RIDE Blog Carnival #1 Playback

Many of the blog carnivals of the 2000s responded to moments and events; I remember them as informal, self-selective with regard to participation, and staggered in time so as to foster dialogue and cross-hatched linking to one another’s entries. Simply, conversations played out. The carnivals that have endured through University of Michigan’s Digital Rhetoric Collaborative became slightly more special issue-like, in that they typically answer a common call and are entrusted to editorial oversight, often with a common publish date. Within ENGL6344: Rhetoric in Digital Environments this semester, our adaptation combines qualities from each approach. The call for entries rang out, and although most entries went through open review, the set reflects an editor-free organic quality, responsive to class lodestars but also licensed to roam peripheries and explore distal paths. About those six lodestars: hypertext & hodology applies to four entries, database & narrative was assigned categorically to three, and avatar & identity, two. The newer (orange) set of lodestars blinked in with less frequency, as attention and dataism each received just one tagging, and artificiality received none. But the low tallies for these last three are not an index for neglect, but rather a consequence of timing, since we are just beginning to consider attention, dataism, and artificiality more substantially at this point in the semester.

To the nine entries, then, in the order of their posting:

We hope you find inviting, thoughtful, and generative the connections and the provocations gathered here. Comments are open with anticipation that further dialogue about rhetoric in digital environments may continue.