2. My research questions for “Disgust,
Distributed”:
• What’s up with public shaming on the Internet?
• How does shame work, rhetorically?
• How does the technology of Twitter & search
engines aid and abet shamings?
• What does the technological nature of this
rhetorical phenomenon reveal/confirm about
the technological nature of ALL rhetoric?
5. “It is not the
simple act of
reflecting on
our
appearance,
but the
thinking of
what others
think of us,
which excites
a blush.”
(Darwin 325)
6. “Core disgust may have been
preadapted as a rejection
system, easily harnessed to
other kinds of rejection.”
(Haidt et al 124)
7. “The feelings of love and regret are not as easily
definable as the feelings of disgust….Disgust thus
communicates rather better than most emotions.”
(Miller 194)
10. Evolution of project:
• In what other ways have networks
continued to crystallize states of
feeling (aided by weakness of
human reason)?
• How does this (does this) change
how we teach argument?
13. Two Forms of Reasoning
collective-knowledge-acquisition cultural-identity-protective
14. “Far from increasing the likelihood that
individuals will agree that human activity is
causing climate change, higher science
comprehension just makes the response that a
person gives to a ‘global-warming belief’ item an
even more reliable indicator of who he or she is.”
”Dan Kahan, “Climate-Science Communication and the ‘Measurement Problem’” 12.
18. Questions we could ask:
• What forms of behavior currently have been
getting called out/shamed on the Internet?
E.g. #MeToo
• What kinds of things would you be ashamed
to post, and why?
• How do you think shaming will change in the
age of Trump? (i.e., blatant disregard for
truth and/or conventions of communication).
As a scholar, how would you study that?
