Rhetorical Data Studies

Abstract

This article by Laurie Gries extends a keynote talk given at the 2022 Nordic Conference on Research in Rhetoric. In this piece, Gries describes a data advocacy project called The Swastika Counter Project that she has been working on for five years to help account for the swastika’s contemporary circulation and consequentiality in the United States. In addition to discussing the digital research method called iconographic tracking that she adapted for this research, Gries introduces a methodology she calls rhetorical data studies, which, she suggests, can be useful for negotiating the rhetorical politics of accountability that are always involved in doing data advocacy work in ethical and just ways. Gries ultimately challenges rhetoricians across both sides of the Atlantic to take up rhetorical data studies to confront the intensification of discrimination, harassment, and intimidation currently being felt within and across local, national, and transnational borders.