TOWARD
A
RHETORIC
OF
INFRASTRUCTURE:
DOING
NEW
MEDIA
WRITING
WITH
COMMUNITIES
By
Guiseppe
Getto
A
DISSERTATION
Submitted
to
Michigan
State
University
in
partial
fulfillment
of
the
requirements
for
the
degree
of
DOCTOR
OF
PHILOSOPHY
RHETORIC
AND
WRITING
2011
ABSTRACT
TOWARD
A
RHETORIC
OF
INFRASTRUCTURE:
DOING
NEW
MEDIA
WRITING
WITH
COMMUNITIES
By
Guiseppe
Getto
In
the
following
dissertation,
I
develop
heuristics
for
collaboratively
and
sustainably
contributing
to
community
infrastructures
through
writing.
Based
on
the
findings
of
an
observational
study
on
how
students
enrolled
in
my
first
year
composition
and
service-‐
learning
class
created
new
media
writing
projects
with
community
partners
and
were
able
to
contribute
to
local
infrastructures,
I
argue
that
students
mobilized
and
invented
different
kinds
of
knowledge
depending
on
what
technologies,
modes,
and
genres
they
had
experience
with
and
access
to
as
part
of
the
class.
In
order
to
do
this,
they
formed
a
strong
network
of
skills,
ideas,
and
other
resources
with
their
community
partners.
Reflections
on
these
findings,
along
with
my
experiences
doing
community
media
work
in
Lansing,
Michigan,
enable
me
to
develop
a
rhetorical
understanding
of
infrastructures
as
networks
of
activity
and
resources—like
knowledge
about
modes
and
genres—that
support
writing.
From
this
perspective,
I
ultimately
argue
that
the
most
effective
means
of
building
and
sustaining
infrastructures
is
for
writers
to
leverage
their
networks
to
create
new
types
of
resources
that
can
then
be
used
to
do
rhetorical
work
in
the
world.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I
would
like
to
acknowledge
all
the
people
that
have
made
this
dissertation
possible,
including
Jeff
Grabill,
Bump
Halbritter,
Julie
Lindquist,
Dean
Rehberger,
Malea
Powell,
Bill
Hart-‐Davidson,
David
Sheridan,
and
Ellen
Cushman
for
their
mentoring
and
guidance
at
various
stages
of
this
project’s
development.
I
would
like
to
thank
Eric
and
David
for
being
excellent
community
collaborators,
for
taking
such
good
care
of
my
students,
and
for
agreeing
to
participate
in
the
study
that
this
dissertation
is
founded
in.
I’d
like
to
thank
the
students
themselves,
Courtney,
Val,
Ivory,
Shalin,
Alex,
Emily,
and
Kirk
for
teaching
me
more
about
new
media
writing
than
I
probably
taught
them,
and
for
agreeing
to
participate
in
the
study
as
well.
I’d
like
to
thank
Shreelina
Ghosh
and
Jessica
Rivait
for
contributing
to
early
versions
of
the
theories,
methodologies,
and
findings
you
will
soon
read
about.
I’d
like
to
thank
Leonora
Smith
and
Marilyn
Wilson
for
their
teacher
mentoring
and
support.
I’d
like
to
thank
Matt
Penniman
and
Tristan
Johnson
for
their
technological
mentoring
and
support.
Finally,
I’d
like
to
thank
Doug
Bruce,
Nathan
Franklin,
and
Mark
Roberts
for
their
intellectual
engagement
over
the
years,
and
for
listening
to
me
complain
about
the
rigors
of
grad
school.
iii
TABLE
OF
CONTENTS
LIST
OF
FIGURES
.………………………………………………………………………………………………...
vi
CHAPTER
1:
THE
HOW
OF
NEW
MEDIA
WRITING
………………………………………………….
1
Understanding
Community
Media
Infrastructures
Better:
More
Why,
Less
How
……………………………………………………………………….
