Riki Thompson | University of Washington Tacoma (original) (raw)

Videos by Riki Thompson

In this paper, I argue that dating apps are discursively constructed as spaces for queer communit... more In this paper, I argue that dating apps are discursively constructed as spaces for queer community building as well as hostile spaces where fetishization, harassment, exclusion, and potential violence are regularly negotiated.

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Papers by Riki Thompson

Research paper thumbnail of GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND SHIFTING STYLES: KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AND CODIFYING LANGUAGE USE IN STYLE GUIDES

Ex Aequo, 2024

Recent sociopolitical movements concerning gender identity have shifted conversations about langu... more Recent sociopolitical movements concerning gender identity have shifted conversations about language use and meaning. Style guides reflect this shift, updating and expanding sections on inclusive language in newer editions, and codifying written communication, enabling them to dictate language practices and ideologies. By comparing editions of commonly used guides, specifically AMA, AP, APA, and MLA, we employ queer linguistics to document language change regarding singular they in academic and professional spheres. In our research on gender-non-discriminatory language, we found consistent integration of gender inclusivity into popular style guides, yet guides tend to recommend avoidance of singular they and are ambiguous about usage.

Research paper thumbnail of Beyond the gender binary: Digital dating, discourse, design, & normativity

(Critical) Discourse Studies and the (new) normal: Analyzing discourse in times of crisis, 2024

Since the emergence of the internet, the search for love and sex has increasingly become mediated... more Since the emergence of the internet, the search for love and sex has increasingly become mediated by technology with online dating becoming one of the most common and fastest growing means for people to meet (Anderson et al. 2020). Digital dating and hookup platforms have been shown to facilitate connections for many, especially providing avenues for those in the LGBTQ+ community. As sociopolitical movements have made space for recognition of gender identities beyond the binary of men and women, digital intimacy platforms have attempted to adapt to changing market demands. Unfortunately, despite efforts to create a more inclusive online dating environment, individuals who identify beyond binary gender categories report that mainstream apps are largely unwelcoming spaces due to both platform design and the attitudes and behaviors of other users. This study focuses on the experiences of nine individuals who identify outside the gender binary and explores their quest for connection through digital intimacy platforms. Drawing on multimodal critical discourse analysis, ethnography, and queer linguistics, this research demonstrates how gender nonconforming individuals develop complex vetting practices to find connection and reveals how normative gender ideologies negatively influence their experiences. This research contributes to scholarship that explores digital dating through the lens of language, gender, and sexuality studies (Albury et al. 2021; Chan 2021; Mortensen 2015; Thompson 2022a; VanderStouwe 2019) as well as the emerging body of research dedicated to understanding the experiences of gender nonconforming daters (Albury et al. 2021; Choi et al. 2017; Griffiths & Armstrong 2023; Ma et al. 2022; Sharabi et al. 2022; Thompson, 2022a)

Research paper thumbnail of Polyamorous Relationships under Severe Strain during the Pandemic

From the introduction: A few years ago I started conducting interviews with over 100 people about... more From the introduction: A few years ago I started conducting interviews with over 100 people about their online dating experiences. I wanted to know how people presented themselves on their profiles, perceived other users on the platforms, and made decisions about whom to date. My participants included single people trying to find “the one,” some simply looking to casually date and hook up, and others in polyamorous or open relationships who were seeking to expand their network of lovers. Things were going well, with a steady stream of data coming in – right up until the pandemic hit. Lockdown upended the normal ebbs and flows of dating life. So I switched gears and decided to focus on how the pandemic had influenced the dating lives of my participants. I sent out quarterly surveys and interviewed subjects over video chat, the phone and social media. One finding soon emerged: People practicing polyamory were facing a totally different set of pandemic-related dilemmas than those who p...

Research paper thumbnail of Powerful women heading up dating apps are framed as young and sexy https://theconversation.com/powerful-women-heading-up-dating-apps-areframed-as-young-and-sexy-191403

The Conversation, 2022

People are swiping on dating apps in record numbers and roughly half of these individuals identif... more People are swiping on dating apps in record numbers and roughly half of these individuals identify as women, which may be the reason why the dating app industry recently assigned the top leadership roles to women. This past year, the most powerful dating apps in the world-Bumble and Tinder-were both run by women. Whitney Wolfe Herd is at Bumble while Renate Nyborg was running Tinder. As scholars who write about dating apps like Bumble and dating and feminism, we were interested to see how journalists reported on these two women leading the male-dominated, highly lucrative online dating industry and we wanted to compare that coverage with how the CEOs represented themselves on social media. We looked at last year's top 50 news stories for each woman that came up in search results. We found a pattern of sexist and patronizing coverage. We noted often repeated descriptors for the leaders and created three categories to describe them: "young tycoon," "feminist revenge" and "sexy poster child." We also did a Google Image search and looked at the top 100 results for each CEO to see how a Google search represented these leaders. What we saw were visually distinct styles intricately tied to each brand. In contrast, we observed more diverse and interesting accounts of gender and leadership in the women's personal media spaces. These stories include notions of motherhood, inclusivity and equity. It seems that significant tensions exist between news representations of women leaders in tech versus how they represent themselves.

