Public Shaming & Epideictic

Disgust, Distributed: Virtual Public Shaming as Epideictic Assemblage

JN’s typical pre-research question: “what’s up with that??”

Justine Sacco

Adria Richards

Fired!

Fired!

Fired!

Fired!

Lindsey Stone

What’s the difference between a rhetorician’s approach to research vs. that of a literary scholar?

• sometimes not much.• the material/archive to be studied.• the questions to be asked.

My evolving question for this project:• What’s up with public shaming on the Internet?• How does shame work, rhetorically?• How does the technology of Twitter & search engines aid and abet shamings?• What does the technological nature of this rhetorical phenomenon reveal/confirm about the technological nature of ALL rhetoric?

deliberativeforensicepideictic

deliberativeforensicepideictic as technology

shame

Google Search, March 31, 2014

“It is not the simple act of reflecting on our appearance, but the thinking of what others think of us, which excites a blush.” (Darwin 325)

disgust shame

etc.

etc.

etc.

“Core disgust may have been preadapted as a rejection system, easily harnessed to other kinds of rejection.”(Haidt et al 124)

strongties weak ties

“The feelings of love and regret are not as easily definable as the feelings of disgust….Disgust thus communicates rather better than most emotions.” (Miller 194)

Questions we could ask:• What forms of behavior

currently have been getting called out/shamed on the Internet?

• What kinds of things would you be ashamed to post, and why?

• How do you think shaming will change in the age of Trump? (i.e., blatant disregard for truth and/or conventions of communication). As a scholar, how would you study that?

the endjnicotra@uidaho.edu