Digital Rhetorics

The RHIZOME Project

by Martin E. Rosenberg

_The RHIZOME Project_ (1988-91; @1991), co-authored with Tom I. Ellis, and created in Hypercard. _RHIZOME_ was a critical thinking hypertext which offered creative as well as rhetorical and logical heuristics for the writing of a range of undergraduate essays. It was available at numerous writing programs in the early 1990's, and several articles were generated to explain its theoretical as well as pedagogical implications. Two other programmers, Stuart Selber, and Johndan Johnson-Eiola, worked briefly on the interface in 1991.

The RHIZOME Project was an experiment in instructional software to use the decision-tree environment of hypertext to... more The RHIZOME Project was an experiment in instructional software to use the decision-tree environment of hypertext to model specific sequential (as in narrative and logic) and non-sequential (as in creative and associative) thought strategies to help students write academic and creative essays. It was available at numerous writing programs in the early 1990's, including U Michigan, UC Berkeley, ASU, University of Illinois and Carnegie Mellon U. Comprised of separate "stacks" each modeling a specific heuristic, these stacks included:
1. Jazzwriting--a non-linear and recursive environment for generating and then exfoliating ideas in response to an automated or self-initiated prompt. Designed with the composing practices of BeBop jazz musicians in mind (improvisation/composition/improvisation), it offered recursive access to strategies for the improvisation of thoughts, and guided students to explore their more formal elaboration according to the rules of rhetoric, which was then linked to another "stack called:
2. Brainstorming--a non-linear, yet also sequential cluster of rhetorical heuristics: "Narrative," "Description," "Definition," "Comparison/Contrast," "Argument,"--each of which consitituted a "stack" which contained a sequence of prompts (often based on challenging heuristics such as Kenneth Burke's Pentad, for Narrative) to help expand the range of implications of ideas generated spontaneously in Jazzwriting. It was also possible to "jump" randomly or deliberately from one to the other of these heuristics, so that five separate threads of thought might be developed from the initial Jazzwriting responses. All five of these stacks then were projected into the next stack:
3. Arguprompt--which guided students through a series of prompts that would generate positions, assumptions, arguments and evidence, objections and replies to those objections, in such a way that each prompt generated a paragraph in sequence. At any point in the process of "inventing" and "arranging" an argument, the user could highlight and then export a particular assertion into another "stack" called:
4. Enthymemes--which would, through the use of dialog boxes, center that assertion into the form of an Enthymeme, which would then prompt the student to respond to a few questions. Answering these additional questions would then trigger the hypertext program to translate the Enthymeme into a formal syllogism; and then offer the opportunity to translate that socratic syllogism into a Toulmin unit of logic, with assumptions and grounds for those assumptions. Furthermore, from Arguprompt, the students could access another stack called:
5. Style--which would offer students exercises to work on semantics, grammar and syntax.
As the student progressed through the sequence of four distinct environments, or worked exclusively with just one of them, the student could export generated text to a word processing program for further engagement with the processes of invention, arrangement and style.

Informed by the specific practices of jazz musicians and composers, the behavior of bifurcating systems in non-equilibrium thermodynamics described by Ilya Prigogine, as well as the non-linear models from philosophy exemplified by the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and their concept of the rhizome, the project was an application of the theories explored in my theoretical dissertation: _Being and Becoming: Physics, Hegemony, Art and the Nomad in the Works of Ezra Pound, Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Beckett, John Cage and Thomas Pynchon_ (1989). This project was followed by an online real-time text-based virtual reality classroom of multiple rooms with functional tools at the Media Lab MOO called _MER's Fungal Palace_ (1996), with which I taught several graduate seminars linked to seminars at other universities (1996-8); and _Chess RHIZOME_, an exploratory hypermedia database to explore the contradictory epistemological implications of the metaphor of chess across all disciplinary formations (1998).

About Face: Mapping our Institutional Presence

by Aimee Knight

Co-authored with Martine Courant Rife, Phill Alexander, Les Loncharich, and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss  Computers and Composition 26 (2009) 190–202

In this article, we situate the web sites of technical and professional writing programs as important institutional... more In this article, we situate the web sites of technical and professional writing programs as important institutional spaces that serve as interfaces to particular values, beliefs, and practices. Specifically,we examine theways in which the web sites of United States-based programs craft identity and anchor these programs. We also analyze the ways in which the digital interfaces we create to represent
our work do and don’t mesh with who we are as a field and what we value theoretically and pedagogically.We borrow from the work of James Porter, Patricia Sullivan, Stuart Blythe, Jeff Grabill, and Libby Miles to articulate what we mean by institutional space, and extend their model of institutional critique into digital space. Further, we offer a three-fold framework for analyzing institutional spaces, related to institutional and technological dynamics, issues of agency and representation, and aesthetic dimensions.

