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Global warming in the microblog era
Title
Global warming in the microblog era: a rhetorical analysis of Twitter dialogue between ExxonMobil and Greenpeace USA.
Creator
Kattoura, Mark A., School of Communication and Multimedia Studies
Abstract/Description
This qualitative study examines whether microblogging illustrates or contradicts the longstanding notion that the Internet allows for greater public participation in important issues, thus potentially expanding public sphere. The study analyzes 5 years of tweets about climate change between ExxonMobil and Greenpeace USA using a new hybrid, or blended methodology that combines Kenneth Burke's rhetorical analysis of cluster-agons with eight physical attributes of the Internet that Marshall Poe...
Show moreThis qualitative study examines whether microblogging illustrates or contradicts the longstanding notion that the Internet allows for greater public participation in important issues, thus potentially expanding public sphere. The study analyzes 5 years of tweets about climate change between ExxonMobil and Greenpeace USA using a new hybrid, or blended methodology that combines Kenneth Burke's rhetorical analysis of cluster-agons with eight physical attributes of the Internet that Marshall Poe identified as influential in pushing societies and ideas in new directions. Clusters are also examined using Grace Poh Lyn's reflexive analysis. Additionally, the analysis also considers the use of agitative and control strategies, discursive tensions between freedom and domination, and the rhetorical use of public vernaculars. Analysis of the tweets reveals that business organizations that at first glance or in theory seem to be at odds actually share common discursive practices. They communicate about the same issues at the same or similar times using the same language for the same primary purpose-survival of the organization-while giving the impression that they are working for the good of their respective publics for environmental causes or the bottom line, or even both. The researcher concludes that although there are specific cases of microblogging in which the public benefits to some extent, those gains are either very short-lived or are more likely to exist in theory rather than practice due to the fluid nature of microblogging as well as continued organizational missteps which I call "corporate ejacking."
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Date Issued
2013
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/3360800
Subject Headings
Influence, Global warming, Mass media and culture, Social responsibility of business
Format
Document (PDF)
Envirotronically speaking: A case study of dis-identification in online industrial and oppositional discourse about global warming
Title
Envirotronically speaking: A case study of dis-identification in online industrial and oppositional discourse about global warming.
Creator
Kattoura, Mark A., Florida Atlantic University, Scodari, Christine
Abstract/Description
Corporations such as Exxon Mobil and environmentalist groups such as Greenpeace realize the potential of the Internet from a public relations standpoint. They have taken their industrial and oppositional discourse about global warming online through campaigns meant to appear motivated by grassroots impulses but which, as in the case of Exxon Mobil, are often motivated by profit. This study combines rhetorical and media studies approaches in performing semiotic analysis of online texts related...
Show moreCorporations such as Exxon Mobil and environmentalist groups such as Greenpeace realize the potential of the Internet from a public relations standpoint. They have taken their industrial and oppositional discourse about global warming online through campaigns meant to appear motivated by grassroots impulses but which, as in the case of Exxon Mobil, are often motivated by profit. This study combines rhetorical and media studies approaches in performing semiotic analysis of online texts related to global warming. It concludes that corporations and environmentalists are making innovative use of this new medium in communicating their respective ideologies, but that corporate texts reflect signs and strategies that obscure their sources' primary locus on profit and are, consequently, less transparent.
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Date Issued
2003
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/13057
Subject Headings
Greenpeace International, Issues management, Global warming, Internet in public relations
Format
Document (PDF)