The aim of this study was to better understand how the rhetoric of self-expressions in online celebrity gossip characterizes proximity and distance. While proximity can be defined as a relationship of sameness and identification, distance stands for difference and disidentification. Moreover, in accordance with
‘ultimate dialectic’ as a philosophical principle of rhetorical studies (see Burke 1969: 1969: 19–20, 184–189), I understood proximity and distance as flexibly polar concepts that are not either-or ways of positioning but are simultaneously present in self-expressions. Thus proximity can be a way into distance and distance can be a way into proximity. Moreover, I distinguished intimacy as a specific type of proximity in which an embodied closeness to objects, such as to pictures, videos or texts representing celebrities, is essential (for more on intimacy in online celebrity gossip, see Graefer 2013). I hypothesised that intimacy with objects complicates the relationship of proximity and distance in online celebrity gossip. Thus, potentially, a self-expression may create intimacy with an object representing celebrities at the same time when distancing or even completely excluding otherness that the object represents.
I took rhetorical ethos, the trustworthiness of character, as the core concept to deal with self-expressions as rhetorical ‘speeches’ which online participants had posted in comment sections of gossip sites. The starting point of this study was to understand ethos as a fundamentally relational concept: it is a means of persuasion based on a character’s relation to the addressed audience as well as to
‘others’, often distant or distanced. I was particularly interested in the tension between individual and social aspects of online self-expressions that represent the individual interest of participants and at the same time are invitations to form a community with the addressed audience. Such a tension can be found in acts of rhetorical violence that are self-expressions of individuals aggressively producing more and more sameness. Although violence as a rhetorical and hence a freely chosen option of participation seems like a paradox (see Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 2000 [1969]: 54–59, 62), it represents the extreme end of rhetoric that becomes persuasive in the era of ‘liquid’ modernity in which individual relationships to objects become collective practices aiming at distancing or even completely excluding otherness. Unlike ‘heavy’ or ‘solid’ violence that directly attacks the human physical body, violence in its ‘light’ or ‘liquid’ form seems socially persuasive because it comes in the guise of individual freedom. I focused on online comments on physical violence involving celebrities because violence as a theme of celebrity culture brings to the surface issues of power and domination of groups (see Fiske 1989: 127–130). Thus media representations of physical violence may persuade the audience of celebrity gossip to post
self-expressions that involve rhetorical violence justifying physical violence against particular ‘others’.
By focusing on ethos construction and ethos control, the study has systematically explored the rhetoric of self-expressions in online celebrity gossip. The findings suggest that self-expressions in online celebrity gossip do not take place in a vacuum; they are expressions of social positioning in which individuals invite their audience to form a community with them. Thus online comments, however individualistic they may seem, always have a social dimension. Moreover, I have uncovered the means of persuasion of ‘ordinary’ people, that is, those who do not refer to their authorial social status but rather are characterized by their anonymity (or pseudonyms) in public spaces. Although the present study explored self-expressions from the viewpoint of rhetorical criticism, the findings can also be seen as a contribution to media studies and the study of digital culture interested in the role of online participants in contemporary media culture.
The findings can be regarded as empirical proof that proximity to the addressed audience is highly important for establishing trust in self-expressions online. In online celebrity gossip, ethos was an emotionally exclusive construct because the rhetoric of proximity took place at the expense of distanced ‘others’.
Characteristic of such relationships was intimacy with mediated objects through which online participants treated certain celebrities as examples of ‘inferior’
beings. Thus the intimate object-oriented relationship to pictures, videos and texts representing celebrities became the central locus of ethos in a digital space. This means that relationships to objects became a rhetorical phenomenon – a way of positioning oneself in relation to the ‘other’.
