Chapter 11

The rhetoric of display focuses on the visual or representational rather than on language. With traditional roots in the idea that language-based rhetoric constructed images for its audience, a rhetoric of display shifts to look at non-linguistic methods of rhetoric. In an increasingly visual society, a rhetoric of display recognizes the rhetorical nature of websites, movies, protests, museum displays, stories, architecture, video games, and many other forms of visual communication.

George Kennedy first expanded rhetorical theory by defining rhetoric as a form of mental and emotional energy existing prior to speech and conscious intentionality. Diane Davis later argued that our bodies’ coexistence with other bodies creates an obligation to respond to others using symbols. Using this extension of rhetoric, some rhetorical theorists now study the body and affect in relation to social and political conditions and discourses.

Zeynep Tufekci points out that content algorithms often foreground content that is more extreme. She notes that the algorithm “appears to constantly up the stakes” by providing content that is more and more outside of the mainstream, or where a user might have started. Tufekci shows how the algorithms want to keep people’s attention and will use whatever content keeps people engaged. This prompts fears about sites like YouTube being dangerous tools of radicalization.

Materialism is a movement to decenter humans as the primary actors in the world. This movement tries to create a perspective that better accounts for the “rhetoric of matter or of things.” While traditionally, scholars have understood humans as having the most agency, materialism shifts to an understanding of things as having agency to influence, incite feelings, provoke thought etc. ActorNetwork Theory was an important part of materialism; now scholars such as Laurie Gries are expanding such ideas into a new materialism that puts even more emphasis on new relations to matter and the agency of things.

Odell argues that “patterns of attention” render reality for us, telling us what is possible, real, and urgent. In other words, what we habitually attend to has the power to shape our perception of our experiences and the world around us. This affirms why digital media platforms are specificallystructured to capture and retain our attention, and why it is crucial to be aware of this contest for attention.