Holly Mandes
Rhetorical Analysis
Roxanne Mountford
March 30, 2003
Admitting Disability in Cyberspace:
Maneuvering Spaces in the Zoloft Website
We would probably all agree that certain physical spaces force us to maneuver through them in a particular way. Sidewalks in grassy malls lead us from one place to another. Doorways force us to enter rooms at particular angles. Even in computer classrooms, the controlling workstation is set apart from the rest of the room indicating that the “teacher” take a certain position in that space. However, not all space is physical. These non-physical spaces have material limitations and material consequences, but they exist in a way that we cannot touch them; they are linguistic constructions. We refer to them with as “spaces,” “rooms,” and “sites,” but they occupy no physical space. These strange places exist only in cyberspace and we refer to them as websites.
Websites are complicated rhetorical spaces because non-designers (and unfortunately sometimes designers) often do not take time to consider how the space affects the ways in which users receive information and the conventions they must follow in order to interact with the materiality of the space. Only recently have people even begun to theorize how these spaces force us to read texts differently (hypertext theory) and how our identity (or e-dentity) is altered as a result of our interactions with internet technologies. Furthermore, we are just beginning to understand how users act as consumers of certain ideological and political viewpoints.
One particularly useful lens we can use to look at how websites ask certain things of their users is materialism. (look at that lovely passive construction!) Material rhetoric is not interested in pursing the understanding of the symbolicity of an object or even the creator’s intent. Instead (and probably reductively), materialism asks the rhetorician to examine how the “physicality” of a particular site influences the user/observer. A material rhetorical analysis might ask the question, “What position does the ‘reader’ need to take in relation to the space of the object?” or “How does this space force the reader to physically interact with it and what is the effect of that interaction on the reader?” Using a materialist lens, I am going to attempt to answer those questions (and eventually a whole lot more) as I look at the Zoloft website. The physical construction of this website forces the reader to do two very important things: self-identify an illness and “follow the leader” from illness to health.
Before I am able to fully explore the construction of the site, I feel like to need to briefly theorize (if that’s the right word) a particular aspect of these websites. First, why would someone visit a website instead of calling a company and requesting information in the form of brochures, pamphlets, and/or viewbooks? While the obvious answer is that the internet is quicker and more easily assessable, I believe mush more is at play here. Websites offer a kind of casual anonymity that people (particular people with possible stigmatized disorders) desire. If a person must call an 800 number, he/she must admit to another human being that he/she might have an “abnormality.” Furthermore, if a person has brochures, etc in their home/work, there is more of a chance that another person might find these materials and therefore find out this person’s “secret.” The materiality of these two instances may lead to the effect of anxiety on the part of the owner. Just their physical presence is cause for fear of being found out. However, websites offer a different kind of materiality. Websites are not physical materials that can be left on the countertop.[1] A person must deliberately search the computer to find evidence that a page was visited. And while you might be thinking, but I could easily look in the history pages or cookies to see what sites have been visited, I argue that it is just as easy to delete these files so the average user cannot find this evidence.[2] A person who is unsure if he/she has depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder does not need to worry about admitting their fears to anyone because chances of discovery are very low with website visiting.
If a person does wonder if he/she might be suffering from depression or panic disorder, he/she might visit the Zoloft website to find out more information about it. While Pfizer admits that their site is not “intended to replace discussions with a healthcare provider,” they do regard Zoloft.com as a “site to help you understand your condition and how Zoloft may help you to lead a more productive life” ( The language of this particular quote is very important for understanding how Pfizer has constructed the website. The site is to help understand the existing condition (your condition). It does not profess to help you understand if you might have a condition, but instead expects the user to already have a preexisting condition. This underlying assumption forces readers to accept a particular subject position as they peruse the site.
