Doutorado Cancelamento

Copyright
by
Michael Tyler Welsh
2020
The Dissertation Committee for Michael Tyler Welsh Certifies that this is the
approved version of the following Dissertation:
Disruptive Rhetoric in Age of Outrage
Committee:
Barry Brummett, Supervisor
Diane Davis
Joshua Gunn
Michael Butterworth
Disruptive Rhetoric in an Age of Outrage
by
Michael Tyler Welsh
Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
The University of Texas at Austin
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
The University of Texas at Austin

May 2020
Dedication
Dedicated to the ones with the courage to live within conflict. To those who decided to
not just have a comfortable life. To the ones who disrupt.

Acknowledgements
I do not possess enough language to express the gratitude for the various people
who helped, listened, discussed, comforted, and encouraged me along the way. I am only
here today because of the efforts of others who gave me the inspiration to complete this
journey. It is somewhat futile to attempt to acknowledge all of the tremendous support and
guidance I received across this entire endeavor; however, I will try.
I would like to thank my remarkable committee who helped shape and push this
project to a place I could never have envisioned alone. To my longtime advisor, Barry
Brummett, whose patience and direction have been instrumental to my growth as a person
and academic for so many years, thank you. To Joshua Gunn, for opening me up to worlds
of understanding and being a confidant and colleague. To Diane Davis, for pushing me to
never settle for less than my best, and formulating my perspectives of ethical treatment of
others. And to Michael Butterworth, your insight and expertise proved invaluable.
To the other incredible educators I have had the honor of learning from along the
way – Billy Earnest, Innes Mitchell, Dana Cloud, Scout Stroud, and Lori Peterson. To the
late, great Harald Becker for inserting this crazy idea into my head in the first place. For
teaching me the true meaning of traümen.

Finally, to my wife Amelia, for being my rock, my confidence, my counselor, and
even my research assistant, for always believing in me. I am only able to finish this process
precisely due to your steadfast support throughout the entire ten years. When everything
seemed impossible, your love and encouragement gave me strength to finish. This would
have been impossible without you, and I cannot thank you enough.
I’m grateful beyond words.

v
Abstract
Disruptive Rhetoric in Age of Outrage
Michael Tyler Welsh, PhD
The University of Texas at Austin, 2020
Supervisor: Barry Brummett
Abstract: Online discursive practices often take place within a context know as an
age of outrage. This culture of outrage dominates the current socio-political condition
showing few, if any, signs of subsiding. In fact, this project suggests that outrage culture is
an inescapable societal framework within which rhetors operate today. Outrage culture can
be understood as the tendency for individuals to react publicly to any rhetorical action that
is deemed offensive, insensitive, or uncivil in nature. These outraged reactions are often
mob-like in nature; they are polarized, politicized, and enacted quickly without further
investigation into the context, meaning, and intentions of the original rhetorical action. This
project asks: under what circumstances can rhetors offer stylized answers for dealing with
socio-political issues in an age of outrage? This research reveals that some rhetors use
disruptive rhetoric to challenge hierarchical structures, utilizing the rhetorical concept of
“impiety,” which in turn can create publics within digital, discursive spaces. These digitally
networked publics demonstrate how groups coalesce and self-organize in order to discuss,
negotiate, and contest meaning in response to disruptive acts. This project also proposes
that affective releases can sustain networked publics through public displays of emotion
and intensity as they seek to reorder and reorganize disrupted hierarchies. Archival research
vi
on digital platforms provides digital methods to locate the formulation of these networked,
affective publics by tracking specific hashtags responding to disruptive rhetorical
strategies. Hashtags become sites of affect wherein publics debate, deliberate, and contest
deeper meanings of messages offered by disruptive rhetors. Additionally, this project
utilizes close reading methods to reveal the affective nature of these hashtagged responses,
which create rhetorical space for publics to feel their way into understanding. This project’s
goal is to not only propose new approaches for understanding disruptive rhetorical
strategies, but also offer methods to track and locate future disruptions in an age of outrage.
vii
Table of Contents
List of Figures .................................................................................................................... xi
Chapter 1: Disruptive Rhetoric in an Age of Outrage .........................................................1
Outrageous Outbreaks.................................................................................................3
Narrowing the Scope of Outrage: Disruptive Rhetoric.............................................14
Previewing the Potential of Disruptive Rhetoric ......................................................17
The Pussy Riot Controversy .....................................................................................18
The Case of Colin Kaepernick ..................................................................................20
Some Key Distinctions, Definitions, and their Limitations ......................................22
Disruptive Rhetoric is Public and Can Create Publics.........................22
Disruptive Rhetoric is not an Issue of Free Speech .............................23
Disruptive Rhetoric and Risk ...............................................................24
Call-Out and Cancel Culture Rhetoric ......................................................................26
Hashtag Activism and Digilantism ...........................................................................29
Uncivil Rhetoric/Incivility ........................................................................................35
Synthesizing the Literature .......................................................................................40
Toward a Burkean Symbolic Analysis .....................................................................41
A Hierarchical Analysis ............................................................................................42
Research Questions ...................................................................................................43
Proposed Thesis ........................................................................................................44
Overview ...................................................................................................................44
Chapter Previews ......................................................................................................45
viii
Chapter 2: Old(er) Theories, New(er) Methods .................................................................48
Burkean (Im)Piety.....................................................................................................50
From Coffeehouses to Digital Platforms ..................................................................56
Digitally Networked Publics .....................................................................................63
Affective Digital Publics ..........................................................................................67
Digital Tools .............................................................................................................73
Tracking Tagged Affect ............................................................................................75
Case Studies Preview and Conclusion ......................................................................80
Chapter 3: The Colin Kaepernick Case Study ...................................................................84
Case in Context .........................................................................................................84
History of the Kaepernick Controversy ....................................................................86
Impiety Before Militarized Hierarchies ....................................................................95
Networked Publics in a Digital Age .......................................................................101
Affective Publics in a Digital Age ..........................................................................107
“Affective publics materialize uniquely and leave distinct digital footprints.” ......108
“Affective publics support connective yet not necessarily collective action.” .......111
“Affective publics are powered by affective statements of opinion, fact, or a

blend of both, which in turn produce ambient, always-on feeds that further
connect and pluralize expression in regimes democratic and otherwise.”........115
“Affective publics typically produce disruptions/interruptions of dominant

political narratives by presencing underrepresented viewpoints.” ...................119
“Ambient streams sustain publics convened around affective commonalities:

impact is symbolic, agency claimed is semantic, power is liminal.”................122
Conclusion ..............................................................................................................126
ix
Chapter 4: The Pussy Riot Case Study ............................................................................128
Case in Context .......................................................................................................128
Impious Prayers ......................................................................................................131
Networked Pussy Riot Publics ................................................................................139
Affective Storytelling Through News.....................................................................142
From News Events to News Storytelling ................................................................142
Instantaneity in the Pussy Riot Trial .......................................................................144
Checkmarked Elites ................................................................................................148
Solidarity .................................................................................................................155
Cumulative Chorus A/Effects .................................................................................159
Chapter 5: Toward a Disruptive Future ...........................................................................164
In Review ................................................................................................................164
Contributions to Connected Conversations ............................................................167
Current Limitations and Future Potentialities .........................................................168
Contemplating Complicated Conclusions ..............................................................170
Bibliography ....................................................................................................................173
x
List of Figures
Figure 1: Kaepernick Sitting On Sideline ........................................................................105
Figure 2: Fan with Jersey .................................................................................................110
Figure 3: Fans with Jersey ...............................................................................................110
Figure 4: Extreme Response ............................................................................................111
Figure 5: Extreme Response #2 .......................................................................................111
Figure 6: #ImWithKap Challenge ....................................................................................113
Figure 7: Public Display of Affective Gesture ................................................................117
Figure 8: Congressman Ted Lieu Response ....................................................................117
Figure 9: Sample #TakeTheKnee Response ....................................................................117
Figure 10: Sample #TakeTheKnee Response #2 .............................................................118
Figure 11: #VeteransForKaepernick Collage ..................................................................121
Figure 12: Divisive Tweet Sample #1 .............................................................................123
Figure 17: Challenging Norms Sample #1.......................................................................125

Figure 18: Challenging Norms Sample #2.......................................................................125
Figure 19: Disruptive Engagement ..................................................................................126
Figure 20: Instantaneity Sample #1 .................................................................................145
Figure 24: Courtroom Tweet ...........................................................................................147

xi
Figure 25: Verdict Tweet .................................................................................................147
Figure 26: Checkmarked Elite Sample #1 .......................................................................150
Figure 28: Checkmarked Sample #3 ................................................................................150
Figure 35: Checkmarked Elite Sample #10 .....................................................................154
Figure 36: Checkmarked Elite Sample #11 .....................................................................154
Figure 37: Solidarity Sample #1 ......................................................................................156

Figure 44: Connective Action Sample #1 ........................................................................158
xii
Chapter 1: Disruptive Rhetoric in an Age of Outrage
In 2014, Slate published a special end-of-the-year edition of their magazine entitled
“The Year of Outrage.” Various editors and authors contributed articles that highlighted
how outrage had become the obligatory response to anything and everything that crossed
a perceived line of decency. To illustrate this, Slate created an interactive digital calendar
detailed with a new, outrageous controversy for every day of the year. The interactive
illustration included a description of the group outraged by the controversy and the
subsequent apology (or non-apology) by the original offending party. 1 The startling graphic
categorized outrageous content ranging from the cable network HGTV cancelling an
episode featuring devout Christian siblings, to a scientist wearing a “sexy woman” t-shirt
while being interviewed after landing a spacecraft on a comet. The articles within this
special edition offer an unsettling prognosis for our current culture.
Pop-culture critic Andy Greenwald further likens this assessment to a mechanistic
industry of outrage:
In the Internet economy… loud voices are more than just currency, they’re coal.
The Outrage Industrial Complex burns all day and all night with Twitter as its blistering
engine room. A constant stream of fuel is necessary to keep the entire enterprise afloat, and
so any event, be it the collapse of a government or the cancellation of a sitcom, is greeted
with a near instantaneous torrent of reaction. 2
1"2014: The Year of Outrage," Slate Magazine, December 17, 2014,

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/12/the_year_of_outrage_2014_everything_you_were_a
ngry_about_on_social_media.html.
2 Andy Greenwald, "The Internet Has a 'Louie' Problem," Grantland, June 19, 2014,
http://grantland.com/features/louie-louis-ck-fx-internet-controversy/.
1
Greenwald goes on to note that nuanced and complex discussions about
problematic issues are often eschewed in favor of loud, bombastic takes. Elsewhere, writer
and editor Sonny Bunch laments on the “emptiness of a politicized life,” where anything
and everything produces debate, outrage, and an inability to talk about policies we don’t
agree with.3 Jon Lovett, a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, has labeled
this reactionaryism as the “culture of shut up,” which forces “too many debates about
important issues” to eventually “degenerate into manufactured and misplaced outrage.” 4
Journalist Alyssa Rosenberg takes this critique one step further, noting that
this outrageous way of talking about politics or policies also trickles down into our
everyday experience of popular culture. She notes that the way we talk about politics is
akin to the way we now talk about culture. When we don’t agree with a political stance in
a favorite television show’s episode, we turn toward outrage. Or, if an adored celebrity
misspeaks on an important issue, we reject any and all creative output the artist has been a
part of. Rosenberg writes:
We treat people whose interpretations differ from our own as if they are acting in
bad faith. We focus on gaffes and supposed gaffes. And we demand that significant figures
in cultural commentary have something to say about every big event so we can check their
reactions against our sense of what they ought to feel to remain in good standing. 5And of
course, when their reactions do not match up people express their outrage through social
media outlets.
3 Sonny Bunch, "The Emptiness of a Politicized Life," Washington Free Beacon, ,

https://freebeacon.com/blog/the-emptiness-of-a-politicized-life/.
4 Jon Lovett, "The Culture of Shut Up," The Atlantic, April 08, 2014, ,
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/the-culture-of-shut-up/360239/.
5 Alyssa Rosenberg, "How We Talk about Politics Is Infecting How We Talk about Culture," The
Washington Post, July 09, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2014/07/09/how-we-
talk-about-politics-is-infecting-how-we-talk-about-culture/?utm_term=.1aa5ebab7d73.
2
I argue that an age of outrage dominates our current socio-political condition and
shows no signs of subsiding. In fact, I suggest that outrage culture is an inescapable societal
framework within which rhetors operate today. I define outrage culture as the tendency for
individuals to react publicly to any rhetorical action that is deemed offensive, insensitive,
or uncivil in nature. These outraged reactions are often mob-like in nature; they are
polarized, politicized, and are enacted quickly without further investigation into the
context, meaning, and intentions of the original rhetorical action. Furthermore, these
outrageous incidents are brief in temporal nature, lasting only until the next moment of
outrage bubbles to the cultural surface. But what does this outrageous landscape look and
sound like? What follows are brief vignettes of how outrage culture manifests itself within
popular culture. With these examples it is my intention to demonstrate the broad impact
outrage culture has on everyday life.
OUTRAGEOUS OUTBREAKS
On November 3, 2018 the sardonic comedian Pete Davidson delivered a segment
on the television show Saturday Night Live mocking the appearances of various political
candidates running in the 2018 midterm elections. One candidate’s photo appeared on
screen with Davidson remarking:
You may be surprised to hear he's a congressional candidate for Texas and not a
hit-man in a porno movie… I'm sorry. I know he lost his eye in war — or whatever.6
The candidate in question was Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy Seal who lost his right eye
because of an improvised explosive device blast while fighting in Afghanistan. The public
backlash against Davidson’s comments was widespread, as various media outlets, former
6 Joe Concha, "SNL's Pete Davidson Ripped for Mocking GOP Candidate Who Lost Eye in Combat," The
Hill, November 04, 2018, https://thehill.com/homenews/media/414762-snls-pete-davidson-ripped-for-
mocking-gop-candidate-who-lost-eye-in-combat.
3
presidents, congressional representatives, and many social media users condemned
Davidson’s decisions to use a veteran’s appearance as a punchline. Republican
Representative Peter King claimed the comments on Crenshaw were a “disgrace,” and
declared the attempted joke as “utterly abhorrent.”7
Davidson’s casual and perhaps careless comment incited furor across the political
spectrum with many claiming Davidson owed Crenshaw an apology. However, one
individual claimed to not be incensed by the comments: Crenshaw himself. In an interview,
Crenshaw stated, “I want us to get away from this culture where we demand apologies
every time someone misspeaks…. We don’t need to be outwardly outraged. I don’t need
to demand apologies from them.”8 Curious, then, was Crenshaw’s decision to appear one
week later on Saturday Night Live to not only receive an apology from Davidson live on
air, but also take the time to give a soliloquy on why the country should move toward an
era of civility and “agree on some basic rules for civil discourse.”9 While decrying the
current state of public discourse on issues, Crenshaw was given a broad platform to
promote his candidacy and urge respect and appreciation for veterans.
The following week, Crenshaw wrote an op-ed article for The Washington Post on
why he refused to be part of, in his own words, “a phenomenon that has taken complete
control of the national discourse: outrage culture.” 10 Crenshaw claimed he was not outraged
7 Mairead McArdle, "SNL, Pete Davidson Under Fire For Jokes About Veteran and GOP Congressional
Candidate's Eye Patch," National Review, November 05, 2018, https://www.nationalreview.com/news/snl-
pete-davidson-under-fire-for-jokes-about-veteran-and-gop-congressional-candidates-eye-patch/.
8 Ibid.
9 Dan Crenshaw, "SNL Mocked My Appearance. Here's Why I Didn't Demand an Apology.," The
Washington Post, November 13, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-made-amends-with-
pete-davidson-on-snl-but-thats-only-the-beginning/2018/11/13/e7314fb0-e77e-11e8-b8dc-
66cca409c180_story.html?utm_term=.065270a46f8e
10 Ibid.
4
by the comments and never demanded an apology, but still agreed to be a part of the public
apology because it was a chance for “restoring civility to public debate.” 11
This entire scenario exemplifies the phenomenon this project seeks to explore – the
notion of outrage culture. I agree with Crenshaw that this case was another chapter in
outrage culture, but I do reject the notion that he somehow took the high ground by not
publicly asking for an apology. This assertion comes from the fact that Crenshaw
(knowingly or not) benefitted from the mechanisms of outrage culture by inserting himself
into a nationwide discussion on civility, gaining an exclusive live television appearance,
and in turn increasing his public profile as a current rising star in the Republican Party. In
fact, Crenshaw’s decision to appear on the show and participate in Davidson’s apology
further clarifies the way outrage culture functions:
1. Individual states something perceived as offensive or demeaning toward
another individual or group(s) of people.
2. Public backlash is communicated and circulated across a variety of
communicative media (blogs, websites, op-eds, television programs, social
media platforms, etc.)
3. The initial offender offers a public apology (or non-apology) and the issue
fades as new attention is paid to the next outrageous incident.

4. Rinse, rhetoricize, and repeat.
On one hand, 0ur current outrage culture presents several concerns for rhetorical
studies in that it obfuscates generative discussions on vital issues that affect our everyday
life. It hinders the ability of a rhetor to raise awareness or understanding of problematic or
11 Ibid.
5
critically nuanced issues that society faces. 12 To borrow from an old adage: if we are
outraged at seemingly everything, are we truly outraged at anything?
Additionally, outrage culture renders receivers of communicated messages
as critically indolent and incapable of understanding the context or meaning of messages,
pushing them to immediate outrage and vitriol. One need not look far to see examples of
outrage culture. Simply examine any comment section on a controversial post made on
your preferred social media platform. Writer Glenn Kisela surmises the situation
succinctly:
Outrage culture is about people becoming polarized and letting their emotions
override critical thinking and fact checking. It’s about media abusing genuine pain and
issues to increase views and push an agenda. It involves turning a non-issue into a divisive
battleground for the sake of a narrative. Outrage culture is making the world more of an
arena and less of a place for discussion and real engagement. 13This seems to be a poignant
diagnosis for our current condition. What follows now is a brief snapshot of how outrage
often manifests itself within our popular culture.
Juli Briskman did not start her afternoon bike ride on October 28, 2017
expecting to become a visual symbol of resistance against the Donald J. Trump
administration. However, when a motorcade of all black SUVs decided to overtake her,
Briskman did something she claims was out of character for her. Briksman defiantly and
explicitly raised the middle finger of her left hand at the passing vehicles as she continued
to pedal down the northern Virginian road. In an act of further resistance, Briskman was
able to catch up to the motorcade at a red light and again “flipped the bird” at the secret
12 Consider how difficult it is to raise awareness on environmental or civil rights abuses.

13 Glen Kisela, "Outrage Culture - The Culture That Sells," Critical Hit, June 23, 2017,
https://www.criticalhit.net/gaming/outrage-culture-culture-sells/.
6
service cars as they turned away. However, we might not ever have known about this
incident if it weren’t for the fact it was photographed and shared on various social media
platforms. This moment, while perhaps crude, went viral and became a symbolic moment
of the strong disapproval of the administration. Her face was not visible in the photo, but
Briskman was eventually identified and fired from her job at a government contracting firm
for a violation of the “code of conduct policy.” Briskman contends she does not regret her
impetuous decision, despite the material consequences for her symbolic gesture.
Circling back to my previous definition of outrage culture, this moment is also
indicative of how it forms and functions. The perceived offensive action by Briskman
created a polarized audience where on one side she was vilified receiving abuse via
electronic and physical mail and thousands of disdainful messages through social media
platforms. However, many also saw her act of defiance as heroic, with several thousand
individuals donating to a GoFundMe campaign eventually raising over $140,000 to aid her
after she was terminated by her employer. Yet, the discussions circulating around the
vulgar display rarely, if ever, went beyond mere excoriation or praise for Briskman. What
role vulgarity or decency should have in public displays of political resistance is a complex,
nuanced concept that could have been explored in the wake of this rhetorical event. In the
era of outrage culture, there is often no time or space for such discussions.
Shortly after Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, Karen Fonseca
displayed a controversial message on the rear of her pickup truck. The message exclaimed
“FUCK TRUMP AND FUCK YOU FOR VOTING FOR HIM,” and included a cartoon
illustration of a middle finger. Shortly after Fonseca adorned her truck with the polemic
message, the Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy E. Nehls posted the image on his own personal
Facebook account captioning it with the following message: “If you know who owns this
7
truck or it is yours, I would like to discuss it with you."14 In addition, he mentioned that the
prosecutor of the county was “considering charging the owner with disorderly conduct.” 15
The sheriff would later delete the post after receiving criticism that he might be censoring
free speech.
Shortly after receiving a tip, however, Fonseca was arrested on an
outstanding warrant for fraud. After posting bail, Fonseca was outraged by the actions of
the Fort Bend police, claiming that she had been targeted and bullied, and that she intended
to file a civil-rights lawsuit.16 In an interview, Fonseca commented on the notion that her
case is a singular instance of a broader trend:
I’m just one person… But if I can be used as bait for Troy Nehls to try to gain
approval for him to gain supporters in his upcoming race for Congress against Pete Olson,
then this is how the system works: Pick on the people who are vulnerable and step in and
turn their lives around for gain. 17
Despite the potential ramifications of her actions, Fonseca has no intentions of
backing down from her controversial statement. In a further act of defiance, she kept the
sticker decal on her truck and added the following message, “FUCK TROY NEHLS AND
FUCK YOU FOR VOTING FOR HIM.” As of today, the district attorney has not pressed
any charges, but Fonseca reports she and her children have been verbally attacked in person
and online. The merits of Trump as a political candidate or president was not the focus of
14 Rachel Leah, ""F**k Trump" Decal Woman Adds a Profane Slam of Texas Sheriff to Her Truck,"
Salon, November 22, 2017, https://www.salon.com/2017/11/21/karen-fonesca-troy-nehls-sticker/.
15 Ibid.
16 Cleve R. Wootson Jr., Amy B. Wang, and Marwa Eltagouri, "She Put an Obscene Anti-Trump Message
on Her Truck and Was Arrested. Now She Might Sue.," The Washington Post, November 20, 2017,
accessed June 28, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/11/20/she-put-an-
obscene-anti-trump-message-on-her-truck-and-was-arrested-now-she-might-
sue/?utm_term=.35e44f88a818.
17 https://www.salon.com/2017/11/21/karen-fonesca-troy-nehls-sticker/
8
the mob-like outrage that circulated around the truck decal. Rather, in the true form of
outrage culture, the conversation devolved into a discussion of whether profanity can be
used when publicly dissenting the president.
Again, with the case of Fonseca we see how outrage culture attaches itself
to controversial rhetorical acts. Fonseca displayed an offensive political message and in
turn messages of support as well as contempt circulated and structured the discourse
surrounding the event. The audience was polarized and politicized and as Fonseca points
out, the entire event was utilized by Sherriff Nehls to garner support for his congressional
campaign.
Hip hop has been a site of social resistance since its inception as a musical
genre.18 It is no surprise, then, that in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign,
many artists began to voice their disapproval through their art. In April of 2016, Keenon
Daequan Ray Jackson known by the stage moniker “YG,” filmed and released a music
video entitled “FDT (Fuck Donald Trump).” The video features a crowd of people holding
anti-Trump messages scrawled onto picket signs and as YG performs the song with lyrics
such as:
I'm ready to go right now/your racist ass did too much/I'm 'bout to turn Black
Panther/Don't let Donald Trump win/that nigga cancer/He too rich, he ain't got the
answers.19
The message and lyrics are crude yet succinct. The music and lyrics are combined
with controversial imagery. A message appears before the video stating, “As young people
18 For more see: Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America
(Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994).
19 "YG (Ft. Nipsey Hussle) – FDT (Fuck Donald Trump)," Genius, March 30, 2016,
https://genius.com/Yg-fdt-fuck-donald-trump-lyrics.
9
with an interest in the future of America… we have to exercise our intelligence and
CHOOSE who leads us into it wisely.” 20 The video circulated widely through social media
channels and amassed 18.5 million views on YouTube. On the heels of the successful yet
contentious song, YG announced a 52-date “Fuck Donald Trump Tour.” YG also
announced he would donate one dollar of every ticket sold for the tour to families of victims
of police brutality.
While many lauded and supported YG for the political move, many critics
derided his artistic decision. In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, YG noted that
many promoters cancelled shows after the release of the song. These promoters did not cite
the song specifically, but YG felt its release contributed to their decision. A concert at the
University of Southern California was cancelled because the artist would not agree to leave
the song out of his performance, costing the rapper to forfeit a $60,000 performance fee.
Despite the pushback, YG exclaimed he would not censor his tour or the performance of
the song and doubled down with a remix of the song featuring prominent, popular (and, it
should be noted, white) rappers Macklemore and G-Easy.
Hip hop artist Snoop Dogg has been a source of controversy throughout his career.
Snoop Dogg has expressed opinions on political and public policy issues in the past, but
rarely has he tried to articulate transgressive or subversive political messages publicly.

However, his collaboration with hip hop jazz group Badbadnotgood created an uproar early
on in the Trump administration in 2017. In their music video for the song “Lavender,” an
actor playing a clownish President Trump is shown emerging from a limousine. The actor
is adorned with face paint, wearing an oversized red tie, and a wig in the signature style of
20 WorldStarHipHopTV, "YG & Nipsey Hussle "FDT (Fuck Donald Trump)" (WSHH Exclusive -
Official Music Video)," YouTube, April 18, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkZ5e94QnWk.
10
the president. The scene quickly shifts as Snoop Dogg enters the frame revealing a pistol,
aiming it directly at the temple of the clown. The music stops as Snoop Dogg pulls the
trigger, revealing a comic book-esque “BANG!” flag as the music video fades out.
Many viewers claimed the video incited violence toward the president.
Several critics argued that it “crossed the line,” with one Fox News correspondent wagering
that Snoop Dogg should face legal ramifications for threating the president. 21 Additionally,
several false reports began to circulate that Snoop Dogg had been arrested by the Secret
Service for “violent threats.” President Trump responded in a tweet stating, “Can you
imagine what the outcry would be if [Snoop Dogg], failing career and all, had aimed and
fired the gun at President Obama? Jail time!” However, Snoop Dogg was undeterred by
the public backlash. The artwork for his new album Make America Crip Again featured a
body in a morgue an American flag draped over it, with a toe tag hanging off of it labeled
“Trump.” The image was later replaced after another public outcry condemning the violent
depiction of the president.
Perhaps a more extreme example of outrage culture is comedian Kathy
Griffin’s choice to conduct a photoshoot with a fake, decapitated head resembling President
Trump. Groups immediately reacted demanding a public apology while others castigated
her violent depiction. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney characterized the
photo as “repugnant and vile,” while others compared the picture to effigies of Obama that
were hanged during his presidency. Yet, like the previous instances, others came out in
support of this artistic decision. Fellow comedian Jim Carrey noted, “I think it is the job of
a comedian to cross the line at all times — because that line is not real.”22 As with
21 Donald Trump, Twitter Post, March 15, 2017, 4:02 a.m.,

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/841967881516679168?lang=en
22 Hunter Harris, "Jim Carrey, Larry King Defend Kathy Griffin After Trump-Photo Controversy,"
Vulture, http://www.vulture.com/2017/06/jim-carrey-defends-kathy-griffins-trump-photos.html.
11
previously mentioned incidents, there were ramifications for the now infamous photo.
Griffin issued a public apology but was fired from her hosting job at CNN and claimed that
she was blacklisted by Hollywood following the incident. Yet, Griffin eventually echoed
the sentiments of Briskman stating she was not apologetic over the incident and in her first
public appearance following the photo’s release walked onto stage with a Trump mask and
raised two middle fingers into the air.
These events all are distinct, yet connected: They happened in the context
of outrage culture, but also perpetuate it and contribute to it as well. Outrage is nothing
new, however. Scholar Sue J. Kim notes in her book On Anger that emotions, specifically
anger, have a historical tradition in the production of culture, ideology, and politics. She
argues that “not only are emotions produced in and by a group, but also groups are
produced by emotions.”23 Furthermore, Kim argues that anger (and we might be so bold
as to substitute outrage here) is a historical feature of how individuals understand systems
of power. Therefore, what these previous examples all illustrate is various individuals
living in a culture of outrage and attempting to navigate through and function under long-
standing systemic conditions. That is to say, while outrage culture is nothing new, the
recent examples offered here show how pervasive and inescapable it still is today.
Authors Guy Benson and Mary Katharine Ham also refer to the current
American socio-political landscape as outrage culture, referring to it as the “Outrage
Circus.”24 They argue citizens are afflicted with an “insidious strain of self-censorship”
that prevents them from speaking freely on a daily basis. They argue that outrage culture’s
obsession with protecting everyone’s sensitivity prevents people from engaging in public
23 Sue J. Kim, On Anger: Race, Cognition, Narrative (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014): 67.
24 Mary Katharine Ham and Guy Benson, End of Discussion: How the Lefts Outrage Industry Shuts down
Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun), (New York: Crown Forum, 2017).
12
debate for fear of being silenced by the “thought police.” Here, they describe the process
of how the though police operate:
They [thought police] are highly ideological, often deeply partisan, and relentless
in their vigilance, ever on alert to name and shame violators of their approved order. Once
you’ve violated one of their capricious and fluid “rules”—even unwittingly—malice is
attributed, and restitution is demanded. Nothing short of full, professed repentance shall
suffice.25
Ham and Benson argue that this Circus is by and large a product of the Left, who
are more concerned with “protecting certain people from offense in the public sphere” than
“defending free expression.”26 They go on to provide a variety of case studies to suggest
that this is how public issues are debated and policed in today’s outrage culture, where
freedom of expression is suppressed or ultimately silenced.
Scholars Jeffrey M. Berry and Sarah Sobieraj have also researched and
published on outrage culture, yet their focus is on its creation and dissemination through
political opinion media. They contend that platform such as cable news programs, political
talk radio, and the proliferation of political blogs and Twitter accounts have contributed to
an industry of outrage that is not only highly effective in shaping ideologies but is also
profitable. Unlike Benson and Ham, however, they do not contend this industry skews
ideologically one way or the other. Rather, they suggest outrage rhetoric is personality
centered around a singular figure that can be marketed and advertised. Furthermore, their
definition of outrage discourse states that it:
25 Ham and Benson, End of Discussion, 12.

