Eyman's 3 Theories of Practice for Digital Rhetoric: A Study

                                 Eyman's 3 Theories of Practice for Digital Rhetoric: A Study

Digital Rhetoric can be put into practice in 3 ways.
1.  Through pedagogy (teaching)
2.  Publication (about and instantiating the scholarship of digital rhetoric)
3.  Through production of multimodal, new media, and other digitized texts.

Eyman explores these 3 types of practice throughout the chapter. 

Two important things to know about Douglas Eyman in order to have a better understanding of certain parts of the chapter. 

1. A little background on Eyman:
Eyman was first inspired to look into the teaching of Digital Rhetoric, after taking a graduate Digital Rhetoric class at Michigan State University. Upon completion of the Digital Rhetoric class, he began work on an article about teaching digital rhetoric for the group digiRhet.org. The group (digiRhet.org) was formed from the digital rhetoric course taught at MSU by Danielle DeVoss. Eyman's article, Teaching Digital Rhetoric: Community, Critical Engagement & Application was featured in the Spring of 2006 issue of Pedagogy.  The article he wrote focused on 3 key elements, which Eyman believed were foundational in the teaching of Digital Rhetoric. 
The 3 key elements are as follows:
- an understanding and developing a sense of community both online & in the classroom
- a critical engagement with the technologies of production
- delivery and a method for developing facility with the applications that support the production of digital texts

2. Eyman was also editor and publisher of the online peer reviewed academic journal in writing studies, Kairos. Kairos is one of the few academic journals to publish work that "falls outside the traditional print scholarly article." (Eyman, 124) It is for the reason, (and Eyman's time spent as publisher and editor of the journal) that he chooses to draw from Kairos for many of his examples throughout chapter 4.

About the Chapter:

Chapter 4 is divided into 3 main sections, highlighting each of the 3 theories of practice. The first section focuses on 3 college courses that utilized Digital Rhetoric.

The first course Eyman looked into was Sarah Arroyo's Digital Rhetoric class.
Sarah Arroyo taught a graduate Digital Rhetoric class at California State University: Long Beach during the Spring '09 semester.  Arroyo chose to examine Digital Rhetoric through a cultural studies lens. In Arroyos syllabus, she claims that "digital writing performs and analyzes and critiques. Instead of only critiquing digital culture, were now able to critique the culture within the medium." (Eyman, 114) Over the course of the semester, Arroyo had her students examine a set of theoretical theories as put forth by Roland Barthes, Giorgio Agamben, and Greg Ulmer by making short digital movies or web based multimedia projects. Arroyo's class did not include  readings on classical rhetoric, but rather focused on contemporary rhetorical theory combined with readings on social networking, YouTube, and new media. Arroyo also readily used Ning (  Ning  ) to allow her students to "easily set up a shared social networking site where participants can upload text in the form of blog posts, images and video. Ning also includes built in integration with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (Eyman, 115)

By having a social networking aspect of her course, Arroyo follows the "digiRhet recommendation of providing ways for students to experience and not just critique online community as a key feature of digi rhetoric practice. Arroyo also requires students engaged with each other via online discussions."  (Eyman, 115)

Arroyo's course places an importance on producing digital texts, and having the writing papers accompany the digital text. This is another part of her course that goes in line with the "digiRhet recommendation" Eyman outlined at the beginning of the chapter. 

The second course Eyman looked into was Byron Hawk's Digital Rhetoric class.

Hawk's class was an advanced undergraduate class. Like, Arroyo he used the readings of Greg Ulmer, and used Ning. He chose to study digital rhetoric through a rhetoric lens. His course mainly focused on the internet's impact on writing, since his course was more revolved around digital composition. According to Hawk's syllabus, "the understanding of digital writing is always in the process and understood through the process of participation & production." (Eyman, 116)  Hawk had his students examine other social networks, aside from Ning, and keep vlogs. Like in Arroyo's class, Hawk's students were required to do 2 projects, though the main difference between Arroyo's two projects, and Hawk's two projects were that Arroyo required a paper accompanied with both projects, while Hawk only required a paper to be accompanied for one project. The second was completely multimodal.

