digital rhetoric Digital Humanities The Digital Humanities series provides a forum for ground- breaking and benchmark work in digital humanities, lying at the intersections of computers and the disciplines of arts and humanities, library and information science, media and communications studies, and cultural studies. Series Editors: Julie Thompson Klein, Wayne State University Tara McPherson, University of Southern California Paul Conway, University of Michigan Teaching History in the Digital Age T. Mills Kelly Hacking the Academy: New Approaches to Scholarship and Teaching from Digital Humanities Daniel J. Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt, Editors Writing History in the Digital Age Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki, Editors Pastplay: Teaching and Learning History with Technology Kevin Kee, Editor Interdisciplining Digital Humanities: Boundary Work in an Emerging Field Julie Thompson Klein Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice Douglas Eyman diGitalculturebooks, an imprint of the University of Michigan Press, is dedicated to publishing work in new media studies and the emerging field of digital humanities. Digital Rhetoric theory, method, practice Douglas Eyman University of Michigan Press ann arbor Copyright © 2015 by Douglas Eyman Some rights reserved This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial- No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by- nc- nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid- free paper 2018 2017 2016 2015 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/dh.13030181.0001.001 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Eyman, Douglas. Digital rhetoric : theory, method, practice / Douglas Eyman. pages cm. — (Digital humanities) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 472- 07268- 2 (hardback) — ISBN 978- 0- 472- 05268- 4 (paperback) — ISBN 978- 0- 472- 12113- 7 (e- book) 1. Rhetoric— Data processing. 2. Rhetoric— Study and teaching. 3. Digital media. 4. Online authorship. I. Title. P301.5.D37E96 2015 808.00285— dc23 2014048158 Acknowledgments This book would not have been possible without the great hearts and welcom- ing minds of the computers and writing community, many of whom show up within the text. I wish I could mention everyone who has had an influence on my thinking, my scholarship, my education, but the scope of a work like this is necessarily limited. I especially want to thank those innovators who started Kairos in 1995/96—Mick Doherty, Mike Salvo, Greg Siering, Elizabeth Pass, Corey Wick, Jason Teague, and Amy Hanson. I must also thank Michael Day for showing me the ropes at my very first academic conference and introduc- ing me to many of the aforementioned innovators, thus setting me on the path that eventually lead to my becoming the editor and publisher of Kairos, which I believe to be one of the most innovative scholarly journals in any field. And I could not have done this work if I did not also have excellent col- leagues and editors who routinely make sure that Kairos continues to publish innovative digital rhetoric (as) scholarship and that each issue arrives in a timely manner. In particular, I want to single out Cheryl Ball as the true cap- tain of that ship, but all of our editors and team members are critical to the success of the journal. I am also particularly grateful to my colleagues and mentors at Michigan State University’s program in rhetoric and writing, many of whom have read and commented on elements of this book in one form or another. There are too many to name you all, but special acknowledgment is due to Malea Pow- ell, Jeff Grabill, Ellen Cushman, Bill Hart- Davidson, Julie Lindquist, Dànielle DeVoss, Dean Rehberger, and Jim Ridolfo. And, of course, my dissertation di- rector, Jim Porter, who provided amazingly rapid and detailed feedback and made sure I finished my PhD in the four years for which I had funding. Contents Introduction 1 1 Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric 12 2 Digital Rhetoric: Theory 61 3 Digital Rhetoric: Method 93 4 Digital Rhetoric: Practice 112 Notes 137 References 141 Index 157 Introduction A common exercise in the first-year composition course is the literacy narra- tive— an autobiographical reflection upon the paths, interests, and practices that led the writer to the very moment of writing the narrative, focusing in particular on reading and writing as the pillars of literacy. A variation on this assignment, first introduced to me by Dickie Selfe (see Kitalong, Bridgeford, Moore, & Selfe, 2003), is the technology literacy narrative, which shifts focus from reading and writing to using and producing digital texts and the ways in which the writer has learned to use the technologies that support those digital literacies. I have chosen to begin this introduction with a version of my own technology literacy narrative, not because I believe that it is particularly unique or enlightening, but because it relates my intellectual development from writ- ing teacher to digital rhetorician and in doing so serves the twin purposes of establishing my ethos as developer of this project and acknowledging that my approach to defining and locating “digital rhetoric” through the lenses of the- ory, method, and practice are necessarily both idiosyncratic and rooted in the disciplines through which I’ve traveled.1 Through my reading and research, I am aware that more than one aca- demic discipline and intellectual tradition can make claims to being the “home” of digital rhetoric, and I’ve worked to make sure that I don’t let my own history and bias situate it only in those traditions with which I am most familiar. In fact, I believe that digital rhetoric is an interdisciplinary endeavor that can as easily be situated in departments of communication or English studies and that can be performed within both broad, well- established fields, like media studies, and newer, more narrowly focused approaches such as critical code studies (the relationship between digital rhetoric and these and other disciplines and fields is taken up in chapter 1, “Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric”). My technology literacy narrative wends its way from the early days of the personal computer, through a detour into using the mainframe systems in col- lege, to writing my first web page and joining a community of scholars whose 2 • digital rhetoric interests and work focused on the intersections of rhetoric, writing, and tech- nology.2 I will spend some time detailing my work as the editor of an online journal and the ways that my understanding of rhetoric (and digital rhetoric more specifically) were shaped by my doctoral program and the friends and mentors that inhabited it. Each of these elements serves as a building block in the long process that leads me to claim “digital rhetoric” as both location and scholarly identity. Following this history, I’ll touch upon the problem of de- fining “digital rhetoric,” address the question of audience for this work, and finally provide an overview of the goals and structure of the project. Foreshadowing: Early Experiences with Computers The first personal computer I encountered was the Apple II that appeared in my grade- school library (I was in sixth grade at the time, so it would have been 1979 or 1980). I was one of only a few students interested in using the machine, and I quickly discovered that one of the program disks was for a game called Temple of Apshai. In retrospect, I have noticed that the computer- as- gaming- platform has featured prominently in my continued interest in computers. I have always been more oriented to the humanities than to sci- ence and technology, but my interest in computer games helped me to see the computer not as a machine for computation so much as a new way to experi- ence the stories embedded in the gameplay. Indeed, many of the early com- puter games I played were text-based adventure games, so I saw computers as reading- writing machines. My interest in computers as tools for programming, though, really began in November of 1982, when I received a Timex/Sinclair TS1000 personal com- puter kit for my birthday. The idea of owning a computer that I could program (once I learned BASIC) was exciting not only because it seemed like I was par- ticipating in the world of the science fiction novels I read but also because I could bend the machine to my will through the use of simple programming commands. But before I could exercise any power over the machine, I had to put it to- gether. My first computer was also my first (and only) attempt to solder com- ponents onto a motherboard. My lack of success in this regard is likely the moment when I realized I was more inclined to learn about software and pro- gramming than to build hardware. At the same time, I believe it was a positive experience in the sense that I could see how the machine was made up of a variety of components; the final result may have been a literal black box, but I’d had the opportunity to see what it was made of. The soldering episode has also stayed with me because it reminds me that the digital is inseparable from its material infrastructure.3 Introduction • 3 A few years later, my family acquired a Commodore 64. Like the TS1000, we had to connect the computer’s CPU to the family television, so my broth- ers and I would negotiate times to use it.