Research paper thumbnail of Reflective Approaches to Analyzing Digital Discourse

Research Methods for Digital Discourse Analysis, 2022

Abstract: With the rapid changes in digital media, the need for research methods that address the... more Abstract: With the rapid changes in digital media, the need for research methods that address the constantly changing landscape are vital. In a perfect world, researchers design a plan and implement methods to ensure that data collected answers the research questions developed at the beginning of the process. However, with the speed at which digital technology changes and the convergence between online and offline lives, traditional research methods designed for the analog world are often inadequate. As the line between the real and virtual becomes blurred, with people utilizing social media as a primary form of networking and communicating, researchers must contend with new challenges and opportunities for recruiting, interviewing, collecting and analyzing digital discourse data. By assessing the research situation through an interdisciplinary lens to find common ground between disciplines to solve problems, researchers can develop more effective tools. To understand digital culture and situated communicative practices, many scholars argue for digital ethnography approaches that are inherently flexible and adaptive to issues that may arise from the field (Androutsopoulos, 2011; Hine, 2015; Varis, 2016). Though a case study of online dating research, this chapter will present guidelines and suggestions for engaging in reflective research practices that allow digital discourse researchers to be more responsive to serendipitous interactions and work within a social justice framework to give back to the community.

Research paper thumbnail of From Mass to Social Media: Governing Mental Health and Depression in the Digital Age

espanolDurante el siglo pasado, los trastornos de la salud mental se han convertido en un area de... more espanolDurante el siglo pasado, los trastornos de la salud mental se han convertido en un area de preocupacion para mantener una poblacion "productiva", ya que la atencion se ha desplazado hacia endemismos que lentamente disminuyen la capacidad de vivir una vida larga y productiva y el cuidado de la sociedad depende de tecnologias disciplinarias que Tienen como objetivo educar y administrar a las personas sobre la salud y el autocuidado. Las personas consideradas como una carga para el estado, como los enfermos mentales, son comunmente objetos de la gubernamentalidad (Foucault, 1988, 2003, 2011). En este estudio de la campana mediatica del Instituto Nacional de Salud Mental de los Estados Unidos (2003-2013), exploramos la interseccion entre el discurso institucional, las narrativas de la experiencia personal y las formas de los medios de comunicacion. Esta investigacion contribuye al floreciente campo de los Estudios del Discurso Digital para proporcionar herramientas mejo...

Research paper thumbnail of A review of Patient Tales: Case Histories and the Uses of Narrative in Psychiatry , by Carol Berkenkotter

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2010

... View full textDownload full text Full access. DOI: 10.1080/02773945.2010.504642 Lisa Keränen ... more ... View full textDownload full text Full access. DOI: 10.1080/02773945.2010.504642 Lisa Keränen a ... Quantitative analysis and qualitative data coding (with assistance from Cristina Hanganu-Bresch, Brent Heffron, and Ann Madsen) track the changing features of case histories in ...

Research paper thumbnail of Screwed up, but working on it: (Dis)ordering the self through e-stories

Narrative Inquiry, 2012

The turn to narrative as a form of therapy has become a common practice with individuals telling ... more The turn to narrative as a form of therapy has become a common practice with individuals telling their stories in private and public forums in hopes of finding healing and recovery for a wide variety of mental health disorders. With the emergence of the internet and the proliferation of new media forms, narrative practices have evolved concurrently. An examination of the digitally mediated narratives I calle-stories, on mental health community websites can provide a window into how people use psychological concepts in narratives to do mental health work in everyday life (Edwards & Potter, 1992). This case study of theHealthyPlaceonline journal community shows how e-stories play a significant role in self-identity construction and ideological reproductive work in relation to mental illness and recovery. This research examines autobiographical introductions posted on twenty-eight journal homepages to explore how everyday people use psychotherapeutic coherence systems — lay versions of...

Research paper thumbnail of Nobody Wants to Read Anymore! Using a Multimodal Approach to Make Literature Engaging

Reports about apparent declines in reading continue to gain attention, playing into social anxiet... more Reports about apparent declines in reading continue to gain attention, playing into social anxieties about literacy and the state of education. In this article, we examine concerns about changing reading habits, address the role of digital media in literacy practices, and the problem of adequate access to reading materials. To meet the rapidly changing literacy demands of today’s students, addressing motivation, teaching visual literacy, and instilling a lifelong love of reading are increasingly important. We argue for integration of nontraditional texts and application of multimodal reading approaches to motivate students, reinvigorate curricula, and meet continually evolving education standards. Our approach calls for integrating a wide range of texts, including comics, graphic novels, and film, for language learning and into the literary curriculum. In English language teaching (ELT) contexts, the use of visual texts has been shown to have positive outcomes, including increasing ...