5
Enabling
Complexities:
More
Why,
More
How
……………………………………………
17
Mapping
Complexities:
The
Why
and
How
to
Come
……………………………………
28
CHAPTER
2:
RESEARCHING
WRITING
INFRASTRUCTURES
…..………………………………
31
Modes
of
‘Mode’:
Objecting
to
the
Primary
Object
of
Inquiry
within
New
Media
Writing
Research
……………………………….
34
(Re)articulating
New
(Media)
Objects
of
Inquiry:
Collaboration,
Technology,
and
Genre
……………………………………………..
39
Toward
a
New
(Media)
Research
Methodology,
or
My
Favorite
Researchy
Moves
………………………………………………………...
44
CHAPTER
3:
STUDENT
KNOWLEDGES
AND
NEW
MEDIA
WRITING
………………………
59
Mobilizing
and
Inventing
Technological
Knowledge
...………………………………...
62
Mobilizing
and
Inventing
Modal
Knowledge
………………………………………………
73
Mobilizing
and
Inventing
Generic
Knowledge
…………………………………………….
80
Transitioning
to
Writing
Networks
within
Writing
Infrastructures
…………………………………………………………………..
90
CHAPTER
4:
WRITING
NETWORKS
AND
WRITING
INFRASTRUCTURES
………………...93
‘Net
Work’
vs.
Network:
Leveraging
Resources
to
Learn
……………………………..
94
Nested
Net
Work:
Students
Composing
Infrastructure
……………………………...
104
Toward
a
Heuristic
View
of
Writing
Networks
and
Writing
Infrastructures
…………………………………………………………..
114
CHAPTER
5:
THE
WHERE
OF
NEW
MEDIA
WRITING
…………………………………………..
116
(Re)defining
New
Media:
Many
Times
and
(Hopefully)
for
All
…………………………………………………………………..
117
Outside
to
Where?:
Toward
Some
Rhetorical
Heuristics
for
Building
(New
Media)
Writing
Infrastructures
………………………….
122
Heuristic
1:
Being
of
Use
……………………………………………………………………….....
124
Heuristic
2:
Dwelling
and
Paying
Attention
……………………………………………....
130
Heuristic
3:
Getting
New
Media
Writing
to
‘Stick’
……………………………………...
135
Learning
Infrastructures
Better:
More
How
and
Where,
Less
Why,
Please
…………………………………………………………………………..
141
APPENDICES
……………………………………………………………………………………………………..
144
Appendix
A:
Interview
Scripts
…………………………………………………………………
145
iv
Appendix
B:
Coding
Scheme
…………………………………………………………………….
148
Appendix
C:
Coding
Tally
…………………………………………………………………………
152
Appendix
D:
Student
Skills
Worksheet
……………………………………………………..
155
Appendix
E:
Community
Partner
Needs
Assessment
…………………………………
158
Appendix
F:
Team
4-‐H
New
Media
Project
Final
Draft
and
Cover
Letter
…………………………………………………………..
161
Appendix
G:
Team
Eric
1
New
Media
Project
Final
Draft
and
Cover
Letter
…………………………………………………………..
164
WORKS
CITED
…………………………………………………………………………………………………….
166
v
LIST
OF
FIGURES
Figure
1:
(Idealized)
New
Media
Composing
Process
…………………………………………….
108
Figure
2:
(Actual)
New
Media
Composing
Process…………………………………………………
108
Figure
3:
Screenshot
of
4-‐H’s
Website…………………………………………………………………...
161
vi
CHAPTER
1:
THE
HOW
OF
NEW
MEDIA
WRITING
It
is
now
beyond
doubt
that
some
of
the
most
emergent1
forms
of
media,
such
as
websites,
digital
videos,
wikis,
and
blogs,
are
changing
the
way
various
people,
and
various
groups
of
people,
from
individual
consumers
to
social
movements,
work,
write,
and
learn.
It
is
also
beyond
doubt
that
‘new
media’
mean
new
opportunities
for
non-‐experts
to
create,
use,
and
circulate
information/content
in
new
ways
(Atton;
Jenkins;
Grabill;
DeLuca;
Howley).
