I stopped posting on social media websites this past summer. Thinking back on why I did so, I cannot really recall why I made that decision; Reddit was going through its latest phase of drama, having to do with APIs. Many subreddits at the time went dark, but in the end, I do not know…
Digital rhetoric is a negotiation of information—and its historical, social, economic, and political contexts and influences—to affect change of survivance (survival and resistance) in the network spaces. Despite the space being dominated by specific dominant cultures, scholars, both indigenous and internalized, of digital cultural rhetorics have responded with research methodologies and inclusive rhetorical paths of…
Come one, come all, to the mashup mirror—and get lost in the discursive journey of your reflection. As a response to Brown, Jr.’s call for a “mashup” approach to composing as a “matter of tuning the dial appropriately” and finding synergy between scholê and dromos (89); and Ridolfo and DeVoss’ call to consider how “rhetorical…
I read Mark Zuckerberg’s definition of identity (Odell, p. 163) as one and absolute as a consumerist trope, which wants to turn human consumers into a product—a product that is manifested as a brand with a distinctly monolithic self. This, I guess, helps the manufacturers of this product—the social media companies in this context—to orient…
The rise of digital technologies has deeply shaped how people, especially youths, attend to information and tasks. Katherine Hayles makes a profound argument that the extensive use of digital technologies catalyzes a generational shift in cognitive modes and capacities. She explains that deep attention refers to the sustained, rigorous focus on a single object, text,…
I can’t think of the last thing I tried to repair other than myself which is ongoing. Instead, I use Question 5 of this round’s Blog Carnival as an opportunity to expand an argument originally explored in an earlier nineties post on the concept of broken world thinking, repair, and whether or not rhetoric is…
It’s October of 2018. I’m moving to the rural fringes of my college town, and I’m anxious. I brace myself for lawns adorned with confederate flags and Trump memorabilia. I have imaginary dialogues with bible-thumping, gun-toting neighbors who would likely peg me, at first glimpse, as a liberal “snowflake.” I feel as though I’m venturing…
When I think of how often I repair things today as a student of rhetoric, the most recent thing I can think of is replacing a battery in a key fob. Replacing a battery is a relatively simple endeavor, but considering that until the beginning of this very month, I hadn’t owned a key fob…
When we talk about community, there is an inherent tension between those who happen to be around you and those you have actively sought out. How do we understand community in our own lives–something that develops physically around us, or something we have to seek out and insert ourselves into? Jenny Odell, in her work…