Research paper thumbnail of College Campuses Are Vital for Critical Conversations

Research paper thumbnail of Polyamorous relationships under severe strain during the pandemic The Conversation

The Conversation , 2021

A few years ago I started conducting interviews with over 100 people about their online dating ex... more A few years ago I started conducting interviews with over 100 people about their online dating experiences. I wanted to know how people presented themselves on their profiles, perceived other users on the platforms, and made decisions about whom to date. My participants included single people trying to find “the one,” some simply looking to casually date and hook up, and others in polyamorous or open relationships who were seeking to expand their network of lovers. Things were going well, with a steady stream of data coming in – right up until the pandemic hit. Lockdown upended the normal ebbs and flows of dating life. One finding soon emerged: People practicing polyamory were facing a totally different set of pandemic-related dilemmas than those who practice monogamy. At the same time, their experience navigating the complexities of having more than one partner had put them at a particular advantage when it came to managing pandemic-specific dating issues.

Research paper thumbnail of Does it really empower women to expect them to make the first move_

The Conversation, 2022

Bumble brands itself as a feminist dating app that’s designed to empower women. According to Bumb... more Bumble brands itself as a feminist dating app that’s designed to empower women. According to Bumble’s website, the app was developed to “challenge the antiquated rules of dating” by requiring those who identify as women to initiate communication with men they match with. But my research shows that Bumble, despite purporting to empower women, leaves many female users feeling frustrated and vulnerable. This disconnect can be linked in part to the ways in which many men engage with online dating apps.

Research paper thumbnail of Does it really empower women to expect them to make the first move -The Conversation

The Conversation, 2022

Bumble brands itself as a feminist dating app that’s designed to empower women. According to Bumb... more Bumble brands itself as a feminist dating app that’s designed to empower women. According to Bumble’s website, the app was developed to “challenge the antiquated rules of dating” by requiring those who identify as women to initiate communication with men they match with.
But my research shows that Bumble, despite purporting to empower women, leaves many female users feeling frustrated and vulnerable. This disconnect can be linked in part to the ways in which many men engage with online dating apps.

Research paper thumbnail of Culture: Championing Critical Conversations About College

Research paper thumbnail of Disruptive practice: Multimodality, innovation and standardisation from the medieval to the digital text

Message and medium: English Language Practices Across Old and New Media, 2020

Superficially, digital technologies that rely on a keyboard with preset icons to translate charac... more Superficially, digital technologies that rely on a keyboard with preset icons to translate characters onto a digitized screen look like extreme divergences from earlier, pre-digital writing practices. Yet, in this paper we argue that contemporary digital writing practices, while adaptive to technological architecture, remediate the practices of specifically medieval manuscript production and consumption. To demonstrate this, we historicize writing and reading practices to argue for the importance of multimodality in communicative situations across time. Taking a transhistorical interdisciplinary approach, we consider the importance of visual rhetoric as both aesthetic and functional components that help readers navigate texts. Visual rhetoric in this sense can be understood as the use of visual imagery to communicate and the processes by which such imagery influences viewers (Foss 2005), drawing on the affordances – the capabilities – of a given mode. Our focus is on continuities in the visual properties of the text, engaging with Bolter and Grusin’s (2000: 14–15) argument that “new media are doing exactly what their predecessors have done: presenting themselves as refashioned and improved versions of other media”. Although our understanding of exactly how historical readers interacted with and understood texts is limited due to the passage of time, we discuss how such interaction may have operated, based on texts’ visual arrangement, and examine how the affordances of digital multimodality mirror, and in a sense recover, the same fluid, contingent and participatory textual experience of their medieval predecessors.

Research paper thumbnail of More than the selfie: online dating, non-monogamy, normativity, and linked profiles on OkCupid

Journal of Language and Sexuality, 2020

Success in the digital dating world is often dependent on an individual's ability to negotiate th... more Success in the digital dating world is often dependent on an individual's ability to negotiate the affordances and constraints of platforms (Bucher & Helmond 2017) while effectively expressing who one is and what they are looking for. Since mononormativity is the dominant script that underpins ideals of romantic love and intimate relations in our society (Wolkomir 2019), for the millions who ascribe to non-monogamy, profile creation is often complicated by dating platform interfaces and relationship orientations. This research takes a critical multimodal discourse approach (Milani 2013; Machin 2016) to examine the interplay between various semiotic modes in meaning making about sexual normativities (Motschenbacher 2019) in digital dating contexts and considers how people navigating non-traditional relationship orientations negotiate discourse in digital dating contexts to demonstrate how discourse and design have the ability to empower and marginalize users (Sun 2020) as well maintain cultural norms (Wachter-Boettcher 2017) about emotional bonding and sexuality.