In
light
of
this,
the
question
becomes
not
whether
new
media
are
important
for
the
ways
we
think
about
various
forms
of
writing,
rhetoric,
and
communication,
but
how
they
are
important,
and
what
this
importance
means.2
This
is
especially
the
case
given
the
1
I
discuss
more
thoroughly
what
I
mean
by
media
being
‘emergent’
in
Chapter
5,
but
suffice
it
to
say
for
now,
that
I
consider
the
most
emergent
forms
of
media
to
be
those
that,
within
a
given
infrastructure,
a
term
I
also
define
later
(some
here,
some
in
Chapter
4),
are
the
newest
to
be
introduced
within
that
infrastructure.
You
will
see
no
reference
to
‘multimedia’
writing,
because,
like
Paul
Prior
(in
his
works
cited
below),
I
believe
that
most
current
forms
of
writing
draw
on
a
variety
of
modes,
and
so
are
inherently
‘multimodal.’
More
about
this
beginning
in
Chapter
2.
2
For
an
important
precedent
for
my
framing
metaphor,
see
Devoss,
Cushman,
and
Grabill,
who
claim
that
new
media
infrastructures
change
over
time
and
so
are
best
dealt
with
in
a
kairotic
fashion:
writers
must
constantly
be
on
guard
for
opportunities
that
arise
to
challenge
infrastructural
practices.
I
deal
with
this
idea,
and
my
extension
of
it,
more
fully
in
Chapter
5.
1
continued
hegemony
of
corporate
interests
and
established
media
producers,
who
spend
millions
of
dollars
every
year
trying
to
attract
new
users,
viewers,
and
writers
to
use
their
media,
watch
their
advertisements,
and
consume
their
products.
One
answer
that
a
variety
of
scholars
have
come
up
with
as
to
how
new
media
are
important
in
relation
to
more
established
forms
of
media,
is
that
the
non-‐experts
who
use
new
media
to
create
new
content
often
end
up
doing
so
by
using
the
same
practices
as
dominant
groups
of
media
producers,
but
for
radically
different
ends
(e.g.
Atton;
Jenkins;
Howley;
DeLuca).
Anyone
with
semi-‐regular
access
to
the
internet
has
seen
some
of
the
millions
of
user-‐generated
videos
on
sites
like
Youtube,
videos
that
mimic
talk
shows,
news
shows,
and
the
like,
in
addition
to
the
thousands
of
response-‐videos
that
proceed
to
mimic
the
mimicked
shows.
More
people
than
ever
before
are
creating
their
own
content,
posting
it
to
public
places,
responding
to
other
peoples’
content,
or
are,
in
a
word,
writing
or
composing
in
new
ways
for
completely
new
audiences.
Within
composition
studies
and
education,
these
new
forms
of
writing
have
been
taken
up
by
teachers
and
researchers
who
feel
that
facilitating
the
use
of
computers
in
the
classroom
in
general,
as
well
as
assigning
writing
projects
that
require
the
use
of
multiple
technologies
and
modes
of
expression,
will
better
enable
students
to
participate
within
the
broader
culture
by
becoming
more
critical
technology
user/consumers
and
more
adept
producer/consumers
of
new
media
(Selber;
Shipka;
Wysocki;
Jewitt).
At
the
same
time,
some
scholars
within
communication
studies
and
related
fields
have
turned
toward
the
emerging
sub-‐discipline
of
community
media
as
a
way
to
research
and
facilitate
the
grassroots
production
of
media
ranging
from
radio
and
TV
to
RSS
feeds
and
online
discussion
forums
(Howley;
Jankowski
and
Prehn;
Rennie).
And
though
for
at
least
the
past
two
decades
compositionists
have
been
increasingly
interested
2
in
community
literacy
and
public
rhetoric,
or
the
processes
by
which
everyday
citizens
go
public
(citizens
who
are
sometimes
local
community
members
being
assisted
by
composition
teachers
and
students),
few
composition
scholars
have
taken
up
the
production
of
community
media,
or
media
made
by,
for,
and
with
local
communities,
as
a
serious
research
and/or
teaching
goal
(See
Cushman,
“Toward”;
Grabill).
