Large corporations in the US, such as Intel, Dell, IBM or Starbucks, have begun to adopt social media tools for employee communication. The weekly printed or emailed newsletter is increasingly being replaced by or supplemented with posts published on company internal blogs that allow for quick and efficient publishing and updating if needed. Micro-blogging tools, giving employees the opportunity to communicate with each other, have also been launched inside of many large businesses. Organizations are recognizing that their employees are exposed to a plethora of social media tools in their private lives and are beginning to expect the same communication tools at their place of work. Some companies are experimenting with intelligent corporate directories that have the ability to connect employees based on the information they enter into their profile pages. These technologies are designed to connect employees for their benefit and for the benefit of the organization. These tools have one important thing in common: they create digital archives of what is communicated. These records can be searched and filtered and, at minimum, provide insight into a company’s culture. For the researcher interested in organizational communication, these archives or information products provide never-before-seen opportunities to examine communicative exchanges between the organization’s leadership and the employees and communication among employees.

In my humble opinion, I see large potential for TC in the latter aspect, from two perspectives: 1. understanding our epistemology and the evolution of epistemic processes in phases of major transition in the way we communicate (and I believe we are in one now, as we were during, for example, the transition from primary to secondary orality), and 2. embracing TC’s role and genuine value to guide these transitions and to make them successful.

With respect to the Information Age we live in, I believe that not only should we own the expertise on communicating information/data/knowledge but we also should own the expertise on how to package and make accessible this information for all users. This clearly requires knowledge in communication theories (and I mean a wide breadth of them) but also expertise in communication technologies, especially the ones driving the current transition in epistemic processes, i.e., the processes we use to gather/create/own knowledge. Grossly oversimplified this might be a transition from ‘knowing a number of facts’ to ‘knowing how to tap the collectively available knowledge’ as afforded by communication technologies in a participatory communication paradigm.

TC should absolutely own the expertise on both of these aspects. Would this mean a shift in perception of what TC should be? Possibly, because it would be a shift from reporting on technology to the more inclusive communicating about technology using the best suited communication technology, i.e., not separate the content from the medium when we talk about communication. It would also mean a shift from a ‘reporting others’ knowledge’ mental paradigm to a paradigm of  ‘applying our expertise to design and construct intelligent communication systems’ for others. Big difference.

This said, I might now step into a hornets’ nest by calling for academia to catch up to the world in which citizens and organizations embrace knowledge-creating, participatory communication technologies and, yes, I will say it: social media.

A curriculum should ensure that students become experts in our field and that they KNOW they are experts. This might sound obvious but I believe much confusion arises from insecurity regarding our value-add and expertise, from viewing us as providing a service toothers. In this curriculum, we should include the ENTIRE cycle: from knowledge creation to knowledge communication techniques and technologies, epistemology to interface back to epistemology.

In short, a course, like you suggest, Pete, (see http://theoriapraxispoeisis.blogspot.com/2009/09/tc-and-epistemology.html) , that explicitly deals with this entire cycle as it relates to the identity of TC. Any following course could then be related to a certain aspect in this cycle that, in Foucault’s terminology, could also be called the episteme of TC.

Other resources on this topic:

1. Pete England’s post: TC and Epistemology onTheoria, Praxis, Poeisis

2. Konjektures Post:  What’s technical about TC (Dobrin) – A response

3. Konjektures Post: Ideology, a New Rhetoric, Authorship and Power Relations

]]> http://konstanzealexbrown.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/epistemological-considerations-in-technical-communication/feed/ 3 konstanzealexbrown http://konstanzealexbrown.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/brave-new-world-6-now-what/ http://konstanzealexbrown.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/brave-new-world-6-now-what/#comments Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:54:10 +0000 konstanzealexbrown http://konjektures.com/?p=492 ]]> This review of the literature, while limited in scope, does point out the general need for continued review and revision of rhetorical concepts based on new constellations of communication afforded by interactive, participatory, customizable Web 2.0 technologies. Careful examination of the rhetorical situation for each emerging new online communication medium is needed to determine applicable rhetorical concepts. Students have to be prepared for operating in the new communication media with adequate pedagogical strategies.