Research paper thumbnail of Disruptive practice: Multimodality, innovation and standardisation from the medieval to the digital text

Message and medium: English Language Practices Across Old and New Media , 2020

Superficially, digital technologies that rely on a keyboard with preset icons to translate charac... more Superficially, digital technologies that rely on a keyboard with preset icons to translate characters onto a digitized screen look like extreme divergences from earlier, pre-digital writing practices. Yet, in this paper we argue that contemporary digital writing practices, while adaptive to technological architecture, remediate the practices of specifically medieval manuscript production and consumption. To demonstrate this, we historicize writing and reading practices to argue for the importance of multimodality in communicative situations across time. Taking a transhistorical interdisciplinary approach, we consider the importance of visual rhetoric as both aesthetic and functional components that help readers navigate texts. Visual rhetoric in this sense can be understood as the use of visual imagery to communicate and the processes by which such imagery influences viewers (Foss 2005), drawing on the affordances – the capabilities – of a given mode. Our focus is on continuities in the visual properties of the text, engaging with Bolter and Grusin’s (2000: 14–15) argument that “new media are doing exactly what their predecessors have done: presenting themselves as refashioned and improved versions of other media”. Although our understanding of exactly how historical readers interacted with and understood texts is limited due to the passage of time, we discuss how such interaction may have operated, based on texts’ visual arrangement, and examine how the affordances of digital multimodality mirror, and in a sense recover, the same fluid, contingent and participatory textual experience of their medieval predecessors.

Research paper thumbnail of English language and multimodal narrative

The Routledge Handbook of English Language and Digital Humanities. , 2020

We are in an age of media transition in which the textual is increasingly integrated with other s... more We are in an age of media transition in which the textual is increasingly integrated with other semiotic modes and old and new media interact in a complex relationship. This chapter examines the evolving technology of whiteboard animation as a relatively new digitally mediated multimodal storytelling form that exemplifies the complexity of the convergence between old and new media. Some whiteboard animation videos rely on the material practices of drawing and photography, whereas others mimic the material, using digital animation software and video to generate a story. The most common elements of whiteboard animation are the visualisation of a whiteboard as the canvas, the illustrator’s hand in the field of view and a marker drawing out the story. In the last decade, do-it-yourself (DIY) software programmes have emerged allowing ordinary people to tell their stories through whiteboard animation using libraries that include pre-drawn characters, stock images, music, drawing implements and hands. Whiteboard animation is a multimodal storytelling form that is increasingly used to educate, inform, advertise and entertain.
This chapter investigates the little-studied form of whiteboard animation to uncover the persuasive power of digital storytelling and reveal how technological transformations can inform storytelling practices. To develop frameworks for understanding the affordances that digital technologies bring to stories, this research explores narrativity and narrative discourse as social, rhetorical and multimodal. Through the lens of multimodality and rhetorical narratology, setting, time, point of view and voice are analysed in commercial and DIY whiteboard animation examples, paying attention to material practices of production and multimodal narrative development, as well as the complex relationship between speaker, audience, message and medium. This research on whiteboard animation looks to understand the intersection between technology and storytelling and contributes to digital humanities scholarship that looks to understand the implications of technology, writing and narrative.

Research paper thumbnail of Trauma and the Rhetoric of Recovery: A Discourse Analysis of the Virtual Healing Journal of Child Sexual Abuse Survivors

haumatic events have the power to change a person's sense of self and safety in the world. This p... more haumatic events have the power to change a person's sense of self and safety in the world. This phenomena has been documented in numerous groups of survivors, including-but not exclusively to-war veterans, holocaust survivors, terrorism survivors, rape survivors, physical and mental abuse survivors, and child sexual abuse survivors, as they attempt to make sense of their experience and pursue recovery from the damage done (Herman). For those who make the decision to heal through the rhetoric of recovery, whether it is through personal counseling, support groups, or self-help literature, the discursive practice of narration becomes a primary mode of telling in order to engage in the discourses of healing. Child sexual abuse survivors have capitalized on the genre of narrative in order to heal their own emotional wounds as well as to create a public discourse that is aimed at ending the cycle of child sexual abuse through "speaking the unspeakable" in order to break the silence that this crime thrives on. 1 It is clear that many survivors of trauma have come to engage in oral and written discourses of telling in order to heal their emotional wounds as the increase in community support groups, published texts,' newsgroups and websites demonstrate.' Some tum to the oral tradition of individual counseling or community support groups, both of which value telling as a form of healing," Others tum to writing, utilizing the literate tradition-in the form of journals, stories, and autobiographies-to tell with pen and paper. More recently, individuals have turned to the web, with its newsgroups, web sites and chat-rooms to tell, and thus participate in the discourses ofhealing.

In this paper, I argue that dating apps are discursively constructed as spaces for queer communit... more In this paper, I argue that dating apps are discursively constructed as spaces for queer community building as well as hostile spaces where fetishization, harassment, exclusion, and potential violence are regularly negotiated.

9 views

Research paper thumbnail of GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND SHIFTING STYLES: KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AND CODIFYING LANGUAGE USE IN STYLE GUIDES

Ex Aequo, 2024

Recent sociopolitical movements concerning gender identity have shifted conversations about langu... more Recent sociopolitical movements concerning gender identity have shifted conversations about language use and meaning. Style guides reflect this shift, updating and expanding sections on inclusive language in newer editions, and codifying written communication, enabling them to dictate language practices and ideologies. By comparing editions of commonly used guides, specifically AMA, AP, APA, and MLA, we employ queer linguistics to document language change regarding singular they in academic and professional spheres. In our research on gender-non-discriminatory language, we found consistent integration of gender inclusivity into popular style guides, yet guides tend to recommend avoidance of singular they and are ambiguous about usage.