I
argue
(a
case
that
will
be
more
fully
developed
in
Chapter
5)
that
this
lack
of
attention
may
be
valid
from
certain
perspectives,
but
also
it
may
have
serious
consequences
for
the
ways
composition
students
and
local
community
members
come
to
understand
and
enact
their
own
agency
as
media
user/consumers
and
producers,
or
in
other
words,
for
how
they
come
to
think
of
different
forms
of
media
as
important.
I
would
like
to
further
suggest
that
the
emerging
emphasis
on
new
media
writing
within
composition
studies
has
the
potential
to
afford
not
only
the
production
of
texts
by
students
and
writing
teachers
that
help
both
learn
about
the
possibilities
for
new
forms
of
meaning-‐
making,
but
also
the
production
of
texts
that
do
real
work
for
and
with
local
communities.
One
of
the
central
arguments
of
this
dissertation
is
that
if
compositionists
are
increasingly
interested
in
both
the
facilitation
of
everyday
citizens
going
public
and
the
production
of
new
media,
then
community
media
can
constitute
a
new
research
and/or
teaching
site
within
the
field
that
does
both
these
things,
or
namely
that
engages
compositionists,
students,
and
local
community
members
in
the
production
of
locally
made
and
owned
media.
These
media
have
the
potential
to
challenge
media
made
by
more
established
producers,
producers
who
often
do
not
have
the
best
interests
of
local
communities
in
mind.
Making
community
media
a
central
focus
of
our
research
would
shift
our
gaze
to
the
how
of
writing
with
new
media:
how
this
can
help
us
do
things
that
are
3
valuable,
how
different
media
are
helping
people
do
things
of
value
in
their
communities
and
how
compositionists
can
be
a
part
of
this.
As
I
explain
in
the
following
chapter,
however,
there
is
a
danger
that
many
current
practices
regarding
media
within
the
academy
will
reify
certain
forms
of
it
as
something
always-‐already
coherent
and
pre-‐
structured,
something
that
isn’t
created
by
people
and
for
people,
something
that
can
be
mimicked,
but
not
produced,
something
frozen-‐in-‐time
and
unchanging.
Instead,
I
will
argue,
all
forms
of
media
and
their
attendant
structures
and
practices
are
most
enabled
by
the
imagination
and
tenacity
of
the
people
who
make
up
the
networks
that
create
and
sustain
them.
This
dissertation
emerges
from
my
experiences
researching,
teaching,
and
doing
new
media
writing
with
communities,
and
thus
is
a
product
of
engaging
with
infrastructures,
networks
of
people,
forms
of
knowledge,
and
practices
of
media
production
I
have
personally
encountered.
From
these
experiences,
I
argue
that
the
best
way
to
create
new
media
texts
in
a
way
that
matters
is
to
do
so
with
people
that
have
a
rhetorical
need
for
these
texts
within
their
community.
In
this
chapter
I
review
literature
within
rhetoric
and
composition
and
related
fields
that
displays
scholarly
understandings
of
new
media
writing,
community
literacy,
public
rhetoric,
and
community
media,
and
then
attempt
to
extend
these
understandings
to
explicate
how
they
are
limiting
the
way
scholars
think
of
and
make
new
media
writing.
It
has
been
my
experience
that
infrastructures
are
not
just
things,
not
just
material
structures,
they
are
also
networks
of
carefully
coordinated
activity,
networks
of
people,
networks
that
rely
on
complicated
forms
of
knowledge
and
practice
to
survive.
Part
of
this
experience,
as
I
relate
in
the
following
chapters,
has
been
as
a
teacher
and
researcher
of
4
new
media
writing
in
which
I
encouraged
students
to
join
local
networks
of
writing
activity
to
contribute
to
community
infrastructures,
and
then
followed
groups
of
students
as
they
interacted
with
these
infrastructures,
hoping
to
understand
better
how
such
work
is
done.