The third course Eyman looked into was his own course (I'm not sure where this was taught) 

Eyman's class differed from Arroyo's & Hawk's in that his class focused exclusively on production, and not on theories of critiques of Digital Rhetoric. Most of the coursework in Eyman's class revolved around completing a series of coding & designing activities. His focus on rhetoric is only during "site critiques" ( Eyman, 118 ) and class discussions. 

In Eyman's class, he does use a text by Jesse James Garrett. Garrett's text presents a web design and development process that uses 5 planes. Eyman uses Garrett's 5 planes to classical rhetoric, where each plane has a purpose. The strategy plane focuses on audience and "product objectives," the scope plane addresses "functional specifications" (Eyman, 118) which is invention, the structure & skeleton plane which focus on interface design are arrangement and so on.

Eyman views his course not so much a study of Digital Rhetoric, as opposed to a class that uses digital rhetoric to create special kinds of digital texts. 

After going over the 3 classes that put Digital Rhetoric into practice, Eyman shifts gears, and focuses on his second theory of practice: digital rhetoric scholarship.

Digital Rhetoric in Practice: Digital Rhetoric Scholarship

When studying Digital Rhetoric, it's important to not just focus on research on Digital Rhetoric, but rather, as scholars we need to highlight "the publication of scholarly work that is presented as digital text, utilizing digital rhetoric to craft the research itself within the framework of new media." (Eyman, 119) 

Eyman provides a selection of works (from Kairos) that he feels demonstrate scholarly use of digital rhetoric, beginning with Jim Zappen's work. 

Jim Zappen's, 2005 article "Toward a Digital Rhetoric" focuses on 4 main areas, which are:

-re-configuring rhetorical traditions for digital text

-defining the characteristics of new media

-developing digital identities

-forming online communities

Zappen sees the work of rhetoric as "taking up rhetorics of technology as well as taking technological invention, process, and text as an object of study." (Eyman, 119)

Zappen then uses Laura Gurak's examination "rhetorical proofs at work in two online debates that focus on then-new technologies and their effects on users." (Eyman, 120) Although, Gurak's analysis is more on the function of ethos in the online debate, her analysis also provides an "investigation of the character of the discourse within the context of digital media and a consideration of the rhetorical moves deployed by the technology makers and markers." (Eyman, 120) For Zappen, Gurak's work defines the characteristics of new media. Gurak says that "speed, reach, anonymity, and interactivity are the key elements of digital communication." On the other hand, Ian Bogost claims speed, reach, anonymity simply characterize the aggregate effects of networked computers.

Zappen sites Sherry Turkle’s 1995 piece, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet as a focal point for his focus on identity, and he focuses on social networking researchers for looking at ways to build community.

Eyman continues to talk about the importance of community building, as he examines two articles.

In one of the articles, Christian Pentzold, studies how authors of Wikipedia “articulate community by examing online discussions among editors.” (Eyman, 121) Pentzold states that "the Wikipedia community sees itself as an ethos action community that follows a specific ethic that has developed through shared practice.” (Eyman, 121) While Wikipedia authors aren’t using rhetorical theories and methods, they’re getting a rhetorical conclusion.

Giuseppe Getto, Ellen Cushman, and Shreelina Ghosh "approach the question of new media from a new media composition perspective." (Eyman, 121) Their approach is "rooted in rhetorical understandings of community and identity." (Eyman, 121)  For Getto, Cushman & Ghosh, it was about gathering data & examining a community which they participated in rather than taking data from communities they weren't a part of. 

Another area of "continual development in digital rhetoric research" (Eyman, 122) is research that focuses on methods & methodologies. In Towards a Mediological Method; A Framework for Critically Engaging Dimensions of a Medium, Melinda Turnley uses Regis Debray's development of mediology as "an interdisciplinary method to develop a framework specific to new media production from a writing studies perspective." (Eyman 122) Using the framework she developed, Turnley shows how her framework "can be applied as a generative rubric for the assessment of digital texts and performances." (Eyman, 122) 

Eyman then goes on to review 4 webtexts that were published in Kairos between 2004 and 2011. 

