If we ask our students to document and explain contemporary circumstances of climate change, they may be tempted to focus on the most recent climate disaster, regardless of where it took place or the socio-political conditions that structure the conditions for disaster. As Danielle Endres notes, “environmental rhetoric scholars continue to confront environmental injustices and ecosystem destruction by examining, deconstructing, and composing anew human relationships to the environment” (315).

Drawing on the work of Erving Goffman, I demonstrate how significations of vulnerability foster rhetorical transactions in video networks and, consequently, how these transactions constitute a video vernacular, the knowledge of which can lead to a more robust rhetorical heuristic of video and participatory culture.