A New Rhetoric of Social Movements

<p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>A New Rhetoric of Social Movements</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)> explains the rhetoric-visual aural verbal and technological-of social change actors from a theoretical perspective that emphasizes the interrelationship of agitation and control and the spectrum of movement activities from the reformist to the revolutionary. Readers learn not only how to describe social movements but also how to explain them: why they succeed and by what means why they fail and in what contexts and conditions and in whose interests they operate. There is extensive consideration of how media including social media serve as affordances of social movement actors and organizations. Each chapter provides multiple current examples and features an extended case study for continuity and clarity.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>Chapters lay out a new theoretical framework for studying social movements: the Hegemony-Formation-Pressure model. In the context of counterhegemonic struggle this model puts the moments of formation (identity- and consciousness-forming rhetorics) in a dialectical cycle with the tactics of pressure (instrumental action demanding institutional change). The idea of a circuit of formation and pressure captures the totality of movements and their complexity.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>Filling a gap in the literature </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>A New Rhetoric of Social Movements</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(51 51 51 1)> is an invaluable textbook for upper-division and graduate courses in communication studies rhetoric social movements and U.S. history.</span></p>