Manovich (2008) outlines the immense and ongoing innovation associated with online social media and their underlying Web 2.0 technologies. Manovich’s 2008 article is recent enough to cover the latest Web 2.0 online communication technologies used by the new online social media to make it relevant for the discussion on adapting or reconfiguring traditional rhetorical concepts to new manners of communication. Manovich’s aggregation and description of the new communication technologies and platforms as manifested in online social media paired with supplied usage statistics emphasizes the growing need for analyses of their rhetorical situation and research into applicable rhetorical theory.

Important for exploring the rhetorical situation and for the examination of applicable rhetorical theory is, as also noted by Warnik, the question of how content is produced. How does the consumer electronics industry who provide the digital cameras, laptops, mobile devices, or other equipment for content creation, or the social media platforms influence this content creation? Conventions and templates are to a large extend determined by professionals or an industry, this could have implications on the canons of arrangement and invention.

Many unanswered questions remain with respect to the impact of a communication technology on the communication itself. Is there a certain make-belief in our minds that we are now free to produce any content we want in any form and shape? I think, yes! While the customizability and ability to create content freely is hailed, and rightfully so, there are rhetorical boundaries set by the devices and platforms we use. I will not type a novel on a Blackberry keyboard, even though, it might be the only input device I have at the time of the revelation of an idea for a novel. The device itself with its particular input and output interfaces influences what I say and how I say it. The success of Twitter has a lot to do with its character limitation because it never leaves one pondering whether one wrote enough. A link copied from somewhere and then bit.ly’d or budurl’d often suffices to get responses, validation, RTs. The character limitation gives us an out from writing more. It fits into a day full of task multiplicity, in fact, perpetuates it.  It allows us to publish and present ourselves without much effort of time or those (rhetorical) worries that often prevent us from writing that blog post, that letter, that novel.  It is low risk of failure. It might deliver small fixes throughout a day filled with drugery. On the other hand, this limitation also inspires creativity in shaping those 140 characters into artful rhetoric, into creative abreviations, into conciseness, into one-word statements. Is it this limitation that makes the phenomenon Twitter a Perpetuum Mobile?

An epiphany that came out of a conversation I just had is the technology afforded ability to manipulate or fabricate conversations to appear linear while they might not have been at all. While an age-old concept in, say, the courtroom, the ability to do that easily with everyday communication, textual, audio, or video, leaves room for rhetorical considerations.

Similar considerations apply to other tools and platforms, such as social networking sites, blogs, forums, wikis. Furthermore, sites that aggregate the various tools we use to create content or those bridging tools that allow us to post the exact same content to multiple places impose yet another layer of rhetorical complexity. Are we ignoring any rhetorical situation by blasting our content to all possible places or are we creating new ones by engaging others into conversation that way?

Here are some questions, I feel like asking you: Do you feel we getting desensitized to the meaning of words in an environment in which they are so easily tossed about, sent into the cloud that absorbs them so readily? How do we consolidate the ability to create and publish content so easily with concepts of gravitas and ethos? Is the micro-blog a Perpetuum Mobile that creates more energy than it consumes but of a lesser quality?

A huge field for investigation going forward will be the examination of Web 2.0 communication technologies inside of businesses where brand new rhetorical situations have to be recognized and analyzed along with needs to manage knowledge intelligently.

On this topic also see my post “Does technology enable or determine communication?”

http://konjektures.com/2009/01/18/does-technology-enable-or-determine-communiction/

(Find the bibliography at http://bit.ly/2GK8Dk)

Barbara Warnik (2005) calls for researchers in the field of new media rhetoric to propose new methods of study for the examination of electronic text rather than focus on methods that can be characterized as printcentric. She cites Aarseth’s research centering on the analysis of electronic text as an example of an innovative method. Aarseth contends that there is a fundamental difference between reading print based, or static, text and electronic text which bears the possibility of surprise directly related to the medium it resides in. He does not ascribe the action of reading electronic text to cognition but rather asserts that, “the cybertext user’s actions perform in an extranoematic sense in which the text is traversed through nontrivial (ergodic) effort”. (p. 327) Aarseth warns of the pitfalls related to employing traditional methods of literary criticism when describing the new participatory literature of electronic text because of the fundamentally different human processing that takes place.

