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Uppsatsens syfte är att upplysa kring hur filmer på YouTube fungerar retoriskt. Fokuset ligger ihur miljödiskursen representeras. Med hjälp av en semiologisk och retorisk analys undersöksfilmen The Turning Point (2020) av den brittiske animatören Steve Cutts. Detta sker med hjälpav semiologiska teorier samt sociopsykologiska teorier kopplade till visuell retorik. Resultatetav analysen blev att Cutts använder sig av kausala förhållanden mellan scener för att bygga ettargument. Filmen utnyttjar sedan tittarens tendens att identifiera sig med karaktärer för attövertyga. Resultatet blir relevant då det visar hur ett implicit, visuellt argument byggs upp i envideo på YouTube, en växande plattform för information och diskussion kring miljöfrågor. Minuppsats undersöker dock inte tittarens respons på materialet och ej heller YouTubeanvändaresinteraktion med övertalande visuella texter. Detta fordrar mer forskning påområdet där både responsstudier och diskursanalyser kan bli viktiga för att förstå hur åsikterformas på plattformen. / The purpose of this essay is to inform about how videos on YouTube work rhetorically. The focus is on how the environmental discourse is represented. Using a semiological andrhetorical analysis, the film The Turning Point (2020) by the British animator Steve Cutts isexamined. This is done with semiological and socio-psychological theories linked to visualrhetoric. The results of the analysis showed that Cutts uses causal relationships betweenscenes to build an argument. The film then takes advantage of the viewer's tendency toidentify with characters to persuade. The result is relevant as it shows how an implicit, visualargument is built up in a video on YouTube, a growing platform for information anddiscussions on environmental issues. However, my essay does not examine the viewer'sresponse to the material, nor the interaction of YouTube users with persuasive visual texts.This requires more research in the area where both response studies and discourse analysis’scan be important for understanding how opinions are formed on the platform.

This dissertation examines the role the medium of comics plays in the construction and subversion of anti-Arab and Islamophobic discourse. It seeks to address the following questions in particular: how does the medium of comics interpellate subjects regarding the Western discursive formation that conflates Arab, Muslim, and terrorist? What does the medium of comics afford creators in subverting dominant discourses that dehumanize Arabs and Muslims? I argue that as a hypermedium in which text and repeated images are in continual tension, comics challenge the sort of foundational notion of truth necessary for dominant discourse. I use a Foucauldian lens to examine several comics in relation to larger discursive formations. In Chapter 1, I explain the problem, my methods, and my theory in more detail. In Chapter 2, I apply this theory as a lens to examine the rhetorical work the medium plays in subverting dominant discourse in Palestine, a nonfiction piece of comics journalism. I use Chapter 3 to problematize the assertions made in the first two chapters by looking at an instance where comics are used to reinscribe dominant discourse. Specifically, I analyze the graphic adaptation of The 9/11 Report. Chapter 4 acts as something of a retort to Chapter 3; it examines In the Shadow of No Towers to interrogate the ways in which Art Spiegelman explicitly addresses not only the issues he grappled with as a New Yorker during and after 9/11, but the complex relations of representation that arose from the event. Chapter 5 I examine how subversion works when a hypermedium is further remediated by analyzing Didier LeFevre's The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors without Borders. The Conclusion is devoted to discussing the implications of this study, both in terms of pedagogy and in terms of theorizing the relationship and differences between image and text. I argue that comics demonstrate the productive ideological tensions that exist between modes of signification (such as verbal and visual). An understanding of this ideological tension is key for scholars of visual rhetoric and hegemonic discourse. / Ph. D.

Thesis (M. Tech.) - Dept. of Visual Arts and Design, Faculty of Human Sciences - Vaal University of Technology / The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between visual and verbal codes of visual rhetoric in a sequential art setting. The literature investigation component of the study covered: (1) the notion of visual literacy; (2) the principles of visual rhetoric, and (3) trends in sequential art. The empirical component of the study involved the production of sequential art test material with an accompanying questionnaire in order to measure the comprehension of visual rhetoric in a sample of 197 undergraduate students at the Vaal University of Technology. The working hypotheses that guided the study were, firstly, that the comprehension of the visual code of the visual rhetoric used in a sequential art setting differs between (a) study participants that received visual training prior to the data collection and (b) study participants that received no visual training prior to the data collection, and secondly, that the comprehension of the visual code of the visual rhetoric used in a sequential art setting differs between (a) study participants that received test material in their home language and (b) study participants that did not receive the test material in their home language. Following a one-way ANOVA analysis of the questionnaire data, the first hypothesis indicated a significant statistical difference (p=O.OO) and was not rejected. The second hypothesis indicated no significant statistical difference (p=0.138) and was rejected. Based on the result obtained, possibilities for further research were motivated. / Vaal University of Technology