Accordingly, the findings show that moral positioning based on personal preferences is not merely an individualistic issue of emotivism (cf. MacIntyre 2003 [1985]: 6–35; also Sayer 2011: 24, 32–35); in online celebrity gossip, preferences become collectively shared. In this study, rhetorical practices of moral positioning based on individual preferences for objects were seen as ways of contributing to emotivist morality. Emotivist morality is what happens to emotivism when individual preferences for objects legitimize othering and become the core of ethos. That is to say, emotivist morality was not only based on collective liking or disliking as reactions targeting certain celebrities; it also was a sign of ideological proximity. In rhetorical terms, both the second persona (see Black 1970) and the third persona (see Wander 1984) were involved in the rhetoric of self-expressions. This is because online celebrity gossip concerns groups and their struggles (see Meyers 2010; 2013; Graefer 2013). Moreover, online celebrity gossip does not only concern struggles of social groups but it
takes place as a struggle of finding one’s own place in the complex relationships of proximity and distance. Self-expressions in online celebrity gossip are voices of those who use rhetoric for the purposes of social mobility for them and for the group they identify with. In such rhetorical practices, the tension of proximity and distance is central.
The rhetorical struggles of proximity and distance took place on two levels of emotivist morality: 1) either celebrities were treated as symbols of the ideological meanings a gossip participant promotes through moralizing 2) or the authenticity of celebrity as a moral individual was denied and celebrity gossip discourse itself was seen as the main goal of gossip. On the first level of emotivist morality, moral positioning was serious and took place as moralizing in the form of categorical and theoretical enthymemes and autobiographical moralizing. Thus what seems to be an example of conventionalism or practical morality in online celebrity gossip may be utilized as a rhetorical means of emotivist morality. In the serious gossip, both the discourse of the seemingly sincere ‘self’ and that of a rationalistic moralizer were used for the proximity of ‘us’ at the expense of
‘others’. In such rhetoric, therefore, moralizing was persuasive and online gossipers treated moral values and reasoning as rhetorically attractive. Rhetorical practices based on categorical and theoretical enthymemes were more common to Finnish than English-language self-expressions. In addition to female celebrities often treated as representatives of class and race, moralizing attacked male celebrities and also co-occurred with classist categorization and racist stereotyping. Autobiographical moralizing, slightly more common to the English-language gossip than to the Finnish one, tended to be a sexist discourse in which the ‘sincerity’ of the rhetor was put in a rhetorical use. Such rhetoric, by stereotyping women or men, reinforced the discourse in which ‘sex is power’ (see Höglund 2009). Despite the seemingly serious moral concerns, moralizing in online self-expressions of celebrity-gossip participants was a rhetorical way to hide intimate relationships to mediated objects. Moralizing was only seemingly focused on acts for its main purpose was to evaluate ‘others’ as morally static and unable to change. Moralizing, therefore, was a rhetorical sign of object relationships that were hidden under the guise of morality-concerned evaluation.
Compared with the first level, emotivist morality on the second level was more spontaneous and shamelessly intimate and did not involve ways of hiding the object relationship under the rhetoric of moralizing. Moral positioning on the second level, therefore, becomes mere mockery, which abandons all moral concerns. The targets of such mockery were almost exclusively (lower) middle class women who are known as low-status celebrities having no cultural or social capital related to higher education and profession. Such female celebrities were
dehumanized into sexual and frivolous objects. This type of emotivist morality was involved in amoralistic digital enthymemes and it was more common to English-language gossip compared with that in Finnish, although it was used by Finnish participants as well. For Finnish participants, some celebrities represented national figures and the gossip about them provoked moral considerations of being a good citizen. As discussed above, this may indicate that evaluating celebrities in moral terms is seen as more persuasive in nationally limited online contexts than in online contexts with more multicultural potentialities. One particular Finnish celebrity seen as a national moral figure was the former sportsman Matti Nykänen. Although Nykänen was othered in gossip discourse, he was clearly seen to belong to the moral community of Finns. These findings support the view that celebrities associated with sport are seen as national figures that are part of ‘our tribe’ and its responsibility (see Dahlén 2008: 446).
One explanation for the popularity of playful celebrity mockery, which was particularly typical of English-language online gossip, lies in the contradiction of arete and phronesis, a topic which I have discussed in Article 5. Because online gossipers want to present themselves as media-savvy participants, they refuse identification with celebrities whom they see as highly artificial and media-made.
