2026-09-23T07:20:22Z https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/125566 2025-02-06 col_2142_5131 col_2142_17395 com_2142_5130 com_2142_181 com_2142_8903

application/pdf en text Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2025-02-04 without embargo terms The student, Gabriela Tscholl, accepted the attached license on 2024-07-03 at 18:38. The student, Gabriela Tscholl, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2024-07-03 at 19:10. This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2024-07-10 at 15:07. DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #20944 on 2025-02-04 at 21:04:14 Youth Activism Gun Violence Rhetoric Multimodal Performance Affect Mfol March For Our Lives Ctr Change The Ref Agency Youth Agency Gun Violence Gun Violence Activism Artivism Art Activism Political Shame Rhetorical Haunting Visual Rhetoric. eng This project examines the visual and performative strategies of two anti-gun violence activist groups that emerged following the 2018 Parkland, Florida shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School: March For Our Lives (MFOL) and Change The Ref (CTR). MFOL is a youth-founded organization created by students and survivors of the MSD shooting, while CTR is a youth-centered movement created by Manuel and Patricia Oliver, whose son Joaquin died in the Parkland shooting. While most scholarship on the gun debate focuses on the traditional rhetorical practices of elite actors, this dissertation considers the relationships among art, materiality, and rhetorical performance and how they operate in the context of youth activism in the gun debate. The practices and methods of the activists I study function as a form of encounter where the public is invited to participate in the discursive space, rather than simply addressed with well-trodden arguments. These practices have the potential to reframe a seemingly intractable public debate into one that gives audiences agency and invites participation. I analyze MFOL’s “Most Vicious Cycle” music video, its “Your Complacency Kills Us” art installation, and CTR’s Walls of Demand, 3D Activist, the Unfinished Votes, the Shotline, and American Shamecards. My analysis shows how these groups seek to identify the challenges and oppositional forces in the gun debate, locate and mobilize agency, and recommit the nation to a communal sense of care and concern. 2024-08 Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125566 Copyright 2024 Gabriela Tscholl Affecting the gun debate: Art and performance as arguments for collective action Tscholl, Gabriela 2024-07-10 Finnegan, Cara A Finnegan, Cara A Cisneros, Josue David Murphy, John M Van Duyn, Emily Communication University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Ph.D. Dissertation Communication