See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339989788 Update Culture and the Afterlife of Digital Writing Book · February 2020 DOI: 10.7330/9781607329749 CITATIONS READS 3 259 1 author: John Gallagher University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 27 PUBLICATIONS 91 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by John Gallagher on 27 June 2020. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. UPDATE CULTURE AND THE AFTERLIFE OF DIGITAL WRITING UPDATE CULTURE AND THE AFTERLIFE OF DIGITAL WRITING JOHN R. GALLAGHER UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS Logan © 2019 by University Press of Colorado Published by Utah State University Press An imprint of University Press of Colorado 245 Century Circle, Suite 202 Louisville, Colorado 80027 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of University Presses. The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, University of Wyoming, Utah State University, and Western Colorado University. ∞ This paper meets the requirements of the ANSI/NISO Z39.48– 1992 (Permanence of Paper). ISBN: 978- 1- 60732- 973- 2 (paperback) ISBN: 978- 1- 60732- 974- 9 (ebook) DOI: https:// doi .org/ 10 .7330/ 9781607329749 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Gallagher, John R., 1983– author. Title: Update culture and the afterlife of digital writing / John R. Gallagher. Description: Logan : Utah State University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical refer- ences and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019033219 (print) | LCCN 2019033218 (ebook) | ISBN 9781607329732 (paperback) | ISBN 9781607329749 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Electronic publishing. | Authors and publishers. Classification: LCC Z286.E43 G35 2019 (ebook) | LCC Z286.E43 (print) | DDC 070.5/797— dc23 LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov/ 2019033219 The University Press of Colorado gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the University of Illinois toward the publication of this book. Parts (but not much) of this manuscript have appeared in previous publications. Some of the ideas related to templates in chapter 2 appeared in “Challenging the Monetized Template,” Enculturation 24 (2017): n.p. A small section in chapter 4 appeared in “Five Strategies Internet Writers Use to ‘Continue the Conversation,’” in Written Communication 32 (4): 396– 425. A small section of chapter 5 appeared in “Monitoring and Managing Online Comments in Science Journalism,” in Citizenship and Advocacy in Technical Communication: Scholarly and Pedagogical Perspectives, edited by Godwin Agboka and Natalia Matveeva (New Yovrk: Routledge), 137– 52. However, most of the ideas have been updated and edited. Duty Calls, courtesy of XKCD CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Update Culture 3 1 Methods and Participants 17 2 Template Rhetoric 32 3 Textual Timing 49 4 Textual Attention 77 5 Textual Management 100 6 Ethics in Update Culture 135 7 Learning and Pedagogy in Update Culture 147 8 An Epistemology of Change 156 Appendix A: How This Book Came to Be 163 Appendix B: Initial Interview Questions for Reviewers, Journalists, and Bloggers 169 Appendix C: Initial Interview Questions for redditors 170 Appendix D: Follow- Up Interview Questions 171 Notes 173 References 175 About the Author 185 Index 187 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The people most responsible for this project are its participants. I did not pay any of them. They graciously volunteered their time, often when it was convenient for me. Interviewing them was a pleasure. I consider talking with writers to be the best part of my job. To all the bloggers, journalists, redditors, and reviewers: thank you for making this project possible. In terms of scholarly support, Steve Holmes offered me in- depth guidance throughout this project while keeping a sense of humor along the way. I acknowledge that my spouse, Shelby Hutchens, tolerated interviews at random times of the day and listened to me drone on about the project, especially toward the end. There are many people in the computers and writing community I am grateful for knowing and friending; while I cannot name all of them, thanks to Kristin Arola, Kevin Brock, Jim Brown Jr., Aaron Beveridge, Dànielle Nicole DeVoss, Dustin Edwards, Harley Ferris, and Rebecca Tarsa. Because this project was largely conceived as a new project, it holds little relationship to my dissertation. Nevertheless, the seeds of this project started in my disser- tation, and I wish to thank Donna LeCourt and Anne Herrington for giving me the methodology that made this book possible. I am indebted to Paul Prior’s and Catherine Prendergast’s career advice, humor, and grace during my career at UIUC. Thanks to Maria Gillombardo for suggesting Afterlife as a possible title of this manuscript. Thank you to Rachael Lussos for copyediting this manuscript. Thank you to the University Press of Colorado and my editor, Rachael Levay, for