Reclaiming Experience: Aesthetics & Multimodal Storytelling

by Aimee Knight

Aimee Knight. Computers and Composition: An International Journal. (2013)

Recent scholarship points to the rhetorical role of the aesthetic in multimodal composition and new media contexts. In... more Recent scholarship points to the rhetorical role of the aesthetic in multimodal composition and new media contexts. In this article, soon to be published in Computers and Composition: An International Journal, I examine the aesthetic as a rhetorical concept in writing studies and imagine the ways in which this concept can be useful to teachers of multimodal composition. My treatment of the concept begins with a return to the ancient Greek aisthetikos (relating to perception by the senses) in order to discuss the aesthetic as a meaningful mode of experience. I then review European conceptions of the aesthetic and finally draw from John Dewey and Bruno Latour to help shape this concept into a pragmatic and useful approach that can compliment multimodal teaching and learning. The empirical approach I construct adds to an understanding of aesthetic experience with media in order to render more transparent the ways in which an audience creates knowledge—or takes and makes meaning—via the senses. Significantly, this approach to meaning making supports learning in digital environments where students are increasingly asked to both produce and consume media convergent texts that combine multiple modalities including sound, image, and user interaction.

Designs of Meaning: Tools for Digital Storytellers

by Aimee Knight

Aimée Knight & Austin Starin (submitted to Kairos)

As the creation of digital texts flourishes in and out of the classroom, new strategies for composition are needed.... more As the creation of digital texts flourishes in and out of the classroom, new strategies for composition are needed. Digital stories are multimodal by nature; they communicate meaning through multiple media, especially the combination of text, audio, image, animation, video, and interactive content forms.

Kress, Van Leeuwen, Wysocki, Ball and other multimodal scholars believe that as we see writing transition to the “logic” of the senses, new spaces and new approaches are necessary. DeVoss & Selfe (2002) argue for new “rhetorical positionings” for teachers of writing in digital environments— to “help students explore, develop, and communicate more effectively in them” (Devoss and Selfe, p. 146). It is clear that as both teacher and student navigate these mediated spaces, new approaches are needed for the composing and designing of multimodal texts.

Our webtext, a collaboration between teacher and student, seeks to better understand and communicate how multimodal texts rhetorically “work.” We focus on how stories are shared through digital platforms. A digital storytelling experience involves the central idea or story arc and how it engages the senses and creates meaning through the combination of its form and content. We draw across disciplinary borders— from rhetoricians, philosophers, aestheticians, social theorists, technologists, artists and interaction designers to offer storytellers a heuristic to compose and evaluate multimodal works (and bridge the gap between theory and practice).

Persuasive brand management: How managers can influence brand meaning when they are losing control over it

by Oriol Iglesias

Iglesias, O. and Bonet, E. (2012) Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 25 Issue 2, pp. 251 165

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to build a conceptual framework that enables an improved comprehension... more
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to build a conceptual framework that enables an improved comprehension of how brand meaning is constructed.

Design/methodology/approach – Conceptual implications are drawn from an analysis and discussion of the literature in the fields of brand management, meanings, rhetoric, and narratives.

Findings – Brand managers are progressively losing control over the multiple sources of brand meaning. Brand meaning is co-created during the consumer-brand relationship and the customer-perceived brand meaning is re-interpreted at each touchpoint that a consumer has with a managerially determined brand interface, a brand employee, or an external stakeholder.

Originality/value – “Persuasive brand management” is presented as a new approach to brand management. It considers that the main activities of managers regarding brand strategy decisions involve processes of interpreting and creating meanings; as well as persuading a wide diversity of internal and external stakeholders.

Literature, digital humanities and the age of the encyclopaedia

by Gunther Martens

In this presentation, I aim to discuss literature's renewed exposure to media and technology against the background of... more In this presentation, I aim to discuss literature's renewed exposure to media and technology against the background of a similar discussion in 18th century which involved discourses on education, the position of rhetoric and the idea of the encyclopaedia. To show the relevance of this debate to digital humanities, I tackle a novel recently published through Twitter, showing up the benefits of having a literary text within a digital, rss-equiped environment. In terms of object, a concept of literature as encyclopaedic is advanced, which is then related to such strategies as co-narration, collaborative authorships and to a multimodal take on the concept of constraints ("littérature à contraintes").

