Female genital mutilation is a deep rooted tradition that occurs in many parts of the world. Immigration has increased the number of genital mutilation within the country's borders. Genital mutilation can present problems both physically and mentally. The student health department in Linköping municipality actively works to educate schoolchildren about genital mutilation. They need a brochure which will be available to school nurses in their work and in waiting rooms in connection with the school nurses' reception in primary and secondary schools in Linköping. This work is about practicing principles of visual rhetoric and information design, in order to inform about genital mutilation as well and motivate they in need, to seek help. Interviews, tests and theories have resulted in a design proposal for the brochure. / Kvinnlig könsstympning är en djupt rotad tradition som förekommer i flera delar av världen. I och med invandringen har antalet könsstympade inom landets gränser ökat. Könsstympning kan innebära problem både fysiskt och psykiskt. Elevhälsans medicinska del i Linköpings kommun arbetar aktivt med att upplysa skolungdomar om könsstympning. De är i behov av en broschyr som ska vara tillgänglig för skolsköterskor i deras arbete samt i väntrum i anslutning till skolsköterskornas mottagning i grund- och gymnasieskolor i Linköping. Det här arbetet går ut på att praktisera principer för visuell retorik och informationsdesign, i syfte att informera om könsstympning samt mana drabbade att söka hjälp. Intervjuer, utprovningar och teorier har resulterat i ett designförslag till broschyren.

This thesis sets out to design and execute an in-depth study of the True Fruits controversial advertisements by applying Encoding/Decoding as a theoretical model. It aims at examining visual rhetoric and through Critical Discourse Analysis understanding the cause and effect of the controversial True Fruits advertisements in their 2017 campaign. The research attempts to answer the question: ‘What happened on social media after True Fruits published their controversial advertisements in 2017?’. The thesis presents an analysis of True Fruits´ visual rhetoric in #jetztösterreichts campaign advertisements and then reveals consumer responses to it on social media in 2017. Thus, the thesis presents a comprehensive review of the relevant literature leading toward the key themes of German advertisement, controversial advertisement, and the representation of immigration in advertisements. Towards the end, it states the final remarks concluding the entire discussion and reflects upon the attempts that True Fruits made to communicate a political message and how consumers in social media responded to it.

abstract: While the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s is one of the most famous and celebrated parts of American history, rhetoric scholars have illuminated the ways this subversive movement has been manipulated beyond recognition over time. These narrative constructions play a role in preserving what Maegan Parker Brooks calls the "conservative master narrative of civil rights history," a narrative that diminishes the work of activists while simultaneously promoting complacency to prevent any challenge to the white supremacist hegemony. This dissertation argues that the graphic memoir trilogy March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell challenges this conservative master narrative through visual rhetoric, in particular through the comics techniques "braiding" and "weaving." Braiding occurs when authors create "webs of interrelation" (Miodrag 134) by repeating a technique throughout the text, which can sometimes involve a secondary narrative (Groensteen). Braids are associations in the network of panels of the comic that go beyond the parameters of strictly linear storytelling as panels echo those the reader has encountered before. The braids in March compare the past and present through a direct juxtaposition of January 20, 2009—the inauguration day of Barack Obama—with John Lewis' activism from 1959 to 1965. While this juxtaposition risks reinforcing a progress narrative that suggests racism is in the past, in fact, the braided inauguration scenes help the reader connect the moments of the past with their present, calling to mind the ways white supremacy endures in contemporary America. Weaving refers to the reader’s action of moving back and forth in the comics narrative to create meaning, and artists use techniques that facilitate this behavior, such as leaving out or minimizing significant cues and creating a sense of ambiguity that leads the reader to become curious about the events in the sequence. Weaving can disrupt an easy linear narrative of depicted events—such as Fannie Lou Hamer's testimony at the Democratic National Convention—as artists present several opportunities for the reader to interpret these stories in ways that challenge a conservative master narrative of the events in the trilogy. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2019