Legitimacy is something all organizations aims for and much research has been done on gaining legitimacy among profit-making companies, but much less research has been done on nonprofit organizations and their legitimacy. Therefore this study will address this gap between charity organizations, which are nonprofit companies, and their legitimacy. The purpose of this study is to find the rhetorical strategies that ‘Sverige för UNHCR’ applies when communicating via Instagram to gain or maintain legitimacy. This essay's two research questions are; Firstly, what rhetorical strategies does ‘Sverige för UNHCR’ apply when communicating externally via Instagram? Secondly, what strategies for gaining and maintaining legitimacy can be found in the Instagram posts, and how are they related to the specific rhetorical strategies? In order to answer the outline research questions, qualitative methods were used. The empirical material was collected by using a rhetorical analysis of image and text published by ‘Sverige för UNHCR’ on Instagram. These qualitative methods became the base in which this essay gathers and analyses data. The theoretical framework of this study consists of classical rhetoric, visual rhetoric, legitimacy theory and legitimacy strategies. When analysing the empirical material in relation to the theories it proves how rhetoric methods shape the Instagram publications, and in turn shows how the organization works with legitimacy. This study shows that Sverige för UNHCR uses four main rhetorical strategies. It can be concluded that these rhetorical strategies helps the organization to gain and maintain pragmatic and moral legitimacy through different legitimacy strategies by Suchman (1995). / Legitimitet är något alla organisationer strävar efter och mycket forskning har gjorts på legitimitetsbyggandet hos vinstdrivande företag. Betydligt mindre forskning har gjorts på ideella organisationer och deras legitimitet. Denna uppsats förväntas studera denna forskningslucka mellan välgörenhetsorganisationer, som ingår i den ideella sektorn, och legitimitet.   Syftet med studien är att identifiera organisationen Sverige för UNHCR:s retoriska strategier på sin digitala plattform Instagram för att skapa eller upprätthålla legitimitet. Uppsatsens två frågeställningar lyder;  För det första, vilka retoriska strategier använder sig Sverige för UNHCR av sin externa kommunikation på Instagram? För det andra, vilka strategier för skapande och upprätthållande av legitimitet kan utläsas i Instagram-inläggen, och hur är de relaterade till specifika retoriska strategier? Forskningsfrågorna i studien har besvarats genom att tillämpa kvalitativa metoder. Det empiriska materialet har samlats in genom en retorisk analys av bild samt text av Instagram inlägg publicerade av Sverige för UNHCR. Dessa kvalitativa metoder blir således uppsatsens insamlings- och analysmetod. Studiens teoretiska ramverk består utav klassisk retorik, bildens retorik, legitimitetsteori samt legitimitetsstrategier. Dessa teorier sätts i relation till analysen av empirin för att förstå hur retoriken tar sin utformning i publikationerna på Instagram samt för att kunna se hur organisationen arbetar med legitimitet. Denna studie kan urskilja fyra retoriska huvudstrategier som Sverige för UNHCR använder sig av. Slutsatsen visar på att dessa retoriska strategier hjälper organisationen att skapa och upprätthålla pragmatisk samt moralisk legitimitet genom Suchmans (1995) legitimitetsstrategier.

While numerous studies on academic writers composing for non-academic audiences exist, few if any studies address academic writers composing biographies for children. This self-reflective case study of a Eudora Welty biography for children provides insight into how an academic writer can effectively write in a specific genre (biography) for a specific audience (children) and into practical rhetorical choices such as choosing photographs and designing page layouts. The study also offers triangulated data regarding essential criteria of quality children’s literature as identified by experts in the field (editors, publishers, award committee members, scholars, and authors). The author’s findings include sixty-eight of the most often cited criteria, such as accuracy and the use of documented evidence, that serve as guidelines and a means of evaluating biographies written for children.