Video Games as Equipment for Living

by Jeroen Bourgonjon

This paper is published in the open access journal CLCweb: Comparative Literature and Culture and can be downloaded for free.

In their article "Video Games as Equipment for Living" Ronald Soetaert, Jeroen Bourgonjon, and Kris Rutten... more In their article "Video Games as Equipment for Living" Ronald Soetaert, Jeroen Bourgonjon, and Kris Rutten postulate that with the emergence of new media there is need of a re-evaluation of all modes of communication and the ways in which literacy is conceptualized. Drawing on the concept of multi-literacy they suggest a rhetorical/ anthropological meta-perspective to describe human beings as symbol using animals and focus on particular symbol systems: narrative, drama, and video games. Specifically, they focus on the perspective of drama as a tool to analyze cultural artifacts in general and video games — as a new art form — in particular. They implement Kenneth Burke's notion of the pentad to illustrate their perspective in two case studies, the video games Civilization and Heavy Rain. Soetaert, Bourgonjon, and Rutten illustrate how video games can be described as equipment for living because video game playing has become part of the many ways people create worlds and construct meaning and sense. Thus, they explore how new forms of media and art can be examined from the perspective of traditional disciplines such as rhetoric and anthropology and how rhetoric can transform itself in a digital world.

From Counter-Strike to Counter-Statement: Using Burke's Pentad as a Tool for Reflecting on Video Games

by Jeroen Bourgonjon

Rhetorical analysis of video games

Hink (2009) - "Flat Screens, Grainy Texture? Digital Affective Signature"

by Gary Hink

Conference presentation. Digital Assembly 4th Annual Conference: “Discursive Treatments of Media and Materiality.” University of Florida, Gainesville, FL. 06-07 March 2009

All the World's a Link: The Global Theater of Mobile World Browsers

by John Tinnell

Published in Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture

Les aventures de Pinocchio au pays du greenwashing. Analyse des stratégies de contradiction dans le site du «Prix Pinocchio»

by Andrea Catellani

Join the REx Collective

by Jenn Fishman

REx editors include Jenn Fishman, Joan Mullin, and Mike Palmquist.

The Research Exchange Index or REx  is designed to recognize local, national, and international writing... more The Research Exchange Index or REx  is designed to recognize local, national, and international writing researchers by periodically collecting and publishing information about the research studies they've conducted. All writing researchers are invited to contribute by uploading information about their work. In addition, writing researchers, teachers, and students are invited to help build and shape REx by joining the editorial collective as an acquisitions editor or an editorial reviewer. To learn more, download the attached paper or contact the REx editors: RExchangeContact@gmail.com.

Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Mass Effect: The Government of Difference in Digital Role-Playing Games

by Gerald Voorhees

In Dungeons, Dragons and Digital Denizens: Digital Role-playing Games. G. Voorhees, J. Call and K. Whitlock, Eds. Continuum Books, Forthcoming (February 2012).

This chapter examines the neo-liberal multiculturalist ideology of the Mass Effect series of digital role-playing... more This chapter examines the neo-liberal multiculturalist ideology of the Mass Effect series of digital role-playing games. I show that both games in the series profess the unmitigated superiority of neo-liberal multiculturalism as a form of dealing with difference. While the narrative conceit of the Mass Effect series is an alien threat to annihilate all sentient life in the galaxy, its key thematic is the biological and cultural differences that render the spacefaring races populating the Milky Way vulnerable to such a threat. In this context, the various systems of rules and the procedures for sorting and executing those rules valorize players’ heterogeneous configurative practices and the neo-liberal multiculturalist performances they enact.

"Postmodern Spacings: A Colloquy

by Martin E. Rosenberg

This was a colloquy on the nature of space, its hybridities with respect to virtual and real environments, in terms of the relationship between different constructions of space as well as different models of duration. Participants included Mark Nunes, Martin E. Rosenberg and Paul Bains.

_Postmodern Culture_: Found online at Project MUSE (JHUP): Volume 8, Number 3, May 1998
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/toc/pmc8.3.html

A Humanistic Approach to the Study of Social Media: Combining Social Network Analysis & Case Study Research

by Ashley R. Kelly

Kelly, A. R., & Autry, M. K. (2011). A Humanistic approach to the study of social media: Combining social network analysis and case study research. SIGDOC’11: The 29th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication Proceedings. Pisa, Italy: ACM, 257-260. doi: 10.1145/2038476.2038525.

