The Data Machine: Identification in the Age of Data Mining

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Author(s): Nicholas A. Hanford (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA)
Copyright: 2014
Pages: 16
Source title: Digital Rhetoric and Global Literacies: Communication Modes and Digital Practices in the Networked World
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Gustav Verhulsdonck (University of Texas at El Paso, USA)and Marohang Limbu (Michigan State University, USA)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-4916-3.ch005

Keywords: Communications Theory / Digital Communications / Information Science Reference / Media & Communications

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Abstract

Kenneth Burke warned of the trends of behaviorism in A Grammar of Motives as he found them to be a reduction of the human condition. In the current digital landscape, data mining aims at reducing the human user to characteristics and re-presenting those characteristics, through online advertising, to the user they were collected from. Due to these processes, rhetoricians are forced to take a deeper look at how the audience is constituted within digital situations. This chapter discusses the effects of data mining on Burke's work, providing an example for the contextualization of rhetorical theory in new media environments. By contextualizing Burke's concepts, this chapter allows for these ideas to be used more seamlessly within digital rhetoric and any medium where data mining is a consistent practice.

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