This dissertation begins with the observation that discursive and visual representations of women in politics have direct consequences on the actual participation of women in politics (Beail & Goren, 2009; Bimey, 2010). For this reason I analyze current visual representations of female politicians in editorial cartoons. This work focuses on political cartoons because these artifacts provide information about cultural assumptions regarding gender roles and can bring insight about the cultural barriers that women still face when they become political actors. For this project I asked the following questions: How are female politicians represented visually? And how does the existing visual rhetoric enable, debilitate or restrain their political participation? This is also a comparative study of political cartoons that portray women in Mexico and the United States. To answer these questions, I analyze cartoons within a feminist framework, using literature on patriarchy, postfeminism, and the notion of the double binds faced by women in power. To examine portrayals of female politicians I developed a methodological approach that consists in identifying cartoons that rely on gender in order to construct their political commentary. Gendered cartoons are then classified using archetypes —specifically the Great Mother archetype— and stereotypes. For the analysis, I connect Kenneth Burke’s notion of perspective by incongruity with the feminist framework I previously constructed. The cartoons analyzed in this project comprise one decade, from 2002 to 2012, and four newspapers: La Jornada and Reforma (from Mexico), and The New York Times and The Washington Post (from the U.S.). I conclude that the argument that a patriarchal system no longer exists is not valid when we analyze cartoons that clearly resent women’s participation in the public political sphere. In these gendered cartoons women continue to be the symbol of the private sphere of the home. Their presence in the political space is portrayed as incongruous and cartoonists seek to restore the patriarchal order by visually taking women back to their traditional domestic space, depicting them as housewives and mothers. In these instances cartoons become powerful tools for reinforcing the traditional hierarchy of the private and public spheres. / text

Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 36-38).

In contemporary society, public discourse about abortion remains substantially controversial. Although the U.S. abortion debate remains in the public eye, there has been little to no attention focused on race. This project interrogates the role of race and racial identity in the abortion debate through. To investigate the existence of race in contemporary U.S. abortion rhetoric, I utilize a three-part conceptual framework as my rhetorical method. I examine TRF billboard campaign, paying particular attention to its employment of collective memory. Moreover, I examine how the campaign uses African American collective memories to create and sustain an argument concerning Black abortion. I conclude that racialized abortion rhetoric demands scholarly attention because it extends the boundaries of conversations about abortion. Furthermore, I contend that anti-Black abortion rhetoric increases our understanding of how communication and racial/ethnic identities mutually develop.

Over the past two millennia, dominant Western narratives of the Persian Wars have established a problematic East-West binary in which Greece is represented as a defender of democracy whose improbable victory over the Persians laid the foundation for the development of Western civilization and the Persians are represented as a power hungry, totalitarian “Other” determined to subjugate all whom they encounter. Frank Miller’s graphic novel, 300, and its subsequent film adaptations, 300, and 300: Rise of an Empire (collectively referred to as the 300 franchise) have reinforced and contributed new problematic elements to the dominant Persian War narratives with contemporary visual representations of key historical figures, locations, and events as they pertain to the conflict. In this thesis I conduct a visual rhetorical analysis of the 300 franchise to identify and explain its problematic visual representational tactics for both the Greeks and Persians. Next, I conduct a visual rhetorical analysis of a non-Western Persian Wars counter-narrative, Ramin Abhari’s Xerxes Speaks. Throughout my analysis of Xerxes Speaks I identify instances in which the counter-narrative addresses 300’s problematic representations of the East as “Other.” I conclude by discussing the importance of critiquing visual representations in order to continue to disrupt dominant Western Persian War narratives and subsequently try to establish a currently marginalized Persian perspective on the Persian Wars.

Guided by Sonja Foss' (2005) theory of visual rhetoric, this thesis is an exploration of political cartoons from Bangladesh, published between October 2016 - October 2020. The study is framed by the Digital Security Act (DSA), an anti-freedom of speech law enacted by the ruling Awami League government in October 2018. The cartoons analyzed in this study are divided into two sets – 16 published in a two-year period prior to the enactment of the DSA, and 16 published within two years after the enactment of the law. A criterion-based sampling technique was used to select cartoons published online by two Bangladeshi cartoonists' – Mehedi Haque and Sadatuddin Ahmed Amil. A thematic analysis of the cartoons revealed that corruption and threats to freedom of expression are recurring themes in both sets of data, while cartoons published pre-DSA also contain commentary on the prime minister and the government's feelings of contentment. Declining democratic practices is a major theme in cartoons published post-DSA. By utilizing the method of visual rhetorical analysis on six cartoons, the study delved deeper into the cartoons' construction of visual arguments for each theme. Finally, a comparative analysis of the themes and visual arguments in cartoons from each data set revealed that cartoons published after October 2018 are differentiated by disappearing characters and storylines, the use of indirect language, and implicit visual arguments, as well as increased usage of metaphors. Cartoons published post-DSA also have a sharper focus on specific news events as indicators of national issues. This study contributes to a growing body of research on the DSA, highlights how a specific medium of expression can be affected by anti-freedom of speech laws, and provides implications for media industries facing legal challenges. / MACOM / Bangladesh, a country in South Asia, is currently following a democratic parliamentary system where Prime Minister (PM) Sheikh Hasina is the leader of the government. Her party, Awami League (AL) has been in power since 2008. Since AL's enactment of the draconian Digital Security Act (DSA) in October 2018, a culture of fear has persisted within the country's media industry as well as the public, as the law's vague wording allows people to be charged for the mildest criticism of the government and the PM. Guided by the theory of visual rhetoric (Foss, 2005), this study is framed by the DSA in its analysis of editorial cartoons published online by cartoonists Mehedi Haque and Sadatuddin Ahmed Amil between October 2016 – October 2020. A thematic analysis of cartoons published before and after the enactment of the law shows the major topics that emerge from Bangladeshi political cartoons, such as corruption, threats to freedom of expression, contentment of the government, and declining democratic practices. Visual rhetorical analysis performed on one cartoon that best represents each theme explains in detail how the cartoons use visual arguments to convey their message. Finally, a comparison between the pre- and post-DSA data sets shows that cartoons published after October 2018 are marked by disappearing characters and storylines, the use of indirect language, and implicit visual arguments, as well as increased usage of metaphors. Cartoons published post-DSA also have a sharper focus on specific news events as indicators of national issues. This study adds to developing scholarship on the DSA, highlights how editorial cartoons are affected by anti-free speech laws, and offers insights on the media sector encountering legal challenges.