A rhetorical analysis of the educational interactive film “Riskprofilen”, produced by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (Swedish: Myndigheten för Samhällsskydd och Beredskap). This essay uses the theories and methods of Procedural Rhetoric, as described by Professor Ian Bogost, and Visual Rhetoric, as described by Professor Brigitte Mral to analyse the interactive and visual component parts of the artefact, and compares them to the intended purposes of the artefact as stated by documents pertaining to its creation, found to be those of educating the public; marketing the agency; and driving traffic to its webpage. The artefact is through analysis found to fulfil the purposes of marketing the Agency and of likely increasing traffic to the website upon which it is hosted. Regarding the primary, educational purpose this analysis finds that the artefact does not teach a user the accident-avoidance strategies it claims to do, but is dependent upon further materials.

This dissertation examines the feminist intersections of composition studies, visual rhetoric, and comics studies in order to identify a rhetorically interdisciplinary approach to composition that moves beyond composition studies’ persistent separation of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, rhetoric and ideology, and analysis and composition. Chapter one transgresses the qualitative/quantitative divide using keyword analysis and visualization of 2,573 dissertation and thesis abstracts published between 1979 – 2012 to engage in what composition studies scholar Derek Mueller terms a “distant reading” of the extent and contexts of composition studies’ self-identified interdisciplinarity. Complementing my more traditional literature review, the results of this analysis validate the necessity of my analytical and pedagogical interventions by suggesting that composition studies has not yet addressed comics through the feminist intersections of visual rhetoric and critical pedagogy. Chapters two and three develop a rhetorical analytical approach to comics that moves beyond comics studies’ persistent separation of rhetoric and ideology by positing conflict as an identifiable form of rhetorical persuasion in the Martha Washington comics. These comics were collaboratively created by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons between 1989 – 2007. Following feminist rhetorician Susan Jarratt’s case for rhetorical conflict as a pedagogical tool and extending Chicana feminist Chela Sandoval’s conceptualization of meta-ideologizing in which oppressive ideologies are re-signified via recontextualizations that juxtapose ‘old’ and ‘new’ signs of ideological meaning, I explore the rhetorically persuasive conflict arising from visual, conceptual, and embodied juxtapositions of race, class, and gender made visible in these comics. Chapter four outlines a feminist, critical, visual rhetorical – what I call prismatic – approach to composition pedagogy that requires (1) contexts in which differences and conflicts can be identified and engaged, (2) explicable sites of intersection between ideological perspectives and rhetorical construction, and (3) models for the transition from ideological critique to (re)composition. This is not an add-pop-genre-and-stir approach to composition pedagogy; rather, it intentionally deploys comics’ inherent multimodality as a challenge to students’ often narrow definitions of rhetoric and composition.

This study explores the conceptual relationship between design aesthetics and Aristotelian rhetoric in the context of information visualisation. Aesthetics and rhetorical theory are traditionally studied as separate discourses, but conceptual links between these fields are identified, specifically in terms of communicative goals and strategies. This study therefore compares selected theories on design aesthetics and Aristotelian rhetoric in information visualisation in order to ascertain whether a combined framework may be feasible. Although information visualisation is traditionally practiced from software engineering disciplines, this study frames the practice within the broader field of information design. The democratisation of the field of information visualisation and the emerging practices that emphasise the aesthetic value of visualisations is explored. In order to understand what is meant by the term ‘aesthetic’, a variety of both classical and contemporary views on aesthetics theory is investigated. Even though the term ‘aesthetic’ is not defined, a broad understanding is created by identifying the main conceptual themes in discourse. A specific focus is placed on understanding aesthetics in a design context, since there are many misconceptions about ‘aesthetics’ in this context. The idea that aesthetics relates to the communication of artifacts is explored, which provides a point of departure in linking aesthetics and rhetorical theory. The communicative nature of information visualisations is thus explored in relation to visual rhetorical theory. Aristotle’s three rhetorical appeals, namely logos, pathos and ethos, form the backbone of the visual rhetorical analysis of visualisation artifacts. The aesthetic and rhetorical theories explored throughout the study are compared by applying them to Charles Joseph Minard’s seminal information visualisation of Napoleon’s march to Moscow. This comparative analysis considers the traditional divide between aesthetics and rhetorical theory but identifies sufficient conceptual links between the discourses to suggest that a combined aesthetic-rhetorical framework for information visualisation may indeed be practical. Lastly, the wider implications and potential value of such a combined framework is considered within a broader design context. Copyright / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Visual Arts / unrestricted