This course examines the rhetorical properties of blogs, social networking sites, wikis, online video sharing sites, computer games, and multi-user virtual worlds. The emphasis of the class will be on how these electronic artifacts present arguments and attempt to influence users and thereby produce social change. However, we will also be looking at how the design philosophy of electronic texts may use literary conventions about narrative, character, and intertextuality.
To understand the effects of digital rhetoric, we will study theories of technology from the Cold War to the present about the verbal, visual, and procedural properties of hyperlinked, interactive, dynamic, or distributed new media. Sessions will be taught in the new experimental teaching classroom, where students will also be makers of social media designed for academic environments.