The first webtext he looks into is Ellen Cushman's, Composing New Media, which focuses on "the requirement of interaction" In this webtext, the user can move elements, click on them, use the mouse to go over them in order to achieve various effects. Users are presented with a "new screen of interactive possibility in response to their actions." (Eyman, 125) Users are "required to play with the interface in order to access enough of the overall design and to begin to understand the argument is about design choices and about both the constraints and affordances of interactivity itself." Cushman offers an explanatory text that addresses the goals & the argument of the webtext but users will not be able to find that text unless users find themselves through interacting with the design. This text is all about interactivity.

 

The next webtext Eyman looks into is titled Resituating and ReMediating the Canons.

This webtext looks into re-imagining "the canons of classical rhetoric through a cultural historical activity theory lensand then provides examples of how such a revision would be enacted in the production of digital texts." (Eyman, 125) The authors structure this by "providing a series of jointly authored data nodes that are arranged around a central core argument." The data nodes centered around the argument use different media while focusing on different topics and ideas, The authors main argument here is that "a new set of canons is needed to resituate rhetoric in complex sociohistoric worlds and to realize not simply a consistent multimodality, but a deep orientation to to mediated activity and agency.'"(Eyman, 126)

In Wunderkammer, Cornell and the Visual Canon of Arrangement Susan Delagrange "presents a digital wunderkammer (a box of curios that has doors and drawers containing smaller objects) that the user opens to examine each of the  elements of the argument." (Eyman, 126)  This work focuses on arrangement in digital rhetoric. Delagrange's approach to arrangement is carried out by mapping in re mapping

In the Importance of Undergraduate Multimedia: An argument in Seven Acts the webtext, built in Adobe Flash player uses text, audio, video and animation in a series of seven vignettes each drawing on a different media metaphor. The seven vignettes take part in a tower configuration of a PC, flash drive, MacOS Interface, dj turntables, comic book, antique camera, and a super 8 projector

Each piece re-imagines the medium/platform. For example, the comic book features an animated computer screen in one panel and a movie in another. "Each act has it's own visual & audio aesthetic" (Eyman, 127) Each act is persuasive & uses remediation. 

The argument is about the importance of teaching multimedia production in undergrad curriculum in rhetoric, but also it looks at remediation.

 Digital Rhetoric in Practice: Parodies & Remixes

The final practice Eyman examines is Digital Rhetoric as it is "employed in the production of a range of digital texts, websites, remixes, multimodal composition, and games." (Eyman, 128) Eyman, again, reviews texts beginning with Warnick.

In her book, Rhetoric Online, Warnick focuses on two examples that use parody as a "rhetorical trope" to engage in "political speech & media activism." (Eyman 128) The first one is "This Land is Your Land"  as seen here:

This parody pokes fun at the 2004 Bush/Kerry Presidential Campaign

The second parody "The Drugs I Need"  critiques the pharmaceutical industry. The rhetorical appeal of these parodies is in their intertextuality. The parody's draw on the messages that are being conveyed. By getting users attention, the creators of the videos can influence viewers thinking.   

Video of "The Drugs I Need"

Losh, in her text, Virtualpolitik examines political speech, though she is "more concerned with the deployment of digital rhetoric as a means of power & control on the part of governments & bureaucracies." 129 Losh also sees the "rhetorical construct" in parodies, though she focuses more on the processes that make the parody possible.

In Ian Bogost's Persuasive Games, Bogost "argues for a new digital rhetoric approach he refers to as "procedural rhetoric" because the internal logic of processes within the digital texts supports the persuasive activites of those texts." (Eyman, 129) 

In the Mix

Next, Eyman goes onto look at a series of examples that require "specific engagement with digital rhetoric methods."  (Eyman, 130 )

The first example he looks into is spam poetry.