26 Ibid., 13.
13
involves efforts to provoke emotional responses (e.g., anger, fear, moral
indignation) from the audience through the use of overgeneralizations, sensationalism,
misleading or patently inaccurate information, ad hominem attacks, and belittling ridicule
of opponents.27
These differing yet connected concepts of outrage discourse suggest that language
that is meant to provoke or promote outrage is detrimental to the function of democracy.
Yet, this study seeks to distance itself from that conclusion, or at the very least, put it into
question. If these contentions are true—that outrage discourse (whether it be through a
Circus or Industry) stifles free speech and disrupt democratic discourses—then why do
rhetors continue to employ it?
NARROWING THE SCOPE OF OUTRAGE: DISRUPTIVE RHETORIC
With these examples in mind, we can understand outrage culture as a broad
category that subsumes many rhetorical acts within our socio-political landscape. These
outrageous discursive acts, cathartic but divisive, sometimes can bring issues of injustice
to the forefront of national debates but are problematic in that they are quickly consumed
and forgotten. To summarize, many argue that outrage culture is a negative, if not
damaging, characteristic of our current society. 28 The previous examples demonstrate some
27 Jeffrey M. Berry and Sarah Sobieraj, The outrage industry: political opinion media and the new
incivility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 7.
28 In fact, this seems to be a sentiment shared across both sides of the political spectrum. For more on this
see: Ron Synovitz, "Forget About Civil Discourse, My Keyboard Is OUTRAGED!!!"
RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty, December 26, 2018, https://www.rferl.org/a/social-media-
outrage-civil-discourse-keyboard-warriors/29677441.html, Michael Shammas, "Outrage
Culture Kills Important Conversation," The Huffington Post, January 27, 2017,
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-shammas/from-liberal-college-
camp_b_9070894.html., Jeet Heer, "Weaponized Outrage Is a Threat to Free Speech," The New
Republic, December 06, 2017, https://newrepublic.com/article/146117/weaponized-outrage-threat-free-
speech.
14
of the rhetorical utility outrage culture has to offer, but also highlight its drawbacks—
mainly its inability to substantially shift audience’s perceptions or orientations on complex
issues. This is not to suggest that outrage culture has no utility whatsoever. Instead I would
like to extend the current understanding of outrage culture by introducing a subcategory
that I argue is more successful in its attempts to produce meaningful discourse and move
beyond mere battleground-like discursive practices.
If one is to examine outrage culture closer, she might encounter some cases that do
not fall into the typical cyclical pattern of outrage. In fact, some curious cases that function
under the structure of outrage culture seem to defy the inevitable pattern of shock,
dissemination, and dismissal. I argue these instances operate within the parameters of
outrageous rhetoric to more effectively move audiences toward new perspectives or
orientations. I term this subcategory of outrage culture as disruptive rhetoric. I define
disruptive rhetoric as:
communicative acts or discourses derived from traditionally marginalized voices,
both verbal and nonverbal, that violate expectations or societal norms of decorum or
propriety, in turn requiring audiences to interpret and assign meaning to them.
In contrast to normal acts of outrage, disruptive rhetoric persists over long periods
of time, evolving and adapting to new influences of audiences that engage with the original
disruptive act.
I argue here that disruptive rhetoric is a distinct form of discourse that operates
under the broad umbrella of outrage culture. Disruptive rhetoric is certainly a product or
extension of outrage culture itself but differs from this broader category in that it thrives
within the confines of public discourse, rather than quickly fading into the background.
15
Disruptive rhetoric, like other forms of outrage, seeks to confront issues by evoking anger,
but unlike most outrageous rhetorical acts, disruptive rhetoric does not merely stop the
conversations there. Instead of fading away as audiences’ outrage subsides, it morphs or
evolves as new audiences encounter, engage, and interpret it. This study argues that in an
attempt to understand the broader category of outrage culture, one must critically look at
disruptive rhetoric as a subset within it. By critically engaging with disruptive rhetoric we
can better understand the utility of outrage as a rhetorical strategy overall and might aid
our ability to engage and interact with outrageous instances that normally do not push
audiences beyond polarization. More specifically, what I seek to understand with this study
is how disruptive rhetoric might provide strategic answers for individuals living in these
outrageous times. What material effects might rhetors hope to influence in utilizing
disruptive rhetoric as a strategy?
Critics like Ham and Benson sometimes argue that outrage culture is ineffective or
damaging for audiences. However, this project seeks to explore how disruptive rhetoric, as
a subset outrage culture, offers some rhetorical utility to both rhetors and audiences alike.
In closely examining disruptive rhetoric, we might be able to look past the negative aspects
of outrage culture and discover a productive or generative strategy for individuals living in
an age of outrage. While anger and outrage contain the potential to bring issues to the
forefront of broader discussions, the ensuing conversations are often not nuanced, typically
leaving audiences further entrenched within their polarized position. Worse, these outraged
discussions often get caught up in the churn of the 24-hour news cycle, quickly forgotten
as fast as they are reported. What proceeds from here are two specific case studies that I
argue are emblematic of disruptive rhetoric. They offer a close-up view of how outrage
might be operationalized to move audiences toward new perspectives or orientations.
16
PREVIEWING THE POTENTIAL OF DISRUPTIVE RHETORIC
The previous examples presented thus far display the wide variety of forms
outrage culture takes, while also highlighting some negative components of outrage
culture. Some of the negative attributes includes its inability to move audiences closer to
new perspectives and/or orientations, its tendency to flare up and fade out, and its overall
polarizing nature. Journalist Kia Makarechi notes that as new media outlets and emerging
social media platforms develop, there are more opportunities for diverse perspectives to
amplify their voices louder than ever before, but this can create an oversaturation of outrage
within the culture. She argues that as result of these new mediums and the influx of new
voices people can experience “outrage fatigue.” This occurs often when audiences lament
over an author or rhetor’s decision to raise awareness about an issue such as sexism,
corruption, or racism, rather than address the issue at hand. She describes the backlash to
those who attempt to use outrage:
This is the apex of outrage fatigue, wherein people convince themselves that it’s
articles about race which are creating societal ills like poverty, not policies, institutions and
decades of media created from the perspective of a narrow slice of society in service of that
same, privileged slice. But sure, it’s this essay, in fact, which causes racism and sexism.
Not racism or sexism itself. 29
Our current condition ensconced within outrage culture multiplies in its complexity
here. If one is to accept that outrage culture is the diagnosis for our current condition, a
question is raised: how might a rhetor effectively negotiate or operate under these
constraints? This study does not attempt or seek to find a remedy or a panacea for the
29 Kia Makarechi, “Oh, You’re Tired of People Being ‘Outraged’?,” The Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com./kia-makarechi/outrage-fatigue_b_4614753.html
17
problems outrage culture creates. Rather, I intend to investigate how rhetors might more
effectively function within an outrage culture, avoiding the negative aspects of typical
outrage culture. What follows are two key case studies that demonstrate disruptive
rhetorical strategies for communicating under the conditions of outrage culture. These case
studies offer a differing look at how mere outrage can turn into disruptive rhetoric,
sustaining conversations over a long period of time, and avoid leaving audiences
entrenched in their polarized positions.
THE PUSSY RIOT CONTROVERSY
On February 21, 2012, two weeks before the presidential election in Russia, three
women offered up a “Punk Prayer” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.
Adorned in colorful ski masks the women pantomimed an energetic performance featuring
fist punches into the air and jumping atop the empty cathedral altar. Later that evening, the
troupe spliced together footage of the protest and edited it to their song entitled, “Mother
of God, Drive Putin Away.” The video quickly went viral, causing controversy nationwide
with many citing the sacrilegious nature of the clip as an insult to their religious beliefs. In
a matter of a few days, a criminal investigation was opened against the trio known as Pussy
Riot accusing them of hooliganism. The discourse that circulated around the event
bifurcated the Russian public. Many saw the performance as outright blasphemy, an
irreverent and disrespectful display more akin to vandalism than artful protest. Others cited
the public display as a powerful expression of the dangerous and explicit relationship
between organized religion and the Putin administration.
The case study of Pussy Riot’s disruptive display in coordination with the social
movement against Putin is a representative example of how protest can function in today’s
hypermediated and globalized world. Pussy Riot’s protest demonstrates what I refer to
18
as disruptive rhetoric. Again, I define disruptive rhetoric as communicative acts or
discourses derived from traditionally marginalized voices, both verbal and nonverbal, that
violate expectations or societal norms of decorum or propriety, in turn requiring audiences
to interpret and assign meaning to them. One should view the disruptive rhetoric of Pussy
Riot as a subset within outrage culture that aims to avoid many of the negative attributes
of outrageous rhetorical acts. Pussy Riot demanded an international audience pay attention
to the relationship between religion and the state within Russian politics by violating the
normal function of the chapel.
The case of Pussy Riot greatly informs this project because its disruptive rhetoric
violated the generic expectations of behavior and communication within a sacred, public
space, thus leaving room for audiences to interpret their actions. Unlike most provocative
instances within outrage culture, their actions were not quickly forgotten with the daily
news cycle, and their members to this day refuse to apologize. Pussy Riot is emblematic of
an approach that sets a tone for controversial discourse subsequently raising international
awareness for their movement. The event was rapidly shared, retweeted, and linked across
social media platforms, heightening the awareness of the despotic nature of the Putin
presidency. This case offers a new development for rhetorical scholars to study how
transgressive or unexpected communicative acts impact or influence orientations and

perspectives.
Today, holding an audience’s attention for sustained periods of time is more and
more difficult, especially given the fact that popular culture and media have become
increasingly fragmented. Understanding Pussy Riot’s actions within the lens of disruptive
rhetoric reveals that their strategy did not hinge on simply communicating anger or rage.
Rather, their actions sparked worldwide discourse that lasted for several months, and
required audiences to process what role religion should play in the governance of a state. I
19
argue here that what Pussy Riot offers is not another example of outrage culture quickly
disseminated and consumed then moved on from. What this study hopes to accomplish is
a scholarly inquiry into the usage of disruptive rhetoric, particularly within the realm of
political activism, whether disruptive rhetoric can sustain public discourse, inviting
audiences to assign meaning to disruptive rhetorical actions.
THE CASE OF COLIN KAEPERNICK
On August 27, 2016, professional athlete Colin Kaepernick decided to
speak out against a trend of highly publicized law enforcement abuses against persons of
color. Kaepernick crafted a response in the wake of murders of Tamir Rice, Trayvon
Martin, and Michael Brown. Instead of organizing and calling a press conference,
Kaepernick decided on a different mode of rhetorical address: he opted to kneel during the
national anthem before a preseason National Football League game. This silent action sent
shockwaves not only through the league, but throughout the national public sphere. What
originally was intended to be an action to raise awareness and open dialogue about social
injustice quickly morphed into a divisive conversation on what it means to be an American.
I find this case perplexing and it is difficult for me to understand how the rippling
effects of such an innocuous act could lead to a nationwide conversation on racism,
patriotism, and social injustice. I argue Kaepernick’s performative act was meant to disrupt,
raise awareness, or call into question the treatment of bodies of color by law enforcement
agencies. But, the rhetorical effects of his action were something he could never have
predicted. Instead, we can only trace the evolution of how audiences received and or
rejected Kaepernick’s invitation toward critical evaluation. This particular case proposes
many questions in terms of what, if any, material effects can verbal, or symbolic rhetorical
acts have in creating audiences or structuring perspectives and orientations. We now live
20
in a hyper-context that prompts a closer inspection of how rhetoric creates or orders
emerging publics around important issues in our world today. The advent of the internet
and its continuing integration into our daily lives changes the way we receive and respond
to messages. How have the internet, social media, and memes changed how we filter,
process, and decode the challenges we face today? At this point in time, I do not know how
to fully answer these questions, but with this chapter I will propose how I intend to address
them.
Kaepernick’s disruptive rhetoric is a snapshot of what activism looks like in an age
of outrage. Technological developments in communication can alter approaches to
understanding the interconnectivity of social movements. Scholar Robert Glenn Howard
notes that:
From wikis, to social networking, to photo sharing, to blogs, these
new participatory forms of Web-use occur across network locations where vernacular and
institutional agencies hybridize into complex new communication processes.11
These intertwined communication processes are an aspect of persuasion that have
not been fully explored. Understanding how these new participatory formats structure
meaning for audiences is vital to understanding the actions of rhetors who decide to employ
the strategy of disruptive rhetoric. Additionally, a question to ask is, can disruptive
rhetorical strategies move audiences toward agency? Howard argues that participatory
media “have the potential to be more empowering than media objects because they offer
network locations where local agents can express themselves.”12 A question then would
be, do rhetors who use disruptive rhetoric seek to empower audiences by activating
responses that can be reproduced, recirculated, shared, and evolved through social
networks? And if so, does this strategy help or hinder the cause(s) of the provocative
21
rhetor? It is with these questions in mind that I wish to pursue a project on disruptive
rhetoric precisely because I do not know the answers to them. What is happening in these
cases is something unique, novel, and overlooked in the field. Therefore, I am left wanting
to be able to trace the rhetorical and material affects these cases of disruptive rhetoric
produce, and this study seeks to offer a method in doing so.
SOME KEY DISTINCTIONS, DEFINITIONS, AND THEIR LIMITATIONS
While I began this project by taking a broad examination on outrage culture, I
would now like to set some parameters for how this project will attempt to delineate what
disruptive rhetoric is and is not. Again, I offer a definition of disruptive rhetoric as:
communicative acts or discourses derived from traditionally marginalized voices,
both verbal and nonverbal, that violate expectations or societal norms of decorum or
propriety.
Disruptive rhetoric encourages audiences to assign meaning to these disturbing
acts, which often require audiences to engage and fill in what it means enthymematically.
With this understanding in mind, I offer a brief literature review that will detail further key
characteristics of outrage culture. Additionally, I argue that disruptive rhetoric has been
overlooked by scholars precisely because of some of the key characteristics I wish to lay
out.
Disruptive Rhetoric is Public and Can Create Publics
First, disruptive rhetoric is public in essence and practice. Although it might
influence private discourse and perspectives, for disruptive rhetoric to be effective it must
be public. This distinction draws on Jürgen Habermas’s theoretical concept of the public
22
sphere, or the “discursive space separating the public and private realm where critical
agents could be provided a space for ‘rational communication.’” 30 I argue disruptive
rhetoric relates to Habermas’s notion of rational deliberation; however, there are some clear
distinctions that must be pointed out. First, disruptive rhetoric is not “rational
communication,” at least not in the Habermasian sense, as it often incorporates emotional
or visceral responses from audiences to encourage provocation and engagement.
Additionally, disruptive rhetoric shares an inherent relationship with public
culture. The publicity of disruptive rhetoric creates and foments the possibility for publics.
Scholar Michael Warner contends that, “no single text can create a public.”31 I agree with
this assertion; however, I argue disruptive rhetoric can organize and structure publics’
understanding of citizenship, identity, race, technology, politics and economics by
encouraging individuals to form and participate within publics. Public culture, for the
purposes of this study is, as Gerard Hauser suggests, the product of “web[s] of discursive
arenas, spread across society and even in some cases across national boundaries” contesting
each other often through disruptive rhetorical strategies.32
Disruptive Rhetoric is not an Issue of Free Speech
I would like to note that this study of disruptive rhetoric is not an investigation of
free speech or censorship. While many scholars have looked at the marginalization of
nontraditional voices through censorship, this study is less interested in the technocratic
apparatus that often suppresses an individual’s ability to speak. The case studies I will later
detail do not follow the traditional notion of how censorship has been studied because the
30 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry into a Category of
Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991).
31 Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2014), 90.
32 Gerard A. Hauser, Vernacular Voices: the Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 2010), 71.
23
rhetors freely communicated controversial statements. However, that is not to say their
communicative actions do not have consequences. Rather, I take the stance that these
rhetors were able to freely communicate at the time of their speech act. I argue this
distinction is important when we are discussing disruptive rhetoric’s relationship as a
subset of outrage culture. Many critics, such as Ham and Benson, point to outrage culture
as having the ability to limit or restrict free speech because of the constant intervention of
“thought police.” Yet, disruptive rhetoric, such as that of Kaepernick or Pussy Riot,
challenges that claim by demonstrating rhetors offering controversial, free thought, through
their disruptive actions.
Disruptive Rhetoric and Risk
I suggest that an integral aspect of disruptive rhetoric is that it requires an element
of risk. By risk, I mean that something tangible (money, employment, physical well-being)
should be at stake in the utterance of disruptive rhetoric. Disruptive rhetoric is often
controversial because it advocates for causes that require amplification within the public
sphere. Often, to advocate for these causes is potentially harmful in some way for a rhetor.
Additionally, in many of these instances, even though risk is recognized by the rhetor it
does not discourage their speech acts. Individuals such as Briskman, Fonseca, and Griffith
all remained unapologetic for their disruptive acts, despite the financial and social damage
they incurred from their actions.
Scholarship on Disruptive Rhetoric: Themes within the Literature
Let us now turn to literature review of what has been done on the concept of
disruptive rhetoric so as to look for what we do not know or understand about it. The study
of speech acts designed to interrupt conventional discourse is not a new concept in
rhetorical scholarship. Yet, in my review of the literature on disruptive rhetoric, I was not
24
able to locate other scholars engaging with the term of disruptive rhetoric directly.
However, I was able to find cognate concepts or offshoots of disruptive rhetoric that I argue
give us a foundational understanding of what scholars think it is. What follows is a brief
examination of three thematic approaches I have identified within the extant literature.
These approaches provide insightful and productive methodologies to understanding the
relationship between disruptive rhetoric and outrage culture, but I argue they leave some
room for more work to be done. The first category of call-out and cancel culture rhetoric
offers a foundational understanding to how disruptive rhetoric is created and propagated
through various media. This literature also reveals how prevalent call out or cancel rhetoric
has become in today’s age of outrage.
The second area within the body of literature that identify is hashtag
activism and digilantism. This area focuses on examples of outrageous rhetoric that push
the boundaries of normative discursive practices. Scholars within this category focus on
vulgar or profane language used in conjunction with social media or online platforms. This
research highlights how rhetors or activists develop transgressive communicative
processes to disrupt dominant forms of discourse. Additionally, this body of literature
examines how hashtag activism utilizes digital reproduction specifically within the realm
of social media. Radical/protest rhetoric provides clear insight as to how publics and
counterpublics both form and evolve in the wake of disruptive rhetorical acts.
The final category I look at is uncivil rhetoric, or rhetoric that violates
normative, “civil” practices of communication. Scholars argue that incivility is a method
of opening discursive space for disruptive rhetoric in contexts or situations. The practice
of incivility in the presence of civil discourse is often viewed as a transgressive act that has
the potential to shift attitudes and orientations toward controversial subject matter.
Furthermore, scholarship in this area reveals that incivility or uncivil rhetoric challenges
25
the more commonly accepted form of invitational rhetoric, which seeks to establish
common ground with interlocutors in aims of achieving persuasion. Investigating why
rhetors adopt an uncivil approach might shed on why disruptive rhetoric frequently is
employed in today’s outrage culture.
These three categories are by no means exhaustive of the extensive literature
available. But these three categories reveal the scope of literature I seek to draw from in
formulating an approach to understanding how controversial rhetoric functions. Beyond
this, these three categories outline the limitations and gaps in research that I hope to address
through this project, revealing the potential for future exploration of new case studies and
examples of disruptive rhetoric.
CALL-OUT AND CANCEL CULTURE RHETORIC
Call-out culture can be viewed as a subsidiary of disruptive rhetoric, in that it is a
rhetorical process that produces and disseminates widespread outrage across audiences.
Much of call out culture relies on the ability to capture or record racist or sexist injustices
on a smart phone. Then, the footage is quickly uploaded to social media outlets. Finally,
someone implores justice for the abused, i.e. demanding that the offender be fired from job
or publicly shamed. Writer Emma Grey Ellis argues that call out culture is an efficient tool
for revealing the widespread issues many marginalized citizens face on a daily basis. She
contends:
These videos reveal that the average American racist isn’t a terrifying, hulking
figure who might knife you in an alley if you’re really unlucky—it’s a middle-aged white
woman in a store or a drunk bro at a bar. 33
33 Emma Grey Ellis, "The Case for Viral 'Callout' Culture," Wired, December 12, 2018, ,
https://www.wired.com/story/viral-call-out-culture/.
26
Ellis remarks that call out culture is a new way to counter and engage with everyday
racism and helps citizens who might only understand racism as a bygone institution of the
past.
Lisa Nakamura, a digital media scholar, argues that call-out culture can be
productive when it can “educate, protest and design around toxic social environments in
digital media,” in turn opening up discursive spaces to examine important issues for
marginalized groups.34 Nakamura likens call out culture to a form of digital labor often
“performed by women of colour, queer and trans people, and racial minorities” that allows
them to “intervene in racist and sexist discourse online.” 35 Nakamura notes that there are
varying degrees of success to these tactics, but their disruptive nature of call-out culture
gives visibility to their causes that other forms of rhetorical address do not.
Related to the notion of call out culture is that of cancel culture. Meredith
Clark, a leading digital media and gender studies scholar, defines cancel culture as “an act
of withdrawing from someone whose expression—whether political, artistic or
otherwise— was once welcome or at least tolerated, but no longer is.” 36 She argues that
cancelling someone—a celebrity, politician, public figure—is the “ultimate expression of
agency,” describing it further as a “taking back of one’s own power after a breakup.”
Cancel culture is rampant, as figures such as Kanye West, Taylor Swift, and Bill Gates
have all been “cancelled” due to their incendiary speech acts. Professor Nakamura also
adds that cancel culture is an extension of call out culture. She states that it represents a
34 Lisa Nakamura, “The Unwanted Labour of Social Media: Women of Colour Call Out Culture As
Venture Community Management,” New Formations 86, no. 86 (December 15, 2015): 106.
35 Ibid., 106.
36 Jonah Engel Bromwich, "Everyone Is Canceled," The New York Times, June 28, 2018, ,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/style/is-it-canceled.html.
27
“cultural boycott,” wherein a collective of individuals agree to not “amplify, signal boost,
or give money” to those who offend or commit a form of injustice. 37
However, while research into call-out and cancel culture continues to grow,
I feel it has some theoretical gaps that need to be addressed. Author Asam Ahmad warns
that call out and cancel culture is problematic in that it appears as a simple fix to complex
issues. He notes that due to their public nature, call outs are often more about the
performance itself rather than content of the call-out. There is usually a large element of
whose call out can be more humorous, therefore generating more likes, retweets, or digital
shares, rather than what the performative act helps or corrects in terms of racial or gender
injustices.38 Ahmad advocates for “ways of calling people out that are compassionate and
creative,” and that do not reduce individuals to symbols of broader systems they might not
actually adhere to.
Clark also puts the efficacy of call-out and cancel culture into question, noting the
limits of what it can and cannot do. She suggests that cancelling and call outs are “not
enough of a disruptive practice to take a politician out of office.”39 The key word in her
assertion of course is disruptive. What remains to be seen is how cancel and call out culture
in an age of outrage can actually disrupt communicative practices that shape our everyday
world. An inquiry into the rhetorical efficacy of disruptive rhetoric will need to examine
whether one can move past mere critique of everyday offensive or outrageous practices
and equate to some substantial change. Defining what substantial change looks like will be
difficult; nevertheless, the current research on cancel and call-out culture presents an
inconclusive perspective. Ultimately, the cancel and call out culture rhetorical scholarship
37Ibid.
38 Asam Ahmad, “A Note on Call-Out Culture,” n.d., 2.
39 Bromwich, “Everyone is Cancelled”
28
does not reveal the full rhetorical potentialities of these disruptive approaches. While call
out and cancel culture rhetoric is efficient in raising awareness, it does not address this
study’s concern of how to move discourse beyond mere attention raising. What audiences
or rhetors are meant to do beyond calling out or canceling harmful rhetoric is not addressed
in these rhetorical strategies. This study seeks to understand how disruptive rhetoric moves
audiences further than this initial step toward a prolonged or extended discourse on issues.
Additionally, I argue these approaches both can easily get subsumed right back into the
outrage vacuum they are trying to change. How, then, might they be enacted in a lasting
manner?
HASHTAG ACTIVISM AND DIGILANTISM
I now turn to another extension of disruptive rhetoric research. Many scholars argue
that some speech acts can be housed within the categories of “hashtag activism” and
“digilantism.” This research adds to our understanding of uncivil and call out/cancel
rhetoric in that it explores how outrageous rhetoric is digitally constructed in order to
influence broad audiences. Many scholars have focused on the impact of outrageous
rhetoric within the digital realm, as communication has increasingly become mediated
through various technological apparatus. Social media platforms offer a space for rhetors
to organize messages that attempt to influence or alter perspectives, and current technology
allows for these messages to proliferate and spread out faster than ever before.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram
have a profound effect on outrageous rhetoric because they facilitate the ability for
information to be distributed and disseminated at an increasingly rapid rate, eschewing the
traditional delivery methods of mass mainstream media. Thomas Zeitoff writes that this is
due in large part to social media’s capacity to lower the barrier of entry for activists to
29
communicate with each other, increase the speed and spread of information, adapt and shift
messaging as tactics change, and generate new data. 40 According to him, digital activists
seeking to employ radical or confrontational rhetoric can not only mobilize large groups of
people, but also construct identities through the strategic use of narrative and rhetoric in
their messaging. With this in mind, I provide now a few recent examples of how activists
have utilized social media to articulate hashtag activism and digilantism.
Hashtags represent a particular form of radical rhetoric, something scholar
Emma Jane has labeled as digilantism. Jane defines this form of radical collective action
as “a spectrum of do-it-yourself attempts to secure justice online,” which “may include any
combination of trickery, persuasion, reputation assaults, surveillance, public shaming, [or]
calls to action.”41 Digilantism requires outrageous responses that seek to punish offenders
who threaten various marginalized groups. Digilantism often coalesces around the use of
strategic hashtags in order to aggregate responses to “bring public attention to gendered
hate speech and abusive material that might otherwise have only been viewed by individual
recipients or small groups.” This specific practice of digilantism, also known as hashtag
activism, deserves attention specifically within an age out outrage because of the ability of
hashtags to organize and structure orientations within the context of controversial,
outrageous issues.42 Rachel Kuo notes that in the goal of pushing toward racial equity,
“racial justice activist hashtags can function as collective action framing tools and
educational tools.”43 She adds that hashtags are designed “to drive discourse in particular
40 Thomas Zeitzoff, “How Social Media Is Changing Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 61, no. 9
(October 2017): 70–91, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002717721392.
41 Emma A. Jane, “Feminist Digilante Responses to a Slut-Shaming on Facebook,” Social Media +
Society 3, no. 2 (April 2017): 205630511770599, https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117705996.
42 It should be noted that this rhetorical strategy in practice predominantly takes place within digital or
online spaces.
43 Rachel Kuo, “Racial Justice Activist Hashtags: Counterpublics and Discourse Circulation,” New Media
& Society 20, no. 2 (February 2018): 497.
30
directions and force race to be a salient part of the conversation.” 44 Again, while social
movements are not the focus here, what is important is understanding how outrageous
rhetoric (in this case in the form of hashtags) structures and orders audiences, thus
facilitating the ability to construct perspectives, form identities, and inform orientations
towards notions of justice.
One radical example of this is demonstrated in scholar Scott Stroud’s
examination of the online blog “Racists Getting Fired.” This blog, located on the social
media platform Tumblr, features posts by users who intend to discover the identities of
individuals who espouse hateful or racist rhetoric. Much in line with the previous literature
of call out culture, Stroud argues that the blog uses hashtags and public online shaming to
enact a form of justice for those who appear to engage in racist behavior. The blog in
question will often post video of the perceived offender and include the hashtag #Gettin’
if the offender has not been identified or #Gotten if the actor’s identity has been located.
Once the person is identified, individuals who follow the blog are encouraged to contact
the agent’s employer in order to get the person fired. This form of radical hashtag activism
seeks to rectify abuses against persons of color by publicly shaming individuals through
online networks. But, as Stroud warns, there are serious ethical concerns in terms of this
coordinated, radical communicative effort. Stroud asks, “While we are legally allowed to
use our online rhetorical activity to bring shame and disrepute on those whom we think
deserve it, are we ethically justified in doing so?”45
In 2015, Najma Al Zidjaly conducted a multimodal analysis of how Omani citizens
use memes and hashtags on the social media platform WhatsApp to express political
44 Ibid., 497.
45Scott Stroud, "The Jaina Rhetoric of Nonviolence and the Culture of Online Shaming," in Ancient
Rhetorics and Digital Networks, by Damien Pfister and Michele Kennerly (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of
Alabama Press, 2018): 318.
31
dissent.46 He argues that memes are “cultural tools” that can function as powerful
constructs of lament, in this case lamenting the corruption of the Omani political system.
Through his analysis of various “reasonably hostile” memes he argues that memes can be
adapted into “different roles” and can “shift discourses and consciousness” within cultures
when properly constructed. However, he notes that during the 2015 elections users
gradually constructed and moved toward more full-on dissent-based messages, eschewing
any sense of humor or playful lamentation. Zidjaly argues that when memes or hashtags
become too hostile, movements suffer from a “loss of empowerment signaled by the
collective giving up of a new form of engaged political participation.” 47 This shift in
messaging harkens back to Windt’s point that as social media messages within activist
movements become too extreme or radical, they often lose their viability in broader
audiences. Nonetheless, Zidjaly’s analysis reveals that many cultures such as the Omani
“draw upon a plethora of means afforded by social media (e.g. hashtags) to enact multiple
communicative functions.”48
A more extreme example of digilantism can be found in Kristin Bivens and
Kirsti Cole’s research on “grotesque rhetoric.” Bivens and Cole argue that “social media
protest strategies represent an inventional media that produces new practices” and often
these are most effective when they are grotesque in nature. 49 Unique to their project is the
way in which they examine how the material, in this case bodily fluids, is translated across
46 Najma Al Zidjaly, “Memes as Reasonably Hostile Laments: A Discourse Analysis of Political Dissent
in Oman,” Discourse & Society 28, no. 6 (November 2017): 573–94,
https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926517721083.
47 Ibid., 590.
48 Ibid., 579.
49 Kristin Marie Bivens and Kirsti Cole, “The Grotesque Protest in Social Media as Embodied, Political
Rhetoric,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 42, no. 1 (January 2018): 5–25,
https://doi.org/10.1177/0196859917735650.
32
digital media in an attempt to change social and political conditions for activists. Bivens
and Cole write specifically on how grotesque rhetoric influences social movements:
The grotesque… can upend existing power structures, call attention to the
inequality or discrimination inherent in the power structure that one seeks to supplant, resist
attempts to control bodies, and reinsert individuals’ voices in political discourse aimed to
exclude those bodies.50
This approach echoes some of the principles of Cathcart’s confrontational rhetoric
in that a goal of grotesque rhetoric is to “upend established orders of power.” Grotesque
protest utilizes hashtags such as #PeriodsforPence and #CumragsforCongress as “a
productive act of resistance that trespasses social norms.”51 As I mentioned previously, the
goal of radical rhetoric in social movements is to mobilize bodies towards action. Givens
and Cole cite that grotesque protests bring “attention back to the body—our bodies—
through social media,” providing protesters “a method to destabilize differential power
relationships.”52 The hashtag campaigns, while explicit, offer a means of radical resistance
for those who feel disempowered and seek to reestablish agency over their bodies in the
face of state interference.
Radical rhetoric scholarship offers some answers for the theoretical gaps
cancel or call-out rhetoric scholarship leaves unaddressed. Individual rhetors employing

digilantism or grotesque rhetoric practice a form of disruptive rhetoric that departs from
traditional norms of democratic discourse. This offers an opportunity for marginalized
voices to reach broader audiences by eschewing formal channels of “democratic”
communication. However, one issue with this approach of focusing on radical rhetoric is
50 Ibid., 8.
51 Ibid., 21.
52 Ibid., 21.
33
the ethical concerns of its approach. As Jane points out, radical rhetoric located within
hashtag activism and digilantism is tricky in that it:
carries risks and may be ethically problematic, especially in its strongest forms.
Among other issues, it may: deny targets the opportunity to tell their—potentially
exculpatory—sides of the story; punish innocent people because of issues relating to
mistaken identity; mete out disproportionate punishments; and/or provoke hostile counter-
responses.53
This theme within outrageous rhetoric details how these methods violate societal norms of
propriety and decorum, thus often amplifying the voices of those utilizing digitized
rhetorical practices. Rhetors in search of justice, who engage in digilantism or grotesque
rhetoric might need to consider the potential ill effects their rhetoric and actions might
possess. Unfortunately, current research in this area does provide definitive answers to
these issues.
The focus on grotesque or vulgar language also presents some difficulty
when trying to understand the disruptive nature of nonverbal disruptive rhetoric. Since
radical rhetoric is centered on controversial language it overlooks how nonverbal
communicative actions can have disruptive effects for social movements as well. Some
critics have labeled Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the National Anthem as profane
or vulgar despite his attempts to be deferential while protesting. Therefore, while radical
rhetoric offers a generative lens it still leaves some room to fully theorize how disruptive
rhetoric influences individuals’ perspectives and attitudes when it is nonverbal.
53 Jane, “Feminist Digilante,” 4.

