The enactment of rhetorical citizenship in a cultural journalism podcast: empowering low-skilled women migrants

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article examines the enactment of rhetorical citizenship in a cultural journalism podcast that seeks (1) to raise awareness of the exploitation and abuses against intra-EU migrant caregivers (predominantly women) and (2) to reinvest with credibility and agency a woman activist with a contested personal history. The analytical framework draws upon semio-pragmatics, multimodal discourse studies and rhetorical criticism in order to show how rhetorical agency is jointly performed by the producer of the podcast (a woman journalist) and the migrant caregiver within the interaction frame of the podcast dispositive. We show that rhetorical agency is enabled through a balanced articulation of news-style documentary, reportage-specific personal narrative and voice-over commentary, cast in immersive podcast features. The producer combines traditional and alternative journalistic styles, genres and digital technologies to engage listeners, while connecting them to the low-skilled women migrants’ transnational everyday lives and problems, and to their voices and rhetorical acts.