In agreement with Aarseth and Warnik who both call for new methods of criticism, Katherine Hayles as cited in Warnik (2005), contends that the “material form of a medium affects the experience of reading and of using it”, and illustrates this by looking at different form and media factors such as an electronic book, an artist’s book, and a multi-layered print novel. Hayles advocates a “media specific analysis” in addition to an analysis of content and expressive style.

Warnik also includes Lev Manovich’s work on user perception and experience of digitized content. Manovich agrees with Warnik and cautions of using traditional criticism to interpret user behavior in digitized environments. He asserts that in stark contrast to the printed page, “the interface we experience is a mix between a set of controls and an immersive environment, between standardization and originality.” Manovich points out that rather than a consumer or reader, the individual becomes an active user. Both Warnik and Manovich predict that in the future even the stationary aspect of interaction will shift to a more mobile one. Of course we see this today as accepted reality.

Seamless mobility, the concept of always being connect anywhere we go, on any device, even on the go, has huge implications on the rhetoric used in these tools. The knowledge of ubiquitous access with no interruption when we cross from one network to another or when we jump from one transmission medium to another will give rise to usage models that we might not fathom right now. Conjuring them up, drawing up potential scenarios based on what we have seen with the emergence of the blog and the micro-blog, will prepare us better to integrate new technologies into our teaching practices to help prepare future ‘digital natives’ to become savvy digital explorers.

Warnik acknowledges that the effects of these many new media forms influence the rhetorical criticism of them as mentioned above but also the rhetoric associated with their production.  She sees these two aspects as highly related and emphasizes the need for the rhetorical analysis of electronic text to consider how the text was produced by the author(s), i.e.,  how it is designed, what is its purpose, what are the affordances, and what role does its changing nature play. (p. 329)

Customization and individualization of content afforded by the Internet also includes the rhetorical concept of audience. Warnik calls this the disaggregation of audience. Users see content that is served individually to them as opposed to a large audience. This ‘audience targeting’ has great implication on the production of content which needs to have the coded ability to be customized. Technological advances, such as faster connections to the Internet via the availability of higher bandwidth, allows for richer content, graphical and interactive, which has to potential to further change authorship and audience. (p. 330)

According to Warnik, considerations of production, audience, and consumption are vital in developing critical rhetorical theories of electronic text. Warnik seems very encouraged by the work that has been done but emphasizes the continued need for more research especially in the areas of media content development, production, and dissemination.

Reinsch and Turner (2006) outline the effects of communication technology on participants, employees in this case, in three sequential, connected, overlapping stages. (p. 342) A new technology, in the first of these stages, “enhances a worker’s efficiency by reducing inputs and increasing or improving outputs. […] Secondly, “as people explore a technology’s potentialities, they realize that it allows or even encourages alterations […] in tasks, and, consequently, in jobs.” The third stage, as described by Reinsch and Turner, is the individual’s adaptation to an environment profoundly reshaped by technology.

(Find the bibliography at http://bit.ly/2GK8Dk)

Stephanie Vie (2008) while not directly mentioning the rhetoric of social networking technologies, puts out a call to action with respect to changing how composition is taught in the classroom. The traditional approach using the academic essay as the central focus in the composition classroom, according to Vie, needs to be adapted to foster a technological literacy that is required to navigate and compose within and across the new Web 2.0 technologies. Shifts in the perception of authorship and audience and the extremely participatory nature of these technologies need to be addressed by instructors in order to remain relevant.

She outlines the digital divide not in terms of access versus no access to new communication technologies but rather frames it as a divide between students’ and composition instructors’ level of knowledge and technological expertise with Web 2.0 communication technologies. Vie argues that students of ‘Generation M’ have left composition instructors behind causing questions of authority.

