NKRF9: Rhetoric in Digital and Technological Transition

Sine N. Just, Professor at the Department of Communication and Humanities, Roskilde University, Denmark

Controversial Encounters: How Digital Technologies Are Stifling Public Debate and What to Do about It

Digital technologies are transforming how we encounter issues of public concern and engage in public debate. On the one hand, data-based personalization means we are increasingly exposed to content that we already like. On the other hand, algorithmic infrastructures intensify and polarize message circulation, favoring clashes between opposed opinions rather than nuanced engagement. In combination, these two tendencies support automated processes of public and private meaning formation in which people are constantly guided by covert persuasion whilst becoming increasingly unaccustomed to overt persuasive attempts. This keynote diagnoses the present situation as ‘the closing of the rhetorical mind’ and suggests that a return to the classical notion of controversia (arguing all sides of a case) may provide a starting point for ‘making disagreement good again’. This is not a call to abandon digital technologies, but an attempt to show how individuals and collectives can use algorithms and data to (re)ignite public debate as a source of societal trust and institutional legitimacy.

Damien Pfister, associate professor, Dept. of Classics, University of Maryland, USA

Rethinking Digitality, Refashioning Ethos: Technics, Ecology, and Rhetoric after Ubiquitous Computation

Rhetoric is in a time of digital and technological transition, spurring scholarly responses that highlight technicity and ecology. Ubiquitous digital technologies are encouraging rhetoricians to address the technicity of rhetoric in increasingly dramatic ways: we cannot escape the mediating roles of platforms, algorithms, artificial intelligence, wearables, and the "internet of things," all programmed to communicate in ever-more complex ways. Digital networks have also quickened the interest around ecological models of rhetoric that highlight the co-constitutive relations humans have with the non-human entities that surround us. Our interfacing with digital objects is not just situated, but situated within larger rhetorical ecologies that are connected by a richer array of computational-rhetorical agents than ever before. Synthesizing the turn to technics and to ecology, I theorize digitality as a "technics ecology" that invites a revision and expansion of rhetorical theory. In this keynote, I offer new theoretical and critical concepts that reconceptualize and expand our understanding of ethos in the context of the digital technics ecology produced by ubiquitous computation. If ethos developed in the ancient world as part of rhetoric's arts for living well with others, this talk considers the conceptual resources needed to live well with others now that digital technics thoroughly mediate and condition experience.

Johanna Hartelius, associate professor, Dept. of Communication Studies, Moody College of Communication, University of Texas at Austin, USA

Learning in Transition: Ethos and Text to Image AI Technologies

Algorithmic thought and artificial intelligence, which have long fascinated tech-enthusiasts and scholars became the center of public attention in late 2022. Media commentaries were abuzz – If ChatGPT writes better than a writer, what will this mean for journalism, education, etc.? If digital art is accessible and infinitely generative, what defines “an artist”? From a rhetorical perspective, questions of legitimacy, accountability, and trust reference the concept of ethos, the emplaced habituation of individual character as one dwells with others. The keynote explores how nonexpert discourses surrounding Midjourney, a visually spectacular text to image tool, interpret and constitute the tool’s “learning” process. Specifically, it assesses how lay-understandings of space and expertise organize the technology’s learning in relation to its users. To assess implications for ethos in the contextual transitions of AI, it connects both the “I” of AI and the “learning” in machine learning to the activity of dwelling as traditionally theorized.

Individual paper

25 minutes are allocated. per presentation, of which 10 are reserved for questions and discussion. A presentation should therefore not last more than 15 minutes. The description must include:

• Title
• Abstract (max. 300 words excluding references)
• 3-5 keywords
• Contact information: Name, place of employment and email address

Panel session

90 min is allocated. per panel, of which 30 are reserved for questions and discussion. The description must include:

• Title
• Abstract (200 words about the overall theme and max. 300 words excluding references per paper)
• 3-5 keywords
• Contact information: Names of the chair, presenters (max 3) and possibly respondent, places of employment and e-mail addresses for all participants in the panel

Round table

90 min is allocated. per panel, of which 30 are reserved for questions and discussion. The description must include:

• Title
• Abstract (300 words about the overall theme and a maximum of 100 words for the individual contributions)
• 3-5 keywords
• Contact information: Names of participants, places of employment and email addresses for all participants in the panel

Poster or multimedia presentation

E.g. internet projects, documentaries, or other types of mediating formats)

• Title
• Abstract
• 3-5 keywords
• Contact information: Name, place of employment and e-mail address

Thanks to an unexpected high number of participants and luck with funding applications, we find ourselves in the lucky position to be able to offer a somewhat discounted conference fee to a smaller number of participants. Participants can apply for this if they:

1. are junior scholars
2. will be presenting a paper 
3. do not have a full time job 
4. have paid for the conference out of their own pocket (not with other stipends or the like)

If you want to apply for a discounted conference fee, please send us an email stating that you meet these four criteria and would like a discounted conference fee, you will then receive an email explaining how to proceed. The size of the discount depends on how many respond to this. 

We need to hear from you no later than September 19 at 12. Please contact us at nkrf9@ku.dk.

Conference participants in need of a certificate of participation can contact nkrf9@ku.dk before 30 October 2024 indicating their name and the title of their conference presentation. The certificate will then be sent via email.