34
UNCIVIL RHETORIC/INCIVILITY
A final area of research pertinent to this study is the usage of uncivil
language in everyday and politically focused engagement. Scholars in the social sciences
and political communication discipline often focus on the impact uncivil language can have
on consumers of media, whether that be news, online forums, or film and television. 54
According to the research, civil language is conducive to increasing deliberative
communication within publics and potentially increases participation in democratic
practices. However, some scholars suggest that insisting on the civil precludes certain kinds
of political activism. In other words, civility actively masks class, race, and other biases,
thereby privileging certain voices of power. This section outlines a body of research that
suggests rhetorical practices or speech deemed “uncivil” or incivility actually foments the
potential for disruptive rhetorical actions.
Nina M. Lozano-Reich and Dana Cloud theorize the move towards an
“uncivil tongue” which is a method of confronting oppressive rhetorics.55 According to
Lozano-Reich and Cloud, civility foments the ability of the oppressor(s) to constrain or
tame disruptive rhetoric. The overarching preference for civility in public discourse is
unacceptable in that it “has been proven to leave those already disempowered in a
continued state of conformity, punishment, and/or silence.” 56 Thus, for activists or those
engaged in social justice work, an uncivil approach is required at times to enact actual
54 For reference: Kirk Emerson et al., “Disrupting Deliberative Discourse: Strategic Political Incivility at
the Local Level,” Conflict Resolution Quarterly 32, no. 3 (April 2015): 299–324, Bryan T. Gervais,
“Following the News? Reception of Uncivil Partisan Media and the Use of Incivility in Political
Expression,” Political Communication 31, no. 4 (October 2, 2014): 564–83, and Jay D. Hmielowski, Myiah
J. Hutchens, and Vincent J. Cicchirillo, “Living in an Age of Online Incivility: Examining the Conditional
Indirect Effects of Online Discussion on Political Flaming,” Information, Communication & Society 17, no.
10 (November 26, 2014): 1196–1211.
55 Ibid., 421.
56 Ibid., 424.
35
change. This notion of the uncivil tongue, I argue, is an extension of and closely intertwined
with the project of disruptive rhetoric, in that it offers strategies for the marginalized to
advocate for justice and equality.
Nancy Welch’s work with uncivil rhetoric connects past social movements
during the industrial “Gilded Age” to modern resistance work in an era of neoliberalism. 57
In an essay on mobilized protest she traces the constraints of civil discourse in opposition
to current nuclear energy regulatory policies. One recent example she offers is the Indian
Point protest where activists organized and executed a coordinated effort to challenge the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) into opening up an inclusive, all-access Q&A
session. The activists were successful when the NRC skipped over a perfunctory
PowerPoint presentation and answered questions from a highly vocalized and engaged
crowd. The meeting was characterized as “lively” and “boisterous” by local press and
attendees.
But, as time passed, some critics, even within the anti-nuclear community, deemed
their rhetoric and methods as misguided or flawed. In a public radio interview, anti-nuclear
activist Raymond Shadis claimed that, “[The activists] rhetoric… had veered toward
‘irresponsible’ incitement to ‘violence,’ and ‘urged civility and calm.’”58 He forewarned
Vermonters that “violent language” had the potential to “stimulate violent action.”59 The
critique offered by Shandis circulated broadly under headlines urging civility in anti-
nuclear activism. Welch, however, argues that the incivility of the activists on that day
opened up the rhetorical space and possibility to engage in an educated debate about the
potential harm and risks of nuclear technologies. In refusing to wait for their designated
57 Nancy Welch, “Informed, Passionate, and Disorderly: Uncivil Rhetoric in a New Gilded Age,”
Community Literacy Journal 7, no. 1 (2012): 33–51, https://doi.org/10.1353/clj.2012.0028.
58 Ibid., 34.
59 Ibid., 34.
36
time, “their incivility served to make rhetorical space in which more views could be heard.
They sought to save their land—or at least this meeting—by unciviling their speech.”60
This uncivil approach connects to Lozano-Reich and Cloud’s notion that when groups are
dealing with a substantial power inequality an uncivil tongue is required in order to make
voices heard. Welch notes that a regulatory body like the NRC is more concerned with
ensuring the well-being of an industry, and not safeguarding the public good, therefore
incivility is a charge used by dominant groups to silence or discourage future resistance to
their operations. Subsequently, she contends in order to ensure social change for the public
good, incivility must be used as a rhetorical strategy to confront unjust social order.
Young et. al, extend the understanding of civil rhetoric in the field of the
academy. They argue while most academics are encouraged to participate in engagement
beyond the classroom, participation in political activism is often discouraged.61 In tracing
the borders between scholarship and activism, they make the claim that many institutional
boundaries force scholars to practice and promote civility when engaging in controversial
issues. One such incident they point to is the 2008 National Communication Association
convention. Several activist groups publicly demonstrated against the hotel citing unfair
labor disputes, prompting many scholars to move their conference panels to another
location. Young et. al, conducted a rhetorical analysis of CRTNET (NCA’s e-newsletter)
and found that appeals to civility were often used a panacea to discourage scholars’
participation in the public confrontation of political issues. They write, “The norms of
civility and decorum also operate as border patrols, disciplining the activist-scholar into
60 Ibid., 37.
61 Anna M Young, Adria Battaglia, and Dana L. Cloud, “(UN)Disciplining the Scholar Activist: Policing
the Boundaries of Political Engagement,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 96, no. 4 (November 2010): 427–
35, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2010.521179.
37
forms of engagement that would only reinforce, rather than reform, the status quo.”62 For
Young et. al, true engagement within the community requires a level of incivility in order
to actually achieve goals focused on positive social change.
Kyra Pearson and Nina Maria Lozano-Reich also point to the usage of the
“uncivil tongue” in the reality television show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. They
conceptualize the uncivil tongue as a rhetorical practice that challenges norms, thus
opening discursive space for marginalized voices. Furthermore, they suggest that civil
discourse aims to constrain or depoliticize non-heterosexual bodies. This is an attempt to
“discipline the speech and bodies of queers and people of color.” 63 Many critics assert that
Queer Eye was complicit of these civilizing practices in that it sanitized and commodified
queer identities and performativity, making them “safe” for mass audiences. However,
Pearson and Lozano-Reich suggest that Queer Eye employs a queer rhetoric that “is not
entirely sanitized by a language of decorum but is ‘dirty,’ corporeal.”64
Citing several interpersonal exchanges from the show, Pearson and Lozano-Reich
argue that the show’s main stars are able to “reorder and reorganize sources of desire,” by
challenging hetero-normative notions and assumptions when interacting with “straight”
guests on the show. For example, they write that by reorganizing and reforming interior
spaces of “bachelor pads,” the Queer Eye hosts suggest that heterosexual spaces do “not
need to be colonized by the privacy of heteronormativity.” 65 Additionally, the authors point
to subtle “flirting” and “joking” between queer hosts and heterosexual guests as a way for
uncivil tongues to “open up discursive space, even momentarily, for the circulation of non-
62 Young et. al, 430

63 Kyra Pearson and Nina Maria Lozano-Reich, “Cultivating Queer Publics with an Uncivil Tongue:
Queer Eye ’s Critical Performances of Desire,” Text and Performance Quarterly 29, no. 4 (October 2009):
383–402, https://doi.org/10.1080/10462930903242848.
64 Pearson and Lozano-Reich, 386.
65 Ibid., 390.
38
normative forms of desire.”66 These hyper-edited moments, while fleeting in temporal
nature, briefly open up possibilities of queer worldmaking by uncivilizing language from
traditional, imperialistic discourses. Ultimately, Pearson and Lozona-Reich call for more
theorization on the uncivil tongue because it offers, “a point of departure for rethinking not
only queer worlds but the politics of worldmaking itself.” 67 With this in mind, this project
hopes to further explore the uncivil tongue and how incivility as a rhetorical practice opens
discursive spaces for marginalized or suppressed voices.
While the work within uncivil rhetoric offers potential new approaches to
understanding how disruptive rhetoric might influence social movements, it seems it is
limited in its scope. I argue that uncivil rhetoric approaches are hyper-specific to their
context, thus not allowing for understanding or connections to broader social movements.
A specific television show, a single email listserv, and a single nuclear plant protest all
contain examples of uncivil rhetoric, but do not fully articulate how these instances connect
to broader social movements.
The literature cited here emphasizes three previous approaches to disruptive
rhetoric scholarship: dissident rhetoric, radical/protest rhetoric, and uncivil rhetoric. While
this review is not exhaustive, it offers a broad view of how scholars understand aggressive,
confrontational, or non-normative approaches to communication. Additionally, it connects

to broader understandings of how these techniques influence or shape social movements
for social justice issues. However, I argue that while this literature is incredibly useful to
the present study here, these critical approaches are not fully adequate into understanding
how to approach all forms of disruptive rhetoric. I now will outline how my study aims to
synthesize an approach to understanding discourse that aims to be controversial.
66 Ibid., 395.
67 Ibid., 397.
39
SYNTHESIZING THE LITERATURE
I have summarized three themes within the extant literature that offer an
understanding of disruptive rhetoric’s role as a strategy within outrage culture. While these
themes are generative for rhetorical studies, they do not fully encompass the nuanced and
rapidly evolving nature of disruptive rhetoric. Call-out and cancel culture literature points
to how marginalized voices might be able to raise awareness of pertinent issues, cutting
through much of the noise outrage culture produces. But that literature does not specify
how to maintain that discourse over extended periods of time, and what audiences should
do with these messages beyond calling out and disengaging problematic rhetors or
situations.
The literature surrounding hashtag activism does reveal strategies for interacting
with notions of justice within digital platforms. However, hashtag activism and digilantism
literature does not account for methods of disruption that seek to extend beyond the digital
realm, only offering critique or examinations of specific cases on the internet or social
media platforms. Furthermore, it primarily centers on vulgar or grotesque messages, which
precludes one’s ability to understand disruptive rhetoric that is more benign. Finally,
uncivil rhetoric literature reveals the potential for marginalized voices to utilize disruptive
methods in order to rearrange disparate hierarchies of power. However, it also remains
specific to individual causes or cases and does not reveal its relationship to engaging
broader extended conversations across dissimilar audiences. I argue this present study is a
focused examination of disruptive rhetoric as a strategy within outrage culture, that
addresses the gaps in the present literature and calls attention to what disruptive rhetoric is
and what it can do. In order to do that, here, I offer a brief preview of two frameworks I
think will apply to the forthcoming case studies.
40
TOWARD A BURKEAN SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS
While I am not definite on these methods, I am inclined to turn to the work of
theorist Kenneth Burke as an approach to these disruptive case studies. First, I suggest a
Burkean symbolic analysis of disruptive rhetoric is warranted. The literature provided thus
far offers a wide range of theoretical frameworks in which to examine including cancel,
call-out, digilantism, and uncivil rhetoric. This body of research successfully traces the
impact these strategies can have, but it often does not fully examine the importance of the
symbolic rhetoric contained within them. In other words, rhetors might express themselves
through disruptive rhetoric in order to effect change in social conditions, but is that their
only goal? Perhaps one subsequent outcome of disruptive rhetoric is that it symbolically
informs orientations for audiences or publics. Borrowing from theorist Kenneth Burke’s
understanding of symbolic action, I argue one can view disruptive rhetoric as “strategic
answers, stylized answers” for the situations they might face historically. 68 A symbolic
understanding of disruptive rhetoric could help reveal how disruptive rhetors “size up the
situations, name their structure and outstanding ingredients, and name them in a way that
contains an attitude toward them.”69 In doing so, this study would reveal the strategic value
of disruptive rhetoric as an approach to navigate situations that affect many individuals.
I argue that rhetorical studies have not fully explored the symbolic value of
disruptive rhetoric, therefore it is prudent to understand what, if any, purpose a symbolic
understanding of disruptive rhetoric might have for individuals trying to navigate a rapidly
changing world. Burke’s understanding of symbolic action could prove useful for this
approach. While scholars have gestured toward a symbolic understanding of disruptive
rhetoric’s symbolic function, I suggest here that more attention is necessary. Disruptive
68 Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990): 1.
69 Ibid., 1.
41
rhetoric often aims to change or influence material conditions, but is also molding,
negotiating, and exchanging with the symbolic.
A HIERARCHICAL ANALYSIS
Additionally, I propose a close examination on the relationship of disruptive
rhetoric and hierarchies. As R.L. Scott summarized, confrontational rhetoric is a dialectical
tension between “haves” and “have nots.” I seek to adopt this understanding but update it
to understand the hierarchical tensions disruptive rhetoric seeks to shift. This exploration
of hierarchical structure might reveal the rhetorical significance of controversial discursive
practices and offer insight as to why certain messages are more effective than others.
Referring back to Lozano-Reich and Cloud’s uncivil tongue framework, we know that
immense disparities of power and agency are present in situations of the oppressed versus
the oppressor. If this is believed to be true, a hierarchical analysis would reveal not only
the gulf in power between these groups, but would also reveal the ethical, moral, and
material concerns of the issues inherent in these difficult socio-historical moments.
To do this I will employ Burke’s concepts of piety as a means to understand how
disruptive rhetoric is constructed by rhetors and consequently accepted or rejected by
audiences. Piety, for Burke, is a way to look at how competing perspectives or social orders
interact with each other when they collide. Piety is a construction of proper decorum or
social order, when something violates this established order, new pieties emerge. It is my
intention to use this concept to reveal how rhetoric that might seem controversial, vulgar
or inappropriate is used as way to shuffle hierarchical structures of power and give power
to dismissed or oppressed perspectives. I argue disruptive rhetoric is an example of impious
acts that seek to reestablish social order or rebalance disparities of power and/or agency.
42
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
At this point I argue that disruptive rhetoric has been examined from
different perspectives, yet there remains significant work to be done. What remains of
Habermas’s idealistic public sphere continues to become increasingly polarized, and if
persuasion is to have any effects on broader debates it seems new examinations of
disruptive rhetoric are necessary. If disruptive rhetoric indeed offers rhetors agency
through discursive techniques that interrupt normative conversations, it would benefit
scholars to understand to what extent these techniques could prove resourceful. More
importantly, by understanding the constitutive effects of disruptive rhetoric, we might
adopt better strategies designed for future debates on real world issues. This raises three
important questions that would require closer examination using the previously mentioned
analytical approaches:
What is the nature and function of rhetoric designed to violate expectations or
societal norms of propriety? Under what circumstances and to what extent can rhetors from
traditionally marginalized backgrounds offer stylized answers for audiences to complex
situations they are ensconced within?
What material effects can disruptive rhetoric influence in the struggle for civil or
human rights that reasoned, civil approaches do not provide? How might a hierarchical
analysis reveal the relationship between piety and disruptive rhetoric?
How might emergent communication technologies aid or influence the
dissemination and circulation of disruptive rhetoric amongst networked individuals in
today’s hypermediated context?
43
PROPOSED THESIS
In response to this research questions, I argue that disruptive rhetoric has
the potential to produce networked, affective publics that can create rhetorical space for
marginalized voices to challenge established hierarchies. I will demonstrate through this
project exactly how discourse that violates norms of propriety is impious in nature, which
causes publics to respond in affective ways often through the usage of digital networks.
Networked affective publics can debate, challenge, and redefine traditional understandings
of complex situations, and through these discursive exchanges, new hierarchies can be
tested and constructed. Emergent communication technologies facilitate the dissemination
and circulation of these discursive practices through affectively charged, digital artifacts,
and for the purposes of this study, I will argue that specific hashtags are digital footprints
that track, aggregate, and stimulates these practices. Furthermore, with this study I will
demonstrate disruptive rhetoric’s potential for providing strategic answers to challenging
situations for those often marginalized or silenced in public arenas.
OVERVIEW
For this author, it is regrettable that we find ourselves operating under an ever-
increasing wealth-income gap, corporate domination and consolidation of media channels,

a political system marred by corruption and partisan obstructionism, and a raging culture
war that threatens our definition of democratic values. It is difficult to imagine how agency
or rhetorical strategies can be effective in a society or world shaped under late-capitalism.
Yet, despite these lamentable considerations, the rhetors I examine in this project continue
to persist. They have chosen unique rhetorical strategies in order to amplify their voice in
an attempt to achieve their “real world” goals. This study does not seek to necessarily
44
critique or eschew the situations we find ourselves in, rather I seek to explore rhetorical
strategies that may help one survive or at least maneuver within them. While this is perhaps
not a radical approach, I argue it is a necessary one. I hope to understand if disruptive
rhetoric is a sustainable technique to achieve influence or persuasion in a late-capitalistic,
digital society. If so, how might these strategies function in future situations? Or, in other
words, is disruptive rhetoric a sustainable strategy to not only survive, but thrive in an age
of outrage?
With this chapter, I established that disruptive rhetoric is a frequently utilized
strategy for rhetors historically and especially today. I traced a brief history of the
scholarship that has looked at disruptive rhetoric as dissident, incivility, and radical or
protest rhetoric. This body of literature provides a snapshot of how disruptive rhetoric
might be analyzed within today’s current public sphere but does not fully account for the
symbolic or hierarchical components I argue that are vital to its usage. The research
questions I have proposed would prove useful to a greater understanding of how disruptive
rhetoric functions in our present digital age.
CHAPTER PREVIEWS
The following chapters will establish the theoretical approach to disruptive
rhetoric in order to respond to my research questions, outline the case studies I seek to
examine through this theoretical framework, and provide conclusions for future research
in this area.
In Chapter 2, I will provide a more in-depth literature review that structures
the theoretical framework and a methodological approach I will apply to my case studies.
First, I will look at Burke’s notion of piety. I will examine how disruptive rhetoric can
challenge hierarchical structures in turn stimulating the formulation of publics. Second, I
45
will look at danah boyd’s research of networked publics and how they utilize digital
mediums to coalesce around disruptive rhetoric. Finally, I look to the work of Zizi
Papacharissi and her understanding of how digital affect fuels the circulation of disruptive
rhetoric in turn aiding in the formation of and sustaining of networked publics. I argue that
piety confronts questions of social order and suggest that disruptive rhetoric aims to
equalize or redistribute agency to those who feel powerless or silenced.”\ Additionally, I
will detail my methodological approach of adopting digital research methods in concert
with the practice of rhetorical criticism to uncover affective responses left by individuals
on digital networks such as Twitter.
In chapters 3 and 4, I look to apply this theoretical framework to unique
case studies of disruptive rhetoric. Chapter 3 seeks to examine disruptive rhetoric of athlete
and activist Colin Kaepernick. I will examine the former NFL quarterback’s decision to
kneel during the performance of the national anthem. The goal of this chapter is to reveal
how disruptive rhetoric is capable of organizing and sustaining networked, affective
publics by challenging traditional hierarchical structures.
Chapter 4 will focus on the controversy surrounding the activist group Pussy Riot.
The group’s decision to violate the decorum of the sanctimonious Cathedral of Christ the
Savior brought widespread controversy into a variety of public forums. Pussy Riot’s case
not only highlights how impious acts attempt to restructure hierarchical orders, but also
circles back to the literature’s discussion of invoking the uncivil tongue. These two case
studies illustrate a hierarchical understanding of disruptive rhetoric and how it seeks to
foster agency within groups struggling for public platforms.
Finally, Chapter 5 will look to draw broader conclusions from the case study
chapters and pinpoint a nuanced theory of how disruptive rhetoric functions within popular
culture. I will answer the research questions previously provided and demonstrate their
46
importance into everyday lived experiences. I hope to open the possibility of more studies
and methodologies that address disruptive rhetoric as it continues to evolve with ever-
shifting social tensions and issues. Ultimately, I argue that disruptive rhetoric is not merely
a “last resort” option for rhetors searching for publicity. Rather, I hope to put forth a case
that a deliberative democracy has and always will need disruptive rhetoric in order to grow
and include the disempowered, the marginalized, and the voiceless.
47
Chapter 2: Old(er) Theories, New(er) Methods
In this chapter, I offer a theoretical lens and a description of the
methodology I intend to draw from in researching the discursive phenomenon I have
termed disruptive rhetoric. My theoretical approach is tripartite in conceptualization,
combining the work of three distinct yet related areas of critical inquiry: piety, networked
publics, and affect theory. I will briefly detail these theoretical perspectives, explaining
their relevance to this present study. Later on, I offer a detailed examination of the method
I will employ in investigating disruptive rhetoric.
For the first, I will narrow my approach by looking to the work of theorist Kenneth
Burke. In the previous chapter, I proposed a study of how disruptive rhetoric question or
challenge traditional norms and discursive practices. If this proves to be true, one way of
understanding disruptive rhetoric is to explore its relationship with hierarchies and how it
influences communicative practices within them. Burke’s work in describing how
hierarchies function are challenged and evolve should prove generative in this study.
Comprehending how hierarchies form and are shaped by language allows for an
understanding of how disruptive rhetoric might then alter hierarchical order and normative
structure. Burke’s theoretical work in the area of rhetoric, symbolism, and hierarchies
provides an informed and diverse catalog to explore and draw from. Though his work was
and to this day continues to be generative, it is difficult to argue that, given our current
socio-political situation, Burke could provide all the answers present in this study. Given
the highly technological nature of this inquiry, it would befit a scholar to also consider
modern theoretical approaches to the issue at hand.
In addition to Burke’s understanding of hierarchies, I suggest one must also look at
a line of theory that addresses the technologically mediated nature of disruptive rhetoric. I
48
argue disruptive rhetoric flourishes within online or digital discursive contexts. Therefore,
in an age that is dominated by near constant internet connectivity and social media usage,
it is pertinent to expand our theoretical lens to understand the relationship of networked
publics and disruptive rhetoric.70 I will detail what role networked publics have in forming,
sustaining, and proliferating groups who find solidarity or identify with disruptive
rhetorical strategies. Drawing primarily from danah boyd’s interpretation of networked
publics, I define what differentiates these publics from simple communities and/or groups
and investigate what affordances digital networks offer these technological assemblages.
Finally, both piety and networked publics provide entry points into examining how
disruptive rhetoric functions. But I argue that these two theoretical backgrounds do not
fully explain the motivation for publics to engage with disruptive rhetoric. Therefore, I
look to Zizi Papacharrisi’s work in the area of affective publics in order explain the energy
that “drives, neutralizes, or entraps” engaged groups of digitally networked individuals.
Papacharissi suggests that affective, online activity leaves traces of how publics feel their
way into understanding disruptions to the stability of hierarchies. Whether it be Egyptian
citizens active during the Arab Spring or individuals involved in the Occupy Wall Street
movement, Papacharissi reveals how online engagement plays a tremendous role in
facilitating formations of affective and political participation in today’s world. This

combination of three theoretical perspectives provides context and grounding in my
approach for understanding disruptive rhetoric. But greater detail and justification is
required for each. Therefore, let us first begin by looking at Burke’s notions of piety and
impiety.
70 Hootsuite Media Inc, "Digital in 2019 - Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard,"
Hootsuite, accessed August 14, 2019, https://hootsuite.com/pages/digital-in-2019.
49
BURKEAN (IM)PIETY
In this section, I survey the proposed theoretical connection between
disruptive rhetoric and impiety. In order to do so, I must first articulate what impiety is for
Burke, how it is enacted, and its ramifications. In order to do this, I start with an
understanding of piety and its relationship to hierarchical structures of order. I argue that a
central theme of Kenneth Burke’s work is an inquiry into how language, specifically
rhetoric, structures audiences’ perspectives or attitudes in relation to their respective
situations. This premise raises a centralizing question: if language and the rhetoric it
produces shape the way audiences interpret their situation, then what do these structures
look like for Burke? To answer this, I suggest one might substitute the term “structure”
with another Burkean term: hierarchy.
Hierarchy is a concept Burke frequents throughout his writings and
examinations of rhetoric. In fact, we see it in Burke’s notable definition of humankind:
Man is
the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal
inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative)
separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making
goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order)
and rotten with perfection.71
In the fourth clause, Burke writes that humans desire “order” and are “goaded by
the spirit of hierarchy;” that is to say, humans often seek formalized structures of power to
understand their situations. For Burke, this is a fundamental human trait, which prompts
71 Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (Saratoga
Springs, NY: Empire State College, State University of New York, 1973), 16. Emphasis added.
50
further inspection of how Burke defines hierarchy. For me, this raises more questions: what
do hierarchies look like and how do they function in a Burkean sense?”
William Rueckhert offers a summation of what hierarchy means to Kenneth
Burke stating:
In the most general sense, hierarchy is any kind of order, but more accurately, it is
any kind of graded, value charged structure in terms of which things, words, people, acts,
and ideas are ranked. 72
He continues his characterization of the term by noting any hierarchy can unify, but
simultaneously divides by ranking individuals by some system of values. According to
Rueckhert, individuals participating within a hierarchy will want to progress by moving
“higher” up the progressive order built within it, or move “downward” depending on how
the system regulates itself. He points out that this movement is dependent on hierarchic
motive, which is of course an essential characteristic of all humans according to Burke.
Rueckhert describes how hierarchic motive moves individuals to action within a given
hierarchy:
On the one hand, people are goaded by the desire to mount the hierarchy, either
through action or possession, and on the other hand people are goaded by the threat of
descending the hierarchy, again by either action or possession, but also failure to act or
inability to possess certain things.73
72 William H. Rueckhert, Kenneth Burke and the Drama of Human Relations. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1982.
73 Rueckhert, 131.
51
Therefore, to avoid chaos, societies structure hierarchies valuing certain behaviors
and individuals, while simultaneously pushing others downward or out of accepted
systemic structures.
These hierarchies can be political, economic, or religious in nature, but are all
governed by language. Burke argues that language offers specific terms called “ultimate
terms” that can provide a sense of order, in turn creating hierarchies of understanding.
Within a given language, ultimate terms will symbolically and systematically wrestle with
other terms, establishing a sense of what goes with what. Burke writes that ultimate terms:
…would place these competing voices themselves in a hierarchy, or sequence, or
evaluative series, so that, in some way, we went by a fixed and recent progression from
one of these to another, the members of the entire group being arranged developmental
with relation to one another." They would thus differ in that there would be a "guiding
idea" or "unitary principal" behind the diversity of voices.” 74
A Burkean understanding of hierarchy suggests that certain terms or rhetoric guide
groups of individuals in understanding how to operate within their given situation. For
example, if “freedom” is an ultimate term for citizens living in a respective country, terms
that would limit or impinge upon freedom would challenge the established hierarchy of
freedom as a guiding principle for that population. So, what, in Burke’s understanding,
happens when these ultimate terms challenge hierarchies?
I argue one way ultimate terms guide the construction of hierarchies is
through a sense of piety to the systems that structure and inform our daily lived experiences.
In his book Permanence and Change, Burke introduces the concept of piety as a way to
74 Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 2013), 187.
52
explain how hierarchies influence everyday living experiences. Burke removes piety from
its traditional religious context and offers it as a theory for structuring a secular sense of
order. He explains that “piety is a system builder, a desire to round things out, to fit
experiences together into a unified whole,” that it is “the sense of what properly goes with
what.”75 Piety allows people to know how to make sense of the world around them, what
language or actions are appropriate in a given context, and suggests that it “extends through
all the texture of our lives.” For Burke, piety offers orientations to situations that imply
how one should communicate with other humans and interact with the surroundings or
systems encountered on a daily basis.
Thomas Rosteck and Michael Leff explain the nature of piety further,
claiming that it is a way of organizing perspectives and that it also encourages a sense of
propriety.76 Though many competing perceptions exist, pieties are established through
these contested perspectives, eventually leading to new frames or orientations of acceptable
actions. These schema of orientations function as hierarchical systems that “function as
stable frames of reference which direct human perception and determine our judgments
about what is proper in a given circumstance.” 77 This suggests that pieties are thus a
socially negotiated understanding that reinforce Burke’s conclusion that order is something
that goads human beings into action.

However, pieties are not stable or set in place forever. Burke argues that
they shift and evolve as human interaction shapes the world around them. Since pieties are
contested, this opens the possibility for actions that operate outside of these accepted
75 Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose(Berkeley, CA: University of

California Press, 1997).
76 Thomas Rosteck and Michael Leff, "Piety, Propriety, and Perspective: An Interpretation and
Application of Key Terms in Kenneth Burke's Permanence and Change," Western Journal of Speech
Communication 53, no. 4 (1989).
77 Ibid., 329.
53
frames. As Burke writes, “The thought may suggest itself that an attempt to reorganize
one’s orientations from the past would have an impious aspect.”78 Impiety, then, is a
concept for actions that challenge given norms of propriety in an attempt to alter the sense
of what goes with what. Thus, when impious actions occur, it offers the potential for a
change in the existing notions of propriety. Burke writes that pieties are not immutable
structures. They encounter impieties, thus transforming into new pieties which assuredly
will be tested, deconstructed and made anew, and the process repeats itself. One might
experience impiety in the refusal to adhere to norms of propriety, not using acceptable
language in a given context, or putting a current hierarchical system in question. For Burke,
pieties exist only because they are socially negotiated through the constant contestation of
impious actions or, as Rosteck and Leff argue, “old pieties must fall to provide space for
new ones.”
One manner in which impious acts can manifest themselves is through a
process Burke terms “perspective by incongruity.” Burke writes that the impious practice
of perspective by incongruity is “a method for gauging situations by verbal ‘atom
cracking,’” which entails linking previously unrelated frames of understanding to reveal
new ways of looking at situations. 79 He writes that perspective by incongruity requires a
process of taking a specific term that “belongs by custom to a certain category” and in turn
attempting to “wrench it loose and metaphorically apply it to a different category.” 80 In a
sense, perspective by incongruity is an impious act that shows what does not go with what,
a reversal of what pieties seek to establish. Rosteck and Leff argue that perspective by
incongruity “is a linguistic impiety, an upsetting of normal patterns of association,” or, “the
78 Burke, Permanence, 80
79 Kenneth Burke, Attitudes toward History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984): 308.
80 Ibid., 308.
54
wedge that pries apart established linkages.” 81 But it should be noted that perspective by
incongruity is not simply a renaming of a term, or redefining it. Instead, Rosteck and Leff
contend that “perspective by incongruity aligns and re-orders entire domains of experience
not just word meanings.”82 Thus, because this process is symbolic in nature, it has the
ability to have effects on broad systems or hierarchies.
In summary, pieties help structure systems of order, or hierarchies, that
shape and influence daily interaction and communication for persons at an everyday level.
With this current study, we might attune to impious rhetorical acts to see if they function
in a manner that seeks to challenge established hierarchies. Locating examples of impiety
that pry apart established linkages or seek to provide perspective by renaming situations
would shed light on the utility of disruptive rhetoric as a communicative strategy in an age
of outrage. The following case studies will argue that disruptive rhetoric must first start
with an impious event or a rhetorical act that disrupts a given sense of order. Additionally,
we must look to see if these impious acts somehow offer perspective by incongruity by
offering a new viewpoint for understanding a given context.
I argue that the impious nature of disruptive rhetoric is a characteristic that
differentiates it from outrage discourse because it seeks to re-order domains of experience,
not merely call attention to them. By violating norms of propriety, disruptive rhetoric might
open up rhetorical spaces for audiences to engage with and dispute the guiding principles
by which they live by. However, I argue that disruptive rhetoric does not just simply reach
audiences and offer new manners in which to gauge situations. In the next section, I will
articulate how impious acts in the form of disruptive rhetoric produce or aggregate
networked publics that are then able to dispute and discuss new pieties. In order to do this,
81 Rosteck & Leff, Piety, 330.