Research paper thumbnail of Beyond the gender binary: Digital dating, discourse, design, & normativity

(Critical) Discourse Studies and the (new) normal: Analyzing discourse in times of crisis, 2024

Since the emergence of the internet, the search for love and sex has increasingly become mediated... more Since the emergence of the internet, the search for love and sex has increasingly become mediated by technology with online dating becoming one of the most common and fastest growing means for people to meet (Anderson et al. 2020). Digital dating and hookup platforms have been shown to facilitate connections for many, especially providing avenues for those in the LGBTQ+ community. As sociopolitical movements have made space for recognition of gender identities beyond the binary of men and women, digital intimacy platforms have attempted to adapt to changing market demands. Unfortunately, despite efforts to create a more inclusive online dating environment, individuals who identify beyond binary gender categories report that mainstream apps are largely unwelcoming spaces due to both platform design and the attitudes and behaviors of other users. This study focuses on the experiences of nine individuals who identify outside the gender binary and explores their quest for connection through digital intimacy platforms. Drawing on multimodal critical discourse analysis, ethnography, and queer linguistics, this research demonstrates how gender nonconforming individuals develop complex vetting practices to find connection and reveals how normative gender ideologies negatively influence their experiences. This research contributes to scholarship that explores digital dating through the lens of language, gender, and sexuality studies (Albury et al. 2021; Chan 2021; Mortensen 2015; Thompson 2022a; VanderStouwe 2019) as well as the emerging body of research dedicated to understanding the experiences of gender nonconforming daters (Albury et al. 2021; Choi et al. 2017; Griffiths & Armstrong 2023; Ma et al. 2022; Sharabi et al. 2022; Thompson, 2022a)

Research paper thumbnail of Polyamorous Relationships under Severe Strain during the Pandemic

From the introduction: A few years ago I started conducting interviews with over 100 people about... more From the introduction: A few years ago I started conducting interviews with over 100 people about their online dating experiences. I wanted to know how people presented themselves on their profiles, perceived other users on the platforms, and made decisions about whom to date. My participants included single people trying to find “the one,” some simply looking to casually date and hook up, and others in polyamorous or open relationships who were seeking to expand their network of lovers. Things were going well, with a steady stream of data coming in – right up until the pandemic hit. Lockdown upended the normal ebbs and flows of dating life. So I switched gears and decided to focus on how the pandemic had influenced the dating lives of my participants. I sent out quarterly surveys and interviewed subjects over video chat, the phone and social media. One finding soon emerged: People practicing polyamory were facing a totally different set of pandemic-related dilemmas than those who p...

Research paper thumbnail of Powerful women heading up dating apps are framed as young and sexy https://theconversation.com/powerful-women-heading-up-dating-apps-areframed-as-young-and-sexy-191403

The Conversation, 2022

People are swiping on dating apps in record numbers and roughly half of these individuals identif... more People are swiping on dating apps in record numbers and roughly half of these individuals identify as women, which may be the reason why the dating app industry recently assigned the top leadership roles to women. This past year, the most powerful dating apps in the world-Bumble and Tinder-were both run by women. Whitney Wolfe Herd is at Bumble while Renate Nyborg was running Tinder. As scholars who write about dating apps like Bumble and dating and feminism, we were interested to see how journalists reported on these two women leading the male-dominated, highly lucrative online dating industry and we wanted to compare that coverage with how the CEOs represented themselves on social media. We looked at last year's top 50 news stories for each woman that came up in search results. We found a pattern of sexist and patronizing coverage. We noted often repeated descriptors for the leaders and created three categories to describe them: "young tycoon," "feminist revenge" and "sexy poster child." We also did a Google Image search and looked at the top 100 results for each CEO to see how a Google search represented these leaders. What we saw were visually distinct styles intricately tied to each brand. In contrast, we observed more diverse and interesting accounts of gender and leadership in the women's personal media spaces. These stories include notions of motherhood, inclusivity and equity. It seems that significant tensions exist between news representations of women leaders in tech versus how they represent themselves.

Research paper thumbnail of Reflective Approaches to Analyzing Digital Discourse

Research Methods for Digital Discourse Analysis, 2022

Abstract: With the rapid changes in digital media, the need for research methods that address the... more Abstract: With the rapid changes in digital media, the need for research methods that address the constantly changing landscape are vital. In a perfect world, researchers design a plan and implement methods to ensure that data collected answers the research questions developed at the beginning of the process. However, with the speed at which digital technology changes and the convergence between online and offline lives, traditional research methods designed for the analog world are often inadequate. As the line between the real and virtual becomes blurred, with people utilizing social media as a primary form of networking and communicating, researchers must contend with new challenges and opportunities for recruiting, interviewing, collecting and analyzing digital discourse data. By assessing the research situation through an interdisciplinary lens to find common ground between disciplines to solve problems, researchers can develop more effective tools. To understand digital culture and situated communicative practices, many scholars argue for digital ethnography approaches that are inherently flexible and adaptive to issues that may arise from the field (Androutsopoulos, 2011; Hine, 2015; Varis, 2016). Though a case study of online dating research, this chapter will present guidelines and suggestions for engaging in reflective research practices that allow digital discourse researchers to be more responsive to serendipitous interactions and work within a social justice framework to give back to the community.

