, there are groups that rally against this sort of thing, but simply watching social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) shows that what people say they want and what they actually want are different. We are drawn towards the grotesque, and these terrible violent acts are part of that. I definitely want to look into the theoretical side of the rhetoric conversation to better address this, and I want to revisit this post soon since I've had a little time for it to marinate. Yesterday was a busy, chaotic day, but I wanted to get something written down while it was on my mind.