82 Ibid., 331.
55
I will first trace the history of publics, their rhetorical impact, and what their role in
proliferating disruptive rhetoric might be.
FROM COFFEEHOUSES TO DIGITAL PLATFORMS
Central to my understanding of disruptive rhetoric is its capacity to create
discursive space for networked publics. This characteristic complicates the notion that
rhetoric is intentionally composed with a conceptualized audience in mind. Instead, rhetors

utilizing disruptive rhetoric offer a nexus for groups to coalesce around, and, in turn, they
are able to discuss, debate, and deliberate the value or meaning of it. In other words,
disruptive rhetoric postulates that “if you disrupt it, they will come.” Now, if this premise
is to be accepted, that raises the question of who they are, and where they will appear. I
argue that we can conceptualize these groups that respond to disruptive, impious acts as
publics. This distinction draws from the theoretical framework of public sphere theory,
originating in the work of Jurgen Habermas. The “where” can be identified as networks,
and, in our case, digital networks located on websites, blogs, social media platforms, and
other net-based technologies. To begin describing the theoretical link between disruptive
rhetoric and networked publics, I will begin with a survey of Habermas’ conceptualization
of the public sphere.
Habermas's The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere puts forth

the notion of a discursive space separating the public and private realm where critical
agents could be provided a space for “rational communication.” 83 The origins for such a
space, according to Habermas, first arose alongside the proliferation of print media in the
17th and 18th centuries, resulting in a literary bourgeois public capable of rational-critical
83 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry into a Category of
Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991).
56
discussion. This intermediary space provided opportunities for civil society (i.e., the
private, the family, the household) to deliberate on specific matters and to subsequently tell
the state how to act on them. Mary Kupiec Cayton defines the public sphere as a “halfway
house between state and society” where “individuals and groups articulate reality of their
lifeworld to the state.”84 The state must then adequately respond to the public sphere in
order to maintain its validity. This discursive process in turn regulates notions of
citizenship, civility, privacy, and the role of the state in general.
Over time, critics of Habermas’s system note that several concerns complicate the
distinctions of the public and private. Cayton argues that toward the late nineteenth century
the erosion of these spheres was rapidly accelerating as the state began to “intervene more
forcefully in the economy” and the machinations of capitalist economies complicated
notions of work, education, and social function. 85 Michael Warner summarizes this
blurring of the private and public succinctly, stating:
Attempts to frame public and private as a sharp distinction or antinomy have
invariably come to grief, while attempts to collapse or do without them have proven equally
unsatisfying.86
Furthermore, while the clear distinction between the public and private continues
to problematize itself today, Habermas’s notion of rational communication also presents
trepidations. Entry into the public sphere requires being a member of literate bourgeoisies
and essentially relies on a rational, Kantian subject. Class, gender, and race often became
84 Mary Kupiec Cayton, "What is Public Culture," ed. Marguerite S. Shaffer, in Public Culture: Diversity,
Democracy, and Community in the United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008),
11.
85 Ibid., 12.
86 Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2014), 29.
57
grounds for exclusion, raising the question of who actually constitutes a “public.”
Additionally, as Habermas himself noted, capitalism and mass media eventually became
more entrenched in everyday aspects of civil society, resulting in a fundamental shift “from
a public critically reflecting on its culture to one that merely consumes it." 87
This concern of exclusivity, or of a too-narrow definition of who could gain
entry into a public, allowed for scholars to begin thinking pluralistically, and the notion of
publics thus became a way of discussing this private/public divide. Nancy Fraser’s work
within public sphere theory opened the door to thinking about multiple publics, or what
she would term as “subaltern counterpublics.”88 She argues that there is an inherent danger
in conceptualizing a “single, comprehensive, overarching public” because it privileges and
creates a dominant discourse or identity for individuals assumed to be within that category.
She contends that subordinated members of such a public “would have no arenas for
deliberation among themselves about their needs, objectives, and strategies.”89 Therefore,
according to Fraser, groups such as “women, workers, people of color, gays, and lesbians”
have formed alternative publics in order to “invent and circulate counterdiscourses to
formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs.”90 Fraser’s
notion of subaltern counterpublics expands the notion of what could constitute a public
culture.
Michael Warner extends Fraser’s concept of nondominant publics, but proposes
that the term subaltern should be dropped when discussing counterpublics. Warner seeks
this distinction because he argues that “a counterpublic maintains at some level, conscious
87 Habermas, Public Sphere, 175.

88 Nancy Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing
Democracy," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 123.
89 Ibid., 123.
90 Ibid., 123.
58
or not, an awareness of its subordinate status.” 91 This understanding differs from Fraser’s
in that it argues that counterpublics do not just simply reflect the subordinate status of a
group of people, but rather “participation in such a public is one of the ways by which its
members’ identities are formed and transformed.” Warner suggests that counterpublics are
“counter” in that they perceive tensions of the world differently than those of dominant
publics, and this difference is “constitutive of membership and its affects.” 92 Connecting
back to the focus of this study, Warner’s notions of counterpublics might offer some
understanding as to how disruptive rhetoric organizes networked publics. At the time of
his writing, internet-based communication technologies had not fully proliferated daily life
as they do today. However, his understandings of marginalized or typically silenced groups
coming together in opposition of dominant publics could possibly graph onto today’s
socio-political context.
Warner’s conceptualization of counterpublics gives us a much more comprehensive
view of understanding publics and offers a generative baseline definition for publics in our
current context of hypermediated, digital communicative platforms. Additionally, Warner
offers five distinctive components of a public that informs our inquiry of what type of
publics might form in response to disruptive rhetoric: 1) a public is self organized; 2) a
public is a relation among strangers; 3) the address of public speech is both personal and
impersonal; 4) a public is constituted through mere attention; and 5) a public is the social
space created by the reflexive circulation of discourse.93
With this in mind, I would now like to put these criteria in relationship to the current
understanding of disruptive rhetoric thus far. Disruptive rhetoric, through impious actions,
91 Warner, 119.
92 Ibid., 122.
93 Warner, Publics, 67-90.
59
opens up the possibility for publics to organize themselves. Warner describes this process
explicitly:
A public is a space of discourse organized by nothing other than the discourse itself.
It is autotelic; it exists only as the end for which books are published, shows broadcast,
Web sites posted, speeches delivered, opinions produced. It exists by virtue of being
addressed.94
Important to add to this distinction is that this self-organization process, according
to Warner, is independent of “state institutions, laws, formal frameworks of citizenship” or
other pre-existing institutions that organize individuals through official membership. As
we will discuss later in this study, certain technological platforms might aid in this
formation, but it is not the membership within the platform that instantiates the identity of
the public.
The next two elements of Warner’s publics suggest that the notion of the
stranger is crucial to publics because of its ability to engage with discourse that is at once
personal and impersonal. Warner writes that organizing individuals together often relies on
codified, common identities. However, the possibility of publics consisting of strangers
opens up the possibilities of membership departing from normalized notions of

organizations such as nation citizens, audiences, or religions. Warner argues that we orient
ourselves in relation to strangers on a daily basis, which requires a blending of both the
personal and the impersonal in everyday discursive practices. Disruptive rhetoric mirrors
this notion, because it can simultaneously address individuals personally while also
speaking to unknown strangers. I argue that disruptive rhetoric’s imprecise way of
94 Ibid., 67.
60
addressing strangers increases its rhetorical utility because audiences composed of
strangers are not finite. I argue that disruptive rhetoric orients itself to an unknown,
impersonal other, seeking to address a public that does not readily manifest itself through
personal and impersonal discursive practices.
Warner also suggests that a public is constituted through mere attention,
which follows closely the function of disruptive rhetoric as well. Warner alludes to the fact
that everyday life is increasingly inundated with outside interruptions demanding our
attention. But publics are constituted by this impetus to be called by something that seeks
their attention. He argues that the moment a public has been “awoken” by a message, they
have fulfilled “the only entry condition demanded of a public.”95 Some scholars argue that
overexposure to constant messaging can encourage audiences to become docile groups.
Warner argues the opposite:
Public discourse craves attention like a child. Texts clamor at us. Images solicit our
gaze. Look here! Listen. Hey! In doing so, they by no means render us passive. Quite the
contrary…. The direction of our glance can constitute our social world. 96
Here we might again substitute the term “attention” for that of disruption.
Disruptive rhetoric aims to awaken the possibilities of new hierarchies through impious,
attention-seeking actions. Thus, if publics require attention to redirect focus, I argue
disruptive rhetoric is one of the most effective ways to make noise, to demand attention, to
direct a stranger’s focus.
95 Warner, 88.
96 Ibid., 89.
61
Finally, Warner notes that a “public is the social space created by the
reflexive circulation of discourse.” 97 Similarly, I will contend later in this study that
without the recirculation, reframing, and reiteration of disruptive discourse there can be no
formation of a public. In chapter 1, I argued that disruptive rhetoric differs from mere
outrage in that it opens the possibility for audiences to contest it; urging them to engage
with and assign meaning to it. In the wake of disruptive rhetoric, the struggle for
understanding creates rhetorical space, a place where publics may respond. Warner
contends, “No single text can create a public. Nor can a single voice, a single genre, even
a single medium.”98 Therefore, in order for disruptive rhetoric to encourage reflexivity it
must allow a polyphony of participation within the rhetorical space it creates. Conversely,
I argue that disruptive rhetoric falls into the trap of outrage if it is focused on only one
voice or one iteration of meaning. We should understand that disruptive rhetoric offers
space for publics to wrestle with and communicate through incongruent conversations, thus
allowing recirculation and engagement. To contrast, I argue outrage only encourages one-
note responses, simply amplifying the volume of one voice.
Warner offers additional notions of what constitute publics and/or
counterpublics, but I argue that these five criteria help us define precisely the relationship
of impious acts and the ability to activate or encourage the formation of publics. This
section offers a modern interpretation of what constitutes a public by combining Warner’s
criteria with the characteristics of how disruptive rhetoric functions. However, this only
provides explanation for half of the term “networked publics.” I now suggest we examine
how digital publics created in the wake of disruptive rhetoric become networked.
97 Warner, 90.
98 Warner., 90.
62
DIGITALLY NETWORKED PUBLICS
A unique feature of publics formed through disruptive rhetoric today is that
they possess the ability to be networked through digital platforms. Networked publics are
a generative site for exploring how disruptive rhetoric aids in the formation of publics, but
also reveals the nature of engagement within these groups. Zizi Papacharissi writes that
networked publics are a result of technological convergence, and as technology becomes
more integrated into daily life, the idea of a clear split between what is public and private
has become more complicated. She defines this phenomenon further:
Technological convergence refers to the interconnectedness afforded through
networked capabilities of information technologies and is relevant to various levels of
interaction involving individuals, organizations, businesses, groups, and greater societal
configurations.99
I argue that technological convergence opens more possibilities for the formulation
of networked publics in that it provides discursive platforms for strangers to participate and
engage with impious acts. Yochai Benkler writes that it is precisely because of convergent
technologies that publics can be created by strangers from disparate areas of the globe,
offering a more open version of Habermas’ original conception of the public sphere.100
Thus far I have briefly discussed the notion of a public, starting with
Habermas’s original vision of the public sphere and its evolution through the work of
scholars of Fraser and Warner, to a now more open inclusive concept of digitally networked
publics and counterpublics. Warner argues that publics adapt to the technological advances
99 Zizi A. Papacharissi, A Private Sphere: Democracy in a Digital Age(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010),
61.
100 Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
63
of their time. He gestures to the disruption of web-based information during a time when
most news, messages, or media were still dispersed on a weekly or daily basis. The internet
of course changed that frequency. But Warner perhaps could not have envisioned how
convergence would increase that rapidity to an instantaneous temporality, making all
public discourse happen now, thus increasing the potential for reflexivity. Digital platforms
changed how publics today engage and contest disruptive rhetoric. Therefore,
understanding networked publics requires us to examine the affordances digital platforms
provide.
Today’s communicative technologies allow for the rapid formation of
networked publics, which in turn can deliberate, discuss, and distribute disruptive rhetoric
at a faster pace than ever before. Mizuko Ito defines networked publics as a “linked set of
social, cultural, and technological developments that have accompanied the growing
engagement with digitally networked media.” 101 He argues that these groups of individuals
should be referred to as networked publics instead of audiences or consumers, because a
networked public connotes a higher form of engagement. According to Ito, networked
publics can engage with messages in unique, novel ways due to the increasingly complex
ways in which media reaches out to individuals today. He writes that these specific publics
can be “reactors, (re)makers and (re)distributors, engaging in shared culture and knowledge
through discourse and social exchange as well as through acts of media reception.” 102
These new media platforms allow for a more nuanced form of engagement that provides
publics with the means to connect and share their experience with rhetoric they engage
with. Impiety encourages publics to reorganize what goes with what. Therefore, I argue
101 Mizuko Ito, introduction, in Networked Publics, by Kazys Varnelis (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012), 2.
102 Ito, 3.
64
that networked publics are the sites where this deliberation and engagement can be traced
and examined more closely.
danah boyd offers a useful theoretical understanding of networked publics that
reveals how one might approach the examination of networked publics as rhetorical sites
of contested meanings. She argues that networked publics are not just connected together,
but that they are instead publics that “have been transformed by networked media” through
engagement practices that digital networks encourage in their everyday use. She explicitly
describes what distinguishes networked publics from other publics or counterpublics
previously discussed thus far:
Networked publics are publics that are restructured by networked technologies. As
such, they are simultaneously (1) the space constructed through networked technologies
and (2) the imagined collective that emerges as a result of the intersection of people,
technology, and practice. Networked publics serve many of the same functions as other
types of publics—they allow people to gather for social, cultural, and civic purposes, and
they help people connect with a world beyond their close friends and family. While
networked publics share much in common with other types of publics, the ways in which
technology structures them introduces distinct affordances that shape how people engage
with these environments.103
Additionally, boyd pinpoints four affordances of networked publics that allow
publics to become transformed and not aggregated together. These four criteria include 1)
persistence; 2) replicability; 3) scalability; and 4) searchability. She argues that these
103 Zizi Papacharissi, ed., A Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites
(New York: Routledge, 2011), 39.
65
affordances help “shape publics and how people negotiate them,” and provides a blueprint
for tracking the formation of these groups. 104 Furthermore, she argues that specific
functions of social network sites such as profile pages, lists of friends, and tagging
capabilities all offer a means of constructing publics that previous media forms could never
provide.
boyd’s understanding of networked publics provides a contemporary
contextualization of the criteria Warner suggested were required of publics. With her
definition in mind, this project proposes to examine networked publics that are structured
by new technologies, affording new modes of engagement previous publics did not
possess. Networked publics offer strangers the ability to self-organize in response to
attention created by disruptive rhetoric, while simultaneously providing a digital,
discursive space to reflect on and engage with contested meanings of impious acts. With
this understanding, we can conceptually round out two of the three theoretical areas this
study will utilize. Disruptive rhetoric begins with impious rhetorical acts that challenge
given hierarchies. As a result, networked publics coalesce and engage with these
disruptions through the affordances of networked publics. But this still does not fully
theorize a crucial element of disruptive rhetoric. I argue disruptive rhetoric has an integral
relationship with the theoretical concept of affect. The following section will examine
disruptive rhetoric’s connection to affect, detailing a brief examination of the affective turn
in critical cultural studies, and how it can manifest itself in digital, discursive practices.
104 Danah Boyd, A Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites, by Zizi
Papacharissi (New York, NY: Routledge, 2011): 46.
66
AFFECTIVE DIGITAL PUBLICS
I have surveyed two theoretical areas, Burke’s impiety and boyd’s networked
publics, that inform this project. These theories help explain why disruptive rhetoric is
provocative and how it invites audiences to form engaged communities around such
discourse. However, these areas do not aid our attempt to understand how disruptive
rhetoric sustains long temporal periods of engagement and dialogue around impious
messages. Here, I will describe why affect within these digitally networked publics drives
user engagement and maintains these networked publics across substantial moments in
history. To do this, I look to Zizi Papacharissi’s research in the area of affective publics,
which seeks to identify how affective gestures on web-based platforms influence or shape
networked publics’ engagement in moments of socio-political upheaval or unrest.
In her book Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics, Papacharissi
examines emotionally charged messages on digitally networked platforms and suggests
they can be viewed as political “public displays of affect.” According to Papacharissi, these
displays possess the ability to fuel the affective intensity of networked publics, encouraging
further engagement and responses. In her own words, her project is a way to examine the
form networked publics take on as affective intensity shapes individuals’ engagement:
I examine the form publics take as they are networked together, through affectively
charged discourses about events that command our attention in everyday life. Affect, as the
sum of—often discordant—feelings about affairs, public and private, is examined as the
energy that drives, neutralizes, or entraps networked publics. 105
105 Zizi Papacharissi, Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology and Politics (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2017), 7.
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This quote makes clearer a connection between Papacharissi’s project and the
notion of disruptive rhetoric. I established earlier that impious rhetorical acts can command
attention as publics in order to assign meaning and understanding or reorder hierarchical
structures. But it is also crucial to investigate how affect influences these public practices.
Papacharissi’s research adds to my examination of disruptive rhetoric in that it
offers an explanation of how affectively charged engagement not only forms networked
publics but shapes the way individuals understand disruptive acts and effectively negotiate
their meaning. Her research studies social movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the
Arab Spring as representative examples of how affect influences the process of challenging
hierarchies through public displays on net-based platforms. Her work primarily focuses on
how online activity introduces “primary disruptions to the stability of powerful hierarchies”
which can accrue over time and offer a social movement momentum. 106 However, while
my project is not principally focused on social movements, her theoretical orientation
intersects with disruptive rhetoric, because as she suggests:
[P]ublics are activated and sustained by feelings of belonging and solidarity,
however fleeting or permanent those feelings may be. The connective affordances of social
media help activate the in-between bond of publics, and they also enable expression and
information sharing that liberate the individual and collective imaginations. This is perhaps
why the influence of social media in uprisings that take place in autocratic regimes
frequently persists despite attempts to shut down the networked infrastructure that
supports them.107
106 Papacharissi, Affective Publics, 8.

107 Ibid., 9.
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Papacharissi’s understanding of affect’s impact on networked publics offers a third
and final element of my theoretical foundation. But before explaining the connection
between piety, networked publics, and affect, I must first give a brief survey of affect within
critical cultural studies.
In the late twentieth century, critical theory is said to have adopted an “affective
turn” or a move towards understanding the unconscious impulses that drive or energize
social human interaction. 108 Scholar Patricia Ticienta Clough argues that this area of
critical inquiry was “a productive way of thinking politically about subjectivity, identity,
meaning, bodies, and reality.”109 She adds to her summary of this research by noting that:
[A]ffect refers generally to bodily capacities to affect and be affected or the
augmentation or diminution of a body’s capacity to act, to engage, and to connect, such
that autoaffection is linked to the self-feeling of being alive – that is, aliveness or vitality.110
This approach was an attempt to dislocate the traditional conventions of logic and reason
as the ruling principles for understanding phenomenon.
According to Papacharissi, an emphasis on empirical understanding can be viewed
as a product of Enlightenment Era-thinking beginning with Ancient Greece, tracking
through the work of Descartes, Locke, and ultimately through the aforementioned
Habermas as well. According to her, the tradition of enlightenment thinking did provide
empowerment and freedom from monastic modes of thinking. Additionally, Papacharissi
contends that Habermas’s focus on “communicative rationality” had merit because of his
concern for how media outlets can pollute or distort the public sphere through emotional
appeals. These concerns are valid, but for Papacharissi, the privileging of the rational mind
108 Patricia Ticineto Clough, Jean OMalley Halley, and Michael Hardt, The Affective Turn: Theorizing
the Social (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.
109 Ibid., 6.
110 Ibid., 2.
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comes at the expense of the body or other psychological processes (unconscious or not)
that influence everyday life. However, while these philosophers might have prioritized the
rational as the key to understanding truth and knowledge, they left conceptual room to seek
out the role emotion might play within these processes as well.
Papacharissi suggests then that affect “can be understood as the link between how
we think and how we act,” opening our understanding of how the mind and body are
connected and suggesting that feelings or emotion are an important component of
understanding social interaction. Citing the work of Spinoza, and Delueze and Guattari,
she makes a clear distinction that affect cannot be solely comprehended as personal feelings
or sentiment, but rather inclusive of it. Delueze and Guattari write that affect references:
the ability to affect and be affected. It is a pre-personal intensity corresponding to
the passage from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an
augmentation or diminution in the body’s capacity to act. 111
Therefore, according to Delueze and Guattari, while emotion or sentiment should
not be our only conceptions of affect, they are certainly markers for affective intensity. To
explain this connection, Papacharissi argues that connection by arguing that affect is
demarcated by its confinement within the body and through its release as energy, emotions,
thoughts, and/or ideas in response to stimuli that trigger the consciousness or mind. She
clarifies this relationship further, stating that “emotion is subsumed within affect, and
perhaps the most intense part of affect. Yet affect itself extends beyond feeling as a general
way of sense-making.”112 Thus, we can understand affect as a non-linear or non-empirical
111 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London:
Bloomsbury, 2017), xvii.
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entry point into understanding certain social behaviors that “precedes emotions and drives
the intensity with which emotions are felt.” 113
If affect can be understood as a driving force or response to stimuli, where
might we locate the accumulation and subsequent release of it? I suggest digital networks
offer a productive area to look for affective flows. Scholar Jay Brower argues digital
platforms might be generative when looking at affective intensities flowing through
publics, because:
Digital environments, like Twitter… are saturated with rhetorical activity that
contributes to the generation of affects and their transfer between participants in the service
of any one of a host of rhetorical aims.114
Brower also notes that the crowd or mob-like nature of Twitter circulating these
affect-soaked messages can be unsettling and chaotic for individuals. This unsettling
creates rhetorical vacuums of space for publics to then emerge, make sense of, and
eventually reconstitute new pieties. I argue that it is precisely in this disrupted space, where
order is questioned, that affect becomes a driving impetus for publics to reflexively respond
to and engage with disruptive, impious acts. Papacharissi defines this space, succinctly
suggesting that:
Disorder, marginality, and anarchy present the habitat for affect, mainly because
order, mainstreaming, and hierarchy afford form that compromises the futurity of affect. 115
Disruption stirs affect within publics, creating space for the release and expression
of these intensities. Papacharissi goes on to argue that disrupted spaces allow for the
potentiality of change, and therefore “affect is inherently political,” as it seeks to imagine
113 Ibid., 15.

114 Jay Brower, "Rhetorical Affects in Digital Media," in Theorizing Digital Rhetoric, by Aaron Hess and
Amber L. Davisson (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2018), 48.
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new hierarchies or networks. Networked publics thus are sites that are socially constructed
and formed through affective gestures as individuals congregate to contest and discuss
disruptions to established hierarchies. This process is all possible because of new, digital
networks that facilitate the flow and dissemination of affect as public displays of emotions
and feelings directly corresponding to everyday, personal experiences.
Papacharissi suggests that while the body and thoughts are understood as
structures where affect emerges, scholars should look at how technologies might also
support affective flows. She indicates that technological media apparatuses possess the
ability to transmit affect but also sustain it, which can “lead to the cultivation of subsequent
feelings, emotions, thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors.”116 I argue, then, that affective
engagement on technological platforms thus allows for hierarchies to not only be
“reproduced but also reorganized” through encounters with disruptive rhetoric. For the
purposes of this present study, I argue alongside Papacharissi’s notion that:
Richer understanding of the place of the internet in contemporary political
environments can be obtained by examining how networked platforms support affective
processes.117
Accordingly, I suggest it is pertinent to look at specific technologically networked
platforms in order to reveal how affect manifests itself through the interplay of public
statements. Locating these responses on digitally networked platforms help elucidate how
“[a]ffective gestures contribute to political expression in ways that pluralize, organize, and
disrupt conversations.”118 Additionally, this pluralization of voices might explain how
affect sustains disruptive rhetoric by energizing networked publics to engage with and

117 Ibid., 28.
118 Ibid., 28.
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assign meaning to impious acts before established hierarchies. Therefore, I will employ
Papacharissi’s theoretical conceptualization of affective publics when examining the role
affect plays when networked publics negotiate encounters with disruptive rhetoric.
Thus far, I have detailed a tripartite theoretical approach to researching the
rhetorical phenomenon of disruptive rhetoric. First, I described how disruptive rhetoric
escapes the category of mere outrage by challenging established norms and hierarchies
through the Burkean concept of impiety. Second, I suggested that boyd’s conceptualization
of networked publics describes how groups coalesce and self-organize on digital networks
in order to discuss, negotiate, and contest meaning in response to impious acts. Finally,
Papacharissi’s work describes how affect sustains these networked publics through public
displays of emotion and intensity as they seek to reorder and reorganize disrupted
hierarchies. I argue these three theoretical approaches are distinct but related and provide
a pathway into further investigating disruptive rhetoric as rhetorical strategy in an age of
outrage. With this trifold theoretical schema in mind, I now seek to detail how these
approaches will be applied methodologically.
DIGITAL TOOLS
This survey of literature provides a theoretical footing to pursue a critical inquiry
seeking out the function and effects of disruptive rhetoric. I have suggested that disruptive
rhetoric is not necessarily a new historical phenomenon. However, what is novel is the
emergent, intertwined relationship with digital platforms that increase its pervasiveness
and efficiency. This project focuses on recent disruptive rhetorical events and how they
might encourage the formation of networked publics through affective engagement on
web-based platforms. I contend that a structured methodology for seeking out this
discursive phenomenon must utilize technological approaches to capture and investigate
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how disruptive rhetoric functions. Or, in other words, the methodological approach for this
study must incorporate digital strategies to understand recent or modern disruptive
rhetorical practices.
Technology has slowly crept its way into nearly every aspect of everyday life and
humanities research is no exception to this. Scholarship that utilizes digital or technology-
based tools to research literary or rhetorical phenomenon often operates under the moniker
of the Digital Humanities (DH). Matthew Jockers argues that the recent expansion in access
and the “ubiquity of big data” has encouraged scholars within the humanities to seek out
methods that account for larger sample sizes than ever before. 119 For Jockers, a single
speech or single text is no longer sufficient material upon which to base broad claims. As
a result, DH offers varied methods for both qualitative and quantitative approaches to
studying rhetorical artifacts that incorporate technological research tools. Scholarship
within this field suggests looking at software, data, digital archives, and networks as objects
of critical rhetorical inquiry. For this study, I aim to construct a digital method that is
informed by DH practices while also utilizing techniques from the tradition of rhetorical
criticism. This will provide a hybrid approach to appropriately investigate disruptive
rhetoric.
Richard Rogers writes that digital methods should seek out ways to
investigate the possibilities online devices or networks offer users today. He argues that in
rethinking traditional methodological approaches, digital methods should “strive to follow
the evolving methods of the medium,” and that digital methods should “take stock of the
availability and exploitability of digital objects so as to recombine them fruitfully.” 120
119 Matthew L. Jockers, Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History (Urbana, IL: University of
Illinois Press, 2013).
120 Rogers, 1.
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Therefore, in investigating a rhetorical artifact, a scholar should ask questions that utilize
the tools and functions of the said digital medium and the digital objects it provides. In
concert with Rogers’ understanding of digital methods, the social media platform of
Twitter provides many of these digital objects or artifacts including tweets, retweets,
hashtags, usernames, locations, replies, and more. I argue that Twitter might lend itself as
a generative digital medium to investigate, because the artifacts it produces can provide
new insight into how networked publics form and are sustained by affective engagement
and gestures. Rogers suggests that one method to researching Twitter might come from
asking, “[d]oes a particular hashtag, and its set of most retweeted tweets, organize a
compelling account of an event, and whose?”121 I argue that this question guides the
formulation of the digital method that this study will utilize.
TRACKING TAGGED AFFECT
Brian McNely and Christa Teston argue for a qualitative approach within
DH research that incorporates traditional methods with the aid of newer digital tools now
available. They suggest that a rhetorically informed qualitative study should approach
digital objects with an emphasis on tactics and strategies. They detail this distinction by
relating these terms to the relationship between methods and methodologies:
We see a parallel relation between tactics and strategies: methods are tactical,
sometimes involving kairotic adjustments in a given research context. Methodologies, on
the other hand, are strategic: they carry and inculcate specific and layered epistemologies
that shape one’s approach to an object of study.
121 Ibid., 1.
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I have already supplied a strategy in the examination of theories that outlined an
understanding of the relationship impiety, networked publics, and affect in relationship to
disruptive rhetoric. But now I seek to provide a tactic for tackling digital artifacts. McNely
and Teston argue that “tactics should be meaningfully and reflexively configured to
broader strategies of research.”122 Therefore, I argue a tactic that investigates the affective
engagement of users within networked publics, specifically net-based platforms, will be
productive in examining how disruptive rhetoric functions within an age of outrage. To do
this, I propose a two-pronged method that examines digital rhetorical artifacts within
networked publics that formulate on the social media platform of Twitter:
Access and research Twitter’s public archive for key hashtag terms that correlate
to recent disruptive rhetorical events.
Employ a rhetorical criticism technique of close reading in order to assess how
these hashtagged public communications, centered around disruptive rhetorical events, aid
and/or sustain the development of affective, networked publics.
For purposes of the first tactic, I look to Papacharissi’s work in understanding affect
within networked publics. Her research offers several guiding methods for this study and
provides examples of how digital methods can be employed to understand disruptive
rhetorical events. Papacharissi has examined several social movements to study how affect
produces and sustains networked publics in moments of social unrest or upheaval. She
argues that Twitter is a productive digital medium because it captures and combines public
122 Brian McNely and Christa Teston, "Tactical and Strategic: Qualitative Approaches to the Digital
Humanities," in Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities, by Jim Ridolfo and William Hart-Davidson (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2015), 112.
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displays of affect as political expressions in response to events that challenge hierarchies.
She suggests social media platforms such as Twitter are ideal to investigate:
because its organizational logic is defined by hashtags, which combine
conversationality and subjectivity in a manner that supports both individually felt affect
and collectivity.123
This assertion is an answer to the question Rogers asked before, does a hashtag
offer a compelling account of an event? I argue with Papacharissi, that hashtags offer
digital artifacts for us to track, research and trace, much like any other rhetorical artifact.
With this grounding in mind, I will now provide a more in-depth description of the digital
method I seek to employ in tracking hashtags that centralize affective, networked publics.
For the proceeding case studies, I will analyze hashtags that emerge from
disruptive rhetorical events. These hashtags often arise organically from users responding
to situations that challenge established systems of order, and eventually, after sufficient
repeated use, get displayed in the “Trending” section of the network. I argue these
responses are affective in nature, evoking a sense of a collective “structured feeling” of a
disruptive situation. Fortunately for researchers, hashtags are trackable digital objects that
when analyzed can reveal how networked publics are formulated and sustained. Marisa
Parham writes that “hashtags give users a way to make specific social media moments
retrievable out of the otherwise vast nothing into which all social media acts otherwise
potentially pass.”124 But beyond being retrievable, hashtags aid in the formation of
networked publics in that they can make a public visible. The public usage of hashtags
relates back Warner’s criteria of publics which requires that strangers relate on a personal
123 Papacharissi, 27.