Research paper thumbnail of From Mass to Social Media: Governing Mental Health and Depression in the Digital Age

espanolDurante el siglo pasado, los trastornos de la salud mental se han convertido en un area de... more espanolDurante el siglo pasado, los trastornos de la salud mental se han convertido en un area de preocupacion para mantener una poblacion "productiva", ya que la atencion se ha desplazado hacia endemismos que lentamente disminuyen la capacidad de vivir una vida larga y productiva y el cuidado de la sociedad depende de tecnologias disciplinarias que Tienen como objetivo educar y administrar a las personas sobre la salud y el autocuidado. Las personas consideradas como una carga para el estado, como los enfermos mentales, son comunmente objetos de la gubernamentalidad (Foucault, 1988, 2003, 2011). En este estudio de la campana mediatica del Instituto Nacional de Salud Mental de los Estados Unidos (2003-2013), exploramos la interseccion entre el discurso institucional, las narrativas de la experiencia personal y las formas de los medios de comunicacion. Esta investigacion contribuye al floreciente campo de los Estudios del Discurso Digital para proporcionar herramientas mejo...

Research paper thumbnail of A review of Patient Tales: Case Histories and the Uses of Narrative in Psychiatry , by Carol Berkenkotter

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2010

... View full textDownload full text Full access. DOI: 10.1080/02773945.2010.504642 Lisa Keränen ... more ... View full textDownload full text Full access. DOI: 10.1080/02773945.2010.504642 Lisa Keränen a ... Quantitative analysis and qualitative data coding (with assistance from Cristina Hanganu-Bresch, Brent Heffron, and Ann Madsen) track the changing features of case histories in ...

Research paper thumbnail of Screwed up, but working on it: (Dis)ordering the self through e-stories

Narrative Inquiry, 2012

The turn to narrative as a form of therapy has become a common practice with individuals telling ... more The turn to narrative as a form of therapy has become a common practice with individuals telling their stories in private and public forums in hopes of finding healing and recovery for a wide variety of mental health disorders. With the emergence of the internet and the proliferation of new media forms, narrative practices have evolved concurrently. An examination of the digitally mediated narratives I calle-stories, on mental health community websites can provide a window into how people use psychological concepts in narratives to do mental health work in everyday life (Edwards & Potter, 1992). This case study of theHealthyPlaceonline journal community shows how e-stories play a significant role in self-identity construction and ideological reproductive work in relation to mental illness and recovery. This research examines autobiographical introductions posted on twenty-eight journal homepages to explore how everyday people use psychotherapeutic coherence systems — lay versions of...

Research paper thumbnail of Nobody Wants to Read Anymore! Using a Multimodal Approach to Make Literature Engaging

Reports about apparent declines in reading continue to gain attention, playing into social anxiet... more Reports about apparent declines in reading continue to gain attention, playing into social anxieties about literacy and the state of education. In this article, we examine concerns about changing reading habits, address the role of digital media in literacy practices, and the problem of adequate access to reading materials. To meet the rapidly changing literacy demands of today’s students, addressing motivation, teaching visual literacy, and instilling a lifelong love of reading are increasingly important. We argue for integration of nontraditional texts and application of multimodal reading approaches to motivate students, reinvigorate curricula, and meet continually evolving education standards. Our approach calls for integrating a wide range of texts, including comics, graphic novels, and film, for language learning and into the literary curriculum. In English language teaching (ELT) contexts, the use of visual texts has been shown to have positive outcomes, including increasing ...

Research paper thumbnail of College Campuses Are Vital for Critical Conversations

Research paper thumbnail of Polyamorous relationships under severe strain during the pandemic The Conversation

The Conversation , 2021

A few years ago I started conducting interviews with over 100 people about their online dating ex... more A few years ago I started conducting interviews with over 100 people about their online dating experiences. I wanted to know how people presented themselves on their profiles, perceived other users on the platforms, and made decisions about whom to date. My participants included single people trying to find “the one,” some simply looking to casually date and hook up, and others in polyamorous or open relationships who were seeking to expand their network of lovers. Things were going well, with a steady stream of data coming in – right up until the pandemic hit. Lockdown upended the normal ebbs and flows of dating life. One finding soon emerged: People practicing polyamory were facing a totally different set of pandemic-related dilemmas than those who practice monogamy. At the same time, their experience navigating the complexities of having more than one partner had put them at a particular advantage when it came to managing pandemic-specific dating issues.

