The short version:

My research focuses on digital communications and community-building. I use this research to diagnose problems with groups’ culture and identity, and develop recommendations for improvement (e.g., ways to foster productive conversation).

Articles and Chapters

• “Rhetorical Decay: Counterproductive Maneuvers in Argument” (Rhetoric Society Quarterly; December 2021

  I identify a large ‘umbrella category’ of counterproductive derailing gestures in public discourse. This work 1.) demonstrates how productive arguments (which are useful for democratic participation and community function) can be derailed by certain responses and 2.) recommends practices that help communicators “bridge gaps” and function as teams in the face of substantial disagreement.
  

• "'I Can't Breathe': Eric Garner and In/Out-Group Rhetorics" Rhetoric Review (Fall 2018)

This article uses qualitative ethnographic research methods to explore a dozen popular newsmedia articles' coverage of Eric Garner's 2014 arrest and death. This research demonstrates that popular news outlets from a wide variety of political leanings deploy in- and out-group framings and colorblind rhetorics to prime readers to think of Garner as a member of an out-group (criminal, not entitled to police protection), opposite an  in-group which includes the articles' readers (implied as law-abiding, entitled to police protection). 

• "Brokering Trust and Modeling Globalization in the Trans-Pacific Partnership" Seggau School of Thought Vol. 2 (2018)

This book chapter shows how two pro-TPP documents, drafted and distributed by U.S. officials in 2015 under President Obama’s administration, fostered different audiences’ trust by strategically explaining globalization in two different wats. This work reveals a conflict between two competing, prevalent models of globalization: 1.) one that emphasizes frictionless flows of goods and ideas, and 2.) a model that highlights the boundaries and priorities of individual nation-states. Overall, this chapter shows how different ways of understanding globalization isn’t just ‘descriptive,’ but actually works persuasively.

• "New Ways of Making Women's Fitness Groups: Ripped Goddess" Women's Ways of Making (2021)

This chapter explores social media community-building and messaging. I demonstrate how members of the online women's fitness community (Ripped Goddess) “rewrite” feminine fitness. This work highlights the community members' visions of feminine embodiment ‘play’ with traditional assumptions about women’s bodies, specifically, pushing back on notions of passivity and weakness. Ultimately, I show that community members use three gestures to produce resistant models of fitness: identification with the "ripped goddess" concept, ownership of women's right to occupy physical space, and resistance to several mainstream, gendered beauty standards. 

Book Review

• Review: Serendipity in Rhetoric, Writing, and Literacy Research, ed. Maureen Daly Goggin and Petter Goggin (2018, U. of Colorado Press). Rhetoric Society Quarterly (2020)