Audiences and vernacular rhetoric.

Smith, Christina M.

Scholarly interest in the creation, circulation, and contestation of vernacular rhetoric has increased dramatically with the growth of new media. The opportunity for previously marginalized groups to disseminate their message has expanded because new media forms offer ways to gain access, albeit constrained and controlled, to the public sphere. Pamela Conners astutely notes in her article, however that any circulation of vernacular rhetoric must be viewed in concert with the institutional structures that inform its production and enable its consumption. Conners' article provides readers with a provocative example of the strategic deployment of vernacular communication in the service of institutional goals.

Specifically, Conners argues that the institutional appropriation of vernacular expression on the part of labor organizations ultimately functions to interrupt the potential of vernacular laborer discourse for coalition-building among not only low-wage workers, but the wider working public as well. Commenting on the use of low-wage workers as institutionally framed and narrated subjects in a series of seven short YouTube videos intended to highlight the plight of minimum wage laborers, she notes, "... the videos invoke a vernacular performance that subjugates the workers' own participation in the labor movement," thus demonstrating "... how online participatory media can disable marginalized voices even as it actively creates a space meant to empower them" (43, 55).

In discussing the videos, Conners details the two primary frames constructed by the AFL-CIO and ACORN to shape and influence audience interpretation of the productions. First is the frame of "appeals to pity". Addressing examples pulled from visual and textual representations in which the subjects lament their precarious positions in society, Conners suggests the subjects are consequently rendered "sad and helpless." The workers' "... voices function as pawns in service of the institutional narrative, rather than as voices summoning solidarity." (49). Second, Conners illustrates the frame of "fairness" with references to the descriptions by the videos' subjects of their inability to achieve the American Dream. She offers the view that institutions' use of these frames in presentations of vernacular performances "articulates the powerlessness of the workers, accentuates their difference from the audience members, and isolates them from the organizations acting on their behalf" (50).

I would like to raise one point of contention with the discussion of these two frames. Though the author does acknowledge that appeals to pity can create arguments for change, I argue that more change-engendering potential in visual depictions of suffering exists than Conners allows. She suggests that individual experience is less transformative than embodied political action. The two, however, are not mutually exclusive; the longstanding importance of personal narratives and the sharing of individual experience for mobilizing action and fostering social change must be acknowledged. In discussing visual representations of occupied Palestinians, Azoulay (2008) argues that an ethical relationship exists between the photographer, the person depicted, and the viewer, a relationship she calls the "civil contract of photography." Thus, images of injustice possess heightened persuasive power, as case studies of the Burning Monk, Kent State, and the 1963 Birmingham photographs (all depictions of individuals) illustrate (Skow and Dionisopoulos, 1997; Hariman and Lucaites 2001; Johnson, 2007). Though these studies focus on still photographs, the civil contract is equally applicable to moving images.

In the end, the essay offers a useful case study for examining the complex interplay between institutional entities that utilize vernacular discourse to advance their causes and the vernacular communities in which that discourse originates and acquires meaning. The appropriation of vernacular discourse by institutional entities raises important questions about power, control, and censorship. My work analyzing the United States Armed Forces' use of YouTube videos that resemble those produced by soldiers suggests the fluidity of boundaries between truly vernacular material and that which is intentionally marked as vernacular by powerful organizations. Considering the weight accorded such seemingly vernacular productions, the boundaries of authenticity are important to expose and challenge.

In light of these implications, I would like to discuss one aspect that is absent from the author's current rendering, but that nevertheless should be addressed in studies of vernacular discourse on the Internet: the role of the audience. Conners' analysis of the videos leaves little room for resistance. Rather, the subjects in the videos appear as victims of the institutional framing imposed by the AFL-CIO and ACORN. Perhaps more importantly, the resistive role played by the audience remains unaddressed in the article. In fact, audiences are quite savvy in detecting and challenging inauthentic vernacular discourse. From the online "outing" of LonelyGirl15 to the outrage of constituents of a censored political blog, the collective intelligence of consumer audiences challenges a one-sided view of institutional power (Burgess and Green, 2010; Howard, 2008). Conners notes the low number of views received by the videos and suggests that this could be due to the fact that they were deemed by audiences as overly-institutional both aesthetically and rhetorically. Recent scholarship in media and cultural studies also highlights the growing capacity of fans to not only challenge media content, but also create and circulate their own material (Jenkins, 2006). The existence of content in response to the labor videos could also provide insight into the consumption of the institutional productions.

Additionally, it would be useful to explore the viewer commentary accompanying the videos to ascertain how audiences responded to the productions. Hess (2009) provides a thorough analysis of how audiences challenged institutional messages by the Office for National Drug Control Policy. Hess ends his study with larger questions about the (in)ability of the YouTube medium to serve as a productive space for vernacular discourse. Thus, a further analysis of viewer interpretation of the videos could reveal the ways in which diverse audiences responded and might open up opportunities for resistance to the institutional hegemony advanced by the AFL-CIO and ACORN.

Works Cited

Azoulay, Ariella. 2008. The Civil Contract of Photography. Cambridge, MA: Zone Books.

Burgess, Jean, and Joshua Green. 2010. YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture. Cambridge: Polity.

Hariman, Robert, and John L. Lucaites. 2001. "Dissent and Emotional Management in a Liberal-Democratic Society: The Kent State Iconic Photograph." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 31: 4-31.

Hess, Aaron R. 2009. "Resistance Up in Smoke: Analyzing the Limitations of Deliberation on YouTube." Critical Studies in Media Communication 26: 411-434.

Howard, Robert G. 2008. "Electronic Hybridity: The Persistent Processes of the Vernacular Web." Journal of American Folklore 121: 192-218.

Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.

Johnson, Davi. 2007. "Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 Birmingham Campaign as Image Event." Rhetoric and Public Affairs 10: 1-25.

Skow, Lisa M., and George N. Dionisopoulos. 1997. "A Struggle to Contextualize Photographic Images: American Print Media and the "Burning Monk." Communication Quarterly 45: 393-409.

Christina M. Smith

Ramapo College of New Jersey