Research paper thumbnail of Does it really empower women to expect them to make the first move_

The Conversation, 2022

Bumble brands itself as a feminist dating app that’s designed to empower women. According to Bumb... more Bumble brands itself as a feminist dating app that’s designed to empower women. According to Bumble’s website, the app was developed to “challenge the antiquated rules of dating” by requiring those who identify as women to initiate communication with men they match with. But my research shows that Bumble, despite purporting to empower women, leaves many female users feeling frustrated and vulnerable. This disconnect can be linked in part to the ways in which many men engage with online dating apps.

Research paper thumbnail of Does it really empower women to expect them to make the first move -The Conversation

The Conversation, 2022

Bumble brands itself as a feminist dating app that’s designed to empower women. According to Bumb... more Bumble brands itself as a feminist dating app that’s designed to empower women. According to Bumble’s website, the app was developed to “challenge the antiquated rules of dating” by requiring those who identify as women to initiate communication with men they match with.
But my research shows that Bumble, despite purporting to empower women, leaves many female users feeling frustrated and vulnerable. This disconnect can be linked in part to the ways in which many men engage with online dating apps.

Research paper thumbnail of Culture: Championing Critical Conversations About College

Research paper thumbnail of Disruptive practice: Multimodality, innovation and standardisation from the medieval to the digital text

Message and medium: English Language Practices Across Old and New Media, 2020

Superficially, digital technologies that rely on a keyboard with preset icons to translate charac... more Superficially, digital technologies that rely on a keyboard with preset icons to translate characters onto a digitized screen look like extreme divergences from earlier, pre-digital writing practices. Yet, in this paper we argue that contemporary digital writing practices, while adaptive to technological architecture, remediate the practices of specifically medieval manuscript production and consumption. To demonstrate this, we historicize writing and reading practices to argue for the importance of multimodality in communicative situations across time. Taking a transhistorical interdisciplinary approach, we consider the importance of visual rhetoric as both aesthetic and functional components that help readers navigate texts. Visual rhetoric in this sense can be understood as the use of visual imagery to communicate and the processes by which such imagery influences viewers (Foss 2005), drawing on the affordances – the capabilities – of a given mode. Our focus is on continuities in the visual properties of the text, engaging with Bolter and Grusin’s (2000: 14–15) argument that “new media are doing exactly what their predecessors have done: presenting themselves as refashioned and improved versions of other media”. Although our understanding of exactly how historical readers interacted with and understood texts is limited due to the passage of time, we discuss how such interaction may have operated, based on texts’ visual arrangement, and examine how the affordances of digital multimodality mirror, and in a sense recover, the same fluid, contingent and participatory textual experience of their medieval predecessors.

Research paper thumbnail of More than the selfie: online dating, non-monogamy, normativity, and linked profiles on OkCupid

Journal of Language and Sexuality, 2020

Success in the digital dating world is often dependent on an individual's ability to negotiate th... more Success in the digital dating world is often dependent on an individual's ability to negotiate the affordances and constraints of platforms (Bucher & Helmond 2017) while effectively expressing who one is and what they are looking for. Since mononormativity is the dominant script that underpins ideals of romantic love and intimate relations in our society (Wolkomir 2019), for the millions who ascribe to non-monogamy, profile creation is often complicated by dating platform interfaces and relationship orientations. This research takes a critical multimodal discourse approach (Milani 2013; Machin 2016) to examine the interplay between various semiotic modes in meaning making about sexual normativities (Motschenbacher 2019) in digital dating contexts and considers how people navigating non-traditional relationship orientations negotiate discourse in digital dating contexts to demonstrate how discourse and design have the ability to empower and marginalize users (Sun 2020) as well maintain cultural norms (Wachter-Boettcher 2017) about emotional bonding and sexuality.

Research paper thumbnail of Disruptive practice: Multimodality, innovation and standardisation from the medieval to the digital text

Message and medium: English Language Practices Across Old and New Media , 2020

Superficially, digital technologies that rely on a keyboard with preset icons to translate charac... more Superficially, digital technologies that rely on a keyboard with preset icons to translate characters onto a digitized screen look like extreme divergences from earlier, pre-digital writing practices. Yet, in this paper we argue that contemporary digital writing practices, while adaptive to technological architecture, remediate the practices of specifically medieval manuscript production and consumption. To demonstrate this, we historicize writing and reading practices to argue for the importance of multimodality in communicative situations across time. Taking a transhistorical interdisciplinary approach, we consider the importance of visual rhetoric as both aesthetic and functional components that help readers navigate texts. Visual rhetoric in this sense can be understood as the use of visual imagery to communicate and the processes by which such imagery influences viewers (Foss 2005), drawing on the affordances – the capabilities – of a given mode. Our focus is on continuities in the visual properties of the text, engaging with Bolter and Grusin’s (2000: 14–15) argument that “new media are doing exactly what their predecessors have done: presenting themselves as refashioned and improved versions of other media”. Although our understanding of exactly how historical readers interacted with and understood texts is limited due to the passage of time, we discuss how such interaction may have operated, based on texts’ visual arrangement, and examine how the affordances of digital multimodality mirror, and in a sense recover, the same fluid, contingent and participatory textual experience of their medieval predecessors.