Advertising often employs metaphor because of its rhetorical utility. By drawing on analogous imagery and language, metaphor has the potential to elicit emotional responses. As the digital age is increasingly saturated with commercial messaging, advertising experts leverage the persuasive power of metaphor and emotion to produce creative, compelling, and memorable commercials. German automobile company Audi employs metaphorical language and imagery in their video advertisements to arouse consumer emotions. In this study, I conduct rhetorical analyses of Audi’s online video commercials in order to: identify instances in their ads that employ metaphorical language and imagery; investigate how those metaphors function rhetorically; and discuss the complex rhetorical interplay between metaphor and emotion. My findings suggest that Audi leverages the power of metaphor to build audiences’ emotional investment in the brand, and therefore, be more likely to purchase Audi vehicles.

Denna uppsats syftar att undersöka hur, i digital storytelling, visuell retorik används för att förmedla känslor och skapa empati i hjälporganisationskampanjer. Uppsatsen är en fallstudie där Rädda Barnens virala kampanjfilm Most Shocking Second a Day från 2014 analyseras. Valet av material grundas i filmens virala spridning och valet av metod baseras på behovet av djupgående kvalitativ forskning inom forskningsområdet digital storytelling. Kampanjfilmen analyseras utifrån en retorisk trestegsmodell där fokus läggs på visualiseringen av mänskligt lidande och hur detta visualiseras genom främst patosargument. Detta med grund i tidigare forskning som undersöker kampanjer av hjälporganisationer och digital storytelling samt med stöd i teori om visuell retorik och visualisering av lidande och semiotik. Resultatet visar att genom digital storytelling, igenkänningsattribut och retoriska troper visualiserar kampanjfilmen mänskligt lidande genom patos. / This essay aims to look at how, in digital storytelling, visual rhetoric is used to evoke emotion and create empathy in campaigns for NGOs. The essay is a case study where Save the Children's campaign film Most Shocking Second a Day from 2014 is analyzed. The film was chosen based on its viral success. The choice of method is based on the lack of qualitative research in the research field of digital storytelling. The film is analyzed based on a method of visual rhetoric analysis which is a three-part method with the focus on the visualization of human suffering and the use of pathos. This is done with support in earlier research that examines NGO campaigns and digital storytelling as well as visual rhetoric theory and visualization of human suffering. The result of the this research essay shows that the campaign film through the use of digital storytelling recognized attributes and rhetoric tropes visualize human suffering through pathos.

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This thesis analyzes the ways in which Banksy’s street art installations are used to critique sociopolitical injustices. The street has long existed as a platform for social and political movements. In particular, street art offers unique opportunities for voicing criticisms in pioneering ways that have been proven successful in upsetting normative power structures. Anne Theresa Demo’s analysis on the Guerilla Girls’ comic politics of subversion offers an appropriate conceptual lens to analyze Banksy’s employment of perspectives by incongruity as strategies for subversion. Therefore, this thesis analyzes how Banksy’s subversive satire is rhetorical by examining three techniques that have successfully exposed hegemonic institutions: mimicry, revision, and juxtaposition. Further, I argue that Banksy’s street art gallery, Better Out Than In, utilized these techniques in a global, revolutionary manner to bolster access and widen audience participation. Banksy’s street art both spotlights contemporary injustices and provides a frame to interpret the artist’s critical perspectives. By analyzing the ways in which Banksy uses satire as subversion, this thesis illustrates how visual rhetoric can offer liberation for victims of sociopolitical injustice.