124 Marisa Parham, Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities, accessed August 16, 2019,
https://digitalpedagogy.mla.hcommons.org/keywords/hashtag/.
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and impersonal level. Jennifer Reinwald argues that “When people use a hashtag, they
move their conversation from the private sphere to the public sphere and mark an issue as
worthy of attention.”125 We can understand hashtags then as public markers of disruption,
generating affective responses as they are dispersed through other users timelines,
complicating once more the public/private divide.
Using the advanced search function and targeting specific trending historical
hashtags, I will collect hundreds of public tweets from Twitter users. Following methods
previously employed by Papacharissi, I seek to discover “patterns characterizing the
modalities of connection and expression that emerge as… publics interact via Twitter, with
an emphasis on who is talking to whom, and what they are talking about.”126 These
discursive practices, tagged and archived through the use of hashtags, have the potential to
reveal affective gestures that articulate identification, solidarity, or shifting perspectives in
response to the rhetoric of disruptive agents. Reading these hashtags as digital artifacts will
offer an entry point into rhetorical practices networked publics enact, and subsequently
how affect pushes, energizes, or encourages interactions of strangers on a digital network.
Twitter’s internal search engine allows for advanced criteria within queries, allowing one
to track specific dates, locations, and users if necessary. This tactic offers what Rogers
terms online groundedness, which he describes as conceptual “research that follows the
medium, captures its dynamics, and makes grounded claims about cultural and societal
change.”127 It is my intention to sufficiently investigate the medium of Twitter as a site for
networked publics to affectively feel their way into understanding disruptive rhetoric by
tracking and tracing the dynamic change hashtags aggregate.
125 Jennifer Reinwald, "Hashtags and Attention Through the Tetrad," in Theorizing Digital Rhetoric, by
Aaron Hess and Amber L. Davisson (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2018), 184.
127 Rogers, Digital Methods, 23.
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The second prong of my tactic calls for analyzing the content of these
hashtagged tweets through the rhetorical technique of close reading. In order to understand
the affective and rhetorical value of the many hashtagged tweets collected with the first
prong of my tactic, I argue that a critique of the messages embedded within these public
responses is necessary. The method of close reading seems appropriate in that it offers the
critic the ability to gain insights and perspectives on broadly shared social practices.
Rhetorical scholar Barry Brummett writes that a close reading is “an attempt to understand
the socially shared meanings that are supported by words, images, objects, actions, and
messages.”128 This definition is particularly pertinent here because Twitter is a social
network that allows users to share words through typed messages, but can also include
images, hyperlinks to other content, and calls to action. Tweets are digital objects, with
hashtags organizing and aggregating them in connection with each other. Therefore, by
reading them with a critical approach, we may reveal what networked publics might be
saying indirectly through their digital engagement.
But a reading by itself is not sufficient for our purposes of tracking how
networked publics use Twitter as a platform share public revelations of private, political
affective gestures. The second prong of my tactic, therefore, must align itself with the steps
necessary for a close reading. Brummett explains close reading as a “mindful, disciplined
reading of an object with a view to a deeper understanding of its meanings.” 129 This
disciplined reading technique will reveal itself though my critical analysis, suggesting there
is more to these digital artifacts than just 140-280 characters. Therefore, as Brummett
suggests, I will pay particular attention to the form of these hashtagged messages or “the
structure, or pattern, that organizes a text.” How do hashtags repeat themselves, formulate
128 Barry Brummett, Techniques of Close Reading (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2019).
129 Brummett, 9.
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patterns, or structure discourse that surrounds disruptive rhetorical events? Close reading
will allow for a qualitative examination of the affective intensity these tweets generate by
attentively attuning to the “subsequent feelings, emotions, thoughts, attitudes, and
behaviors” they communicate.
Papacharissi writes that publics feel their way into structures of understanding by
affective attunement. She defines what this attunement looks like:
Publics assembled out of individuals feeling their way into a particular news stream
generated via Twitter engage in practices of rebroadcasting, listening, remixing content,
and creatively presenting their views—or fragments of their views—in ways that evolve
beyond the conventional deliberative logic of a traditional public sphere.130
As this definition indicates, this attunement is disjointed, varied, and perhaps
difficult to track as it happens in real time. For that reason, a close reading of archived
hashtags is a technique that can offer a narrative of what attunement looked like over time.
A critic may be able to piece together, through a historical perspective, how networked
publics were formulated and sustained through challenging hierarchical systems that
structure everyday life.
CASE STUDIES PREVIEW AND CONCLUSION
Jockers contends that today’s rhetorical scholar “can no longer risk being just a
close reader,” and that one must broaden their critical scope and gather as much
representative data as possible in order to make qualified observations about social trends.
This contention, however, should not preclude a close reading analysis, because, as he

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states these two scales of analysis, close and macro, “should and need to coexist.” 131 I argue
that the methodological approach offered in this chapter is a negotiated compromise of this
assertion. One prong of the tactic seeks to gather as much data as possible in the collection
of hashtagged tweets centered around disruptive rhetoric. And the other seeks to critically
and mindfully explore these individual public expressions as affectively laden messages
that reveal perspectives of an ever-shifting and evolving social reality.
With this two-step method in place, I now offer a brief preview of the
coming case studies along with a description of how the method will be applied to their
respective context. First, I will examine the case of Colin Kaepernick, an athlete and
activist who disrupted established hierarchies by kneeling during the national anthem at an
NFL football game. The subsequent networked response to his disruptive actions produced
networked publics through the utilization of hashtags such as #imwithKap,
#VeteransForKaepernick, and #taketheknee. My tripartite theoretical foundation will
inform my approach of analyzing how Kaepernick’s case incorporates elements of impiety,
networked publics, and affect. For my method, I will gather tweets from the beginning of
his dissenting action through the most recent Super Bowl in 2019 in order to read how he
disrupted pieties within a professional sports context and allowed for affectively intense,
networked publics to feel their way through the public negotiation of the purpose behind
his decisions. Through a structured close reading, I will examine their form and content for
five characteristics that according to Papacharissi are required for the formation of
networked affective publics. I selected this case study because of its long temporal duration
within popular culture and the vivid and affectively intense responses it generated. I argue
131 Jockers, 9.
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Kaepernick’s case is emblematic of how disruptive rhetoric can escape the confines of mere
outrage and have broad impacts on socio-political perspectives.
My second case study examines the disruptive rhetoric of political activist
group Pussy Riot. Their infamous disruptive display of performing a pop-up protest in the
halls of the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow not only sent shockwaves across Russia,
but also became a globally tracked affair. This case study provides a look at how disruptive
rhetoric can formulate networked publics on an international scale. It also reveals how
affective engagement from individuals across the world can debate and discuss a protest’s
meaning and impact. I will examine their situation using the same tripartite approach
outlined in this chapter. Methodologically, I will also gather tweets specific to the Pussy
Riot disruptive event, including the trending #pussyriot and #freepussyriot hashtags. For
purposes of this study, I will focus on a roughly 30-day period, building up to their public
trial and subsequent sentencing. This precise temporal period is a small slice of the long
engagement publics had with Pussy Riot’s disruptive rhetoric. However, in narrowing the
scope of the search, I will clarify how news events become what Papacharissi terms news
stories. News stories produced by networked publics blend affective responses within
political messages, revealing values as individuals feel their way into understandings of
events. By providing a close reading of these affective laden responses, I will offer another
perspective of how disruptive rhetoric can formulate and sustain networked publics of
strangers living in disparate geographic locations.
This chapter has provided a theoretical orientation and a detailed
methodology for examining disruptive rhetoric. I have briefly described the two case
studies that I will examine in the proceeding chapters and how they exemplify the rhetorical
strategy of disruptive rhetoric in an age of outrage. I argue that both this strategy and this
tactic are necessary to effectively investigate the complexity of discursive practices that
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challenge established hierarchies. I now move to my first case study, Colin Kaepernick’s
controversial kneel during the national anthem.
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Chapter 3: The Colin Kaepernick Case Study
In order to discover and trace the effects of disruptive rhetoric we should seek out
discursive examples that generate dialogue within networked publics. In an age of outrage,
individuals frequently react to headlines, news stories, clickbait, etc. in ways that express
strong emotional sentiment. It is the premise of this study that disruptive rhetoric can be
the catalyst for the formation of affective publics. If this is the case, we should look for
instances wherein a rhetor utilizes disruptive rhetoric to generate affective responses. With
the understanding of Burke’s impiety in mind, and boyd and Papacharissi’s literature on
networked, affective publics, we can look to kairotic moments that ripple out creating
publics in their wake. I now turn my attention to an example that continues to disrupt and
evolve even at this present moment: the complex case of Colin Kaepernick.
CASE IN CONTEXT
During an NFL preseason game in late August 2016, backup quarterback for the
San Francisco 49ers Colin Kaepernick ignited a nationwide conversation on the issues of
racial injustice, public protest, and freedom of speech. Kaepernick took a symbolic stand
for racial justice by kneeling on the sideline bench during the perfunctory singing of the
national anthem. His action came in response to recent outbreaks of violence primarily
perpetrated by law enforcement officials against minority civilians. This public, symbolic
gesture immediately sparked a complex and widespread discussion that formed as multiple,
diverse networked publics of both support and dissent. Many former and current NFL
players, members of the media, and other professional athletes were vocal in expressing
support. However, others did not view the action as appropriate, declaring it an unpatriotic
sign of disrespect to the nation’s flag and military servicemen and women. All of this
discourse, whether in support or in dissent emanated from that one small action. I am
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interested in how affective publics formed around this disruptive rhetorical action. The
networks of public communities and conversations all intersected because of Kaepernick’s
kneel, shaping a large discussion on race, police brutality, and freedom of speech that does
not consistently occur on such a broad level. His decision to not stand is worthy of further
critique because it provides insight into how seemingly small symbolic actions can have
broad disruptive effects in shaping attitudes through the affordances of digital affective
networks.
Kaepernick’s symbolic protest is unique in that several networks of
affective publics formed around his action, but never reached consensus as to the ultimate
meaning of Kaepernick’s actions or intentions. Was this symbolic action driven by a desire
to seek justice for the abused and oppressed persons of color in this country? Or, was it an
unpatriotic attempt to create a rift in an already racially divided country? Since we can
never know a rhetor’s true intentions, I seek only to trace how meaning was interpreted by
these interconnected communities. The Kaepernick controversy is a paradigmatic example
of how disruptive rhetoric can be disseminated, shared, and internalized across various
interconnected digital mediums today. Moreover, it is a unique case in that through this
disruptive, nonverbal act, Kaepernick created a rhetorical space for individuals to
affectively respond through digital engagement through networked publics. The rest of the
chapter will illustrate ways in which disruptive rhetoric employed by Kaepernick shaped
publics’ notions of police brutality and racial inequality. First, I address the ways that
Kaepernick’s impious act challenged the norms and decorum of the NFL in turn
challenging hierarchies of today’s modern athlete. Second, I examine some of the ways in
which networked publics formed and coalesced around his act, thus facilitating the
dissemination of disruptive rhetoric. And finally, I explore the ways in which affect
sustained Kaepernick’s disruptive rhetoric, allowing publics to shape their everyday

85
engagement with notions of social justice. Before diving into this three-tiered analysis, I
examine Kaepernick’s initial disruptive rhetorical action closer to understand the
complexities this case contains.
HISTORY OF THE KAEPERNICK CONTROVERSY
Colin Kaepernick was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to a white mother
and black father, who placed him for adoption almost immediately after he was born. He
was adopted by white parents Rick and Teresa Kaepernick, who moved their family to
northern California when Kaepernick was around the age of 4. Growing up a biracial child
in white suburbia played a significant role in his identity formation as he struggled to
navigate the murky waters of race at a young age. In an interview Kaepernick commented
on two key ideas that were at a constant tension while growing up:
I knew I was different to my parents and my older brother and sister. I never felt
that I was supposed to be white. Or black, either. My parents just wanted to let me be who
I needed to be.132
He also has spoken about how his experience was not relegated to the suburban
confines of northern California. He recounts several instances on vacation with his family
as a teenager with strangers questioning his actually family affiliation, going so far as to
ask why he was there.
Kaepernick speaks highly on the loving relationship his parents and siblings
provided despite these difficult conditions. During this time, it became clear to his parents
132 Andrew Corsello, "Mr. Colin Kaepernick," MR PORTER, , accessed July 29, 2019,
https://www.mrporter.com/journal/the-look/mr-colin-kaepernick/535?cm_mmc=PartnerizeAM-_-
skimlinks_phg-_-True Content-_-305950&setupsession=false.
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that Kaepernick was an extremely gifted young athlete with the ability to play football and
baseball well. In addition to excelling in both sports, Kaepernick was an exceptionally
bright student who finished high school with a high GPA and received several college
scholarships offers. However, only one school, the University of Nevada, offered
Kaepernick the dream he wanted most: a chance to be a starting college football
quarterback.
During his tenure at Nevada, Kaepernick established himself as a dual-
threat quarterback with a strong throwing arm and an incredible ability to run with the ball.
In the process of setting many school records, including the two-time offensive conference
player of the year, Kaepernick became a highly recruited prospect for the professional
football league known as the NFL. Selected 36th overall by the San Francisco 49ers in the
second round of the draft, Kaepernick sat out most of his rookie year as a backup and didn’t
officially get a start until his second season.
His NFL career took off quickly once being named starter and he quickly
developed a reputation for making game-breaking plays using not only his arm strength
but dynamic rushing ability. He would go on to lead the 49ers to a Super Bowl
championship that the team narrowly lost. His success lead to a rise in his public profile,
landing him several sponsorships and endorsements. But while many lauded his athletic
achievements, a significant amount of the discourse surrounding the player was entrenched
in racist tropes and critiques. Columnist David Whitley wrote an article that opens with the
following two lines:
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San Francisco's Colin Kaepernick is going to be a big-time NFL quarterback. That
must make the guys in San Quentin happy. 133
The writer would go on to cite unfounded statistics about how many inmates within
the California state prison have tattoos and made direct connections to Kaepernick’s inked
arms and suggested that the quarterback looked as if he had “just got paroled.” These racist
associations became increasingly common in the Kaepernick media coverage, often
veering toward familiar racist tropes centered around black quarterbacks which posit tacitly
that they do not possess the “intelligence” or “IQ” to be a successful quarterback. The
quarterback position in professional football has statistically been comprised of white
athletes which has created for many the view that it is a white position on the field.
Kaepernick’s playing career continued into the 2013 and 2014 seasons with
varying degrees of success. He began to suffer on field disappointment and increased
scrutiny after signing a substantial contract pay increase in 2014. As the on-field troubles
started to mount, public questioning of Kaepernick’s ability to run a professional football
offense increased with many critics doubting his professional pedigree. In 2015, he would
finish the season with a serious shoulder injury that put his position on the roster in
jeopardy.
During his brief absence from the field, a change began to manifest itself in
Kaepernick’s public social media accounts and in interviews. Journalist Cork Gaines writes
that up until late 2015, Kaepernick’s personal Instagram account featured content expected
133 Drew Magary, "Who Is This Hack Who Wrote About Colin Kaepernick's Tattoos, And Why Is He
Such A Racist Dicktroll?" Deadspin, June 17, 2013, accessed July 29, 2019, https://deadspin.com/who-is-
this-hack-who-wrote-about-colin-kaepernicks-tatt-5964564.
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of today’s modern athlete. 134 Photos of the athlete working out, posting fashion outfits,
exotic cars, and family photos provided the majority of his online persona. However, on
October 15 of that year, Kaepernick posted an image reminding his followers of the historic
foundation of the Black Panther Party in 1966. The ensuing content continued on the
themes of social justice and civil rights for African Americans. The feed contained quotes
from prominent civil rights leaders and memes pleading for justice for victims of police
brutality.
As the football season approached, many predicted the recently rehabbed
quarterback would resume his position as the starting quarterback for the 49ers. However,
early reports leaked from the training camp that Kaepernick would actually be competing
for the job. During this time, Kaepernick repeatedly used his Instagram feed to highlight
violent acts by the hands of police against persons of color. One such post included a video
of Philando Castille dying in his car after being shot by an office after a routine traffic stop
with the added caption: “We are under attack! It’s clear as day! Less than 24 hrs later
another body in the street!”135 This was a follow up post a mere day after the public murder
of Alton Sterling, a Baton Rouge resident who died while attempting to sell CDs at a
neighborhood gas station. This was all in context with other high-profile police brutality
cases such as those of Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray. But few could have
predicted what would take place in the second week of the pre-season during the customary
warmup and introduction of the players.
134 Cork Gaines, "Colin Kaepernick Has Been Vocal about Social Injustice for Months and Hardly
Anybody Noticed until He Sat down during the National Anthem," Business Insider, August 29, 2016, ,
accessed July 29, 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/colin-kaepernick-social-injustice-sat-national-
anthem-2016-8.
135 John Branch, "The Awakening of Colin Kaepernick," The New York Times, September 07, 2017,
accessed July 29, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/sports/colin-kaepernick-nfl-protests.html.
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On August 14, 2016, Kaepernick remained seated during the national
anthem. The action went unnoticed to nearly everyone present in the stadium. Kaepernick
proceeded to repeat this throughout each opening anthem week to week. It wasn’t until the
third game when a Twitter user tweeted a photo of the 49ers sideline that people began to
notice that Kaepernick was actually sitting during the traditional singing of the anthem.
The tweet quickly caught the attention of national media and reports started spreading
about the perceived act of resistance. Audiences quickly latched onto the stories and many
media outlets started to take stances on the merit of the action: was it an act of courage or
an unpatriotic display of disrespect?
While Kaepernick’s decision to sit generated a large amount of discourse,
it paled in comparison to the rupture of his symbolic choice to kneel during the first official
game of the NFL season. Joined by teammate Eric Reid, Kaepernick remained on one knee
throughout the entirety of the singing of the national anthem. Television cameras focused
on the group ensuring that the image would be broadcast to millions watching at home,
quickly surpassing the publicity of Kaepernick’s initial action during the preseason.
Shortly after the first viral image of Kaepernick sitting, many questioned
the intentions and purpose Kaepernick’s disruptive action. He addressed these initial
concerns on August 28, 2016, two days after national media first discovered him seated
during the anthem. Kaepernick spoke purposefully when describing his original aim in
breaking with the traditional custom of standing during the anthem:
This stand wasn’t for me. This is because I’m seeing things happen to people that
don’t have a voice, people that don’t have a platform to talk and have their voices heard,
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and effect change. So, I’m in the position where I can do that and I’m going to do that for
people that can’t.136
Throughout his interview he reiterated much of what he had been describing on his
social media feed−that a greater attention and scrutiny needs to be paid to the injustice
forced upon persons of color by the hands of law enforcement. He articulated his stance
further in a separate interview:
I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black
people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on
my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave
and getting away with murder. 137
It appears with these comments that Kaepernick had reflected on how to voice his
dissent to atrocities he recognized taking place in America.
However, despite reiterating that his protest was rooted in exposing the violence
against persons of color at the hands of law enforcement officials, Kaepernick was not able
to keep the broad public conversation focused on this topic alone. Quickly, many detractors
began to frame Kaepernick’s protest as an “anti-American,” “anti-flag,” or an “anti-

veteran” statement. Several fans of opposing teams began to jeer Kaepernick during games,
videos emerged on social media of people burning his jersey, and then-presidential
136 Mark Sandritter, "All the Athletes Who Joined Kaepernick's National Anthem Protest,"
SBNation.com, September 25, 2017, , accessed July 29, 2019,
https://www.sbnation.com/2016/9/11/12869726/colin-kaepernick-national-anthem-protest-seahawks-
brandon-marshall-nfl.
137 Steve Wyche, "Colin Kaepernick Explains Why He Sat during National Anthem," NFL.com, August
28, 2016, accessed June 13, 2019, http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000691077/article/colin-
kaepernick-explains-protest-of-national-anthem.
91
candidate Donald Trump even remarked that perhaps Kaepernick “should find a country
that works better for him.”138
Of course, the irony embedded within this negative response was that the decision
to kneel was at the behest of a letter Kaepernick received from a US Army Green Beret
veteran Nate Boyer. A former football player himself, Boyer had served in the military
before starting a career at the University of Texas as a long snapper. After witnessing
Kaepernick sit during the preseason, Boyer penned an open letter to the quarterback asking
that he consider the greater impact of his action. The letter quickly went viral, eventually
reaching Kaepernick himself. In time, the two men met to discuss the decision to sit, where
Boyer argued that it made him appear disinterested and not engaged. After a long
conversation about race, patriotism, and their respective experiences living in America,
Kaepernick asked if there was something he could do in protest that would appear better
than sitting. Boyer explained that kneeling, rather than sitting, would actually be a more
powerful statement. In an interview with Bryant Gumbel, Boyer explained the purpose
behind this symbolic action: “Soldiers take a knee in front of a fallen brother's grave, you
know, to show respect.”139 Boyer suggested that if Kaepernick wanted to protest peacefully
he could kneel with his teammates and accomplish the same goals he had cited previously.
Kaepernick was receptive. On September 1, 2016, as the cameras focused on Kaepernick

and Reid, there stood Boyer next to the athletes with his hand over his heart, in solidarity
with Kaepernick’s decision to voice his concerns in peaceful protest.
138 NFL.com Staff, "Donald Trump on Kaepernick: Find Another Country," NFL.com, August 30, 2016,
accessed June 29, 2019, http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000692256/article/donald-trump-on-
kaepernick-find-another-country.
139 Will Brinson, "Here's How Nate Boyer Got Colin Kaepernick to Go from Sitting to Kneeling,"
CBSSports.com, September 27, 2016, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/heres-
how-nate-boyer-got-colin-kaepernick-to-go-from-sitting-to-kneeling/.
92
If the story of Kaepernick’s disruptive act ended here, I argue it wouldn’t satisfy
this project’s definition for disruptive rhetoric. Disruptive rhetoric seeks to extend
conversations past mere outrage and looks to extend difficult dialogues over long temporal
periods. Which is why one must pay attention to the rippling rhetorical effects this one act
had on a national dialogue. Hundreds of other athletes began to join in on Kaepernick’s
activism by either kneeling, raising fists in the air, or interlocking arms while bowing their
heads.140 The NFL reported that Kaepernick’s #7 jersey became the highest-selling shirt
on their online shop, and activists across the country applauded and echoed the sentiments
of Kaepernick’s statements. Despite the traction gained by the athlete’s protest, a year later,
Kaepernick was no longer on an NFL roster. The dialogue and controversy surrounding
him now shifted to a question of sport: Would he ever get signed to another team?
The next NFL season started without Kaepernick on a roster, spurring
President Donald Trump to revisit the controversy. Citing low television ratings, Trump
argued that NFL owners needed to act more authoritatively in dealing with anyone who
protested during the national anthem. At an Alabama rally he viciously exclaimed,
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag,
to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!’ ”141 A
few weeks later vice president Mike Pence would leave an Indianapolis Colts home game
versus the San Francisco 49ers shortly after the anthem, later releasing a statement
explaining:
140 Mark Sandritter, "All the Athletes Who Joined Kaepernick's National Anthem Protest,"
SBNation.com, September 25, 2017, accessed July 30, 2019,
https://www.sbnation.com/2016/9/11/12869726/colin-kaepernick-national-anthem-protest-seahawks-
brandon-marshall-nfl.
141 Bryan Armen Graham, "Donald Trump Blasts NFL Anthem Protesters: 'Get That Son of a Bitch off the
Field'," The Guardian, September 23, 2017, accessed July 30, 2019,
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/sep/22/donald-trump-nfl-national-anthem-protests.
93
I left today’s Colts game because President Trump and I will not dignify any event
that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem… I stand with President
Trump, I stand with our soldiers, and I will always stand for our Flag and our National
Anthem.142 Pence’s more-than-likely pre-planned political stunt only elicited more
responses, and showed ultimately that the controversy surrounding the disruptive rhetoric
of the athlete-turned-activist had not run its course entirely.
This messy, unwieldy rhetorical situation is an ideal example of what
disruptive rhetoric can look like and how it functions in an age of outrage. But a question
remains: Why did this seemingly peaceful and innocuous act spark a multi-year
conversation on racial relations, sports, and police brutality? With this context in mind, it
is here we can begin to turn toward the theoretical lenses to analyze precisely what
separates Kaepernick’s case from mere outrage. First and foremost, his decision to kneel
challenged traditional hierarchies present within our popular culture. Many scholars have
argued that the sporting arena does not escape the realm of the political; in fact, many
suggest it is only another facet of our daily grapple with hegemonic and powerful displays
of nationalism, religion, and militarization. 143 I now will examine how the symbolic kneel
was what Burke would call an impious act before established hierarchies. Kaepernick’s
impious kneel opened up the space for networked publics to express affective reactions to
their perceptions of the athlete’s rhetoric. By first investigating the impious characteristics
of his disruptive action we can begin to understand how affective publics and evolved
within digital networks.
142Mike Pence. Twitter post. Oct. 8, 2017, 12:24pm.

https://twitter.com/VP/status/917078269077413888/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweete
mbed%7Ctwterm%5E917078269077413888%7Ctwgr%5E393039363b636f6e74726f6c&ref_url=https%3
A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2017%2F10%2F08%2Fpolitics%2Fvice-president-mike-pence-nfl-
protest%2Findex.html
143 For more on this see: Michael L. Butterworth, Sport and Militarism: Contemporary Global
Perspectives (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017).
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IMPIETY BEFORE MILITARIZED HIERARCHIES
This section of my analysis begins with an understanding of why
Kaepernick’s action escapes mere outrage precisely because it satisfies what Burke terms
impiety. As established earlier, impiety is the opposite of piety, a religious term Burke
secularizes in order to describe a perspective orienting oneself within systems. According
to Burke piety is “the sense of what properly goes with what,” or an alignment of how
systems should function in everyday experiences. He suggests that pieties establish systems
of order built in with notions of decorum or propriety. Thomas Rosteck and Michael Leff
explain this further stating, “Pieties, then, function as stable frames of reference which
direct human perception and determine our judgments about what is proper in a given
circumstance. In this respect, a piety is an orientation that governs our sense of
propriety.”144 Pieties, however, are not stable or set in place forever. Burke argues that they
shift and evolve as human interaction shapes the world around them. Thus, when impious
actions occur, it offers the potential for a shift in the existing notions of decorum, propriety,
or what is appropriate.
If we examine Kaepernick’s disruptive rhetorical action through a Burkean lens of
impiety, we must first ask why the decision to kneel was impious given this context. I argue
that Kaepernick’s kneeling violates a long and intensifying tradition of the militarization
of sport. Many scholars argue that sports play an integral role in the defining of national
identities. Sports have become a strategic site for overt displays of patriotic pageantry, and
144 Thomas Rosteck and Michael Leff, "Piety, Propriety, and Perspective: An Interpretation and
Application of Key Terms in Kenneth Burke's Permanence and Change," Western Journal of Speech
Communication 53, no. 4 (1989): 329, doi:10.1080/10570318909374312.
95
increasingly, since the tragic events of 9/11, have served as a space for unification through
rituals that show reverence to symbols of the country.145
This trend is not just an American phenomenon either. Scholar Michael
Butterworth notes that sports have become inextricably tied to displays of nationalism and
patriotism across the globe. 146 Public sporting events articulate a piety of reverence before
the respective country, which then organizes how one must operate or orient oneself within
that structure. I argue Kaepernick’s disruptive action directly puts that piety into question,
asking witnesses (whether in person or through some mediated viewing) to then make sense
of how to act with a competing perspective.
It is no surprise, then, that despite Kaepernick’s persistent reiteration that his
disruptive act of dissent was not directed towards any notion of the “flag” or members of
the military, many felt it most certainly was. Butterworth describes this pious organization
of sports and militarization succinctly when examining the various details and processes
one experiences viewing any sporting event:
Military references and ceremonies are routine components in broadcasts and live
events. The relationships and entanglements between sports leagues, media, and the
military are almost too numerous to mention: regularly aired television commercials for
the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines… on-air references to members of the military,
complete with reminders to “support the troops”; war-inspired vocabulary to describe the
action and participants on the fields and courts; fly-overs and celebratory displays of
military hardware; on-field enlistment services and reunions of military spouses (typically
young brides reunited with their enlisted husbands); video footage of American troops
145 Tricia Jenkins, “The Militarization of American Professional Sports: How the Sports–War Intertext
Influences Athletic Ritual and Sports Media,” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 37, no. 3 (August 2013):
245–60, https://doi.org/10.1177/0193723512470686.
146 Michael L. Butterworth, Sport and Militarism, 3.
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watching a game while stationed overseas; and a seemingly endless supply of ceremonies
to memorialize those who serve, or have served, in the US Armed Forces. 147
This list, which is by no means exhaustive, gives us a clear sense of what piety
looks like in sports today. To consume or participate in sports, especially in the United
States, one is expected to be patriotic, show respect to branches of the military, and not
disrespect revered symbols of the nation.
We can further articulate this pious orientation by examining the processes
and rituals of attending sporting events today. A vocalist is brought to the center of the
field to sing a rendition of the anthem. Patrons are asked by the booming public announcer
to stand, remove their hats, and place their hands over their hearts as the anthem is
performed. At larger more important sporting events, this will be accompanied by an
unfurling of an oversized flag across the field, with sometimes a fly-over of military aircraft
as the final notes are sung. It is hard to imagine where a piety of patriotism and sport begins
or ends.
Of course, this piety is not a natural occurrence or an organizing structure of
experience that maintains itself without influence of authoritative forces. Rosteck and Leff
point out, “pieties are created by human makers as they interact with their fellows and with
the world.”148 But this assertion does not go so far as to say whether this is done in the
interest of the humans whose lives are organized by these pieties, and because of this one
should be skeptical when encountering pieties. In 2015, According to a joint oversight
report by Arizonan senators, the Pentagon paid sports organizations millions of dollars for
147 Butterworth, Sport and Militarism, 2-3.