As
I
relate
in
Chapter
4,
I
found
that
student
composing
activity
not
only
impacted,
but
was
impacted
by,
local
infrastructures,
which
further
led
me
to
believe
that
(student)
writing
work
could
be
part
of
grassroots
community
media
campaigns
that
allow
local
communities
to
have
a
voice
in
the
way
they
are
represented.
As
I
argue
below,
a
convergence
of
old
and
new
media
infrastructures
is
allowing
for
groups
of
people
that
were
previously
only
consumers
of
media
to
become
producers
of
it,
which
further
means
that
the
facilitation
of
new
forms
of
university-‐community
relationships,
ones
founded
around
the
production,
circulation,
and
consumption
of
new
media,
are
now
possible
as
well.
These
newly
mediated
relationships
can
be
similar
to
the
types
currently
being
developed
under
the
auspices
of
community
literacy
and
public
rhetoric,
but
can
also
have
the
added
benefit
of
increasing
the
abilities
of
community
members
to
make,
share,
and
broadly
circulate
their
own
media
texts,
as
well
as
giving
rhetoric
and
writing
teachers
and
students
valuable
opportunities
to
learn
and
practice
these
skills
themselves,
skills
that
are
increasingly
necessary
to
participate
fully
in
our
media-‐saturated
culture.
Understanding
Community
Media
Infrastructures
Better:
More
Why,
Less
How
What
I’m
suggesting
isn’t
a
radical
alteration
of
research
priorities,
but
is
instead
more
of
a
shift
in
disciplinary
emphasis
and
perspective.
As
Anne
Wysocki
attests,
“writing
teachers
are
already
practiced
with
helping
others
understand
how
writing—as
a
print-‐
5
based
practice—is
embedded
among
the
relations
of
agency
and
extensive
material
practices
and
structures
that
are
our
lives.”
She
thus
exhorts
writing
teachers
to
help
open
new
media
to
writing,
meaning
open
its
production,
circulation,
and
consumption
to
the
thinking
of
people
who
are
writing
experts
(7).
Similarly,
Stuart
Selber
attests
that
“[a]lthough
academic
institutions
are
investing
in
technology
infrastructure
and
support
at
an
astonishing
rate...these
investments
are
often
driven
by
logics
that
fail
to
make
humanistic
perspectives
a
central
concern”
(1).
I
could
easily
make
similar
claims
for
new
media
writing
with
communities:
writing
teachers
and
other
educators
have
something
to
contribute
to
this
work,
and
if
they
don’t,
others
will
make
decisions
both
for
us
and
for
our
local
communities.
Not
all
of
these
decisions
are
bad
ones,
though,
of
course:
as
I
pointed
out
above,
there
are
scholars
in
communication
studies
who
are
studying
and
helping
to
build
community
media
all
over
the
world.
Additionally,
there
are
undoubtedly
some
administrators
in
universities
invested
in
building
new
media
infrastructures
that
serve
local
communities.
I
wonder
if,
however,
the
main
issue
regarding
who
has
a
say
in
how
media
gets
used
in
universities
has
more
to
do
with
exactly
the
kinds
of
“extensive
material
practices
and
structures”
being
developed
on
campuses
all
over
the
globe,
the
ones
that
Selber
names
infrastructures.
This
is
not
to
confuse
technological
infrastructures
built
for
supporting
academic
work
in
a
university
with
those
used
for
circulating
media,
though
often
they
can
be
one
and
the
same—my
point
is
that
perhaps
the
reason
more
rhetoric
and
writing
experts
aren’t
researching
and
getting
involved
with
community
media
is
a
problem
of
the
way
infrastructures
for
doing
so
are
both
defined
and
built.