Humanistic research into social media is presently diverse in approach, but rich in theoretical underpinnings. It is... more Humanistic research into social media is presently diverse in approach, but rich in theoretical underpinnings. It is unsurprising that there is some difficulty in translating often text-based approaches to multi-media rich, rapidly-evolving social networking environments. We explore theoretical issues for studying social media with respect to one popular research methodology: case study research (CSR). Here we examine the challenges that social media pose to CSR in the humanities and then advance an approach using social network analysis (SNA) to assist in selecting case studies. This approach, we argue, improves selection of case studies by considering the network structures of social media.

Bodies Without Skin: Feeling out of a ubiquitous future

by David Gruber

Gruber, David. Published in Ctheory

The paper considers the meaning of a body without skin or, rather, one with multiple “skins” on the inside and the... more The paper considers the meaning of a body without skin or, rather, one with multiple “skins” on the inside and the outside in a sensual and sensing ubiquitous computing environment. Thinking about the changing material conditions for human development from within a technological drive for Whatever Anywhere All The Time offers an opportunity to stretch the skin of deontological theorizing from a post-Deleuzian analytic that understands and maps Being-as-relations in terms of “affecting and affectable bodies.” The paper concludes by questioning the appearances of the affecting and the affectable and by doubting the compatibility of the technological Whatever and human liberation.

I Play Therefore I Am: Sid Meier's Civilization, Turn-Based Strategy Games and the Cogito

by Gerald Voorhees

Sid Meier's Civilization allows players to build empires that span the earth and the ages. Complementing existing... more Sid Meier's Civilization allows players to build empires that span the earth and the ages. Complementing existing scholarship on ideologies, practices, and subject positions inculcated by the game, this article interrogates the very conception of subjectivity Civilization fosters in players. Building upon ludological and cybernetic principles, the author takes a formal approach to analyze the processes of human—computer interaction that emerge in the course of players' engagement with the game. Characteristics of the turn-based genre as well as Civilization's interface mechanics, representations of historical processes, and manual are considered for the ways in which they solicit player input. The author contends that player interaction with Civilization reifies a conception of himself or herself as a sovereign agent constituted of pure internality.

Digital Demagogy: Invoking a Bobblehead Audience

by Jeff Swift

Draft only--written for Ph.D. seminar on "Rhetoric and Digital Media"

The current definition of demagogy provided by rhetorical theory is neither preventing nor adequately explaining the... more The current definition of demagogy provided by rhetorical theory is neither preventing nor adequately explaining the abuse of rhetoric so prevalent in contemporary political dialogue, and while it might not be the job of rhetoricians to do the former, rhetorical scholarship should certainly engage more thoroughly in the latter. I suggest that we need to reexamine demagogy in the context of the digital age due to the unique rhetorical dynamics of the online political landscape. Demagogues have a new and dangerous power online that has not yet been explored in rhetorical scholarship. I begin exploring this new power by tracing the scholarship on demagogy, proposing a new focus for demagogy studies based on deliberation and Edwin Black's idea of “second persona,” examining the digital exigence for this focus, and finally presenting case studies of both traditional and digital rhetoric to test this view of demagogy.

O'Halloran, K.A. (2010) 'Critical reading of a text through its electronic supplement', Digital Culture and Education 2(2): 210-229.

by Kieran O'Halloran

A by-product of new social media platforms is an abundant textual record of engagements - billions of words across the... more A by-product of new social media platforms is an abundant textual record of engagements - billions of words across the world-wide-web in, for example, discussion forums, blogs and wiki discussion tabs. Many of these engagements consist of commentary on a particular text and can thus be regarded as supplements to these texts. The larger purpose of this article is to flag the utility value of this electronic supplementarity for critical reading by highlighting how it can reveal particular meanings that the text being responded to can reasonably be said to marginalise and / or repress. Given the potentially very large size of social media textual product, knowing how to explore these supplements with electronic text analysis software is essential.
To illustrate the above, I focus on how the content of online discussion forums, explored through electronic text analysis software, can be used to assist critical reading of the texts which initiate them. The paper takes its theoretical orientations from the textual intervention work of Rob Pope together with themes in the work of the philosopher, Jacques Derrida.

The Evolution of Document Design Since 1985: a Response to Richard E. Mayer's “Structural Analysis of Scientific Prose”

by Martin E. Rosenberg