Search

This thesis describes a study that investigates the assumptions, rhetorical strategies, and genre characteristics demonstrated by online petitions and two websites that host them—We the People and MoveOn Petitions. Chapter One consists of a literature review of democratic and public sphere theories, as well as a description of the two websites of interest. Chapter Two investigates the impact of digital circulation on the function and form of the genre. Chapter Three describes a visual analysis of the home pages and creation templates of each site, while Chapter Four contains a critical discourse analysis of a sample of petitions. The project concludes with a chapter that outlines the findings of the study, supplemented by a discussion of the affordances and constraints of the genre. I argue that online petitions are complex digital texts that reveal varied and often complicated attitudes towards democracy, and that online petitions are their own genre due to their circulation patterns. Ultimately, this project provides insight on a form of digital public writing valuable in a variety of contexts, including first-year composition classrooms.