148 Rosteck and Leff, “Piety,” 328.
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patriotic displays in the name of “recruitment” for various military organizations. 149 I argue
that this piety of patriotism within sports is often articulated to maintain the connection and
proliferation of our military industrial complex, and thus these structures warrant scrutiny.
Accordingly, I argue Kaepernick was aware, at some level, of the deeply fortified
piety of patriotism within today’s modern sport culture. For in choosing to commit his
disruptive act during the anthem, he forced a differing perspective of what piety can signify
within ritualized processes. His refusal to stand was an impious act against a long-standing
tradition of reverence before patriotic, national symbols. I argue, his impious act and the
ensuing reactions individuals had been what ultimately separates it from the classification
of outrage. Burke suggests that “an attempt to reorganize one’s orientation to the past
would have an impious aspect,” therefore Kaepernick’s disruptive act forces individuals to
reorganize what the role or purpose of patriotism is in sports. Additionally, his
inappropriate action before the flag puts into question a sport that heavily relies on bodies
of color. The notion of the patriotic athlete is a well-worn trope, a piety one can encounter
in everyday experience.
While Kaepernick is not the first activist athlete to protest during a sporting event,
his disruptive rhetorical act is significant in that it violates standards of accepted norms in
a way that is unavoidable. His symbolic refusal to stand put into question many
relationships audiences have with public displays of patriotism, while simultaneously
raising questions of racial equality.
Burke describes impiety further by revealing its relationship to skepticism. He notes
that both science and religion require a certain amount of suspicion in order to foretell or
149 Eyder Peralta, “Pentagon Paid Sports Teams Millions For 'Paid Patriotism' Events,” NPR (NPR,
November 5, 2015), https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/11/05/454834662/pentagon-paid-
sports-teams-millions-for-paid-patriotism-events.
98
predict outcomes in the future. Impiety thus is born out of suspicion of current conditions
and requires an actor to offer a “new orientation, a revised system of meanings, an altered
conception as to how the world is put together.” 150 Psychology scholar Dacher Keltner
argues that Kaepernick’s kneel challenged the traditional, cultural understandings of the
anthem. He writes that Kaepernick “transformed a collective ritual… into something
somber, a reminder of how far we still have to go to realize the high ideal of equal
protection under the law that the flag represents.” 151
Kaepernick’s disruptive act is an enactment of such suspicion over the true
meaning of the national anthem. Of course, the anthem lyrically articulates a country that
is the “land of the free” which does not necessarily reconcile with Kaepernick’s
observations. In an acceptance speech for an Amnesty International award, Kaepernick
communicated his skepticism:
Racialized oppression and dehumanization is woven into the very fabric of our
nation—the effects of which can be seen in the lawful lynching of Black and brown people
by the police, and the mass incarceration of Black and brown lives in the prison industrial
complex. While America bills itself as the land of the free, the receipts show that the U.S.
has incarcerated approximately 2.2 million people, the largest prison population in the
history of humankind.152
150 Kenneth Burke, Permanence & Change, An Anatomy of Purpose (Third Edition.) (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984) 81.
151 Dacher Keltner and Jeremy Adam Smith, “The Psychology of Taking a Knee,” Scientific American
Blog Network, September 29, 2017, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/the-psychology-of-taking-
a-knee/.
152 Colin Kaepernick, "Acceptance Speech" (Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award,
Amsterdam, June 21, 2019).
99
This statement challenges an assumed piety many are privileged to not reconsider
due to the color of their skin. Kaepernick’s kneel signifies an altered conception of how
the world is put together in an egregiously hyper-patriotic context. Again, forcing a
conversation is often the aim of a protest, and in an age of outrage, this is not always a
difficult feat. However, I argue, because of Kaepernick’s impiety, his message was able to
stimulate and sustain a conversation for a significant, extended period of time.
Burke writes that pieties are not immutable structures. They encounter impieties,
thus transforming into new pieties which assuredly will be tested, deconstructed, and made
anew. A common critique of Kaepernick’s disruptive act was that it was not conducted in
the right setting. This sentiment was often conveyed in the trite phrase “Keep politics out
of sports.” This sentiment conveniently ignores the pious and political displays of
militarization and patriotism that saturate the NFL. This head on confrontation with the
established order has begun to shape what some have termed a “player empowerment”
movement.153 Kaepernick demonstrates that activist athletes can challenge established
hierarchical structures, and while perhaps not succeeding in dismantling them completely,
can open the door for future disruptive acts.
A year after his initial protest, many players began to mimic and replicate their own
disruptive acts during national anthems. Athlete demonstrations grew in spite of public
backlash, which coincided with lower TV ratings, lower game attendance, and dropped
commercial sponsorships. Eventually, a private meeting was called for the thirty two NFL
franchise owners to address what could be done about these protests. Though the meeting
153For more see: Mark Murphy, "Player Empowerment on the Rise in NBA," Boston Herald, February 18,
2019, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/02/17/player-
empowerment-on-the-rise-in-nba, and Raf Stitt, "The Anthony Davis Saga and the Rise of NBA
Player Empowerment," Kulture Hub, February 01, 2019, accessed July 28, 2019,
https://kulturehub.com/anthony-davis-nba-player-empowerment/.
100
was held in private, one notable quote was leaked from Houston Texans owner Bob McNair
in which he exclaimed, “We can’t have the inmates running the prison.” 154 The owner
would later recant the statement in a public apology, but the damage had been done.
This quote, I argue, crystalizes why Kaepernick’s decision to kneel was warranted.
It reveals the underlying notion of piety within the NFL ownership and management, 0ne
that privileges displays of patriotism over the concerns of their own employees. A piety
that admonishes those who don’t stand to sing “land of the free,” but can simultaneously
refer to athletes as metaphorical prisoners. Kaepernick’s impious disruption sent waves
across a variety of mediums creating the possibility for the formation of affective of
publics. It is here we must understand what role networked publics play in the process of
disruptive rhetoric. I now turn my attention to how digital networks offer space for
affectively charged individuals to coalesce around impious acts, offering the potential for
discursive engagement centered around new pieties aimed toward justice.
NETWORKED PUBLICS IN A DIGITAL AGE
What makes disruptive rhetoric interesting in today’s context is that new
communicative technologies exist that allow for the formation of publics which in turn
deliberate, discuss, and distribute disruptive rhetoric. These groups of individuals form
what scholar Mizuko Ito terms networked publics or a “linked set of social, cultural, and
technological developments that have accompanied the growing engagement with digitally
networked media.”155 Ito argues that these groups of individuals should be referred to as
networked publics instead of audiences or consumers, because a networked public
connotes a higher form of engagement. Networked publics can engage with messages in
154 Michelle R. Martinelli, "Sports World Slams Texans Owner Bob McNair for Comparing NFL Players
to Inmates," USA Today, October 28, 2017, accessed July 30, 2019,
155 Mizuko Ito, introduction, in Networked Publics, by Kazys Varnelis (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012), 2.
101
unique, novel ways due to the increasingly complex ways media reaches out to individuals
today. He writes that these specific publics can be “reactors, (re)makers and
(re)distributors, engaging in shared culture and knowledge through discourse and social
exchange as well as through acts of media reception.”156 These new media platforms allow
for a more participatory form of engagement that provides publics the means to connect
and share their experience with rhetoric they engage with.
If impiety allows for certain messages to reorganize what goes with what in
the world, I argue then networked publics can become deliberating forces in the
arrangement of these new pieties. This does not suggest that this discourse necessarily
reshapes the material conditions in which these publics live in, however it provides a means
for their dialogue to shape and reorient new perspectives. Disruptive rhetoric requires
impious actions that in turn can create rhetorical space for networked publics to coalesce
around. Ito argues that this is facilitated by new media’s ability to offer unlimited access
in turn connecting individuals around common interests, concerns, and issues. He points to
companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook as a few examples of new media
providers that rely on the ability to connect, redirect, and organize individuals into
networked publics. I argue that, in the case of Kaepernick, we see that the concept of digital
public networks as an integral component in the proliferation of Kaepernick’s disruptive

rhetoric.
To narrow our search for evidence of networked publics, we might look
toward digital media scholar danah boyd’s required criteria for networked publics. boyd
argues networked publics are not just publics simply connected together, but that they are
instead publics that “have been transformed by networked media” through the engagement
156 Ito, Networked Publics, 3.

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practices digital networks encourage in their everyday use. boyd pinpoints four elements
of networked publics that indicate a public has been transformed and not merely aggregated
together. These four criteria include persistence, replicability, scalability, and searchability.
She argues that these affordances help “shape publics and how people negotiate them.” 157
boyd likens the content of these networked publics to “bits” or pieces of data that are used
to build the structures of networked publics. Furthermore, she argues one should look to
social network sites to examine how users engage publicly through profiles, lists of friends,
and means of communication not previously available through traditional media forms.
With these conceptions in mind, I contend it is pertinent to seek out the bits and traces of
networked publics centered around Kaepernick’s disruptive rhetoric on the social network
site of Twitter. If Kaepernick’s case study articulates what disruptive rhetoric looks like in
an age of outrage, we should seek out evidence of networked publics engaging with his
impiety in ways that a site like Twitter would provide space for.
First, boyd states that a social network site might offer persistence, or the
idea that data published to the site is recorded and archived in perpetuity. 158 Twitter is an
ideal platform for us to investigate precisely because, in essence, Twitter functions as a
digital archive. In 2010, the website donated its entire digital archive of public tweets to
the Library of Congress providing massive amounts of data for research and archival
purposes.159 This archival process continued up until the end of the year 2017 providing
the ability to explore any public message centered around the subject of Kaepernick. boyd
157 Danah Boyd, A Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites, by Zizi
Papacharissi (New York, NY: Routledge, 2011): 46.
158 Ibid., 46.
159 Matt Raymond and Greg Pass, "Twitter Donates Entire Tweet Archive to Library of Congress," The
Library of Congress, April 15, 2010, accessed June 30, 2019, https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-10-081/twitter-
archive-to-library-of-congress/2010-04-15/.
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mentions the process of an individual tweeting can “transform the acts they are capturing.”
Therefore, given the persistence of the Twitter, investigating the archive surrounding
Kaepernick’s disruptive act we might be able to see how tweets transformed his act of
dissent.
Second, boyd suggests that replicability is a key affordance in the structure
of a networked public, arguing that data must have the ability to be duplicated. Networked
publics focused on Kaepernick often turned to Twitter to employ the feature known as
“retweeting” and “hashtagging.” A single message can be replicated via the retweet
function, thus expanding the reach of the original message. Hashtagging allows users to
aggregate their tweets into organized topics such as #Kaepernick or #ImwithKap in order
to increase the repetition and replication of messages concerning Kaepernick. While other
social network sites offer some of these same functions, Twitter provides a clear way to
navigate and search these replications. Of course, with replicability there comes the
potential to change the meaning of the original act, but this is not necessarily a negative
characteristic. The ability for messages to be altered and reshaped as users engage with
them reveals the fascinating potential for networked publics to be transformed through
constant negotiation of content.
Additionally, boyd contends that social networks increase the scalability of a data
transmission more so than any traditional form of media. Boyd writes that a site like Twitter
“enables broader distribution, either by enhancing who can access the real-time event or
widening access to reproductions of the moment.”160 The possibility for a broad audience,
though not guaranteed, allows any user the ability to potentially reach audiences at a scale
only previously possibly through traditional media forms such as radio, television, or print.
160 boyd, A Networked Self, 47.

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We can see scalability’s role play when considering the initial tweet of the 49ers sideline
photo where Kaepernick was seated.
As one can see in the photo below, Kaepernick’s location is not easily recognized
upon first glance. It requires a closer search to discover the seated player positioned
Figure 1: Kaepernick Sitting On Sideline
between the two Gatorade coolers. As boyd mentions, networked publics are not merely
connected, but rather their engagement with messages is what transforms them. The
disruptive rhetorical effect of this photo was facilitated by the ability for an engaged
individual to not only identify the act of protest, but then scale the dissemination to a
broader reach almost instantly. Without the scalability of Twitter’s network, it is possible
Kaepernick’s disruptive message would have never been able to start its initial disruption.
Finally, boyd contends that the searchability of a social network site is
important for a networked public to have access to the information it possesses effectively.
Twitter has its own internal search functions that users can easily access. But what
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ultimately makes Twitter even more searchable is the metadata a single tweet contains.
Location, time zone, the device used to publish the content are just some of the categories
of valuable data packed with each public tweet. Broad sweeping tools can be programmed
to search for these items, allowing for even more engagement with publics.
These four affordances that social network sites offer networked publics
helps our understanding of how disruptive rhetoric forms and solidifies networked publics.
In the case of Kaepernick, one can question if his disruptive act would have had the same
impact or speed without the aid of engaged networked publics. boyd articulates the
influence networked publics might have for rhetorical studies:
As social network sites and other emergent genres of social media become
pervasive, the affordances and dynamics of networked publics can shed light on why
people engage the way they do. Thus, taking the structural elements of networked publics
into account when analyzing what unfolds can provide a valuable interpretive
framework.161
With this section, I have analyzed the structural elements Twitter affords networked
publics when encountering a case such as Kaepernick’s. His impious act before the given
hierarchical structures prompted networked publics to engage with and transform his
rhetoric into a broad reaching discourse on race, justice, and police brutality. But to
understand what that discourse looked like; one cannot simply look at the structural
elements of these networked publics. I argue that a key element of what made Kaepernick’s
case study unique is that it also mobilized networked affective publics. To examine what
161 boyd, 55.

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this looks like though requires us to return to Papacharissi’s work on affective publics and
survey the rhetoric they produced through digital means.
AFFECTIVE PUBLICS IN A DIGITAL AGE
So far, I have employed two parts of my tripartite approach to understanding
how Kaepernick’s disruptive rhetoric operated in an age of outrage. However, in order to
argue that the athlete’s rhetorical action had long term effects, I aim to locate evidence of
broad reaching engagement across networked publics. But more so than just locating these
discursive practices, I argue it is necessary to understand how affect sustains, perpetuates,
and subsequently evolves the publics that engage with disruptive rhetoric. I argue
disruptive rhetoric has broader reaching impact than mere outrage because of its ability to
provide what digital media studies scholar Zizi Papacharissi has termed “networked
structures of feelings.”162 If we recall from the previous chapter, affect is not simply
emotions – fear, anger, hate, love. Instead, it should be understood as the intense push or
drive at an unconscious level that might motivate an individual to respond in an emotional
way. Papacharissi explains this distinction succinctly:
[I]t is essential not to confuse affect with emotion and feeling. While affect contains
a particular energy, mood, or movement that may lead to particular feeling, and possibly
the subsequent expression of emotion, it both precedes and sustains or possibly annuls
feeling and emotion. We might think of affect as the force that drives the unconscious tap
of the foot to music, the bob of the head as we listen along to conversation, the rhythm of
our pace as we walk.163
162 Zizi Papacharissi, Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology and Politics (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2017).
163 Ibid., 21.
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Given this distinction, it is pertinent to explore how disruptive rhetoric relates to
affect and the networked publics it can potentially connect. I argue disruptive rhetoric such
as Kaepernick’s can fuel the affective intensity within networked publics giving them the
ability to expand, evolve, and structure understanding of complex events and issues.
Moreover, I contend Kaepernick’s impious kneel motivated affective publics to engage
with his message in turn increasing the volume and reach of his message.
If disruptive rhetoric energizes affective networked publics to, in
Papacharissi’s terminology, “pluralize, organize, and disrupt conversations,” we would
look to how these conversations manifest themselves on digital platforms. I examine the
digital platform of Twitter to closely read how publics affectively engaged with
Kaepernick’s disruptive rhetoric. Papacharissi suggests that “by examining how networked
platforms support affective processes” we might begin to understand the relationship
between disruptive rhetoric and “contemporary political environments.” 164 Therefore, one
must understand what affective publics are in order to argue that Kaepernick’s disruptive
rhetoric made space for individuals to engage, sustain conversations, and reorganize or
challenge hierarchies. Papacharissi provides five key features of what defines affective
publics. What follows is an examination of the discourse surrounding Kaepernick’s
disruptive act in conjunction with these five key components. In this section, I argue that
discursive engagement of Kaepernick’s impious act on Twitter reveals how networked
publics offer a structure of feeling, providing the potential for new pieties to be constructed.
“AFFECTIVE PUBLICS MATERIALIZE UNIQUELY AND LEAVE DISTINCT DIGITAL

FOOTPRINTS.”

108
Central in identifying the trace(s) of affective publics is what Papacharissi
defines as a “digital footprint” or some identifiably unique data aggregation focused or
centered around the issue at hand. She points out that these footprints will of course vary
from one sociopolitical context to the next. But online platforms such as Twitter facilitate
an amplification of awareness about issues or events by increasing affective intensity in
letting users engage and express themselves in publicly connected conversations. These
digital footprints collect and aggregate these affective performances shaping the way
individuals incorporate the political into everyday life. In the case of Kaepernick we might
point to hashtags as an example of the digital footprints left in the wake of the disruptive
act. Hashtags not only direct affective publics toward specific conversations but also allow
users to engage in these discourses without directly seeking out other engaged individuals.
Hashtags can quickly proliferate and spread into individual users’ timeline feeds
through similar tweets and retweets thus altering the affective tonality of the conversations
centered around events such as Kaepernick’s disruptive act. Users can encounter these
tweets and respond with affective gestures of support or dissent, by retweeting with
comments or opinions that show agreement or support. As Papacharissi states, this effect
is contagion-like in nature and can in turn subtly disrupt dominant hierarchies by offering
new frames in which individuals can understand sociopolitical contexts. #ImWithKap

provides us with a generative example to examine from a qualitative perspective.
Shortly after his initial press conference explaining his decision to kneel, users
started posting tweets of affirmation for the quarterback that included the hashtag declaring
their solidarity in his choice. Tweets featured images of individuals wearing the #7 jersey
and included affective gestures towards positive feelings toward the athlete’s disruptive
act. Tweets then had the potential to be retweeted by larger, verified accounts expanding
the reach of the original message and connecting more engaged users.
109
Figure 2: Fan with Jersey
Figure 3: Fans with Jersey
Often these tweets would include affective gestures as well, reflecting their
opinions and taking the form of extreme emotional responses.
110
Figure 4: Extreme Response
Figure 5: Extreme Response #2
Papacharissi writes, “Personal views and takes on events are woven into developing
narratives through the organizational logic of hashtags,” and we can see users here
describing how Kaepernick has impacted their individual lives.165
“AFFECTIVE PUBLICS SUPPORT CONNECTIVE YET NOT NECESSARILY COLLECTIVE

ACTION.”
Another component of affective publics is how they motivate engaged
individuals to something Papacharissi terms “connective action.” She argues modern social
movements often collect more participants through the usage of hashtags, not to eventually
mobilize physical bodies into material spaces, but rather to organize without falling into
the pattern of traditionally established hierarchical organizations. She defines this process
further:
Connective action organically takes form as self-motivated actors share personally
expressive messages across networks and as interconnected actors view, rebroadcast, and
further remix them. Distinct from collective action, connective action develops out of

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personalized reactions to political issues, old and new, that turn into broader themes shared
via various personal communication technologies. 166
Additionally, she contends connective action emerges from personal frames or
perspectives that are formulated through affective responses of messages encountered on
Twitter. Connective action suggests a more organic or collaborative nature than traditional
social movements, in that it amalgamates around users with similar perspectives, but not
identical ones.
#ImWithKap exemplifies how connective action via hashtags aggregates
similar perspectives across a wide variety of engaged, affectively charged users. While the
#ImWithKap originated in 2016, it continued to be utilized by networked publics as
Kaepernick’s exile from the NFL continued. The ebb and flow of tweets containing the tag
would increase at times when someone such as President Trump would tweet about
kneeling during the anthem, or anytime a new team would hire a quarterback that was not
Kaepernick. The affective intensity surrounding the hashtag came to an all-time high in the
lead up to the 2019 Super Bowl. The marquee event for the NFL provides a week of press
and media before the game to promote what is usually one of the highest-rated television
programs of the year. However, in the lead up to the event, several celebrities, musicians,
activists, and athletes took to twitter to express their boycott of the event.
Filmmaker Ava Duvernay tweeted out her disapproval of the Super Bowl
directly connecting her dissent to the dealing of Kaepernick by the NFL:
I will not be a spectator, viewer or supporter of the #SuperBowl today in protest of
the @NFL’s racist treatment of @Kaepernick7 and its ongoing disregard for the health +
166 Ibid., 71.

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well-being of all its players. To watch the game is to compromise my beliefs. It’s not worth
it. #ImWithKap.167
The tweet garnered many affective responses in the forms of retweets, and
messages of support as the hashtag quickly made it to the trending section of Twitter. As
more voices engaged with the sentiment the notion of boycotting the viewing of the event,
others urged individuals to donate to certain civil rights organizations in the amount of $7,
symbolic of the athlete’s jersey number:
Figure 6: #ImWithKap Challenge
Papacharissi notes that connective action is often mobilized by network
gatekeepers, or users with broad reaching networks of followers. She argues that,
connective action “attains its own rhythms and patterns, which, on Twitter, are activated
through processes of networked gatekeeping and framing.”168 With the resurgence of these
167 Ava DuVernay. Twitter Post. February 3, 2019. 10:13AM.

https://twitter.com/ava/status/1092093707212312577?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcam
p%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1092093707212312577&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fth
ehill.com%2Fblogs%2Fblog-briefing-room%2Fnews%2F428274-imwithkap-trends-
ahead-of-super-bowl-as-activists-celebrities
113
affective responses, users were able to create, augment, or even disagree with the initial
boycott statements, articulating their personal frames of how they viewed Kaepernick and
the NFL. But within these pluralized narratives, issues of racial equality, justice, morality,
and ethics were discussed, debated, and disseminated as the hashtag continued to be
circulated with these conversations.
Duvernay’s initial tweet urged others to join her in boycotting the viewing
of the Super Bowl, and indeed the event would go on to earn its lowest ratings in 11
years.169 I do not wish to make a causal argument that the low viewership was a direct
result of the connective action by affective publics engaging with #ImWithKap.170
However, I argue connective action had an impact on engaged affective publics, perhaps
persuading many to avoid the spectacle. Additionally, Papacharissi contends that the
declarative action of merely calling for such a boycott is vital in that it gives affective
release to the tensions users encounter in their everyday life dealing with issues of racism.
She explains this eloquently:
Support cannot be directed toward that which has not been verbalized. The act of
declaring affords voice, and voiced declarations are calls that signal other individuals or
publics to join in or keep their distance. In the absence of a declaration, connective action
has no axis around which to form. The more open and inclusive the declaration, the greater
the net that connective action may mobilize. 171
169 Lucy Handley, "Super Bowl Draws Lowest TV Audience in More than a Decade, Early Data Show,"
CNBC, February 05, 2019, , accessed June 19, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/05/super-bowl-draws-
lowest-tv-audience-in-more-than-a-decade-nielsen.html.
170 It was also one of the lowest scoring games in Super Bowl History.
114
Duvernay’s usage of #ImWithKap reignited Kaepernick’s original message,
reimagining its power years after his initial disruptive act, and reopened the call for publics
to join in or reject the quarterback’s initial message. It is here we can see where disruptive
rhetoric differs from acts of outrage, in that it allows for voices to be carried out longer,
and to grow louder over time. The connective action mobilized around #ImWithKap
reveals the potential for disruptive rhetoric to elicit affective responses well after its initial
utterance or performance. This not only creates space for new voices, but also extends the
window of time for them to be heard, echoed, and understood.
“AFFECTIVE PUBLICS ARE POWERED BY AFFECTIVE STATEMENTS OF OPINION, FACT, OR

A BLEND OF BOTH, WHICH IN TURN PRODUCE AMBIENT, ALWAYS-ON FEEDS THAT
FURTHER CONNECT AND PLURALIZE EXPRESSION IN REGIMES DEMOCRATIC AND
OTHERWISE.”
Furthermore, Papacharissi argues that affective publics are diverse, not
homogenous, and require a blending of opinions to sustain an ever-changing stream of
words, images, memes, and hashtags. This diverse polyphony of voices produces an
“ambient, always on environment” that raises awareness about the particular event. Again,
I argue that Kaepernick’s disruptive rhetoric was a unique and essential catalyst in the
production of these diverse opinions, motivating users to engage in affective responses to
his actions. One way we see this aspect is the pluralized contestation of the #TakeTheKnee.
President Trump used his personal twitter account in September 2017 to
again lash out at Kaepernick shortly after criticizing the NFL for not taking a stronger
stance for athletes who did not stand for the anthem. He wrote in typical hyperbolic fashion,
“The issue of kneeling has nothing to do with race. It is about respect for our Country, Flag
and National Anthem. NFL must respect this!” 172 This bombastic claim is pertinent to our
172 Donald Trump. Twitter post. Sept. 25, 2017, 6:39am.

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/912280282224525312?lang=en
115
understanding of affective publics because it puts into question the true meaning of
Kaepernick’s disruptive rhetoric. Tweeting that message caused many users to engage in a
public contestation over what the action represented to them individually. This again was
largely facilitated by network gatekeepers (usually verified Twitter accounts with large
amounts of followers) including their opinions and tagging them with #TakeTheKnee. This
recirculation of the hashtag produced an intense affective display of the disagreement of
Kaepernick’s initial action. Many users participated in this discussion by including the
hashtag, urging NFL players to also take a knee. Amidst this, however, were other publics
arguing that such support was unpatriotic or disrespectful of the country. Katie Hopkins a
political pundit commented, “Breaking news for Kaepernick. You don't have to kneel for
the cameras to make a difference. You can register and vote. #TakeTheKnee” 173 Dinesh
D’Souza, a conservative political pundit, also chimed in stating, “It's time to loudly boo
teams & players who refuse to respect the national anthem—we too can exercise our right
to protest #TakeAKnee”174 Other users incorporated images into their affective responses
as well:
173Veronica Stracqualursi, "#TakeTheKnee Trending Hashtag Reveals Sharp Debate over NFL Players'
Kneeling," ABC News, September 24, 2017, , accessed July 31, 2019, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/nfl-
kneeling-player-debate-draws-sides-trending-taketheknee/story?id=50055177.
174 Ibid.
116
Figure 7: Public Display of Affective Gesture
However, others, including Congressman Ted Lieu, expressed the exact opposite.
Congressman Lieu, an Air Force veteran himself, confronted President Trump in a direct
reply by questioning the president’s credibility to speak on issues of patriotism:
Figure 8: Congressman Ted Lieu Response
Many users also included messages of support for Kaepernick reminding the public
of reasons why the quarterback kneeled with mentions of previous individuals murdered
by police officers.
Figure 9: Sample #TakeTheKnee Response
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Figure 10: Sample #TakeTheKnee Response #2
The usage of video, audio, photos in combination with #TakeTheKnee fueled more
disruptive discussions months after Kaepernick’s original u act. Papacharissi notes that this
“open and polyphonous” hyper blend of opinion and facts affirms “that discordant publics
living in the same world feel and think in markedly distinct ways,” but help us make sense
of movements and events.175 In week 3 of the 2018 NFL season, after Trump’s remarks,
over 100 NFL players took a knee in protest during the singing of the anthem, adding even
more layers of meaning and further discourse for #Taketheknee. 176 The discussion
generated a polyphony affective responses, impassioned opinions, and sharing of facts,

further developing pluralized responses to Kaepernick and keeping publics attuned to his
message of racial justice.

176 Natalie Weiner, "The NFL's Last Men Kneeling," Bleacher Report, January 04, 2018, accessed June
22, 2019, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2752195-the-nfls-last-men-kneeling.
118
“AFFECTIVE PUBLICS TYPICALLY PRODUCE DISRUPTIONS/INTERRUPTIONS OF
DOMINANT POLITICAL NARRATIVES BY PRESENCING UNDERREPRESENTED
VIEWPOINTS.”
Papacharissi writes that affective publics possess the ability to question
overarching political narratives by allowing engaged users to share stories in response to
events and issues. She explains these stories on Twitter persuade through affective
identification, rather than reason or logic, in order to “produce disruptions or interruptions
of dominant political narratives, inviting others to tune and feel their way into their own
place in politics.”177 In the following chapter I will describe more the affective process of
turning “news events” into “news stories.” However, here I argue the mere disruption of
dominant narratives through personalized stories is a vital component of disruptive
rhetoric, and we see evidence in the usage of #VeteransForKaepernick.
A dominant argument against Kaepernick’s disruptive decision was the lack
of respect it showed toward the flag, the country, and consequently members of the
military. Recall that NFL and American sports are ritualistically pious sites of patriotism
and militarization, so actions of dissent before these symbols threaten, or, at the very least
challenge, those dominant hierarchical structures. A Boston Globe article published
immediately after the widespread player protests noted that veterans across the country
were conflicted while viewing the displays of protest. One retired army lieutenant colonel
explained this dismay stating, “It brought me to tears. There’s enough divisiveness in our
country. Don’t bring it to sports.”178 This sentiment was shared by many of Kaepernick’s
critics as the protests began to be labeled as “national anthem protests.” I argue this label

178 Brian MacQuarrie, "Military Veterans Are Divided over NFL Protests - The Boston Globe,"
BostonGlobe.com, September 25, 2017, accessed June 21, 2019,
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/09/25/military/MLjykBWSTbMlWqbaVUAGzI/story.html.
119
intentionally mischaracterized the substance of Kaepernick’s dissent, and in turn produced
a multitude of affective responses focused on publicly supporting the military.
This narrative expanded as President Trump continued to tweet in opposition to the
players’ protests, continually linking the kneeling to disrespect of the military. Press
Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended these statements claiming the president’s
comments were a defense of “our flag and the men and women had fought for it,” and that
it is “always appropriate for the president of the United States to promote our flag and
promote our anthem.”179 Keith Harman, the commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars
organization, was unambiguous in his condemnation of the protests stating:
There is a time and place for civil debate, and wearing team jerseys and using
sporting events to disrespect our country doesn’t wash with millions of military veterans
who have and continue to wear real uniforms on real battlefields around the globe. 180
While the call to “keep politics out of sports” became one of the majority narratives
surrounding the public protests, a smaller contingent took to Twitter to disrupt that notion,
including veterans themselves.
#VeteransForKaepernick became a unique affective response quickly after
Kaepernick’s initial protest. Unlike the networked gatekeeping of #TakeTheKnee, which

saw verified users with large follower bases influencing the spread of an affective response,
the users engaged with this hashtag to share stories of support and solidarity despite their
status as military veterans. These responses typically followed a repeated
179 Leo Shane, III, "VFW, American Legion Slam NFL Players for Anthem Protests," Army Times,
September 25, 2017, accessed June 15, 2019, https://www.armytimes.com/veterans/2017/09/25/vfw-slams-
nfl-players-for-anthem-protests/.
180 Dianna Cahn, "VFW, American Legion: NFL Protests Disrespectful to Vets; Others Disagree," Stars
and Stripes, September 26, 2017, accessed June 23, 2019, https://www.stripes.com/news/us/vfw-american-
legion-nfl-protests-disrespectful-to-vets-others-disagree-1.489529.
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form of sharing photos of the user in military uniform, including a short story of
their service and an expression of solidarity with Kaepernick.
Figure 11: #VeteransForKaepernick Collage
These disruptive, personal affective stories challenged the narrative that
Kaepernick and the ensuing mimetic protests were s aimed at disrespecting veterans and
members of the of the military. Papacharissi states that “these narratives amplify visibility
for viewpoints that were not as prevalent before,” and these voices of veterans were
broadcasted across multiple streams as their tweets were favorited and retweeted by non-
military citizens as well. She also states hashtags and tweets such as these are examples of
a new digital participatory form of storytelling which have the potential to have “more
substantial forms of political impact.” 181 #VeteransforKaepernick continues to be used
today as a marker of dissent and disruption against the dominant discourse that attempted
to confuse the purpose of Kaepernick’s protest. This only further demonstrates the
influence that Kaepernick’s disruptive rhetoric had in terms of shaping a disruptive long-
lasting conversation on social justice.

