This dissertation examines the local, situated speech within the Eloqi community of practice. Eloqi is a pseudonym for an organization that built an online, voice-enabled, interactive learning platform connecting English ...

This dissertation examines citizens' activism in the city of L'Aquila, Italy, after the destructive earthquake of April 6, 2009. A natural catastrophe such as L'Aquila earthquake brings up feelings of human powerlessness ...

This dissertation is an investigation of the aftermath of the Arab Spring protests of 2011-2012 and their consequences for impacting contemporary discussions and efforts to promote "internet freedom" by Western democratic ...

Text messaging on the mobile phone is a recent and significant global phenomenon requiring an inquiry. Billions of messages are sent each month worldwide. One may question what the act of exchanging short text messages on ...

This study is centered on issues of storytelling, persuasion, and politics on websites: how stories are made accessible on the web and how these stories are asserted as truths. This study analyzes these issues through ...

Anti-intellectualism has a long history in U.S. public debate, and in the 21st century it is not uncommon for politicians to emphasize themes of anti-intellectualism in their public communications. This study proposes a ...

In the late 1980s and 1990s, individuals in the intellectual and academic circles of the journalistic community argued over whether or not journalists should publish the names of crime victims, particularly rape victims, ...

This dissertation examined the rhetorical dynamics of expertise around a manufactured science-based controversy. Using the ongoing debate surrounding vaccine-induced autism as a case study, this work explored the persuasive ...

Civil liberties were under attack in the United States well before Senator Joseph R. McCarthy strode to a West Virginia microphone in February 1950 and began the tumult that would be known as McCarthyism. State investigations ...