In "Rhetorical Velocity and Copyright: A Case Study on Strategies of Rhetorical Delivery" by Jim Ridolfo and Martine Courant Rife, ethics and legality are questioned in the realm of rhetorical delivery. Maggie Ryan, a student at MSU, was involved in a protest on campus, specifically designed to gain media coverage for the cause. The protest was successful on that front and a photograph of Maggie in the protest was used for their gain. Long after the success of the protest, the same photo was used by the university in a completely different context. It was used to profit the university, depicting Maggie as a student having a good time on campus in the snow.
This entire essay discusses the issues around the re-use of this photo. Delivery is a big focal point. Ridolfo and Danielle Nicole DeVoss conclude that "composing in the digital age is different from traditional practices of composing" (7). This is obvious. Everything is available in the digital realm. Maggie's photo, originally used in an article about the protest, was readily available through digital mediums. MSU recognized this and used it for their own gain and delivered it in a way that was completely different from its original purpose. Rhetorical delivery, in this case, changed the view of the photo completely. The photograph itself does not really say much, it is the context that it is presented in that determines what it really "means".
In Carolyn R Miller's essay "Genre as Social Action", she refers to Toulmin's study of Wittgenstein who claims that context is the third hierarchical level to meaning, encompassing both substance and form and enabling interpretation of the action resulting from their fusion (Miller 159). In Maggie Ryan's case, the context is everything. The substance is the photo itself, which is used in the form of an article about her protest, originally, but then on the university's website as an advertisement for the school. The meaning of the photo changes when the form determines the context. The genre of the photograph went from editorial to advertisement.
Through form and context, a substance can be rhetorically delivered in a number of ways, changing the way a viewer interprets its meaning.
Awesome job relating Ridolfo and Rife's text to Miller's "Genre as Social Action." I definitely agree that the genre of the image changed when it was appropriated by the university of advertising purposes. Instead of a girl engaging in a protest, it became just a girl having fun in the snow. However, it is difficult to say whether the original context of the photo could be considered the protest. We know that was where the photo took place, but Maggie was not the one who took the photo, nor did she request it. The photo, as far as we know, was not taken for any purposes involving the protest. It was likely taken by someone who works for the school, and the purpose of the photo itself may have always been to advertise the school. If this is true, then did it really change genre? Or did the photo never have a context to begin with? I think a lack of context could be what landed the photo in the realm of the commons and made it able to be appropriated by the school for their website and their pamphlet. A creative work such as a photo without a known creator or context can be considered free to use by anyone and possibly even free to be copyrighted by anyone who appropriates it. Whether such appropriation is ethically right or wrong is another story entirely, but I don't know that this debate was ever solved within the text.
ReplyDelete-Kayla Goldstein