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“AMBIENT STREAMS SUSTAIN PUBLICS CONVENED AROUND AFFECTIVE
COMMONALITIES: IMPACT IS SYMBOLIC, AGENCY CLAIMED IS SEMANTIC, POWER IS
LIMINAL.”
Finally, I have highlighted the purpose of impious acts is an attempt at
challenging established hierarchies, in effort to symbolically transform perspectives ideally
so that new pieties might be created. Thus, disruptive rhetoric manifests itself symbolically
first, giving affective publics the ability to “play” in the engagement of and interaction with
disruptive symbols. Papacharissi argues that in engaging with affective hashtags users play
with their networked identity, merging private thoughts into public streams, rendering a
version of what she terms the “political self.” Users can enact performances of the political
through engagement with hashtags, articulating thoughts that normally would remain
private. Papacharissi argues that through semantic play “users define the personal as
political and thus lay claim to agency.” 182 While these performances can broadly be
understood as symbolic, they create the potential for challenging established pieties and
dominant narratives of thought materially.
One can see this process of agency through play when examining
#ImWithKap. I argue that using this specific hashtag affords affective individuals the
ability to articulate an identity that is contrarian to dominant narratives shared by
Kaepernick’s critics. To publicly state #ImWithKap is to suggest you symbolically identify

with the quarterback’s political stance, in turn opening oneself up to the criticism
Kaepernick was charged with as well. That is to say, composing a tweet with this hashtag
is in many ways a symbolic, divisive message that is disruptive to dominant narratives.
Replicating this hashtag is also a performative, political act that has the potential for

122
symbolic impact. An advanced search through the Twitter archive reveals a large number
of tweets exhibiting this process in play:
Figure 12: Divisive Tweet Sample #1
123
The affective intensity of these messages is apparent through the emotional charged
language included with the hashtag. Papacharissi notes that this provocative approach is a
clear example of the public performance of play certain hashtags afford:
It is not accidental that these personalized messages seek to presence behaviors
contrarian to dominant narratives of what is appropriate, allowed, or expected. They digress
from the dominant narrative in a manner that is public and are thus inherently politicized.
Provocation is a political act, even if in this case it is presented as a way of crafting a
performance that is more authentic. 183
I argue that public play by affective publics with #ImWithKap becomes a symbolic
statement that represents far more than the issues of justice and equality Kaepernick was
originally concerned about.
The effectiveness of these public articulations of the political self is the
ability for symbols to move across different networks. As Papacharissi notes, “affective
publics evolve within and beyond Twitter,” arguing that affective hashtags can spread out
to different networks such as Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, and Instagram. For example,
in September 2018, Kaepernick announced in an Instagram post a pre-sale for jerseys
emblazoned with #ImWithKap featuring his iconic number 7 and stated 20% of the profits

124
would be donated to his nonprofit civil rights organization. The shirt instantly sold out and
has subsequently been redesigned and repressed many times over to meet the
overwhelming demand.
I argue the act of wearing this shirt or posting photos on networked platforms again
is an example of the affordance that hashtag gives affective individuals agency to feel their
way into a political self beyond just digital networks. One can see this in some sample posts
that reflect the desire to challenge certain expected norms of discourse:
Figure 17: Challenging Norms Sample #1
Figure 18: Challenging Norms Sample #2

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The affective intensity of these public declarations is felt in the notion that the mere
act of wearing the jersey in public is a provocative, political, and polemic act. Some might
maintain that the influence of these acts remains within the symbolic realm, or as
Papacharissi argues they are “liminal” in nature. She explains that affective publics are
only sustainable in length and duration to the point where surrounding factors “permit these
disruptions to become contagious and thus pollute established hierarchies of order.” 184
However, I argue the evidence of hashtags leaving digital networks and manifesting itself
on a physical, public artifact only spreads the possibility for broader engagement of
affective publics. However, the nature of Kaepernick’s act was so disruptive that it has
afforded affective public the ability to engagement and play with it for a period of time far
longer than anyone could have predicted at first. Or as one user succinctly puts it:
Figure 19: Disruptive Engagement
CONCLUSION
Kaepernick’s case study offers dynamic ways of exploring how networked,
affective publics are influenced and motivated by disruptive rhetoric. In the first chapter, I
defined how disruptive rhetoric breaks from traditional norms of decorum thus creating
new spaces for audiences to engage and shape new discursive practices. Kaepernick’s
initial disruptive act even now is still an oft discussed event, linked to the modern rise of
184 Papacharissi, Affective Publics, 132-133.

126
athlete activism which has provided space for more athletes to disrupt, question, and
challenge established pieties. I argue that Kaepernick’s disruptive rhetorical act is essential
for understanding how networked, affective publics form and coalesce in today’s hyper-
technological world. I suggest that this chapter offers new perspectives on how disruptive
rhetoric incorporates understandings of impiety, digital networks, and affective publics.
This case study demonstrates how disruptive rhetoric functions by first
offering impious acts before established hierarchical structures, utilizes digital networks,
and offers structural space for affective publics to feel out the socio-political issues of
everyday situations. Colin Kaepernick is not the first athlete to publicly protest against
issues of justice, police brutality, and systemic racism, and he assuredly will not be the last.
But his story offers us a digital snapshot of what these protests might look like in the future
and provides a blueprint for future activists to replicate and repeat. One might argue that
his dissent did not structurally alter anything, but the symbolic impact of his act will disrupt
future discourses and dialogue for many years to come. Kaepernick’s case offers us the
vision to understand how to merge public issues into private spaces. And in the process,
blur the distinctions even further so that we might disrupt normative practices to open the
possibility for new perspectives, for better futures.
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Chapter 4: The Pussy Riot Case Study
It's not a question of courage, it's a question of your personal development, because
everything interesting begins with conflict. It can be personal conflict and it can be public
conflict, but the conflict forces you to grow up, pushes you to understand something. If you
just have a comfortable life you start to degrade.185
The above quote is from Maria “Masha” Alyokhina a member of the
political activist group collectively known as Pussy Riot. The group became infamous for
their 2012 public protest of the Vladimir Putin administration that eventually reached a
global audience after going viral on the internet. I include the above quote because it relates
well to the inquiry of disruptive rhetoric’s rhetorical utility, precisely because it reveals the
ever-increasing blurriness of what is considered public and private. If one were to substitute
her usage of “conflict” with “disruption” we can begin to see how the case of Pussy Riot
is an exemplary moment of disruptive rhetoric. If impious actions before established
hierarchies create ruptures that affective publics can gravitate towards to, then Pussy Riot’s
disruptive rhetoric provides this present study a generative situation to explore in detail.
CASE IN CONTEXT
On February 21, 2012, two weeks before the presidential election in Russia, three
women offered up a punk prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. Adorned
in colorful ski masks the women pantomimed an energetic performance featuring fist
punches into the air and jumped atop the empty cathedral altar. Later that evening, the
185 Greg Williams, "Meet Pussy Riot, They Break the Rules," WIRED, October 04, 2017, accessed June
11, 2019, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/break-the-rules-pussy-riot.
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troupe spliced together footage of the protest and edited it to their song entitled, “Punk
Prayer: Mother of God, Drive Putin Away.” The video went viral causing controversy
nationwide with many citing the sacrilegious nature of the clip as an insult to their religious
beliefs.186 In a matter of a few days, a criminal investigation was opened against the
collective known as Pussy Riot, charging them with “hooliganism.” After a lengthy and
contentious trial, they were convicted and sentenced to two years in a penal colony. The
music video, trial, and sentencing of Pussy Riot was extremely controversial. One national
Russian public opinion poll reported over 51% of respondents claiming they “disliked” the
group, were “annoyed” by them, or simply “could not say anything good about them.”187
The discourse that circulated around the event bifurcated the Russian public. But Pussy
Riot was not an isolated controversy, in fact, I argue it should be understood as a globalized
disruptive event.
The viral punk prayer created international controversy with many public groups
outside of Russia condemning the treatment and excessive punishment of the three Pussy
Riot members put on trial. The international attention to the protest and resulting trial
revealed an unsettling reality of the strength of the Putin administration to stifle any form
of free speech. Scholar Leonid Storch argued that the arrest and trial signaled the full
transition of the Putin administration to a domineering, authoritarian regime. 188 Several

international human rights agencies raised concerns to European governing bodies of the
186186 Kathy Lally and Monica Hesse, "Pussy Riot Generates Outrage in Russia, Acclaim in the West,"
The Washington Post, June 09, 2013, accessed July 7, 2019,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/pussy-riot-generates-outrage-in-russia-acclaim-in-the-
west/2013/06/09/c287c842-d127-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html?utm_term=.d785b86362b1.
187 Levada Analytical Center, “Russian Public Opinion 2012-2013,” January, 2013,
http://www.levada.ru/sites/default/files/2012_eng.pdf
188 Leonid Storch, “The Pussy Riot Case: Anti-Westernism in the Paradigm of the Beilis Trial,” Russian
Politics & Law 51, no. 6 (November 2013): 8–44, https://doi.org/10.2753/RUP1061-
1940510601.
129
treatment of the three women while they were incarcerated. Hundreds of newspaper and
magazine articles, news programs, and documentaries were published examining the state
of democracy in autocratic Russia, critiquing the administration for corruption, oppression,
and violation of basic liberties. In the end, though, the efforts of Pussy Riot to influence
the election were not successful: Putin won the election and remains in that position today.
However, the members of Pussy Riot remain adamant today that their actions had a
constitutive effect on the social movement against the Putin administration.
The case study of Pussy Riot’s disruptive display is a representative example of
how protest can function in today’s hypermediated and globalized world. One should view
the disruptive rhetoric of Pussy Riot as a subset within outrage culture that aims to avoid
many of the negative attributes outrage rhetoric fall victim to. Pussy Riot demanded an
international audience pay attention to the relationship between organized religion and
Russian state politics by violating the sacred space of a chapel.
Member Yekaterina Samutsevich summed up their ordeal in a later interview stating:
We wanted to start a discussion in society, show our negative view of the merging
of the church and state ... The problem was raised internationally, the problem of human
rights was put sharply into focus.”1
She adds that because public protests in Russia are often broken up and protesters
quickly arrested, Russia needed a new form of protest. She concludes by declaring that
their goal was “to change Russia through radical protest.”2
This chapter explains how Pussy Riot’s disruptive rhetoric invited affective
responses, sustained public discourse, and allowed audiences in turn to assign meaning to
their actions. Before looking at how that discourse took shape through digital networked
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technologies, I will examine exactly why their punk prayer offered within the cathedral
halls was an impious act before the established hierarchy of their rhetorical situation.
IMPIOUS PRAYERS
To understand the hierarchical structures Pussy Riot was protesting against
as pious, one must take stock of the initial socio-political context the women found
themselves in. In order to do this, one must start with the physical location of the “Punk
Prayer” itself—the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. Journalist Paul Croyer writes
that little attention has been paid to the intersection of the Vladimir Putin’s regime and its
exploitation of religion as a galvanizing instrument of Russian exceptionalism and
nationalism.189 The history of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is one fraught with
conflict especially during the 70 plus years of soviet rule where “The Church was severely
oppressed, with many of its clergy imprisoned, tortured and/or executed.” 190 In the wake
of the fall of the Soviet Union, the ROC worked determinedly to rebuild its influence on
the Russian state, Coyer contends. In 1997, the ROC pushed the Russian government to
pass a law that prevented certain religious groups from practicing freely within the country.
This was an effort to reduce the influence of “foreign” religious organizations such as
Catholic or Protestant affiliates, rendering them incapable of expansion or development
within the newly formed Russian government. This law also gave government the ability
to ban certain religious groups and/or followers if they were found guilty of “undermining
the social order; igniting social, racial, national or religious dissension; forcing a family to
189 Paul Coyer, "(Un)Holy Alliance: Vladimir Putin, The Russian Orthodox Church And Russian
Exceptionalism," Forbes, May 31, 2015, accessed July 08, 2019,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulcoyer/2015/05/21/unholy-alliance-vladimir-putin-and-the-russian-
orthodox-church/#3c86016c27d5 .
190 Ibid.
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disintegrate,” or, “inflicting damage ... on the morality or health of citizens.”191 Coyer
writes that this gifted the ROC a tremendous amount of agency in shaping the landscape
of the newly reformed Russian national culture.
Though not president when this law was passed, President Putin would later
latch onto the resurgence of the ROC as a valuable instrument to spread Russian
nationalism and took steps in aiding their rebuilding as an extension of his oligarchy. This
symbolic combination has led to the understanding of many as Putin as a semi-religious
figure for many modern day Russians with a vast majority (estimated 68-90%) identifying
as members of the ROC. 192 Additionally, Putin’s regime has made a concerted effort in
rebuilding and returning church property damaged or taken during the USSR years,
restoring the ROC not only as a cultural symbol but also another exemplar of national
exceptionalism. This intertwined connection of trust between the political regime of Putin
and the religious organization of the ROC established a strong hierarchical system of power
that enforced adherence to the rituals and norms of religious conservatism.
Thus, we can begin to look at how Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer” was a violent
disruption of the pious structures embedded within Russian culture by again returning
focus to Kenneth Burke’s understanding of impiety. Burke defined piety as a sense of
“what goes with what” and this understanding applies impeccably to this particular case
study. The ROC’s relationship with the powerful, authoritarian regime demands deference
to the established norms and customs of the Russian culture. Pussy Riot’s impiety offered
audiences the opportunity to reexamine "one's orientations from the past," or to question
191 Mark Elliott and Sharyl Corrado, “The 1997 Russian Law on Religion: The Impact on Protestants,”
Religion, State and Society 27, no. 1 (March 1999): 109–34, https://doi.org/10.1080/096374999106773.
192 Coyer, “(Un)Holy Alliance.”
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the "kinds of linkage already established.” 193 I argue that Pussy Riot’s public performance
of their “Punk Prayer” was a disruptive rhetorical act that probed the linkages of the ROC
and the authoritarian Putin regime. The song’s lyrics in context with their socio-political
conditions offer what Burke has also termed “perspective by incongruity.”194 Burke writes
that the impious practice of perspective by incongruity is “a method for gauging situations
by verbal ‘atom cracking’,” which entails linking previously unrelated frames of
understanding to reveal new ways of looking at situations.
One can understand Pussy Riot’s impiety case by examining their “Punk
Prayer” song more closely. To begin, the notion of a “punk” prayer already causes one to
reflect on the unnatural juxtaposition of the two words. Punk as a musical genre and style
often reflects an anti-authoritarian stance towards established, dominant hierarchies
whether those be religious, political, or cultural. In the context of Pussy Riot’s song lyrics,
we can already see this tension or incongruity:
Virgin birth-giver of God, drive away Putin!
Drive away Putin, drive away Putin!
Black frock, golden epaulettes
Parishioners crawl bowing [toward the priest, during the Eucharist]

Freedom's ghost [has gone to] heaven
A gay-pride parade [has been] sent to Siberia in shackles
Their chief saint is the head of the KGB
He leads a convoy of protestors to jail
193 Kenneth Burke, Permanence & Change An Anatomy of Purpose (Third Edition), (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984): 80-87.
194 Kenneth Burke, Attitudes toward History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984): 308.
133
So as not to insult the Holiest One
Woman should bear children and love
Shit, shit, the Lord's shit!
Shit, shit, the Lord's shit!
Virgin birth-giver of God, become a feminist!
Become a feminist, become a feminist!
The Church praises rotten leaders
The march of the cross consists of black limousines
A preacher is on his way to your school
Go to class and give him money!
Patriarch Gundyay believes in Putin
Would be better, the bitch, if he believed in God!
The Virgin's belt won't replace political gatherings
The eternal Virgin Mary is with us in our protests! 195
One recognizes the strange placement and mixture of profane and sacred
vocabulary. Pussy Riot, seriously or not, entreats the sacred figure of Mother Mary to drive
Putin away in the opening line and quickly rejects the practices of the ROC as merely
“shit.” Burke writes that part of perspective by incongruity requires a process of taking a
specific term that “belongs by custom to a certain category” and in turn attempt to “wrench
it loose and metaphorically apply it to a different category.” 196 We see this occur as Pussy
Riot utilize lyrics and vocabulary that plucks the sacred and places it within profane and
195 Jeffrey Tayler, "What Pussy Riot's 'Punk Prayer' Really Said," The Atlantic, November 08, 2012,
accessed July 01, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/what-pussy-riots-punk-
prayer-really-said/264562/.
196 Burke, Attitudes Toward History, 308.
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political spheres. They beg for Virgin Mary to become a feminist, they purport the church
leadership’s connection to the KGB, and call the patriarch a female derogatory term,
putting in doubt his belief in God.
Furthermore, the language present throughout the chaotic, bombastic burst offers
what Burke terms “casuistic stretching,” or the re-interpretation of “new situations by
removing words from their ‘constitutional’ setting.”197 This process, for Burke, is an
attempt to transcend a given perspective by “accurately naming a situation already
demoralized by inaccuracy.”198 The interplay of religious imagery to describe the deeply
embedded political corruption within the ROC and subsequently stretches again the form
and expectation of a traditional prayer. This is an attempt to resituate the presence of
religion within Russian politics and culture. The line “Black frock, golden epaulettes,”
evokes the traditional garb worn by Orthodox priests, but also insinuates a connection to
the KGB uniforms. 199 Taking it further, they casuistically stretch the idea that the “chief
saint,” is head of the KGB, rhetorically aligning the ROC as nothing more than a
government extension of oppression and corruption.
However, the lyrics are not the only factor at play in Pussy Riot’s attempt at
perspective by incongruity. The location and musical form also seek to disrupt the pious
understanding of what goes with what. Pussy Riot offer the refrain of “Virgin birth-giver
of God, drive away Putin! Drive away Putin, drive away Putin!” in the musical styling of
a traditional Orthodox chant. The melody sung by an all-female choir is immediately
followed by the verses performed in a traditional “punk” sound with wailing guitars,
197 Ibid., 309.

198 Ibid., 309.
199 Jeffrey Taylor, a contributing editor for The Atlantic, notes that “With the collapse of the Soviet
Union, many Russian Orthodox priests were denounced as having collaborated with country's most feared
spy agency. In fact, the current Patriarch Kirill I stands accused by journalists, the Helsinki Group (a
prominent Russian human rights organization), and, of course, Pussy Riot, of working with the KGB.
135
screeching vocals, and frantic, thrashing percussion. This musical atom cracking again asks
audiences to reconcile the preconceived notion of what a religious prayer/song consists of,
in turn asking them to reassess the new perspective of the ROC and Putin’s purported
partnership. I argue the dichotomy of the harmonious, comforting dirge in concert with the
chaotic punk instrumentation rips audiences from their constitutional setting. It is an
unsettling and disruptive listener experience.
While the lyrics and instrumentation of “Punk Prayer” both provide perspective by
offering incongruous religious and political imagery, it is perhaps the physical, public
performance of the group that truly communicates the disruptive elements to their
audience. The visuals of the group dancing and moshing clad in bright colored baklava
masks and neon-colored streetwear is a shocking image in contrast to the sober opulence
of the cathedral. This juxtaposition, or incongruity, was intentionally planned by the
members as articulated by Samutsevich in an interview:
[In] our performance we dared, without the Patriarch’s blessing, to combine the
visual images of Orthodox culture and protest culture, suggesting that Orthodox culture
belongs not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch and Putin, that it might
also take the side of civic rebellion and protest in Russia.200
The dress, the movement, and the physical presence of their bodies shocked and
horrified many Russians deeming it an outrageously impious act. One prominent blogger
summarized the impact the performance and subsequent video had on the viewing
audience:
200 Samutsevich, E. (2012) Closing Statement. Available from: http://freepussyriot.org/content/katja-

samutsevich%E2%80%99s- closing-statement-criminal-case-against-feminist-punk-group-pussy-riot
136
the main thing is that they not do this sort of thing in the church—not lift their legs
in such an obscene and filthy way in that wild dance of theirs, not make faces wearing their
masks when at the ambo—at that place held holy by all Orthodox believers, to which
believers only raise their eyes with utmost piety.201
The defiant display in a sacred place again reveals the perspective by incongruity
of Pussy Riot’s disruptive act. The sanctified ambo juxtaposed by bodies covered, yet still
provocative, challenged norms of decorum associated with Russian Orthodoxy.
Feminist scholar Elena Gapova argues that for members of the ROC, places like
the Cathedral of Christ are not considered public spaces (although much of Pussy Riot’s
legal defense suggested as such), but rather cathedrals are representative of the body of
Jesus Christ or a “theandric organism” a symbolic unification of God and humans 202 As
such, Pussy Riot’s punk and feminine display was a desecration in the face of what is
considered holy by members of the religion. Critical scholar Katharina Wiedlack argues
that “Pussy Riot’s performances and their choice of attire,” should be viewed “as a
discussion of female gender roles, social norms, and femininity within contemporary
Russia,” and that this conversation is a questioning or challenging of the traditional roles
of females in Russian culture. 203 Wiedlack along with scholar Masha Neufeld point to
public blog posts Pussy Riot wrote themselves, acknowledging their presence before the
altar was a disruption of pious norms:
201 Danilin, Pavel. 2012. “O Stinge i Chilly Pepperzah.” [“About Sting and Chilly Peppers.”] Comments.
Accessed June 23, 2014. http://leteha.livejournal.com/1547375.html
202 Elena Gapova, “Becoming Visible in The Digital Age: The Class and Media Dimensions of the Pussy
Riot Affair,” Feminist Media Studies 15, no. 1 (January 2, 2015): 18–35,
https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2015.988390.
203 Katharina Wiedlack, “Pussy Riot and the Western Gaze: Punk Music, Solidarity and the Production of
Similarity and Difference,” Popular Music and Society 39, no. 4 (August 7, 2016): 410–22,
https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2015.1088281.
137
For we, the feminists, will do our service—the punk prayer—in front of the altar,
because women are not allowed there. If... the Mother God would enter the Church, she
wouldn’t be allowed to enter the altar area. 204
Again, this quote reveals another attempt to casuistically stretch the role of what
females are able to do in public, sacred spaces.
It should be noted that Pussy Riot’s disruptive display is often
mischaracterized as an indictment of the ROC as a whole. But as Wiedlack and Neufeld
contend, the perspective by incongruity the women articulated is much more nuanced than
that. They argue that the punk prayer was an intercession that candidly, if not offensively,
addressed “the connection from the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church of Moscow,
Patriarch Kirill, to the political regime” of Vladimir Putin in an attempt to raise awareness
to a broader audience and protest the corruption within this amoral partnership. 205 Their
impious actions created a wave of outrage from ardent or longstanding members of the
ROC. But their impiety had other rhetorical effects.
Across the globe, many networked groups began to form affective publics on digital
platforms, citing solidarity with the then imprisoned group charged with hooliganism.
Many scholars argue that this solidarity ignored, or redefined, the true impetus for the
group’s initial protest. However, I suggest it is worth investigating how their disruptive act
provided the catalyst for affective publics to form, regardless of whether this solidarity was
misguided or missed the original protest of Pussy Riot. What is important is to again trace
204 Pussy Riot. 2014. Pussy Riot Livejournal, [blog], http://pussy-riot.livejournal.com.

205 Katharina Wiedlack and Masha Neufeld, “Lost in Translation? Pussy Riot Solidarity Activism and the
Danger of Perpetuating North/Western Hegemonies,” Religion and Gender 4, no. 2 (February 19, 2014):
145–65, https://doi.org/10.1163/18785417-00402005.
138
the forms and discourses of these affective publics to further understand how disruptive
rhetoric shapes discursive practices around issues of social justice. I argue these digital
affective publics were complex, and potentially problematic as they sometimes projected
a “Western-gaze” onto the issues of the Russian activists. Nevertheless, they also reveal
the possibility for broader audiences to coalesce and discuss complex topics that interrupt
and disrupt everyday life, even if those issues are across the globe.
NETWORKED PUSSY RIOT PUBLICS
Central to this project is the notion that disruptive rhetoric is unique to our current
historical situation because of the ability for digital networks to not only aggregate non-
normative discourses, but also disseminate them across broader audiences faster and
further than other mediated forms from before. This facet of my analysis proves useful with
Pussy Riot’s case study as well, in that without the aid of digital networks their disruptive
rhetorical act might not have circulated as effectively and efficiently as it did. Returning to
boyd’s work, we can examine the four affordances digital networks offer publics in order
to understand how they might have facilitated the interactions of audiences engaging with
Pussy Riot’s impious message.
First, we look to see how digital networks afforded persistence for the Pussy Riot
case. Recall in the case of Kaepernick, Twitter provided an archive from which one could
use to track and trace the development of his particular disruption. Twitter of course
remains an active archive allowing one to trace back the persistent data that remains from
disruptive rhetorical events like Pussy Riot’s. While Twitter also is pertinent to this case
study, one aspect that makes Pussy Riot slightly different from Kaepernick is the wide
variety of digital platforms that audiences actively interfaced with during the arrest and
imprisonment of the activist group. This is not to say Kaepernick’s cause was not dispersed
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across other platforms than Twitter as well, but unique to Pussy Riot was its emphasis on
visual interpretations by users. As I will examine more in detail later, #freepussyriot
became a tag that was malleable in its usage, able to be affixed to images, tweets, blog
posts, clothing, and video clips, leaving a dense digital trail of data to sift through. Of
course, one of the primary ways Pussy Riot first reached audiences was through the
utilization of YouTube. Their provocative videos (both the edited “Punk Prayer” and the
live footage clip) all spread virally across the video clip social network, and though were
taken down by YouTube eventually, users were able to distribute digital copies that still
persist on the platform nearly 7 years later. 206
The second affordance boyd describes within digital networks is the ability for data
to be duplicated. Digitally, we see evidence of this in the networked publics engagement
with the particular hashtags #pussyriot and #freepussyriot. These hashtags were duplicated
as data and content were disseminated across a plethora of networks such as Tumblr,
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. For example, YouTube’s user interface
allows users to “share” the group’s video and embed it onto other digital networks such as
Tumblr or Facebook, thus allowing other users to duplicate and share those posts as well.
The ability to duplicate #pussyriot and #freepussyriot allowed the message to proliferate
across a variety of digital mediums. In fact, with the passage of time the videos have been
shared and duplicated so much, no original video remains from the groups original channel
as of this writing; only digital copies of copies exist, making it virtually impossible to know
how many have viewed the video.
206 For reference: Imjustevil666, YouTube, March 10, 2012, accessed June 06, 2019,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALS92big4TY and Timurnechaev77, YouTube, July 02, 2012,
accessed July 09, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grEBLskpDWQ&t=10s.
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Furthermore, boyd contends that digital networks allow a scalability previously not
available in traditional media channels. Here, we can again point to the usage of YouTube
as a significant, influencing factor on the scalability of Pussy Riot’s public display of
dissent. The initial physical protest by the members of the activist group lasted less than
60 seconds, before guards ushered and chased the women out of the cathedral. Yet, the
circulation of the video and previous videos uploaded by the group allowed the message to
scale to an international audience at an extremely fast rate. I recognize that traditional,
mainstream media outlets aided in the dissemination of the group’s message as well. But
digital networks allowed for a much broader reach of the initial punk prayer, simply due to
the guerilla nature of the public protest, as seen by the millions of views the videos
received.
Last, boyd contends that searchability is a key affordance offered by digital
networks allowing users to go watch as disruptions happen in real time, but also the ability
to look for evidence of events in the past. Of course, Pussy Riot’s presence on Twitter was
largely sustained by the searchability and the tagging of updates for the imprisoned
activists. Additionally, YouTube became a vital digital network for users to search through
and tag videos with #pussyriot or #freepussyriot, making it easier for individuals to
discover the clips as well. Moreover, because search has become a foundational activity
and feature of networked publics, the connection between international audiences and
Pussy Riot allowed for a perceived intimacy with the collective.
It is clear that networked publics emerged in the wake of Pussy Riot’s disruptive,
impious act. The four affordances that networked publics offer users in today’s
technological world have changed the way one can feel their way into an event like Pussy
Riot’s case. I now seek to examine the affective responses in order to trace and understand
what rippling effects Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer” had on digitally networked publics. In
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order to do this, we again will look at Papacharissi’s understanding of affective publics and
how “news” can morph into “affective stories.”
AFFECTIVE STORYTELLING THROUGH NEWS
Pussy Riot’s initial disruptive rhetorical act created space for networked publics to
emerge from. These affective publics started forming and circulating their messages right
after the music video clip went viral and continued to expand during the daily buildup to
the trial. One rippling effect of Pussy Riot’s disruption was awareness of the group and
their message which only escalated each day as the likelihood of serious repercussions
increased. The digital sharing of their disruptive rhetorical event transformed into stories
that symbolized how publics engaged with the group, their “Punk Prayer,” and their
subsequent imprisonment.
I argue the digital platform of Twitter enabled the discourse surrounding the
activists to materialize as a news story, shared by affective publics through attunement and
shared responses. This affective public emergence included a pronounced declaration of
values embedded within tweets using the hashtags #pussyriot and #freepussyriot. In
searching through the Twitter archive and applying a critical reading of the themes
emergent from hundreds of tweets from July 31, 2012 to August 31, 2012, I discovered
key values embraced by affective individuals tweeting about Pussy Riot. These values echo
many of the same sentiments Papacharissi analyzed in stories that developed during the
#egypt political uprising in 2011.
FROM NEWS EVENTS TO NEWS STORYTELLING
Papacharissi argues that media outlets often attempt to communicate values
to audiences. She argues that certain values prioritize how media outlets will report,
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research, and translate news events to audiences across the world. Recently, however, with
the emergence of digital networks, typical news events are able to shift into what
Papacharissi terms “news storytelling.” She argues that news stories, facilitated by the
collaborative networking of digital platforms create the possibility for publics to feel their
way into stories. Subsequently, digital platforms afford publics affective structures that can
reveal values that are pertinent to individuals within these contexts. Papacharissi explains
that because structures of feeling are collaborative in nature, novel patterns of engagement
can develop:
News storytelling, then, becomes the process of turning news events into stories,
practiced collaboratively through the accumulation of 140-character updates in the context
of Twitter, where news may be broadcast instantaneously, and stories develop organically
and collaboratively.207
Whereas traditional media institutions have valued objectivity, fact checking, and
rigorous sourcing of information, news stories respond in real time to how publics feel
about disruptive rhetorical events. Individuals now seek non-traditional forms of news
reporting that is perhaps more in line with their needs or values when certain stories
become important to them.