Accordingly, mockery may function as a way of challenging the construction of mass-media audience as passive recipients of mediated monologues, albeit doing it at the expense of certain celebrities and groups. Such ‘clever’ celebrity criticism typical of online celebrity gossip (see Graefer 2013) is not exclusively a characteristic of online celebrity gossip but can be seen as a general phenomenon in contemporary celebrity culture (see e.g. Ahva et al. 2014: 194–195). The specific characteristic of online celebrity gossip is that celebrity mockery as a sign of media criticism is a collective discourse of rhetors who are faceless and mediated to one another. In celebrity mockery, the rhetor’s shameless intimacy with a picture, video or text representing celebrities becomes the basis of a trustworthy ethos that is utilized as a rhetorical choice to attack all morally serious interpretations. Such participation is characteristic of social spaces that are publicly visible but non-civil and highlight participants’ action, not a reasoned form of interaction (see Bauman 2000: 97). At the latest when the object-centric ethos of celebrity culture loses its rhetorical shame, proximity in the interaction of gossipers reveals its nature as a relationship that is possible only through mediated objects. Moreover, the intimate object-focused relationship may be an obstacle to a direct social relationship that would encourage interlocutors to understand one another. This also shows that proximity in its most intimate form may lead to distance and exclusion of otherness.
By focusing on ethos as a rhetorical character through which an individual becomes part of a community, this study has contributed to the research into community building of online participants. I took as a starting point that community in an online space should not be seen as distinct from offline togetherness, since all self-expressions, however ‘alone’ they seem to be, are always invitations to build a community. Thus online comments, even as seemingly separated, individualistic expressions, carry with themselves the idea of social relationships. As already discussed above, the type of community that can be found in online celebrity gossip is not that of mutual understanding or moral commitments but a form of togetherness that highlights proximity to the faceless audience as the ‘nearness of the crowd’ (Bauman 1993: 130). In other words, such a community consists of participants whose individuality is ignored.
Consequently, the findings of this study are in line with the idea that online communities favour a group ethos instead of an ethos based on individual freedom (e.g. Gurak 1999). This also resonates with the remarks that online participants play a certain role and their role expectations become a substitute for their sincerity (see Gardner 2011: 99–106).
What I consider the most important finding of this study is that the highlighted role of individualism as the rhetoric of online celebrity gossip calls into question the very idea of ‘free’ individual. What is personal or self-expressive may also be impersonal and self-attacking. In accordance with the logic of ‘ultimate’ or transformative dialectic (see Burke 1969: 189), self-exclusion may be the end point of self-empowerment. I have discussed this rhetorical tension in relation to the bread-and-butter-fly metaphor. The metaphor characterizes the ethos of participants in digital networks who consume for their own self-interest, but as they consume they themselves become part of digital contents, like the bread-and-butter-fly whose sugar-cube head dissolved in the tea it was drinking (see Fleckenstein 2005). The bread-and-butter-fly effect characterizes intimacy with the material the ‘self’ is consuming and it is prominent in online participants’
self-expressions contributing to emotivist morality.
Firstly, such intimacy excludes all concerns of otherness, since media objects are consumed only for self-empowerment. Only those rhetorical practices are welcomed that do not cause any challenge or risk to the intimate relationship to objects. Secondly, bearing in mind that gossip may always turn against the gossipers themselves because of the tendency for gossipers to trade places with the targets of their gossip (see Bergmann 1993: 45–70), celebrity gossip may also attack its participants. Because celebrities as ‘others’ are proximate, like ‘us’, their otherness is constantly exaggerated in rhetorical struggles. Compared with private-sphere gossip, which, despite its accusing tones, also involves negotiation
of morality as situated meanings (see Bergmann 1993: 130–134), online celebrity gossip is a more explicitly condemning and excluding moral genre. By distancing and excluding celebrities as ‘others’ like ‘us’, and doing it for the sake of intimacy of ‘us’, celebrity gossipers may ironically distance and exclude themselves. These findings, accordingly, reinforce the notion that because of the urgent need for intimacy, togetherness constructed in online comments may contribute to ‘deindividuation’ (see also Lea & Spears 1991; Stromer-Galley &
Martey 2009). Such rhetorical acts can be seen as practices of ‘light’ or ‘liquid’
violence that attack the very idea of being an in-dividual. Unlike violence in physical attacks, violence in its ‘light’ form cannot directly hurt the body of the
‘other’. By individual rhetorical choices, rhetors question their own freedom and surrender to the power of context. Accordingly, the harming effect of self-expressions analysed in this study challenges the idea of the rhetor’s independence.