Spam poetry was a phenomenon that came about with the existence of the site spam-poetry.com around 2003. While, the website no longer exists, but spam poetry is alive and well. Spampoetry.org spampoetry.org still exists, and apparently still takes submissions. 

Check out this YouTube video of a guy reading spam poetry aloud: 

Author Johnathan Lethem offered stories on his site to "appropriate, remix, and adapt." (Eyman, 130)

Micah Ian Wright's  Propaganda Remix Project takes classic wartime propaganda posters and replaces them with new slogans.

The blogger "Canis Lupus" did a parody mix of Jack Valenti's "Moral Imperative Speech" at Duke. He changed Valenti's anti piracy message into a pro fair use speech.

Peter Gabriel promotes remixing of his own and others artists' work at Real World Remixed

Then there was the anonymous artist who created the mashup of 50 Cent's smash hit "In Da Club" & "Yakkety Sax" This is considered a mashup and not a remix because the two audio files were layered one on top of each other and not edited for content. 
While, I could not find the original audio for the mashup (the video was deleted) I did find this Sim video that features the mashup, while featuring a nice remediation of the Sims.

Alanis Morissette did a parody video of the 2005 song "My Humps" Without changing the lyrics, she created a ballad out of a pop, which seeks to provide lyrical commentary.

 Alanis Morrissette "My Humps" parody video:

Johan Soderberg did a video that took clips from Bush's speeches & Tony Blair's speeches. He combined their speeches to create a remix of Lionel Richie & song "Endless Love"

Another popular form of video remixes are anime music videos. These are videos in which clips from anime cartoons are edited together to create a video to a song a remixer has chosen.

Here is an example of a REALLY GOOD Anime Music Video: 

Israel's DJ Kutiman used multimodal composition, appopriation and remix to create his thru-you project. 
In his thru-you project, Kutiman took clips from several 100 videos posted to YouTube, extracted the audio and remixed the content into an album full of songs. He also cut the video together, and provided access to the original authors.

Here is an example of Kutiman's work:

The story of Sean Tevis.

Sean Tevis ran for Kansas State Representative in 2008. He drew national attention to his campaign when he drew a cartoon that was an homage to web comic XKCD to explain why he was running for office. 
XKCD is a popular webcomic that first launched in Sept 2005 among those who are internet savvy Its available under the creative commons attribution non commercial 2.5 license. 

An Example of an XKCD comic:

http://xkcd.com/1414/ 

Basically, Tevis's comic (which drew on parody memes of the film "300") was so impressive, readers of XKCD noticed it and started circulating it through blog & agreggator sites. The link got more & more circulated. Ultimately, Tevis comic went viral, which got him noticed by mainstream media which led him led him to getting TV/print interviews and a lot of notoriety.  

Sean's Comic:

Tevis's "use of the comic format, intertextual references, and knowledge of how to leverage aggretator sites and blogs for circulation" (Eyman, 133 )  qualifies this as an example of digital rhetoric in use He even went so far as to place a message in HTML code on his campaign website that featured the comic. Tevis used all his persuasive resources to appeal to the public to support his candidacy. Unfortunately, he lost.

 Final Thoughts

1. Supposing you were a student in Sarah Arroyo's class, do you think that acting out the theories of the would help you better understand the theories? Has anyone ever done anything like that in a class you've taken?

2. Has anyone ever used Ning? How do you think using a site like Ning provides for a more enriching experiencing then say, using the discussion forum on the SBU website? Would you use Ning in your classroom? 

3. Do you think the 4 webtexts Eyman describes would actually help students with rhetorical processes in a writing class? 

4. Do you think Parodies play a role in effecting outcomes of elections or forms of activism? 

5. The book states the Alanis Morrrissette's remix of "My Humps" focused on the lyrics of the song more. I disagree. But what are your thoughts on that?  

6. Do you think that "going viral" is a way to achieve success in running for political office? 

Works Cited:

Eyman, Douglas. Digital Rhetoric. San Francisco: Creative Commons, 2015. Print.