Various cultures interpret visual rhetoric differently; therefore, technical communicators must adjust their rhetoric accordingly by creating effective visual rhetoric for their international and multicultural audiences. Although there is a great deal of research in the field regarding how to create effective visual rhetorical rhetoric, this research often fails to take into international and multicultural audiences into consideration. Many visual rhetoric solutions proposed in technical communication involve 'catch all' approaches that do little to communicate to people of non-Western cultures and can even serve to offend or confuse international and multicultural audiences. These solutions are generated by a globalization mindset, but are not realistic when we acknowledge how varied technical communication audiences are with regard to culture. The globalization approach also fails unless technical communicators intend to limit the reach of their communication to certain types of Western audiences. To create the most useful visual rhetoric, technical communicators must learn to use color, graphics, icons/symbols, and layouts (web and print) appropriately for audiences. They must learn more about different types of cultures (individualistic or collectivistic, universalist or particularist, high-context or low-context, high uncertainty avoidance or low uncertainty avoidance, monochronic or polychronic, linear thinking or systemic thinking, masculine or feminine), and they must address these different cultural expectations accordingly.

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Through visual rhetoric analysis inspired by ”green communication” this essay aims to shed light on the differences in sustainability communication between two music festivals in Sweden. To be environmentally fatigued, to be tired of the environmental transition which is crucial for the survival of inhabitants of the earth, and the environment itself, is not ethically responsible. This essay strives to bring forward the specific aspects which inspire a festival with a sustainable profile, how it communicates, versus a festival with a non sustainable profile. One is found to use a rhetoric which promotes sustainability in an effective way, although the rhetoric is flawed by different factors of their communication. Another ignores the sustainability aspects completely in the rhetoric of their festival, and instead puts focus on energy, happiness and love, which contrasts against the apparent negative values they express.

World War II women are commonly understood to have come closer to equality than any previous generation. Their mass entry into the workforce is remembered as a united front to support the troops while simultaneously claiming ground to demonstrate their abilities as workers. However, scholarship which emphasizes the collaboration between the government and advertisers to create propaganda that persuaded women to enter the workforce and thus serve as the "domestic front" of the war begins to question the prevailing notion of wartime employment as strides towards equality. This project begins with the question: why did post-war women seemingly willingly abandon these jobs and move to the suburbs? I argue the construct of the post-war housewife, which positions women as willing to abandon careers for the suburban kitchen, is a social imaginary which responds to and uses social anxieties to constrain women’s gender performance and silence gender anxieties. I use the context of the time, as well as rhetorical analysis of mediated artifacts of representations of housewife, to argue this social imaginary silences women’s post-war lived experience and replaces it in public discourse with the multimodal image of Fifties housewife. A visual rhetorical analysis of post-war advertisements which portray the housewife reveals the work of the social imaginary using social anxieties concerning gender roles as well as Cold War fears to define woman’s place. Examining the way Hollywood uses housewife as a frame for its female stars uncovers how circulated use of the imaginary of housewife perpetuates the imaginary by seeming to evidence its claims to representation. However, an analysis of televised representations of the housewife imaginary reveals the fabric of the imaginary fraying. Television humor illuminates the illusion of the imaginary of housewife’s claims to representativeness, and therefore creates a public space in which women can contest the imaginary by exposing women’s discontent with the role of housewife. I conclude with a discussion of the ways this social imaginary of housewife continues to define women’s lives in political debate seventy years after it began to define and constrain post-war women’s gender performance.

Abstract Josh Fox's film Gasland, released in 2010, started the national debate concerning the process of hydraulic fracturing and launched the term "fracking" into the public consciousness. Gasland, nominated for four Emmy Awards, was the winner of the 2010 Environmental Media Award for Best Documentary, the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize, and the Yale Environmental Film Festival Grand Jury Prize. Using the momentum from the film's popular reception, Fox and the Gasland team successfully established a grassroots movement that was responsible for helping create the Frack Act and a moratorium of fracking in the Delaware River Shed. This thesis intends to determine what made Gasland so influential. Through a rhetorical criticism and media analysis, I will show how Fox's film ignited the debate on domestic natural gas production and has created a multi-public literacy that enables social change.