A New Rhetoric of Social Movements - Softcover

Cloud, Dana L

Softcover

ISBN 10: 179351772X ISBN 13: 9781793517722

Publisher: Cognella Academic Publishing, 2024

Synopsis

A New Rhetoric of Social Movements explains the rhetoric–visual, aural, verbal, and technological–of social change actors from a theoretical perspective that emphasizes the interrelationship of agitation and control and the spectrum of movement activities from the reformist to the revolutionary. Readers learn not only how to describe social movements, but also how to explain them: why they succeed and by what means, why they fail and in what contexts and conditions, and in whose interests they operate. There is extensive consideration of how media, including social media, serve as affordances of social movement actors and organizations. Each chapter provides multiple current examples and features an extended case study for continuity and clarity.

Chapters lay out a new theoretical framework for studying social movements: the Hegemony-Formation-Pressure model. In the context of counterhegemonic struggle, this model puts the moments of formation (identity- and consciousness-forming rhetorics) in a dialectical cycle with the tactics of pressure (instrumental action demanding institutional change). The idea of a circuit of formation and pressure captures the totality of movements and their complexity.

Filling a gap in the literature, A New Rhetoric of Social Movements is an invaluable textbook for upper-division and graduate courses in communication studies, rhetoric, social movements, and U.S. history.

About this title

About the Author

Dana L. Cloud (Ph.D., University of Iowa) is Director of the School of Communication, Film, and Media Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Consolation and Control in U.S. Politics and Culture: Rhetorics of Therapy; We ARE the Union: Dissent and Democratic Unionism at Boeing; and Reality Bites: Rhetoric and the Circulation of Truth Claims in U.S. Political Culture, among other articles, edited volumes, and book chapters. She is a longtime activist in movements for social justice.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cognella Academic Publishing
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 179351772X
• ISBN 13: 9781793517722
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 318