Rhetoric Online: Persuasion and Politics on the World Wide Web. Barbara Warnick. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2007. 160 pp. $25.95 pbk.
Rhetoric Online is a concise and economical look at how the Internet affects rhetorical criticism, and how this relatively new medium has forced the communication field to examine and modify its conventional means of analysis.
The beauty of this small book is indeed its brevity and the author’s ability to pack much information in a relatively small space. Another part of its appeal is the author’s writing style; Barbara Warnick summarizes what she is about to say, she says it, and then gives a capsulized summary of what she says.
In this way, the book could serve as a useful text for undergraduate rhetoric or basic communication studies courses—for students who are learning the basics of rhetorical criticism and who probably need terms defined and well-known names introduced. It may not, however, be the most practical primary text for graduate or upper-level undergraduate classes because of these basic explanations and its simple structure.
To some, Warnick, a rhetoric scholar and professor of communication at the University of Pittsburgh, may be stating the obvious early on, as she discusses the challenge for rhetorical scholars posed by the new media; to beginners in the field, however, this could be useful.
The second half of the book focuses on political communication and on specific examples to illustrate and amplify points, mostly from the 2004 presidential election, the first time presidential campaigns made extensive use of the Internet for marketing and public relations purposes.
In the fourth chapter, about interactivity, Warnick applies Kenneth Burke’s theory of persuasion and identification to two Internet political campaigns of the 2004 election: that of the liberal MoveOn.org, and GeorgeWBush.com. She maintains that it was the interactive elements of these campaigns that made the Internet a particularly valuable tool for both, although the MoveOn.org campaign emphasized interactivity among its users far more than GeorgeWBush.com to drive its content.
MoveOn.org also used humor—and the humor of its own users—to illustrate its points. Warnick finds that in the weaker of the two sites, the Bush Web site, interactivity among users was given less emphasis in favor of an emphasis on the weaknesses of opponents. At least some of this dissection of the two sites is obvious: Clearly, as Warnick points out, the nature of the Internet and its ability to air video clips, articles, and opinions instantly can be used as an effective marketing tool.
This book was published in 2007, before the 2008 presidential election, which further expanded the nature and practice of online and interactive presidential campaigning. But Warnick and other rhetorical scholars who critiqued that race now have plenty of new raw material as they tackle the evolving role of the Internet in political contests.
MARILYN GREENWALD
Ohio University