According to Vie, ‘Generation M’ students posses the technological know-how to navigate and compose in social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and others, but they lack critical technological literacy skills. The textured literacy skills required, and in many cases mastered, for self-expression on these sites should not be underestimated. Multi-modal composition of a user profile necessitates a combination of new media composing and technological literacy skills that many composition instructors find intimidating. Jenkins (2006) names this phenomenon media convergence and contends that the importance of these social networking sites lies in their inherent call for user participation.

I interpret Vie’s call for a new approach to teaching composition that includes the teaching of critical technological literacy as a call to devise a rhetorical model that applies for today’s participatory social networking spaces. This is the point where traditional models of rhetoric have to be challenged and adapted to account for the new arrangement and invention that is required to succeed in this space, possibly not unlike the one proposed by Jeff Rice in ‘Urban Mappings: A Rhetoric of the Network .’

Lowe and Williams (2004) at the more tactical and practical level contend that there is a problem with creating artificial rhetorical situations for students on WebCT or Blackboard and that writing on a real blog is a real rhetorical situation because a real audience has access to it. They state that, “Many students today regularly email friends and family, converse via instant message daily, participate in multiplayer online games with people from around the web, and surf Internet sites much as earlier generations read magazines and newspapers. Students see the web as a public, playful place different from the writing spaces they typically work in within the classroom. Recognizing this, some composition teachers now assign individual hypertexts or group hypertext projects such as webzines, hoping to tap into the students’ sense of play and familiarity with online environments in order to stimulate investment in and engagement with their writing.”

Welch (1999), in her call for the Next Rhetoric, advocates Isocrates’ pedagogical theory which affords us an alternative to the discourse education that focuses heavily on handbooks, rote learning, and static formulae for discourse. Similar notions have been discovered in the realm of business communication. Reinsch and Turner (2006) in their article, ‘Ari R U there?’, call for business communication pedagogy to raise awareness among students (the future workforce) about rhetorical situations in business communication that have been reshaped by new communication media. Pedagogy must account for this in form and content, and according to Reinsch and Turner must also foster rhetorical thinking (p. 346).

Torning (2008), just like Kathleen Welch and others, recognizes that we are within a century of social transformation that requires careful examination of rhetorical concepts. He cites Peter Drucker, one of the great theorists in organizational management, as asserting that in today’s workplace with the emergence of the knowledge worker (KW) a new skill set is needed. Continual learning grounded in a formal education and “the ability to acquire and apply theoretical and analytical knowledge” are essential for the knowledge worker and the organization that employs the KW.

(Find the bibliography at http://bit.ly/2GK8Dk)

Lunsford and Ede (1984) make a compelling case for the reexamination of traditional rhetorical theories by challenging traditional interpretations of the same. They point to what they call the false dichotomy that has been created between classical and modern rhetoric, markedly the goal of rhetoric being persuasion in traditional rhetoric and communication in modern theory. The authors argue for a revised interpretation of the classical concepts, with special focus on Aristotle. (p. 40-43) They summarize their interpretation in three sets of similarities and qualifying distinctions between classical and modern rhetoric. First, they assert that “[b]oth classical and modern rhetoric view man as a language-using animal who unites reason and emotion in discourse with another”, and point to the qualifying distinction that “Aristotle addresses himself primarily to the oral use of language; ours is primarily an age of print”. Written in 1984, of course, this precludes today’s digital and portable communication media. Secondly, Lunsford and Ede point out that in classical as in modern conceptualization rhetoric, as techne, affords the rhetor and the audience joint access to knowledge. The qualifying distinction, according to the authors, is that Aristotle has the rhetor and the audience achieve a state of knowing via the use of language and be in a “clearly defined relationship with the world and each other”. This clearly defined relationship between the knower and the known is not part of contemporary theory. In their third set of similarities and distinctions, the authors acknowledge that both modern and classical rhetoric theory include rhetoric’s potential “to clarify and inform activities in numerous related fields”. But, while Aristotle’s theory equates rhetoric to an art and “relates it clearly to all fields of knowledge”, there is no systematic theory that is generally accepted for today’s communication practice. (p. 45-46) All points, and especially the last one, illustrate the need to focus on reviewing and revising traditional concepts to make them applicable to new means of communication.