On Zoloft’s home page, the first screen is has a blue box to the left that gives the reader some information about Zoloft The large middle box tells the reader that this site is for mood and anxiety disorders. At first, it seems like a typical page with a welcome screen and links to different pages within the site. However, once we begin to maneuver through the site’s spaces, we find that the user is asked to take on a very specific role. In order to move away from the home page, I must decide which tab I will click on: depression, panic disorder, OCD, or PTSD (see figure 1 below). Figure 1:
The web designers have forced the user to decide what disorder he/she might have. There is no search engine for the site. A user cannot type in symptoms and be brought to a particular page under one of the categories. Nor does the site divide up the pages by other categories. For example, the one of the organizing principles could have been “Personal Stories” with a drop down box that listed all of the disorders that Zoloft is taken for. Instead, the user must admit to the possibility of a disorder. They must decide which one page to go into. The materiality of the site has forced the reader to take a certain position as a person with an illness. The user can no longer be a casual receiver of information; the user becomes someone with either depression, panic disorder, OCD, or PTSD.[3]
Once a person decides which page to visit, the journey becomes even more interesting as a user is moved methodically from illness to wellness. All of the categories are set up in almost the exact same way, so for the purposes of this paper, I will just look at the depression section of the website. If I click on the green tab, I can choose among many different options. The page that is the most informative and the most directive is the first link: Understanding Depression. Upon clicking on that link, the user is transported to a white background page. At the topic of the page is the title and the picture of Dot, who is sad, presumably depressed, and overall not a happy camper (see figure 2). Figure 2:
As a person starts to move through the website, he/she find that he can only move downward with the right-hand scroll bar. There are no hyperlinks embedded into the page. There are no ways to jump to another site. All of the information for understanding depression can be found on that single page. This observation is important because if the user follows the website design leaders, he/she will end up at the bottom of the page where Dot is smiling, happy, and now just a happy camper (see figure 3).
Figure 3:
While no where directly in the text of the page is the mention of Zoloft, the word surrounds the textbox. The assumption is two-fold: first, knowledge about this disorder will lead eliminate depression, and second, remember the Zoloft people gave you all this information and if information can help you feel better imagine what the little blue pill could do for you! Maybe this is an overly cynical viewpoint to take, but when a website does not allow me to move anywhere I want, but instead directs me to follow a particular sequence I have to wonder what message I am suppose to get. Since this pattern is the same on all four labeled pages, I cannot ignore the possibility that the marketing team had intentionality. While material rhetoric does not necessarily allow for intent, I can only say that as a consumer the physicality of the space affected my ability to leave the page without reading through all of the material. Since there is so little information on the page, I didn’t feel coerced into reading everything, but upon reflection, I was directed strongly. I was made to follow the leader from illness to wellness.
In the interest of space, I will complete my analysis here. However, there are still a few issues that need to be worked out as I make my conclusions. These two subject positions that the user is forced to take when visiting the Zoloft website are not the only two examples of how a material rhetorical analysis might shed light on drug companies. The fact that these companies are trying to sell material products severely influences the kind of site they design. Also, the fact that they are trying to sell something material to “cure” something psychological (but also I suppose biological) is an interesting point to explore. Also, physicality is not the only way to think about materialism. Scholars have explored psychological and historical materialism as well (see “Autobiography After Prozac” in Rhetorical Bodies). John Schilb writes, “The [drug] companies’ existence depends on people seeing themselves as possible consumers of psychopharmacology, and for this to happen, presumably they must see their malaise as disease” (206). This psychological materialism, the manifestation of disease can be even furthered understood when we examine the ways in which companies force consumers to take on particular roles. Finally, as someone examining these sites as a Temporarily Able Body (TAB), I have a very different viewpoint than a person with one of these disorders. My analysis is couched in my own perspective, my own experiences. I don’t know that I will ever be able to project accurately how other people with these disorders might interact with the sites. But then again, I suppose that admission is at the very core of materialism. A writer cannot know how everyone will be engaged by his/her rhetorical textual choices and symbols can be different for everyone. For drug company websites, by manipulating the space, they can attempt to control the ways in which people interact with the site in an attempt to control how they think about their product.
[1] While not a researcher of pornography sites, this anonymity could be one possibility as to why internet pornography is so popular: no physical evidence.
[2] Of course there are professionals and other individuals who can extract even deleted materials, but it would take quite a bit of effort for the average user to find this material.
[3] In an interesting related, but slightly off topic side note, the separation of the four disorders seems almost artificial. People with OCD or PTSD often experience depression and panic disorders. While the categories are distinctly different according to the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-4th edition), there are characteristics of each that bleed into one another. This separation forces the user to create a hierarchy for him/herself. They must decide what disorder they have “the most of.”