Research paper thumbnail of English language and multimodal narrative

The Routledge Handbook of English Language and Digital Humanities. , 2020

We are in an age of media transition in which the textual is increasingly integrated with other s... more We are in an age of media transition in which the textual is increasingly integrated with other semiotic modes and old and new media interact in a complex relationship. This chapter examines the evolving technology of whiteboard animation as a relatively new digitally mediated multimodal storytelling form that exemplifies the complexity of the convergence between old and new media. Some whiteboard animation videos rely on the material practices of drawing and photography, whereas others mimic the material, using digital animation software and video to generate a story. The most common elements of whiteboard animation are the visualisation of a whiteboard as the canvas, the illustrator’s hand in the field of view and a marker drawing out the story. In the last decade, do-it-yourself (DIY) software programmes have emerged allowing ordinary people to tell their stories through whiteboard animation using libraries that include pre-drawn characters, stock images, music, drawing implements and hands. Whiteboard animation is a multimodal storytelling form that is increasingly used to educate, inform, advertise and entertain.
This chapter investigates the little-studied form of whiteboard animation to uncover the persuasive power of digital storytelling and reveal how technological transformations can inform storytelling practices. To develop frameworks for understanding the affordances that digital technologies bring to stories, this research explores narrativity and narrative discourse as social, rhetorical and multimodal. Through the lens of multimodality and rhetorical narratology, setting, time, point of view and voice are analysed in commercial and DIY whiteboard animation examples, paying attention to material practices of production and multimodal narrative development, as well as the complex relationship between speaker, audience, message and medium. This research on whiteboard animation looks to understand the intersection between technology and storytelling and contributes to digital humanities scholarship that looks to understand the implications of technology, writing and narrative.

Research paper thumbnail of Trauma and the Rhetoric of Recovery: A Discourse Analysis of the Virtual Healing Journal of Child Sexual Abuse Survivors

haumatic events have the power to change a person's sense of self and safety in the world. This p... more haumatic events have the power to change a person's sense of self and safety in the world. This phenomena has been documented in numerous groups of survivors, including-but not exclusively to-war veterans, holocaust survivors, terrorism survivors, rape survivors, physical and mental abuse survivors, and child sexual abuse survivors, as they attempt to make sense of their experience and pursue recovery from the damage done (Herman). For those who make the decision to heal through the rhetoric of recovery, whether it is through personal counseling, support groups, or self-help literature, the discursive practice of narration becomes a primary mode of telling in order to engage in the discourses of healing. Child sexual abuse survivors have capitalized on the genre of narrative in order to heal their own emotional wounds as well as to create a public discourse that is aimed at ending the cycle of child sexual abuse through "speaking the unspeakable" in order to break the silence that this crime thrives on. 1 It is clear that many survivors of trauma have come to engage in oral and written discourses of telling in order to heal their emotional wounds as the increase in community support groups, published texts,' newsgroups and websites demonstrate.' Some tum to the oral tradition of individual counseling or community support groups, both of which value telling as a form of healing," Others tum to writing, utilizing the literate tradition-in the form of journals, stories, and autobiographies-to tell with pen and paper. More recently, individuals have turned to the web, with its newsgroups, web sites and chat-rooms to tell, and thus participate in the discourses ofhealing.

Research paper thumbnail of Talking with Students Through Screencasting: Experimentations with Video Feedback to Improve Student Learning

Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, 2012

Changing digital technology has allowed instructors to capitalize on digital tools to provide aud... more Changing digital technology has allowed instructors to capitalize on digital tools to provide audiovisual feedback. As universities move increasingly toward hybrid classrooms and online learning, consequently making investments in classroom management tools and communicative technologies, communication with students about their work is also transforming. Instructors in all fields are experimenting with a variety of tools to deliver information, present lectures, conference with students, and provide feedback on written and visual projects. Experimentation with screencasting technologies in traditional and online classes has yielded fresh approaches to engage students, improve the revision process, and harness the power of multimedia tools to enhance student learning (Davis and McGrail 2009, Liou and Peng 2009). Screencasts are digital recordings of the activity on one's computer screen, accompanied by voiceover narration that can be used for any class where assignments are submitted in some sort of electronic format. We argue that screencast video feedback serves as a better vehicle for in-depth explanatory feedback that creates rapport and a sense of support for the writer than traditional written comments. "I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a paper back with underlines and marks that I can't figure out the meaning of."-Freshman Composition Student 1

Research paper thumbnail of Fostering divergent opinions and encouraging free speech on campus

Talk Radio KVI 570 Podcast, 2017

Interview with John Carlson: Talk Radio KVI 570

Research paper thumbnail of Researching the quest for love, lust, and connection during the time of COVID-19

SIAS Brown Bag Speaker Series, 2020

As people rapidly change their ways of communicating and being in the world, researchers must con... more As people rapidly change their ways of communicating and being in the world, researchers must contend with new challenges and opportunities for doing research related to digital environments. Through a case study of online dating research, Dr. Riki Thompson discusses methods for engaging in reflective research practices that are responsive to rapid technological shifts and serendipitous moments while utilizing a principle of care and giving back to community participants.