Kathleen Welch, in Electric Rhetoric (1999), advocates the Next Rhetoric and goes to great length to vindicate and seek application for the rhetoric proposed by Isocrates in order to incorporate it into a Next Rhetoric that she proposes. Welch’s Next Rhetoric rejects the binary of oral and written discourse in favor of Isocrates’ more Sophist version of rhetoric. She argues that the classical rhetoric set forth by interpretations of Aristotle and Plato is “categorical and highly ordered” (p. 33) and does not account for our ‘electrified time’. She contends that the latter is by nature exclusionist, racist, and mysogynic.
Welch goes back to Sophist rhetoric and asserts that the re-elevation of Sophist thought tends to accompany drastic rhetorical change such as the one occurring at present, as also noted by many other sources in this document. In Welch’s interpretation, Isocratic rhetoric “consists of language as it constitutes part of thought (that is, interior discourse) and language as it constitutes one’s negotiations with the world (that is, exterior discourse). Writing, speaking, and thinking are mutually dependent for him and, I contend, heavily conditioned by the technology of writing” (p. 34). This fact, according to Welch, is critical in formulating the Next Rhetoric as it accepts the relationship between private and public, interior and exterior speech. Isocrates’ rhetoric, in Welch’s view, is better suited for the present electronic discourse that has changed the interrelationship that exists between interior and exterior discourse.

Welch concludes that Isocrates’ approach to rhetoric not only deserves a place but needs a place in the canon of classical rhetoric and techno-liberal-arts study in order to critically rethink the hegemony created by the prevalent rhetorics of Plato and Aristotle. Isocrates must be reinterpreted in this time of social change because his work presents a viable alternative that will address exclusionist tendencies born out of the prevalent approaches to rhetoric.
Much more focused on a specific technology in his suggestion, Jeff Rice (2008) proposes a rhetoric of database-driven online mapping of spaces and names it the rhetoric of the network. Using an SNL skit about the quality of online mapping services, such as Google Maps and MapQuest, as a starting point, Rice outlines how these services use particular “types of informational arrangement for the purpose of invention.”

Not unlike Miller’s notion of novelty in the invention associated with topoi, upon which the rhetor draws, the database can be used to draw those arguments that are deemed the most appropriate for the situation. Rice proposes for arrangement to be the key to invention. This stands in clear contrast to the Ramist approach. Rice cites Walter Ong in characterizing the Ramist approach to arrangement as being the logical process of navigating topoi to facilitate the most efficient path to understanding an argument. This, according to Rice citing Ong, presupposes that there is a preset order or arrangement and one just has to navigate it but one cannot rearrange it, effectively curbing invention.

Manovich (2008), citing De Certeau, introduces the concepts of tactics and strategies and brings to our attention that Web 2.0 media are designed to be manipulated and customized as Rice alludes to with the database offering fluid arrangement. Rice’s rhetor, the information seeker, is allowed an individualistic arrangement allowing for invention of new paths. Rice summarizes this thought by following Miller’s notion of the topos as a conceptual space that does not have completely predetermined content and, thus, can be seen as a starting point for renewed search. Manovich contends that what used to be the individual’s tactic to customize his or her world is now built into the strategy of large industries and can be said to be the paradigm of Web 2.0. The question arises whether this would then go back to a Ramist model of pre-set spatial organization where we only manipulate surface features but are locked into a rigid arrangement leaving little room for invention? What rhetorical implications does that have for theorists?

Rice makes a compelling case for a new rhetoric of the network that allows for fluid arrangement leading to invention and cites Latour’s definition of a network as a tool that can be used not unlike other rhetorical tools associated with space, i.e., memory palaces, outlines, etc. Networks afford us the option of arranging information in ways unrestricted by the rigidity of pre-determined arrangement.

Connecting his workplace research of a KMS to traditional concepts of rhetoric, Torning (2008) finds that, two of the pisteis seem to emerge as highly influential and merit further examination: ethos and pathos. An organization has to establish the KMS as an ethical tool that will not take unfair advantage of the KW, the KW has to understand the KMS as such and the KW has to have a passion for contributing that is generated by the clear understanding of personal benefits of using it.