Previously, I argued the disruptive action of Pussy Riot was an impious act
before the established hierarchy of the ROC and the Putin administration. The news of the
event, their arrest, and lead up to their trial is a generative example for exploring how
affective publics began to transform their disruptive event into a disruptive news story. I
argue as public awareness of Pussy Riot’s imprisonment heightened, the tone of the

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discourse surrounding the group revealed a strong value of protection of human rights and
freedom of speech, or the ability for disenfranchised citizens to critique their governmental
leadership. By examining the collaborative hashtag #pussyriot and #freepussyriot, we can
understand how the discourse that circulated around Pussy Riot allowed users to blend
opinion and fact thus “reflecting deeply subjective accounts and interpretations of events
as they unfolded.”208 The story became less about corruption of a theocratic government
and how publics felt affectively about the values of human rights and freedom of speech in
regards to Pussy Riot.
In analyzing the aforementioned hashtags, similar emergent values that
Papacharissi discovered in #egypt storytelling became prevalent within the discourse of
these affectively attuned publics on the digital network of Twitter. The three values I now
seek to examine in more detail are “instantaneity,” the “crowd-sourcing of elites,” and
“solidarity.” Using the archival search tool for Twitter, I gathered and examined thousands
of tweets from July 31, 2012, to August 23, 2012, a crucial time for the news story of Pussy
Riot. I argue during this period the build-up and affective release became most prominent
because of the highly publicized trial and manifested itself in three themes: instantaneity,
the crowd-sourcing of elites, and solidarity.
INSTANTANEITY IN THE PUSSY RIOT TRIAL
An immediate value that emerges from the collection of tweets utilizing
#pussyriot or #freepussyriot during this time period is that of instantaneity. Papacharissi
defines this affective attribute as a way to “describe the drama of events unfolding, being
recorded, and being reported instantly through processes that instantly turn events into
stories.” At the time of Pussy Riot’s disruptive rhetorical act Twitter’s userbase had just

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surpassed 130 million monthly active users. This userbase began to change how events
were “live-tweeted” and subsequently became stories that trended on a global scale. 209
Papacharissi writes that a value of news as storytelling is the notion that audiences or
publics feel that they are “there” wherever “there” may be. In order to facilitate the
circulation of this affect, tweets often focus on the temporal elements of the event. She
notes that certain words that evoke instantaneity are often expressed with terms like “now,”
“live,” “happening now,” and link to other sites that might offer up-to-the-minute coverage.
The value of instantaneity was expressed explicitly throughout the buildup
and throughout the Pussy Riot trial. The buildup to the trial includes numerous tweets
mentioning how the instant updates of the proceedings would be communicated live to
audiences worldwide. Journalists, both amateur and professionally affiliated, utilized the
growing userbase’s desire to stay informed by using many of the same terms Papacharissi
described in her previous analyses:
Figure 20: Instantaneity Sample #1
209 https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-
users/
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The temporal aspect of the coverage reflects the affective desire to be connected to
the court case despite being physically or spatially disconnected from the story itself. Some
affectively charged individuals also expressed the desire to stay attuned to the developing
story changed how they felt from moment to moment:
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The affective displays of frustration, anger, or resentment towards the Russian court
and trial process is palpable through many of the shared, hashtagged tweets. One can also
detect a notion of how publics should affectively respond to the instantaneous appeals of
the tweets. These tweets ask publics to “follow,” “spread the word,” The omnipresent flow
of instantaneous information from the trial became so widespread that journalists were
eventually prohibited from disseminating information live during the daily courtroom
sessions:
Figure 24: Courtroom Tweet
Despite this order, journalists and even members of the defense continued to tweet
out messages updating publics of the progress and eventually the verdict of the trial:
Figure 25: Verdict Tweet
Papacharissi writes that the value of instantaneity “instantly turns events into
stories,” and that this “exposes the temporal incompatibility of Twitter with our
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conventional definitions of what is news, what separates fact from opinion, and subjectivity
from objectivity.”210 The value of instant connection is commensurate with how I have
argued disruptive rhetoric functions in an age of outrage. Reactions to these stories are
rapid and incessant, especially when the disruption shifts perspectives on previously
established hierarchies much like Pussy Riot did. The value of instantaneity is still shared
by traditional media outlets who all too often now use the “Breaking News” label on events
that happen throughout the world. But unlike these outlets, Twitter as a digital platform
affords affective publics what Papacharissi describes as “constancy” providing a digital
pulse to stories that publics are drawn to and can influence through engagement as they
develop.
CHECKMARKED ELITES
Instantaneity became an emergent value that helped shape the Pussy Riot
case as a news story felt by a networked public, but it was not the only aspect of the
affective response that aided in this evolution. The presence of “crowdsourced elites”
helped shape the Pussy Riot case into a news story regarding freedom of speech and human
rights. During their imprisonment, several stories of abuse and harm were released
suggesting the three women were living in less than humane conditions. As the story gained
more presence and reached larger networks, two emergent groups of crowdsourced elites
facilitated the circulation and dissemination of hashtags that raised the awareness of the
Pussy Riot case. This shifted the disruptive nature of their act to an emphasis on the values
of human rights and political self-expression.
Papacharissi refers to these groups as crowdsourced elites, however I would like to
term them as checkmarked elites, in reference to the blue checkmark next to their

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usernames, which gives the designation of an official “verified” account. Verified twitter
accounts are an official status marker controlled solely by the Twitter corporation, which
identifies accounts as authentic and thus suggests their content carries more importance
than a nonverified user. Papacharissi notes that it is normal for “elite news organizations”
to dominate new stories because of the vast amount of followers retweeting and engaging
with their content. However, I argue that checkmarked elites also have the ability to
significantly influence the tone of the discourse because of their perceived elevated status.
In my analysis of the tweets using #pussyriot and #freepussyriot, two groups stood out as
influential voices in the developing news story as checkmarked elites: human rights
organizations and global celebrities. Both of these groups featured a checkmarked elite
status that was able to engage users on Twitter, but also trickle out into other media sources
such as blogs, online news articles, and television news programs. These checkmarked
elites served as “network gatekeepers,” that offered a “hybrid set of news values” which in
turn allowed “fluid storytelling hierarchies to emerge.”
Human rights organizations quickly picked up on the Pussy Riot case as it
became clear it had developed into a serious abuse of power by the Russian government.
Though the cathedral “Punk Prayer” was intended to reveal the layers of corruption within
the ROC and its connection to Putin’s oligarchy, the story began to focus on the harm
inflicted upon the disruptive protestors. One notable checkmarked elite organization that
dominated this shift was Amnesty International. This checkmarked account became a
highly influential force due to its large number of followers but also its linked network of
regionally focused amnesty accounts. All of these checkmarked elite accounts refocused
the Pussy Riot debacle into a story of human rights abuses, allowing space for affective
publics to feel their way into an otherwise foreign, obscure story. Sample tweets pulled
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from historical searches reveal what this refocusing looked like, entreating publics to
retweet the hashtags and demand justice for the women of Pussy Riot:
Figure 26: Checkmarked Elite Sample #1
Figure 28: Checkmarked Sample #3
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These tweets demonstrate how rhetoric and values shifted the initial disruptive
action of Pussy Riot from that of a religious/technocratic critique to an overt repudiation
of “Russian Authorities” and “Kremlin Russia.” Furthermore, tweets such as the one
stating that “Punk Rock is Not a Crime” are representative of the transformation of this
news story being linked to a “punk rock” act of feminism. Scholar Elizabeth Groeneveld
argues interpretations such as this represent “a Western understanding” of Pussy Riot’s
feminism as a “hackneyed offshoot” of the Riot Grrrl punk movement. 211 I will return later
to the “Western” critique Groeneveld offers, but it should be noted that this framing put
Pussy Riot into a context that affective publics could gravitate towards, with the aid of
checkmarked elites.
Other human rights advocacy groups continued to perpetuate the news story
of a feminist/humanistic cause urging connective and collective action on the parts of
publics engaged within their digital networks:
211 Elizabeth Groeneveld, “Are We All Pussy Riot? On Narratives of Feminist Return and the Limits of
Transnational Solidarity,” Feminist Theory 16, no. 3 (December 2015): 289–307,
https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700115604134.
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Both of these sample tweets reveal again how checkmarked elite gatekeepers
pushed the story to value the case as an issue of human rights, insinuating they were
charged with a “#hatecrime” and suggesting that connective action in the form of online
petitioning could remedy the situation
The storytelling focus on the human rights implications of Pussy Riot’s
disruptive rhetoric was prioritized by checkmarked elite human rights groups across the
Twitter network. Here, I suggest an additional sub-group of checkmarked elites were
instrumental in shaping the story of Pussy Riot as well: celebrity public figures. While
awaiting trial, Maria Alyokhina began a hunger strike in protest of her poor imprisoned
conditions. Quickly, musician Paul McCartney penned and open letter to Russian
authorities urging her release out on parole. 212 This public gesture became a common
occurrence as other actors, musicians, and public figures began to openly urge transparency
and justice for the women arrested for hooliganism. This trend continued onto digital
212 Erin Coulehan, "Paul McCartney Supports Pussy Riot in Letters to Russian Authorities," Rolling
Stone, May 23, 2013, accessed June 06, 2019, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/paul-
mccartney-supports-pussy-riot-in-letters-to-russian-authorities-249342/.
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platforms like Twitter, where celebrities could inform publics of their support for Pussy
Riot by using #pussyriot and #freepussyriot. These constant and varied voices furthered
the development of a story of three wrongfully accused women being maltreated by the
Russian Government:
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This eclectic blend of politicians, actors, and famous musicians shaped the story by framing
the Pussy Riot trial as a human rights tragedy and a severe blow to freedom of speech.
Additionally, tweets from this subset of checkmarked elites gave space for
unverified twitter users to then reply, discuss, and engage with this story in these
hashtagged tweets. This affective news storytelling allowed checkmarked elites and
unverified users to blend a combination of facts, opinions, memes, and emotions to
understand the Pussy Riot saga as something that mattered to them, personally. I argue this
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hybrid formation of values is unique in that affective publics created organic engagement
and understanding only when disruptive rhetoric started to shift established hierarchies.
These charged responses then can get retweeted, replied to, re-memed, thus expanding the
vast network of subjective, affective publics.
This follows Papacharissi’s understanding of how networked elites interact with
individuals, in turn broadening the impact of a hashtagged news story. She writes that these
framing of news events as stories happens when publics “blur personal with objective,
emotion with meaning, opinion with reporting, and affective with cognitive flows of
information.” Checkmarked elites had a pivotal role of structuring the expression of values
of the Pussy Riot story as it emerged. But, affective nonverified individuals also shared in
further framing the story as an issue of human rights abuses and suppression of freedom of
speech.
SOLIDARITY
The third value that manifests itself when examining the discourse centering
around #pussyriot and #freepussyriot is a strong affective display of solidarity. This value
sustained and allowed a feeling of intimacy with Pussy Riot during their struggles.
Statements of solidarity display how individuals found identification with Pussy Riot, and
encouraged their fight, despite not fully grasping the intentions or message of the Russian
activists. This solidarity can also be considered as another instance of perspective by
incongruity, in that these messages of solidarity described how they felt similar to or
unified with Pussy Riot. Obviously, this symbolic affective display of unity is incongruous
with reality, these unverified users were indeed not Pussy Riot. However, though their
Western gaze, many users expressed a sentiment that they actually were connected to the
imprisoned insurgents. And again, this sense of perspective by incongruity enhanced the
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story telling of the event, where crowds could identify through solidarity and identification
with the heroes of this story. These tweets display this solidarity framing explicitly:
Figure 37: Solidarity Sample #1
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These above tweets reflect an affective display of solidarity and identification
putting nonverified users symbolically in line with the fight or struggle of Pussy Riot.
While the usage of the connective “we are all” gestures toward a broader, global affective
public that is united in solidarity against human rights abuses.
Other signs of solidarity signaled toward a sense of connective action,
noting the attempt to offer aid in the Pussy Riot struggle. This again shaped the
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transformation of the Pussy Riot disruptive event as a story, as individuals attempted to
understand a globalized story by attempting personal action. These sample tweets frame
the moment in time as historic, therefore these affective individuals express their desire to
influence the outcome in some manner:
Figure 44: Connective Action Sample #1
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The affective notion of applying “pressure,” “loving ourselves,” or packing bags to
head towards a march all signify a motion towards solidarity in connective action.
Papacharissi notes that “we may interpret these tendencies as collective attempts to frame
a movement in the making as revolutionary,” and these tweets frame the story of Pussy
Riot as movement of resistance against the Putin regime. Ultimately, solidarity manifests
itself as storytelling value, combining unverified and checkmarked elite affective users to
feel as a unified element of the Pussy Riot protest. In expressing these notions of solidarity,
affective publics communicate a sense of identification with the women of Pussy Riot and
add to the discourse surrounding their disruptive rhetorical act.
CUMULATIVE CHORUS A/EFFECTS
This snapshot of the Pussy Riot saga offers a generative look into how
disruptive rhetorical events can transform into affective stories sustained and formed
through digital networks. Papacharissi in her analysis of the #egypt phenomena argues that
it can be “meaningful to consider how affective infrastructures of storytelling turn an event
into a story and how these stories may sustain a variety of distinct, yet imbricated,
events.”213 With the case of Pussy Riot, we can see how the values of instantaneity,
checkmarked elites, and solidarity congregate affective publics, allowing a way for

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individuals to feel their way into understanding a global event. Pussy Riot became a
disruptive rhetorical news story that sustained momentum because of Twitter’s
infrastructure, and its ability to disseminate a hybrid blend of opinions, facts, affect, and
personal accounts. Both #pussyriot and #freepussyriot became affective markers that users
could engage with to tell the story of how they identify with the plight of three women
imprisoned for hooliganism. It should be noted that the corpus of tweets used for this
chapter reflect only a small portion of the ultimately two-year long saga that began with
the “Punk Prayer” in Moscow, and eventually ended with their release from prison. I argue
a distinctive feature of disruptive rhetoric is its ability to sustain discourse for long periods
of time, escaping the drawbacks of mere outrage culture. Though the present analysis looks
at a period where affective intensity was at its arguably highest, further analysis of the
affective storytelling might show how those stories shifted and evolved over time.
It should be reiterated that many scholars argue that the interpretation of
Pussy Riot’s initial disruptive act was broadly misinterpreted when analyzed with a
Western gaze or values. 214 They maintain that the stories shared via the affective publics
profiled in this chapter were an attempt to categorize Pussy Riot as “punk feminists,” or a
new interpretation of the Riot Grrrl movement. Framings such as these import a Western
understanding of feminism and social movements and remove much of the intricacies of
Pussy Riot’s intended original message to reveal the corruption embedded within the ROC
214 For an in depth examination of this see: Katharina Wiedlack, “Pussy Riot and the Western Gaze: Punk
Music, Solidarity and the Production of Similarity and Difference,” Popular Music and Society 39, no. 4
(August 7, 2016): 410–22, https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2015.1088281, Elena Gapova,
“Becoming Visible in The Digital Age: The Class and Media Dimensions of the Pussy Riot Affair,”
Feminist Media Studies 15, no. 1 (January 2, 2015): 18–35,
https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2015.988390, and Frank Weij, Pauwke Berkers, and Jiska
Engelbert, “Western Solidarity with Pussy Riot and the Twittering of Cosmopolitan Selves: Western
Solidarity with Pussy Riot,” International Journal of Consumer Studies 39, no. 5 (September 2015): 489–
94, https://doi.org/10.1111/ijcs.12215 for pertinent critiques of Western reception of Pussy Riot’s
incident.
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and the Putin administration. This critique also suggests that the “understandings” affective
publics might feel their way into, might be lost in translation across socio-political borders.
These scholarly critiques are valid and point out the inherent danger in disruptive rhetoric
as an efficient strategy in communicating complex messages to global audiences.
With this in mind however, we should be hesitant to think communication
is always an intentional and transactional process. A process wherein an interlocutor
perfectly encodes a message and successfully transmits to a sympathetic, accepting
receiver. Rhetoric is messy—a perpetually polysemic affair. But this should be viewed as
a positive attribute, not a detriment to the process of communication. Disruptive rhetoric
delights in this aspect, and thus creates the possibilities for a polyphony of understandings
that might stem from a single, original impious act. I argue that while the story, or stories,
that flourished from Pussy Riot’s disruptive rhetoric might have not been congruous with
their original message, these stories remain valid and important. While the overarching
stories told by affective publics might have centered around solidarity with the notions of
freedom of speech and human rights, these conversations, especially given the contexts of
the Putin regime, are pertinent and merit serious attention. I fully recognize the notion the
unavoidable propensity for Western media to commodify and alter original messages such
as Pussy Riot’s disruptive punk prayer. In fact, it is clear that Western understandings of
feminism, protest, and values were shoved onto the group, and perhaps these views
are/were incommensurate with what Pussy Riot initially stood for. However, I would argue
that the ability to direct attention, especially on a global scale, to any injustice in our hyper-
mediated, over-technologized world seems like a valuable effort in communication. For
this reason, I cannot view Pussy Riot’s attempt at disruption as anything other than a
success, even while still acknowledging the story perhaps shifted and evolved from their
perceived initial intentions.

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Papacharissi writes that storytelling through digital platforms to affective
publics is a viable means of attuning to the world around us. She writes, “dynamic
storytellers liberate the imagination. They tell a story, and in telling it, they help those
listening imagine the reality this story depicts.” A disruptive rhetor cannot fully realize
what reality their rhetoric might impart to audiences, but nonetheless, one might argue it is
ethical to tell one’s story in hopes others might attune to it and share it – even at the risk of
the listener misinterpreting. These disruptive acts, as Papacharissi notes, are borderline
courageous, they are affective stories that energize, inspire, and perhaps even mobilize. I
offer here a quote that summarizes this notion far better than I could articulate:
In repressive regimes, courage is required to express dislike, hatred and anger, and
affective statements thus become political statements. Moreover, affective expressions of
courage, while inspired by solitary acts of heroes, are intensified as crowds chime in to
support a chorus of indignation, expressed in anticipation of change. This chorus, through
the force of repetition and the cumulative intensity reproduction affords, gradually
becomes deafening, powerful, and disruptive.215
Pussy Riot’s audacious “Punk Prayer” created a globalized chorus that was loud.
Their perspective by incongruity pushed audiences, and through the affordances of digital
networks, their song made publics feel like they were there in that cathedral at that day.
Whether you were a credentialed journalist sitting in the courtroom, or a musician with a
baklava-clad avatar on Twitter, Pussy Riot’s chorus repeated itself over and over in a
repetition of shared affective filled hashtags. And for this aspect, I argue that their
disruptive melody was an effective rhetorical strategy in an age of outrage.

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In the final sentencing of the three women, a judge took over three hours to
read a disdainful verdict, rendering the women guilty, and sentencing them to two years in
prison. One of the most notable passages from that transcript points to the disruptive nature
of their act, it reads:
By their actions, Samutsevich, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina seriously disrupted
public order and the day-to-day running of the Cathedral. They showed blatant disrespect
to church-goers and workers, and in doing so gravely offended their religious
sensibilities.216
I argued previously in this study that disruptive rhetoric is a strategy for minorities
to challenge given structures of power, in an effort to be heard, to give volume to the
voiceless. I submit, that in the case of Pussy Riot, their verdict should not be viewed as a
condemnation of their actions, but rather a recognition that their song was loud, that it
shook a nation, a regime, and audiences across the world. They disrupted.
216 "Pussy Riot Sentenced to Two Years in Jail," RT International, August 17, 2012, accessed July 22,
2019, https://www.rt.com/news/pussy-riot-trial-896/, italics added for emphasis.
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Chapter 5: Toward a Disruptive Future
The preceding case studies demonstrate the multifaceted characteristics that
disruptive rhetoric contains within an age of outrage. Rhetoric that challenges established
hierarchies by violating traditional discursive norms can raise awareness of issues not
currently within the mainstream news cycle. Impious actions in the face of authoritative
structures of power can inspire publics to congregate across the globe, opening the doors
to new modes of understanding through affective feeling. Disruptive rhetoric circulating
through networked publics can sustain conversations for substantial periods of time,
escaping the pitfall of typical outrageous rhetorical responses. I argue this study
demonstrates the potential for disruptive rhetoric as a generative strategy when aiming to
move toward change perspectives, orientations, or attitudes. This final chapter will
summarize the findings put forth throughout this project while also pointing to limitations
within the study, and trajectories for future research.
IN REVIEW
I began this project with a focus on three primary research questions:
What is the nature and function of rhetoric designed to violate expectations or
societal norms of decorum or propriety? Under what circumstances and to what extent can
rhetors from traditionally marginalized backgrounds offer stylized answers for audiences
to complex situations they are ensconced within?
What material effects can disruptive rhetoric influence in the struggle for civil or
human rights that reasoned, civil approaches do not provide? How might a hierarchical
analysis reveal the relationship between piety and disruptive rhetoric?
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How might emergent communication technologies aid or influence the
dissemination and circulation of disruptive rhetoric amongst networked individuals in
today’s hypermediated context?
In order to investigate these queries, I proposed a three-tier theoretical approach
that featured a combination of piety, networked publics, and affect theory. This tripartite
theoretical understanding allowed for a nuanced and varied approach. Additionally, it
opened the possibility of not only exploring how disruptive rhetoric is utilized but how it
shapes discourses within groups of people who offer affective responses to challenging
issues in today’s socio-political context. While previous studies have looked at the effects
of dissent or protest rhetoric, this particular investigation traces the formation and
dissemination of disruptive messages and the eventual formation of networked publics
surrounding them. This approach is more comprehensive than previous in that it reveals
the rhetorical impact rhetors might have in choosing disruptive rhetorical strategies.
Additionally, within chapter 2, I devised a qualitative, digital humanities
approach as a method of investigating disruptive rhetoric. Specifically, I looked to hashtags
on the digital platform Twitter as an affective marker of disruptive rhetoric. This tracking
of hashtags allowed for a close reading of the discursive content embedded within these
publicly created messages, in turn revealing the affective responses of individuals engaging
with disruptive rhetoric. This method provided a strategic and focused approach to seek
out public artifacts in the form of hashtags that helped illustrate how networked publics
operate currently. To execute this method, I utilized the advanced search function built into
the Twitter platform which provides researchers the ability to focus searches within certain
temporal ranges and on specific key terms or hashtags. This method revealed evidence of
public networks in that there were digitally constructed linkages of individuals that sought
ways of releasing affective instincts in a public manner. This study suggests this is a
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relatively new practice for publics to be constructed and organized, due in large part to the
presence of online social media platforms such as Twitter.
Chapter 3 featured the case of Colin Kaepernick as an example of how
disruptive rhetoric can be a stylized response to social injustices. I argued that Kaepernick’s
disruptive rhetoric in the form of kneeling and subsequent public, impious statements
challenged the norm of hyper-patriotic reverence embedded within the National Football
League. My analysis argued that Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the national anthem
violated the hierarchical structure of militarization and patriotism prevalent throughout
most professional sports, but specifically within American football today. Furthermore, I
argued because of Kaepernick’s impious actions before these established structures of
power, audiences were able to form networked publics by engaging in discussions
centering on his kneeling. These digitally networked publics allowed rhetorical space for
individuals to assign meaning and interpret Kaepernick’s words and actions. My research
uncovered public responses that fit within an understanding of affective gestures, revealing
five components that defined and detailed the networks marked by affective hashtags.
Through a close reading of these responses I demonstrated disruptive rhetoric’s strategic
role in forming and generating affect within these networked publics. This analysis offered
answers originally asked at the beginning of this project, specifically how rhetors with
traditionally suppressed voices are able to utilize disruptive rhetoric as a means of
amplifying their causes bent towards social justice.
Chapter 4 examined the case study of Pussy Riot and their impious actions
of protest against the religious and political corruption within the Putin administration of
Russia. Their case expanded my understanding of disruptive rhetoric as a globalized
practice, while still identifying and outlining the Russian cultural context. The affective
networked response to Pussy Riot’s revealed disruptive rhetoric’s potential to generate

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broad, long lasting discussions across international borders. I argued networked public
responses to the arrest and trial of three Pussy Riot members revealed how disruptive
rhetoric allows for audiences to feel their way into understanding a news event,
subsequently transforming it into a news story. Pussy Riot’s punk rock protest in a
cathedral demonstrated another example of how to generate affect across a broad number
of individuals and revealed how the negotiation of its meaning sustained and organized
publics digitally. This analysis offers an answer to the original question of how disruptive
rhetoric provided an affective response across global networks that reasoned, civil
approaches might not.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO CONNECTED CONVERSATIONS
I argue the value of this study is its continuing investigation of rhetoric that
shifts outside of traditional approaches to understanding persuasive attempts by rhetors.
Much like dissent, protest, or radical strategies, disruptive rhetoric seeks to awaken
audiences to matters that need attention. In an increasingly mediated world, this analysis
contributes to the practice of analyzing messages that seek effects without consensus.
Beyond this, it offers an updated understanding of the current socio-political context
rhetors find themselves within and demonstrates the influence technology might have in
aiding this type of approach. Recall, I have not suggested in this study that disruptive
rhetoric is necessarily a new phenomenon. However, recent affordances of internet-based
technologies have provided new avenues of engaging audiences and forming publics by
stirring affective responses in novel ways. The case studies offered here mark two such
instances of this, but they are by no means comprehensive of all disruptive approaches.
Additionally, I argue this study has put disparate bodies of literature in
connection with each other, providing updated theoretical approaches to more modern
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cases. As access to data increases, rhetorical scholars should continue to adopt newer
approaches to investigating rhetorical phenomena. And I argue this project provides an
example of how one might do that in the future. Beyond the theoretical and methodological
approaches this study offers a novel way to look at rhetoric that challenges normative
discursive practices in ways previous research does not. Specifically, I argue investigating
disruptive rhetoric not only reveals the utility of messages communicated by controversial
agents, but also the subsequent negotiation of that rhetoric amongst disparate strangers. I
argue that previous attempts at understanding polemic or disturbing rhetoric fails to
investigate how this process reveals itself and that digital archive research provides a means
to do that now and moving forward. Ultimately, I argue disruptive rhetoric is a generative
means of eliciting affective responses to issues that structure and inform our everyday lived
experiences. In an age of outrage with constantly competing stimuli from multiplying
mediated sources, disruptive rhetoric offers the ability for rhetors to cancel out the noise
and amplify their message across digital networks. This study also provides an (of course
not the only) approach to investigate the impetus, formulation, and effects of rhetoric that
intends to disrupt, challenge, and transform pious structures of power.
CURRENT LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE POTENTIALITIES
I argued that this project provides a current and updated approach to

understanding disruptive rhetoric in today’s socio-political context. With that being said,
this study of course contains certain limitations that truncated the scope and depth of its
analysis. Disruptive rhetoric continues to be an increasingly prevalent strategic approach
in today’s hypermediated context, which suggests future studies will seek out ways to
investigate new instances. Here I seek to describe some considerations future scholars
would want to address when pursuing similar studies within this area.
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First, one hindrance to this study was the temporal aspect of gathering data.
Disruptive rhetoric is not a new practice, but it appears and sounds different than before
because of the new technological platforms aiding its dissemination and negotiation. While
the case studies provided here are recent, my analysis relied on looking backwards in time,
analyzing artifacts within digital archives. For purposes of future studies, one would want
to collect data in real time to watch how networked publics form through the transmission
of affectively charged hashtags or other digital markers. Additionally, future projects
tracking instances of disruptive rhetoric would want to expand their searches across more
digital platforms to see how these conversations transform or adapt to specific digital
contexts. This present study relied on the investigation of only one such platform which
limited the scope of available data in both case studies. Tracking the growth and spread of
disruptive rhetoric across different networked platforms would help scholars better
understand the rhetorical effects disruptive messages may impart on disparate audiences.
Second, the method of research proposed by this study provides a way to
utilize easy to navigate digital tools available to all users of the Twitter network. However,
the advanced search provided to Twitter users only provides limited results. More
technologically complex search programs exist but are often unwieldy to those new to
digital humanities approaches to rhetorical artifacts. While I argue the hashtagged tweets
produced through my rigorous searches are emblematic of the online conversations held
by affectively charged in these cases, there are certainly more artifacts that could be
gathered to paint a more comprehensive portrait of these networked publics. Thus, my
limitations as a digital scholar are present in this study in that I am not well versed enough
in coding to create a specific digital tool to scrape Twitter more efficiently. Therefore, I
relied on the built-in search capabilities of the Twitter platform itself. I argue this does not
negate the valuable insights these artifacts provided, but it does limit my analysis in terms
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of the potentially quantity of tweets I could have uncovered. Future research utilizing
digital humanities approaches should seek out the design of tools that make accessing
digital archives easy to implement and utilize because of the wealth of insight these
archives hold.
A final limitation to this study was my knowledge of the theoretical
backgrounds that I combined for my tripartite approach. I have spent many years
researching and writing about the works of Kenneth Burke, but I am by no means a master
of his broad catalog of literature and theory. Admittedly, I am even less versed in the
theoretical world of affect, and as the previous paragraph suggests, in the practice of digital
humanities research. I have tried to equip myself as best as possible to respectfully engage
with these separate and distinct theoretical backgrounds, but I recognize I offer an
incomplete perspective. However, I do argue that the commonality these theoretical
backgrounds share is that rhetoric is crucial to hierarchies, networked publics, and affect.
Therefore, I argue future rhetorical scholars should engage in the combination and “mash-
up” of contrasting theoretical approaches in order to produce vibrant and generative
approaches to challenging research questions moving forward.
CONTEMPLATING COMPLICATED CONCLUSIONS
I argued throughout this dissertation that disruptive rhetoric is a generative

and productive rhetorical strategy given we live in a time and age of outrage. While the
practice of disruptive rhetoric might yield mixed results, I argue that is a net positive rather
than a negative. Karl Marx argued that a byproduct of living within hierarchical structures
of class is the notion of alienation within ourselves and subsequently from each other as
human beings.217 I argue this sense of alienation of self and community has only hyper-
217 Karl Marx, Selected Writings, ed. Lawrence Simon, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994).
170
accelerated as technological tools facilitate and expand the processes of capitalism into
every facet of waking life. Subsequently, I suggest here that perhaps symbolic disruptive
figures such as Kaepernick and Pussy Riot are, to borrow from another Marxist concept,
overdetermined responses to the oppressive forces that structure this sense of
technologically tinged alienation. That is to say, disruptive rhetoric might inspire affective
networked publics to distill or condense a host of concerns onto one symbolic rhetor, thus
ignoring the actual considerations and factors that created the conditions for disruption
from the onset. Perhaps disruptive rhetoric only focuses our attention onto representative
figures, displacing our fears in the form of convenient, retweetable hashtags. Certainly, this
has paved the way for the proliferation of horrendous ideologies due to the readily
accessible interfaces of digital platforms such as Twitter.
Yet, despite the potential for disastrous effects I argue the work here
suggests a realistic but simultaneously cautiously optimistic view on the agency digital
networks might provide affective individuals. The research cited from this study and
elsewhere suggests that we have just scratched the surface of the potentiality of these new
technologies and the affordances they might provide for those who have been suppressed,
silenced, or maligned. It is easy to point out the potential negative harms of networked
platforms such as Twitter, but we should be quick to note these ventures into uncharted
digital territory are less than two decades old. We have yet to conclusively determine what
they represent for communities and individuals who are disconnected, separated, and
alienated in an age of outrage.
I argue that this study presented here offers the positive rhetorical
possibilities new digital technologies may offer publics who have struggled for recognition
in arenas where their voice is needed more. Therefore, I walk away from this project simply
thinking that we must march forward into the murky, digital unknown, for we know not
171
what it may hold. It is my intention and hope that this project will provide new roads for
others to explore the benefits disruptive rhetoric might offer as we take that clandestine
journey. That through disruptive rhetoric and the challenging of given structures of order,
new structures might be constructed to bring greater light to dimly lighted publics,
illuminating exits out of alienation.
172
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Michael Tyler Welsh

Disruptive Rhetoric in Age of Outrage

Barry Brummett, Supervisor

Michael Tyler Welsh

The University of Texas at Austin

for the Degree of

The University of Texas at Austin

not just have a comfortable life. To the ones who disrupt.

teaching me the true meaning of traümen.

I’m grateful beyond words.

Disruptive Rhetoric in Age of Outrage

Michael Tyler Welsh, PhD

The University of Texas at Austin, 2020

Supervisor: Barry Brummett

disruptive rhetoric to challenge hierarchical structures, utilizing the rhetorical concept of

affective publics by tracking specific hashtags responding to disruptive rhetorical

deeper meanings of messages offered by disruptive rhetors. Additionally, this project

List of Figures .................................................................................................................... xi

Chapter 1: Disruptive Rhetoric in an Age of Outrage .........................................................1

Narrowing the Scope of Outrage: Disruptive Rhetoric.............................................14

Previewing the Potential of Disruptive Rhetoric ......................................................17

The Pussy Riot Controversy .....................................................................................18

The Case of Colin Kaepernick ..................................................................................20

Some Key Distinctions, Definitions, and their Limitations ......................................22

Disruptive Rhetoric is Public and Can Create Publics.........................22

Disruptive Rhetoric is not an Issue of Free Speech .............................23

Disruptive Rhetoric and Risk ...............................................................24

Call-Out and Cancel Culture Rhetoric ......................................................................26

Hashtag Activism and Digilantism ...........................................................................29

Uncivil Rhetoric/Incivility ........................................................................................35

Synthesizing the Literature .......................................................................................40

Toward a Burkean Symbolic Analysis .....................................................................41

A Hierarchical Analysis ............................................................................................42

Research Questions ...................................................................................................43

Proposed Thesis ........................................................................................................44

Chapter Previews ......................................................................................................45

From Coffeehouses to Digital Platforms ..................................................................56

Digitally Networked Publics .....................................................................................63

Affective Digital Publics ..........................................................................................67

Digital Tools .............................................................................................................73

Tracking Tagged Affect ............................................................................................75

Case Studies Preview and Conclusion ......................................................................80

Chapter 3: The Colin Kaepernick Case Study ...................................................................84

Case in Context .........................................................................................................84

History of the Kaepernick Controversy ....................................................................86

Impiety Before Militarized Hierarchies ....................................................................95

Networked Publics in a Digital Age .......................................................................101

Affective Publics in a Digital Age ..........................................................................107

“Affective publics are powered by affective statements of opinion, fact, or a

“Affective publics typically produce disruptions/interruptions of dominant

“Ambient streams sustain publics convened around affective commonalities:

Case in Context .......................................................................................................128

Impious Prayers ......................................................................................................131

Networked Pussy Riot Publics ................................................................................139

Affective Storytelling Through News.....................................................................142

From News Events to News Storytelling ................................................................142

Instantaneity in the Pussy Riot Trial .......................................................................144

Checkmarked Elites ................................................................................................148

Cumulative Chorus A/Effects .................................................................................159

Chapter 5: Toward a Disruptive Future ...........................................................................164

Contributions to Connected Conversations ............................................................167

Current Limitations and Future Potentialities .........................................................168