The second edition of Rhetoric Online: The Politics of New Media has been extensively revised and expanded in order to systematically examine how rhetorical theory can be applied to political activity across a wide range of new media technologies. Warnick and Heineman study the web as a public sphere, touching on how websites, social media, smartphone applications, blogs, viral video, and web-based anti-institutional practices such as hacktivism impact everything from electoral politics to activism. Furthermore, they provide critical insight into how rhetoricians might consider existing theories of persuasion, identity, narrative, intertextuality, social movements, and more in the context of evolving new media technology. This edition contains completely new chapters on viral video, social identity and social media, and anti-institutional politics online.

Barbara Warnick is Professor and Chair in the Department of Communication, University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on the rhetorical theory and criticism of persuasion in online public discourse.
David S. Heineman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Bloomsburg University. His primary research interests are located at the intersection of rhetorical theory and criticism and new media technologies.