Communication Commons^™

Surveilling Strangers: The Disciplinary Biopower Of Digital Genre Assemblages, Lauren E. Cagle

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies Faculty Publications

This article identifies and names the digital visual genre of strangershots: photographs of strangers taken without their knowledge or consent and then shared online, accruing derogatory comments as they circulate through online networks. By closely describing a specific strangershot posted on Reddit and then connecting it to further examples, I aim to demonstrate that strangershots constitute a genre identifiable by the recurring social actions they accomplish by producing similar responses to recurring social situations. After identifying the genre, I apply actor-network theory to demonstrate how this genre is produced by assemblages of humans and non-human technologies. Following that, I …

Tweeting The Anthropocene: #400ppm As Networked Event, Lauren E. Cagle, Denise Tillery

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies Faculty Publications

Social media platforms have been widely available for over 10 years, and communication research has responded in part by exploring how Facebook and other social media sites are used for advocacy and public discourse. Environmental issues, including climate change, have also been the focus of recent work on social media, including Environmental Communication's 2015 special issue on Climate Change Communication and the Internet. Bruno Latour's actor-network theory allows people to account for the roles played by users, links, hashtags, and other actants in the effort to move information through a larger network. The high percentage of tweets in the dataset …

Confronting Kenneth Burke's Anti-Semitism, Janice W. Fernheimer

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Para-Expertise, Tacit Knowledge, And Writing Problems, Jenny Rice

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies Faculty Publications

My office is on the thirteenth floor of an eighteen-story concrete tower that sits in the heart of campus. The building is so massively disproportionate to other buildings that it looms over the entire campus. Inside, the hallways are long and narrow, with no windows or natural light. A bank of six large elevators takes up the center space of each floor. Perhaps it is not surprising that this office tower has become the source of campus lore and legends among students and faculty. During my first semester on campus, a student asked if I knew the history of my …

Heuristics For Broader Assessment Of Effectiveness And Usability In Technology-Mediated Technical Communication, Roger Grice, Audrey G. Bennett, Janice W. Fernheimer, Cheryl Geisler, Robert Krull, Raymond A. Lutzky, Matthew G. J. Rolph, Patricia Search, James P. Zappen

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies Faculty Publications

Purpose: To offer additional tools for the assessment of effectiveness and usability in technology-mediated communication based in established heuristics.

Method: An interdisciplinary group of researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute selected five disparate examples of technology-mediated communication, formally evaluated each using contemporary heuristics, and then engaged in an iterative design process to arrive at an expanded toolkit for in depth analyses.

Results: A set of heuristics and operationalized metrics for the deeper analysis of a broader scope of contemporary technology-mediated communication.

Conclusions: The continual evolution of communication, including the emergence of new, interactive media, provides a challenging opportunity to identify effective …

Momma’S Memories And The New Equality, Vershawn Ashanti Young

Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.