support throughout the publication process. Thank you to the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, which provided a subvention grant to help increase the circulation of this book. Family, and the values family represents, is the most important thing in life, something my participants reminded me of during our inter- views. I dedicate this book to my family, especially my father (John E. Gallagher), Quentin, Landry, and Shelby. My sister (Michelle Carr) and mother (Karen Holmes) were enthusiastic about my writing throughout many years, and I thank them for their support over the long arc of a life. Andy Potts listened to me read terrible undergrad papers late at night—thank you for your support, good sir. My friends, Greg Sargent x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS and Michael Gormley, have stood by me for over a decade— thank you and I love you guys. I lost my good friend, Tucker Harpin, and mother- in- law, Lynn Wenig, while finishing this book. I think they would be proud of this book. Family are the ones who stand behind you when things are tough. UPDATE CULTURE AND THE AFTERLIFE OF DIGITAL WRITING INTRODUCTION Update Culture This book evolved from an unusual phenomenon that occurred while I was interviewing a blogger as part of a project about participatory audiences. The project investigated how digital writers consider their audiences who write back to them, often via comments. In 2013, I inter- viewed the blogger Kelly Salasin over the phone. I sat in my mother’s home in Philadelphia, and Kelly sat in her home in Vermont. While we were talking about a blog post of hers that was spotlighted by the New York Times, we both had her blog open on our respective comput- ers. Kelly sat in her home, reading through her blog posts as I asked her questions about the local tragedy she had blogged about. A funny thing began to happen. As I asked her questions about her blog posts and writing processes, she would say, “I need to update that.” And then she would. As soon as I’d leave the webpage and return, new changes would appear without any indication the blog post had been different moments before. I asked Kelly if she changed her texts based on the comments she received. “All the time,” she said. “If the comments are any good, I’ll change my posts.” At one point, Kelly even remarked, “My own per- ception of a post can change depending on the comment.” She pointed me to a series of her blog posts that had received numerous comments and thousands of pageviews.1 “I went back and read each post again and again,” she said, “because I heard from all sorts of [commenters].” Kelly talked at length about the work and time she put into her writing after it was already floating around on the internet, that is, after it was published to the internet and circulating on social media. As her writing was circulating, sometimes due to her actions and sometimes due to the actions of others, such as the New York Times, she found herself attending to the comments. Years later, and after continuing to interview dozens more digital writers, I realized participants made changes to their texts based on audience comments. Even more frequently, those writers attended to their feedback and made savvy decisions based on comments and other DOI: 10.7330/9781607329749.c000 4 INTRODUCTION: UPDATE Culture indicators of reception, such as Facebook Likes or Twitter Retweets. My interview data demonstrate that as digital writing circulates, it does not do so statically or without making a claim on those who initially wrote it. These data illustrate a fundamental shift in the analytic and inven- tive focus from an end product of writing to the emergent responses to online commenters. To be clear, print writers deal with editors, and newspapers print letters to the editor. However, social media is different from this response due to the scale of response and the real- time respon- sivity. Due to these factors, digital writers make a variety of decisions and engage in a remarkable range of activities after they initially complete a digital text. This book argues that these decisions and activities are not only important considerations but are perhaps even more important than the analysis of the first text a digital writer produces. While most schol- arship in writing studies continues to examine the end product, even as that end product circulates and changes, I suggest we examine how digital writers’ processes and strategies change over the course of time as they experience their audiences’ reactions and responses. In other words, this book documents and analyzes digital writers’ decisions after a text has been composed and during its delivery. While print writers have in some ways always dealt with the afterlife of their texts, such as novelists going on book tours or journalists going on television to dis- cuss an article, the internet and social media have greatly intensified this afterlife, as well as made the activities of this afterlife extremely heterogeneous.