Robert Glenn Howard

Major Articles Available Online (in .pdf format)

“The Vernacular Web of Particapatory Media ” (in Critical Studies in Media Communication , Volume 25, Number 5, December 2008: 490-513.)
(If you have trouble accessing this copy-protected location, please email me at rgh@rghoward.com.)

From wikis to blogs, new participatory forms of web-based communication are increasingly common ways for institutions and individuals to communicate. The content these forms produce incorporates elements of both institutional and non-institutional discourse. More than a syncretic pastiche, this content is the product of hybrid agencies made possible by these new forms. Terming this content ‘‘vernacular’’ acknowledges that this hybridity frustrates any reified conception of pure or authentic non-institutional discourse. At the same time, the theory of a ‘‘vernacular web’’ attends to the complex new transformational possibilities of participatory media seem to offer individuals.

“Electronic Hybridity: The Persistent Processes of the Vernacular Web” (in Journal of American Folklore. Volume 121, Number 480, Spring 2008: 192-218.)

Through the example of a specific blog, this article locates a category of online discourse termed the “vernacular web.” Because the definitive trait of the vernacular is its distinction from the institutional, the vernacular web emerges in specific network locations as a communal invocation of alternate authority. Imagining those invocations as located communication processes, the concept of a vernacular web provides the theoretical language necessary for speaking about the complex hybridity that new communication technologies make possible

“Rhetoric of the Rejected Body at ‘Heaven’s Gate’” (in Gender and Apocalyptic Desire, Lee Quinby and Brenda Brasher, editors. London: Equinox Press, 2006. 145-164.)

This article explores the possibility that the leader of the ‘Heaven’s Gate’ or Human Individual Metamorphosis religious group known by its acronym ‘HIM’ committed ritual suicide with his followers in 1997 as a result of his own rejection of the mainstream Protestant ideology with which he was raised. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Applewhite confronted what he considered the overly worldly and materialistic social norms of his mainstream Protestantism through performing an identity that completely rejected his own human selfhood. Coming to believe that he was actually a multidimensional spiritual being named ‘Do’ that was only incarnated in the human body of Applewhite, he validated that belief by creating a community of followers who also rejected their humanity, believing that they too were possessed by non-physical beings. This community sought to minimize gender roles and the sexuality that those roles imply. In the end, this rejection became so radicalized that it led them all into the choice to negate their human identities completely through suicide.

“Sustainability and Narrative Plasticity in Online Apocalyptic Discourse After September 11, 2001” (in Journal of Media and Religion, Volume 5, Number 1, March 2006: 25-47.)

It has been suggested that one avenue for critically assessing online discourses is in their ability to sustain themselves. In this article, I argue that apocalyptic Christian discourse is highly sustainable in the online environment precisely because its argumentative norms are grounded in a profound narrative plasticity. Because the authorizing biblical texts and interpretive narrative that define this discourse exhibit a profound flexibility, new events are immediately assimilated into the narrative structure, making the discourse highly sustainable in the online environment. However, a case study analysis suggests that precisely the same qualities that allow this sustainability also allow this discourse to insulate itself from the necessarily divergent ideas that might generate more constructive public deliberation.

“Toward a Theory of the Worldwide Web Vernacular: The Case for Pet Cloning” (in Journal of Folklore Research, Volume 42, Number 3, December 2005: 323-360.)

This article demonstrates that a “Worldwide Web vernacular” has now emerged. The “vanity” or “home page” in general and the “pet vanity page” in particular exist as recognizable emic genres. The distinguishing features of these genres are in their personal content. However, as a result of the technologies that arose to satisfy growing commercial interests in Web-based communication during the 1990s, that content has come to be associated with particular formal features. It becomes clear that these features are emically recognized as vernacular in the example of a professional WWW designer who deploys this aesthetic in an effort to render his marketing of pet-cloning services more palatable to pet-lovers. By using these features rhetorically, this Web designer offers evidence that the vernacular gives voice to meaning not available from inside institutional norms and forms. By comparing features of the commercial cloning Web pages with a 42-site sample of pet pages, the defining elements of this vernacular are located. In the end, this article finds that the vernacular is now recognizable on the World Wide Web precisely because the emergence of the “institutional” gave the vernacular its power to enact meaning.

