Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Writing​, University of Findlay, 2017, English

The introduction of the comments section to online news articles enabled new forms of interaction, allowing readers to participate directly in the conversation. Scholars have hailed the comments sections as digital public spheres of democratic discourse. However, scant research has been done on how sexist rhetoric affects women's ability to participate in online discourse, despite research indicating that such rhetoric is a problem. This thesis project draws connections between research on the comments sections, uninhibited behavior and flaming, cybersexism, and women's participation in discourse to look at the impact of sexist rhetoric. I conduct a close reading of comments from BuzzFeed, MSNBC, and Fox News, analyzing the material using feminist and sociological rhetorical criticism. I argue that the presence of sexist rhetoric leads to a reduction in women's participation in the comments and negative effects on women's agency within the comments. Findings include consistent patterns of sexist rhetoric on all three sites, and consistent patterns of responses from women, the most predominant of which is silence. If the comments are to meet the ideal of a democratic public sphere, then the role of sexist rhetoric must be understood and mitigated.

Committee: Ron Tulley PhD (Committee Chair); Elkie Burnside PhD (Committee Member); Kathy Mason PhD (Committee Member); Christine Tulley PhD (Advisor) Subjects: Communication; Composition; Gender; Language Arts; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Multimedia Communications; Rhetoric; Technical Communication