Rhetorical Authority in Context: A Study of Technical Accounts of Flint, Michigan's Water Crisis from 2014-2017
| dc.contributor.author | Hockman, Cassandra Rose | en |
| dc.contributor.committeechair | Pender, Kelly Elizabeth | en |
| dc.contributor.committeemember | Gerdes, Julie Marie | en |
| dc.contributor.committeemember | Commer, Carolyn | en |
| dc.contributor.committeemember | Powell, Katrina M. | en |
| dc.contributor.department | English | en |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-03-31T08:00:41Z | en |
| dc.date.available | 2026-03-31T08:00:41Z | en |
| dc.date.issued | 2026-03-30 | en |
| dc.description.abstractgeneral | This project is a study of public stories and events documenting a health crisis in the U.S. city of Flint, Michigan. The water emergency resulted from a natural resource change in April 2014, when local residents began receiving municipal water from the Flint River. As a study of public stories and events, this project focuses on documented accounts of local observations and experiences with Flint's water after the resource change. These accounts reflect political meaning made by community members about Flint's water, particularly through their work declaring a state of urgency resulting from a city-wide public health crisis. The study presented here is an analysis of these accounts written in order to understand and trace technical evidence and how it was authorized during and resulting from the emergency. First, residents' experiences were analyzed through close reading of published materials, including news media and government reports. Categories of community concern were then identified across these accounts in order to create a theoretical frame for understanding technical authority in Flint's water crisis. In this paper, technical authority refers to meaning made about scientific and technical evidence, which was then contextualized within Flint's political conditions at the time of the water source change. This contextualization provided a means by which to understand influential power and persuasive authorities that 1.) successfully brought the crisis to light, and those that 2.) delayed improvement of Flint's water conditions despite mounting protest. | en |
| dc.description.degree | Doctor of Philosophy | en |
| dc.format.medium | ETD | en |
| dc.identifier.other | vt_gsexam:45781 | en |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10919/142451 | en |
| dc.language.iso | en | en |
| dc.publisher | Virginia Tech | en |
| dc.rights | In Copyright | en |
| dc.rights.uri | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ | en |
| dc.subject | technical authority | en |
| dc.subject | rhetorical situation | en |
| dc.subject | delay | en |
| dc.subject | environmental crisis | en |
| dc.title | Rhetorical Authority in Context: A Study of Technical Accounts of Flint, Michigan's Water Crisis from 2014-2017 | en |
| dc.type | Dissertation | en |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Rhetoric and Writing | en |
| thesis.degree.grantor | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University | en |
| thesis.degree.level | doctoral | en |
| thesis.degree.name | Doctor of Philosophy | en |