James Zappen (2005) acknowledging the need for ongoing examination of rhetorical concepts where digital media are concerned, contends that currently there is no single, cohesive digital rhetoric, but rather a mosaic of theoretical components have not begun to form the shape of a comprehensive theory .

Many of the new Web 2.0 communication technologies, highly interactive, participatory, adaptable, customizable, and often very easy to use can be seen as providing a resolution to communicative needs, possibly dormant up to the point of the introduction of the resolution.

The rhetorical situation has been defined by Lloyd Bitzer (1968), cited in my review by Torning (2008), as having three ingredients: 1. Exigence, which he describes as an “imperfection marked by urgency”; 2. Audience, which consists of “only those people who can be persuaded and have the ability to act, i.e. affect change”; 3. Constraints, which can be “persons, events, objects, and relations that are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence”. (Bitzer, 1968) The ‘fitting response’ is the communication that resolves the exigence.

Bitzer asserts that a situation is only rhetorical if communication can resolve it by persuading an audience “to act in a way that removes the imperfection.” It follows that the discourse is organized around the exigence which is a call to action to all of the members of the audience.
Reinsch and Turner (2006), referencing the rhetorical situation as defined by Bitzer (p. 347), contend that the new communication technologies demand new ways of thinking about rhetoric and, equally as important, constant adaptation by the user, especially in light of challenges, such as immense access to and inundation with data. They conclude that “in this time of change, the fundamental insights of a rhetorical perspective are especially relevant” and “the communicator must continually assess the available means of persuasion”. (p. 353)

Using a blog as the publishing medium for their article, Carolyn Miller and Dawn Sheperd (2004) examine the rhetorical situation of the blog. The authors describe the blog as a “new rhetorical opportunity, made possible by technology that is becoming more available and easier to use.” Acknowledging the blog’s quick and pervasive adoption the authors assert that it must be serving well established rhetorical needs. Miller and Sheperd chose genre analysis to answer the fundamental question of what rhetorical work blogs perform. While exploring the ancestral genres for rhetorical predecessors and patterns of the blog, they also examine the rhetorical situation with its particular exigence that allowed for the sustainability of the blog as a genre, using an interpretive-rhetorical approach. Genre, according to the authors and other sources cited, can be interpreted as “rooted in social practices”, ‘genres change, evolve, and decay’” (Miller, 1984) It can be studied better from a Darwinian perspective than from a Platonic one. Building on the Darwinian thought of evolution, Miller and Sheperd cite Bitzer (1968) and in following his theory of the rhetorical situation, focus on the ‘fitting response’ to the situation or kairos, the “socially perceived space-time” of the blog.

“Kairos describes both―the sense in which discourse is understood as fitting and timely, the way it observes propriety or decorum―and the way in which it can seize on the unique opportunity of a fleeting moment to create new rhetorical possibility.” (Miller, 2002)

In accordance with Welch (1999, Electric Rhetoric), Miller and Sheperd describe the current time to be one of social change with rhetorical emphasis on the destabilization of the public and the private creating new rhetorical situations. Miller and Sheperd call for new ways of examining the exigence that is created by the availability of more and more personal information on the web which in turn creates a perceived need to access information in return. (Calvert, 2000)
In agreement with Miller and Sheperd, Lowe and Williams (2004) open their article, entitled ‘Moving to the Public: Weblogs in the Writing Classroom’, by referencing Weinberger (2002):
“The web teaches us that we can be part of the largest public ever assembled and still maintain our individual faces. But this requires living more of our life in public. On the Web, the notion of a diary has been turned inside out: weblogs are public diaries. It is likely that the neat line we draw between our public and private selves in the real world will continue to erode, grain by grain.”
To explain the perseverance of the blog since the mid 1990s, Miller and Sheperd explore the concepts of voyeurism and exhibitionism as documented in history. While in the past clearly associated with sexual gratification, mediated voyeurism, in the context of the Internet, can often be used synonymously with access to information and, in the case of mediated exhibitionism, with voluntarily providing information as it is done in many blogs. The pursuit of truth, the desire for excitement, the need for involvement and shared experience (Calvert as cited in Miller and Sheperd, 2004) form the basic forces underlying voyeurism, which clearly can be labeled as a rhetorical situation that demands communicative resolution. The same goes for exhibitionism, self-disclosure for the purpose of self-clarification, social validation, relationship development, and social control performing intrinsic and extrinsic social psychological functions for the individual. (Calvert)