The findings of the present study, however, cannot be generalized without taking into account the limitations. Firstly, I focused on four topics of celebrity gossip that were well known mostly in American and Finnish cultures. Although I assumed that English-language comment sections are spaces where participants from different cultural and national backgrounds are able to make meanings together, it is likely that these online environments were more or less limited to the American culture and its conception of celebrities. Overall, both corpora analysed in this study represented western celebrity culture in which the public visibility of an individual is part of the everyday media content. The shared western culture may explain why English-language and Finnish online celebrity gossip had so much in common. As Marshall argues (2006: 6–7), celebrity culture tends to represent a form of ideological colonization through which western culture is made global. It would be fruitful to compare English-language online comments on celebrities with online comments that represent the reception and interpretation of celebrity culture beyond the west.
Secondly, since online comments on celebrities were highly ambiguous, the categories into which I have classified them tended to overlap. This is because of the ‘messy rhetoric’ in online contexts where self-expressions of online participants are fragments of speech whose meaning lies in interaction (see also Grabill & Pigg 2012). This means that the quantitative findings of this study, particularly those concerning evaluative language and values, are highly complex and can be interpreted differently from different perspectives. For instance, many of the comments I saw as individualistic self-interest in Article 2 were, in fact, ways of contributing to sexist and classist domination, as the findings of Article 4 more clearly indicated. A digital text, such as a comment in a discussion forum,
often does not have its own origin but rather is part of a network of texts (e.g.
Fleckenstein 2007). Thus the repetitive and ‘crowding’ online participation I called digital enthymeming may contribute to particular meanings that are not explicitly present in each comment as an individual post. It is worth noting, however, that the asymmetry between those gossiping and those gossiped about played a role in favouring digital enthymeming that judges and mocks ‘others’.
The findings on digital enthymemes may be different in online contexts that are not so strongly based on ways of distancing ‘others’, but would favour more symmetrical means of emotional participation.
Thirdly, a deeper contextual understanding of self-expression in different kinds of online spaces where participants contribute to celebrity gossip is a gap to be filled. It would be particularly interesting to more closely focus on the technological and social potentials of different types of forums in relation to the tense function of self-expression. Accordingly, in the future it would be relevant to explore what kinds of circumstances in online forums are the most fruitful for the bread-and-butter-fly effect. It would be particularly interesting to more thoroughly compare forums that are based on the circulation of pictures or videos with forums that are more focused on merely written expression. Such a study would be illuminating from the point of view of rhetorical criticism because particularly a visual object, such as a photograph, holds a strong aesthetic power in serving as proof that is taken as self-evident (see Finnegan 2001). Relating to a better contextual understanding of online self-expression, the means of persuasion contributing to proximity and distance in the rhetoric of the media or journalists is also worth studying more closely. As Silverstone’s (2007: 25–55) concept of
‘mediapolis’ suggests, online participants are not alone; rather they are acting with media corporations and journalists, those in charge of media-generated content in the shared social and public space. In this study, I did not analyse the rhetorical content of mass-media texts (such as gossip stories or videos from the entertainment industry). In the future, it would be fruitful to analyse in what ways positioning based on proximity and distance is shared between online participants and the mainstream media also creating content online.
Generally speaking, because this study was a collection of articles that were also independent pieces of research, each article necessarily simplified the complexities of online celebrity gossip. However, I needed the case studies in order to focus on each aspect of ethos (autobiographical moralizing, emotions and values, reasoning, ethos control) and to form a holistic picture of proximity and distance in self-expressions of gossipers. Also, letting the research material speak
Generally speaking, because this study was a collection of articles that were also independent pieces of research, each article necessarily simplified the complexities of online celebrity gossip. However, I needed the case studies in order to focus on each aspect of ethos (autobiographical moralizing, emotions and values, reasoning, ethos control) and to form a holistic picture of proximity and distance in self-expressions of gossipers. Also, letting the research material speak