“A Theory of Vernacular Rhetoric: The Case of the 'Sinner's Prayer' Online” (in Folklore, Volume 116, Number 2, August 2005: 175-191)

This paper seeks to rigorously define and illustrate the analytic category of “vernacular rhetoric” through an examination of the “Sinner’s Prayer” as it appears on an amateur web page. In the online environment, this invitation to a traditional prayer performance seems to be a strategy for converting non-Christians. Through the application of the concept of vernacular rhetoric, however, it becomes clear that the deployment of the prayer can also function as an invitation for the already-converted to “testify” to their faith. In this way, the apparently evangelic prayer form also functions as an invitation for the already-converted to perform previously held values. By applying the concept of vernacular rhetoric to this example of online discourse, its value as an analytic category becomes clear because it can address the performative nature of World Wide Web-based documents.

“Who Posts DeCSS and Why?: A Content Analysis of Web Sites Posting DVD Circumvention Software,” with Kristin R. Eschenfelder and Anuj C. Desai (in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Volume 56, Number 13, November 2005: 1405-1418)

This study explored why web authors post the DVD decryption software known as “DeCSS” --specifically whether authors post DeCSS to protest changes in copyright law. Data are drawn from content analysis of websites posting the software. Most DeCSS posters did not include any content explaining why they posted DeCSS; however, no authors presented DeCSS as a piracy tool. Of sites containing explanatory content, many argued that DeCSS is legitimate tool to play DVDs on free/open source computers. Other sites asserted that current copyright law is unjust, and that DVD related corporations are engaging in undesirable behaviors. Based on the data, and theorizing from rhetoric and the collective action literatures, we assert that much DeCSS posting is protest, but it may not be copyright protest -- numerous posters protest related issues such as freedom of speech. More research is needed to determine the significance of DeCSS posting to broader copyright policy debates including its relation to off-line protest, and the development of shared identities and cognitive frames. Also, the complexities of circumvention issues raise concerns about whether policy debate will be limited to elites. Finally, data point to the need to understand both international and local laws, norms, and events when studying copyright protest activity.

“Sustainability and Radical Rhetorical Closure: The Case of the 1996 ‘Heaven’s Gate’ Newsgroup Campaign” (in Journal of Communication and Religion, Volume 28, Number 1, March 2005: 99-130)

Because of its multilateral structure, Usenet newsgroups offer their users the benefit of rich audience feedback. When sustainable, feedback dramatically expands an individual communicator’s audience. In the summer of 1996, the H.I.M. religious group used multiple posts to Usenet newsgroups to try to locate individuals who might join their spiritual community. However, H.I.M. failed to garner a large audience and, as a result, failed to locate new members through Internet newsgroups. This occurred because the group’s posts did not conform to the “negotiative” rhetorical tactics typical of newsgroup discourse. Negotiative rhetorical tactics encourage feedback and imply a pluralist attitude. As a negative case, the H.I.M. newsgroup posts of 1996 indicate that individuals who believe they have attained certain knowledge can disregard the influences of a pluralistic medium because their beliefs allow them to value benefits that differ from those most obviously associated with that medium. This level of rhetorical closure may imply the potential for dangerous antisocial behavior.

“The Double Bind of the Protestant Reformation: The Birth of Fundamentalism and the Necessity of Pluralism” (in Journal of Church and State, Volume 47, Number 1, Winter 2005: 91-108)

Martin Luther’s Reformation shifted the authority for divine truth away from the Catholic Church and to the individual. This shift created a double bind. While it made the ideology of fundamentalism possible, it also made necessary the political pluralism fundamentalism withholds. For a society to judge and act on values, it must share a conception of truth. As becomes clear in Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam’s well-known debate about the freedom of the will, individually authorized truths had no recourse to a shared method of mediation through state or religious institutions. When individually experienced truths conflicted, there was no longer any governing authority to resolve those conflicts. As a result, post-Reformation governments caught in this double bind sought to maintain pluralist policies regarding divine authority in the face of growing popular affinities for fundamentalism.

