Students’ Social Media Disclosures: Reconsidering the Rhetorics of Whistleblowing

Abstract

This article examines how whistleblowing evolves as a rhetorical genre alongside emergent media. By analyzing three events involving student disclosures on social media, this article argues that students’ social media communication can qualify as whistleblowing, just as whistleblowing can qualify as rhetoric. Notably, whistleblowing’s current conventions, which are heavily based in business and organization studies, suggest otherwise. This article introduces a concept called kinderuption to facilitate rhetorical analyses of whistleblowing. Approaching whistleblowing events as kinderuptions invites critical attention to audience engagement and influence, and a reconsideration of underlying themes like intention, harm, and care.

Notes

1 Thank you to Elise Verzosa Hurley, RR reviewers Jessica Reyman and an anonymous reviewer, and Jeremy David Johnson for their helpful feedback and support for this article.

2 Hereafter referred to as u/CAROLINA.

3 Care work occurs in praxis and theory. For feminist methodological scholarship related to care and rhetoric, see Royster and Kirsch’s “ethics of care.” Generally, an ethics of care in research encourages inclusive, intersectional method/ologies (see also Adsanatham; Hankivsky; Raghuram).  

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Riddick

Sarah Riddick is an assistant professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she teaches courses in rhetoric and writing. Her research focuses on digital rhetoric and writing cultures, social media, audience studies, publics and counterpublics, and rhetorical methods and methodologies.