This text outlines and applies a methodology for deciphering problems and producing new information by analyzing the artifacts produced by medical imaging technologies - text and images - using practices gleaned from Surrealists, semiologists, and visual artists, emphasizing its own form as being the product of the apparatuses that produce it and therefore untrustworthy. Its basic assumption is that every text contains the information necessary to solve problems of all sorts, though because of the limitations of this text in both form and authorial intellect, we may only reach a starting point for a solution herein. In this regard, we are deciphering rather than solving. Further, this text illustrates primarily through narratives how digital imaging technologies mediate our relationship with our doctors, illnesses, and our bodies. It explores how the artifacts produced by medical imaging technologies create a data stream that replaces the corporal patient, shifting the physician's focus from the whole body to pieces and parts. It is a study of texts and technologies. The method evolved from a rhetorical approach to examining the medical imaging artifacts and the processes by which those artifacts come into existence, with the method and form becoming part of the story, producing a wide array of new information that transcends disciplinary constraints.

This dissertation investigates the rhetorical constitution of a religio-political social collective which has come to be understood as Christian Reconstruction (CR). CR is guided by conservative Calvinism (Reformed theology) and upholds the ideas of theonomy, postmillennialism, and presuppositional apologetics. Some of the leaders associated with CR are R. J. Rushdoony, Gary North, Gary DeMar of American Vision and Doug Phillips of Vision Forum. A few of its key practices are homeschooling, the father ‘returning home,’ and having as many children ‘as God will allow,’ (a vision aligned with the Quiverfull movement). It is primarily a national movement within the United States, not limited to a singular geographical location or denomination. This study provides a comprehensive overview of CR, illustrating how the grammars of CR are animated, embodied, and upheld in peoples’ lives and practices. Through the observation of conferences and events, and the collection and examination of media materials, this analysis takes a constructivist approach to piecing together the discursive fragments that constitute CR. CR grammar is richly embedded in a web of interaction, media, technology, images, bodily adornment, performance, music, games, and consumer culture. My theoretical framework utilizes the work of critical cultural theorists (Gramsci, 1971; Butler, 1990; Hall, 1976, Laclau, 2005) in combination with theories of constitutive (Burke, 1950; Charland, 1987; McGee, 1975) and visual rhetoric and display (Olson, Finnegan & Hope, 2008; Prelli, 2006; Selzer & Crowley, 1999) to examine the types of social, cultural, and political subjectivities, practices and institutions that are constituted within the CR community. It focuses primarily on the patriarchal identities within CR families as well as the focus on nationalistic teaching about Christian American history as methods for changing the culture of America. I consider the hegemonic machinations of CR grammars in constituting these identities. Finally, this study makes available a methodology and method for the study of dispersed “peoples” and their discursive lives. I demonstrate that multi-sited ethnography, combined with the theories of constitutive and visual rhetorics and critical cultural studies provides a systematic heuristic with which to inquire into a people, its culture, activities, identities, and how they constitute themselves.

Det blir ett alltmer vanligt krav på företag att redovisa hållbarhet i sin produktion. Oatly är ett företag som gjort hållbarhet och miljöaktivism till en del av sin varumärkesidentitet. Denna studie undersöker hur de uttrycker denna identitet i Sustainability report 2020. Undersökningsmaterialet utgörs av fyra utvalda uppslag ur kompendiet. Genom en kvalitativ, semiotisk analys undersöks materialet från huvudsakligen ett greenwashing perspektiv med begrepp ur visuell retorik.  Resultatet av min analys visade på att Oatlys visuella retorik i Sustainability Report 2020 kan klassas som greenwashing. Därtill diskuteras materialet ur olika perspektiv och öppnar upp till vidare forskning. / It is becoming an increasingly common requirement for companies to report sustainability in their production. Oatly is a company that has made sustainability and environmental activism part of its brand identity. This study examines how they express this identity in their Sustainability report 2020. The research material consists of four selected publications from the compendium. Through a qualitative and semiotic analysis, the material is examined mainly from a greenwashing perspective using concepts from visual rhetoric. The result of my analysis showed that Oatly's visual rhetoric in the Sustainability Report 2020 can be classified as greenwashing. In addition, the material is discussed from different perspectives and opens up for further research.