“On-Line Ethnography of Dispensationalist Discourse: Revealed versus Negotiated Truth” (in Religion on the Internet, Douglas Cowan and Jeffery K. Hadden, editors. New York: Elsevier Press, 2000: 225-246)

This article discusses and applies a mixture of rhetorical and ethnographic analytical methods to document and analyze a small Internet community. Providing an easily identifiable and wide-spread discourse, engaging in both on-line and face-to-face discourse with American Evangelical dispensationalists create a window on the evolving modes of Internet expression. Developing out of informal electronic expression, dispensationalist debaters utilize complex vernacular rhetorical techniques. In 1999, this community’s debates were a feverish rush. In this rush, a rhetorical tension emerges between the desire to negotiate about truth and the desire to express an experienced or revelatory Truth. This article explores the possibilities and limits of the hypothesis that the medium of the Internet encourages and privileges more negotiative rhetorical techniques based on the methods it has developed for this purpose.

“Apocalypse in your In-Box: End-Times Communication on the Internet,” (in Western Folklore Volume 56, Number 3/4, Summer/Fall 1997: 295-315)

Historically, apocalyptic Christians have been portrayed with wild eyes. Even in the 1970 revision of his 1957 classic The Pursuit of the Millennium, Norman Cohn, maybe the most well-known scholar of millennialism, kept them fearfully hanging on the periphery. In recent press coverage, it seems that the average Christian millennialist is dangerously devoted to a single malevolent leader. This article argues that, on the Internet at least, this image does not hold true. Most Christian millennialists who are highly involved in electronic discourse seem, by the very nature of the electronic media themselves, less likely to be devoted to a single religious authority.

Minor Articles Available Online (in .pdf format)

Entry for "Fundamentalism" (in Encyclopedia of Religion, Communication, and Media, Daniel Stout editor. New York: Berkshire Publishing. 2006. 155-160.)
“Technology Takes Folklore into Future”(in Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, Wisconsin: Sunday, April 10, 2005: B2)
Entries for “Final Judgment,” “Myth,” and “Second Coming”(in Encyclopedia of Fundamentalism, edited by Brenda Brasher. London: Berkshire/Routledge, 2001: 179-181, 326-7, and 437-9)
"Negotiating Finality: Electro-Folk Rhetorics of Apocalypse" (in Journal for Millennial Studies Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 1999)
“Toward a Folk Rhetorical Approach to Emerging Myth: The Case of Apocalyptic Techno-Gaianism on the World-Wide-Web” (in Folklore Forum. Volume 29, Number 2, Fall 1998: 53-73)
"Attitudes Toward the Tragic: A Not-So-Biased Approach to the Heaven's Gate E-mail Campaign" (in Journal for Millennial Studies Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 1998)

Talks Available Online (in various formats)

Computer Lib and the Vernacular Web: The Real-World Emergence of Rhetorical Appeals to the Non-institutional (a talk given on May 25, 2008 at The Rhetoric Society of America Conference in Seattle, Washington)
Blogging the End Times: Ritual Deliberation in Participatory Media (a talk given on April 12, 2008 at The Western States Folklore Society Conference in Davis, California)
The Vernacular Authority of Computer Lib: How Counter-Culture Helped put the 'Vernacular' in the Vernacular Web (a talk given on October 20, 2007 at The American Folklore Society Conference in Quebec City, Quebec)
Hybrid Agencies on the Vernacular Web (a talk given on August 4, 2007 at The Alta Conference on Argumentation in Alta, Utah)
Religion in an Age of Vernacular Media: Vernacular Christian Fundamentalism on the Worldwide Web (a talk given on April 18, 2007 at The Western States Folklore Society Meeting in Los Angeles, California)
The Vernacular Mode: Locating the Non-Institutional in The Practice of Citizenship (a roundtable talk given on November 18, 2005 at The National Communication Association Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts)
FolkNets: The Emergence of the Internet Vernacular (a talk given on April 16, 2005 at Wisconsin Public Library; Madison, Wisconsin in .pdf format, a Powerpoint version may be downloaded here.)
Webcasting and Community Correction in a Public Speaking Pedagogy (a talk given on March 5, 2003 at University of Wisconsin Learning Support and Services; Madison, Wisconsin)