Bloggers Everywhere

This blog is going to be somewhat different than the previous posts because it is of a decidedly academic tone, so bare with me. 

This blog was born out of the rhetorical situation of a class syllabus that stated that we, as students, must create our own blog and then posts whatever content we want. It was part of the assignment to become familiar with the discourse of blogging and the genres that happen in the digital context.

Through my readings from class and other blogs, it became clear to me that an urgency/immediacy of information, whether it is a reply, an email, a post, or a comment, was prevalent in most circumstances. What I have decided to attempt to investigate for my project as well as my seminar paper is how the rhetorical situation of digital writing/communicating creates and recreates the genre of immediacy in digital contact. 

To effectively address this, it is necessary to understand why people feel compelled to write back, feel irritated if the person being contacted doesn’t respond quickly enough, and why and how this effects the corporeal interactions of everyday life? I am also curious why immediacy/urgency/frequency create a sense of authority and power in the digital place. This is where I need other bloggers to respond with narratives of their experiences with the need for immediacy. If all this is a little confusing, continue on to the following lines where I will go into further detail, if not, posts your comments, they will be highly valued.

The basis of this investigation comes from the articles that I have been reading in my writing studies class. The overall inquiry is really “why do people blog, and what does blogging due for them, and how does it generate real life experiences.” Having said that, I still have little understanding about why people blog, only that I have become compelled by my need to blog, therefore I have experienced personally this urgency to translate my experiences into digital text via this blog. Granted I have not blogged as frequently which has resulted in my blog not having the appearance of authority and authenticity despite my belief that I am being authentic. 

I have primarily focused on specific articles which I think best describe the desire of the instant and the need for immediacy in terms of the digital realm. I will list them and then give an abstract of the information that I have gleaned from the articles that best fits my inquiry. They are in no particular order.

Jonathan Glater. “To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It’s All About Me.”

The Glater piece discusses the interaction between Discourses that tend to conflict like the informal act of writing digital text and the formal writing of academic settings.

Gallaghan and Dobyns. “Reading and Writing Strategically.”

This article provided more of the basics about what good writing, specifically academic formal essays, but it refers to the rhetorical triangle as the way to make a convincing and entertaining essay. I extrapolated the meaning to better fit my inquiry. I look at the whole of digital communication as an essay of sorts in action, currently being created. The writer is the person with the first act of communication/contact, the reader is the person that reads but also is then compelled to respond/react to the subject which is the information and knowledge that is being created. 

Johndan Johnson-Eilola. “The Database and the Essay. Understanding Composition as Articulation.”

The Eilola piece goes very nicely with the Dobyns piece because it is about the pastiche knowledge that is made and conveyed digitally. They call it Articulation, which basically means taking pieces of knowledge/content and pasting them together to make some new meaning that better relates to the situations of the creators. It is important to recognize that writing as articulation involves many people sharing information in the form of hyperlinks, pictures, audio, videos, whatever.

James Paul Gee. “What is Literacy?”

Gee’s article goes in-depth into what discourse is and how it and we function within/without and with awareness of it. I used it primarily to format my thinking and understanding of the terminology so that I could firmly make my claims. 

Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepherd. “Blogging as a Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog.” Into the Blogosphere.

Miller and Shepherd used research to define what genres are common within the discourse of blogging and how blogs became what they are today. Mostly I focused on the section about the frequency of blog postings, the chronological order of said posts, and how these two aspect interact to declare the authority and authenticity of the blogger. It would seem that the presentness of a blogger makes other bloggers more secure and trustworthy in their interaction with the blogger.

Robert Kuttner. “The Other Side of E-Mail.”

He is decidedly negative about how email functions in the interactions of people. I used him primarily to give and example of the negative thoughts that people have about email. Because email can only conveys words and not tone, facial features and the like, it is easy for things to be misconstrued from a sent email even among friends.

Cathy McDonald. “The Desire of the Instant: Genred Identities in Email and Essays.”

Because I am a student this article is very relevant to me. It discusses both the conflicts and benefits of communicating through new technologies for example email. Primarily the focus is how students need to acquire the ability to code-witch between the digital discourse that they are functioning in most of the time and then switching to the academic discourse when it is necessary. Her contention is that most conflict arises when people are unable or unaware of the need to move within and without conflicting discourses.

James Sosnoski. “Hyper-readers and their Reading Engines.”

It has to do with the common practice of students ability to read something in a partial why. With the constraints on time and an every growing workload students have acquired the ability to look over a document for the things that are necessary for a paper or that fit in the frame of the lecture ect. Time or the perceived lack of time in the corporeal realm has some connection to this need for immediacy in the digital realm.

So there it is. My articles that I’m using and what I got from them. My thesis slash conclusion is that immediacy or the urge for immediacy is fueled by a capitalists society that has equated time with money and therefore it translate to us that we need to get answers now, we need to be heard now, we have to connect now, because if we don’t we will lose any chance at success, power, position…. It is really weak and I don’t really believe it or like it so I’m going to have to work something else out. That is why I need anyone and everyone to comment.