In the age of the Internet with the help of technology, both terms voyeurism and exhibitionism have been neutralized according to the authors. Important for the understanding of the kairos of the blog is, that it “shifted the boundary between the public and the private and the relationship between mediated and unmediated experience”. Calvert notes that validation of experience increasingly is achieved through mediation via a technology.

The accessibility of the Internet and the technology of the blog afford this by their very nature. Baudrillard (1981) contends that the perception of “the real and the simulated have reversed: that rather than representing the real, the simulation constitutes the real”. By extrapolation, the rhetorical situation, real or simulated, can be resolved by a fitting response, real or simulated.

Manovich, in 2008, observes that the major shift in Internet usage that has occurred between the early 1990s and today, 2008, is a shift away from being mostly a publishing medium towards becoming a communication medium. (p.2) If communication is happening in a sustained way, then it must be resolving an existing rhetorical situation. The communicative interaction happens in the form of “posts, comments, reviews, ratings, gestures and tokens, votes, links, badges, photos, and video”. Manovich points out that to date only a very small number of users actually contribute content and most remain consumers but the conversation has begun to shift, as confirmed by the staggering usage statistics of online social media. See http://www.pipl.com/statistics/social-networks/size-growth/?l=US for statistics used by Manovich.

In exploring the psychological and rhetorical underpinnings of the rhetorical situation and its exigence with respect to the blog, Miller and Sheperd (2004) contend that “[t]he blogger is her own audience, her own public, her own beneficiary” and situate the blog as fulfilling a timeless rhetorical exigence that fits our current time. The authors examine the blog as a social phenomenon that involves the contributor and reader as private individuals.

With the emergence of social media in organizations it would be interesting to further examine the development of the blog genre when injected into the workplace where different exigences might be at play. Torning (2008) examines the rhetorical situation present in an organization with respect to a knowledge management system (KMS). Such a system must rely on the employee, the knowledge worker (KW), to provide content into the system to be useful for the KW and the organization. In his study, Torning examines the factors that contribute to the sharing of knowledge by the KWs. He examines this by exploring the rhetorical situation surrounding the creation of a KMS in order to determine motivating factors for KWs to share knowledge. He found that two rhetorical situations emerged with distinct exigences, one for the organization and one for the KW. The organization’s exigence surrounds the sharing of knowledge by employees in a sustainable way to ensure growth and profitability. Important for this review is the fact that if communication does not resolve a rhetorical exigence, its sustainability is doubtful.

Torning turns to Web 2.0 technologies and suggests that the identified rhetorical situations outlined above could benefit from incorporating certain Web 2.0 technologies into the new KMS to frame a ‘fitting response’. Having examined several social networking sites and what makes them sustainable, Torning suggests to employ the those same technologies in the KMS of an organization because they would offer that ‘fitting response’ to KW’s exigence of self-representation and it would allow for natural knowledge sharing as it can be observed in the social networking sites.

For more thoughts on this topic see my post on “Synergies among methodology proposals”

http://konjektures.com/2009/01/18/synergies-among-methodoly-proposals/

The blog has become the poster child for interactive, participatory Web 2.0 technologies and many theorists of rhetoric have been arguing for the existence of a blog genre. (Welch 2004, Miller 2004) Welch and Miller contend that with the blog the division between public and private discourse has been blurred, destabilized. This constitutes a huge divergence from Aristotelian rhetoric. The emergence of these new forms of communication demands the reexamination of the viability and applicability of traditional rhetorical concepts. How do rhetorical concepts have to be reshaped or redefined in order to serve digital communication? What are the new rules? Are entirely new concepts and theories of rhetoric needed?

Over the next week or so, I will publish parts 2-6 of this series.