6
Though
commonly
people
like
to
think
of
an
infrastructure
as
a
“substrate”
or
a
sort
of
material
base
upon
which
something
like
local
media
outlets
run,
Susan
Star
and
Karen
Ruhleder
prefer
to
think
of
an
infrastructure
as
a
“fundamentally
relational
concept”
(112).
Just
as
a
tool
has
meaning
when
put
into
usage,
rather
than
being
easily
defined
as
a
built
structure
which
has
“pre-‐given
attributes
frozen
in
time,”
then,
infrastructure
“is
something
that
emerges
for
people
in
practice,
connected
to
activities
and
structures”
(112).
The
same
computing
infrastructures
on
university
campuses
that
Selber
mentions,
for
example,
can
often
be
repurposed
to
serve
as
media
production
platforms
given
the
right
amount
of
work
by
the
right
amount
of
people.
But
this
is
not
how
community
media
infrastructures
have
been
defined
by
communication
scholars.
Howley’s
definition
is
representative,
if
not
somewhat
more
politicized
than
others:
“grassroots
or
locally
oriented
media
access
initiatives
predicated
on
a
profound
sense
of
dissatisfaction
with
mainstream
media
form
and
content,
dedicated
to
the
principles
of
free
expression
and
participatory
democracy,
and
committed
to
enhancing
community
relations
and
promoting
community
solidarity”
(2,
emphasis
mine).
At
first
glance
this
may
seem
to
include
something
like
a
website
made
by
a
group
of
professional
writing
students
(or
any
student
interested
in
such
a
project)
if
such
a
website
was
developed
in
close
collaboration
with
community
stakeholders
(see
Cushman
“Toward”).
Rennie
warns,
however,
that
“there
is
[a]
real
danger
that
community
media
will
be
confused
with
social
networking
and
other
forms
of
amateur
media
production.
Community
broadcasting,
due
to
its
participative,
accessible
and
cooperative
nature,
has
found
itself
under
pressure
to
justify
its
claim
to
state-‐derived
resources
when
media
participation
is
seen
to
occur
at
no
cost
elsewhere”
(27,
emphasis
mine).
Jankowski
and
7
Prehn
echo
these
assertions
when
they
define
community
media
methodologically
as
the
study
of
“communication
structures
and
communication
processes
within
a
distinct
social
setting—a
geographical
community
or
community
of
interest”
(20).
These
definitions
bear
out
in
case
studies
created
by
these
and
other
authors,
studies
of
community
radio
stations
and
other
forms
of
broadcasting,
street
newspaper
initiatives,
public
television
channels,
and
extensive
community-‐based
computer
networks
and
other
already
existent
structures.
This
is
all
despite
the
assertions
of
Rennie
that
“[t]he
categories
of
‘old’
and
‘new’
media
don’t
strictly
apply
to
community
broadcasting”
because
community
media
possesses
many
of
the
characteristics
of
“‘new’
social
networking
media:
it
relies
on
community
affiliations
and
the
circulation
of
information
occurs
through
volunteer
effort.
Community
media
has
always
been
‘prosumer’—in
that
it
enables
consumers
(audiences)
to
become
producers.”
However,
it
is
“distinctly
‘old’
media
in
its
technologies,
codes
of
practice,
legal
restrictions
and
standards”
(25).
So,
despite
her
own
assertions
to
the
contrary:
clearly
community
media
is
old
media,
or
has
to
be
partly
comprised
of
old
media
or
an
old
media-‐like
infrastructure
such
as
a
hard-‐wired
network,
station,
office,
building,
or
other
physical
location,
etc.
Community
media
needs
to
avoid
being
amateur
media;
it
always
already
needs
a
pre-‐existing
infrastructure.
The
practices
that
happen
within
this
structure,
the
ones
that
determine
who
gets
to
say
what
in
a
community
or
university
context,
however,
are
not
brought
to
the
foreground
or
are
absent
altogether
in
this
literature,
and
missing
altogether
are
practices
that
happen
outside
of
a
recognized
structure.
The
emphasis
of
these
scholars,
in
other
words,
is
on
looking
at
the
creation
of
what
Star
and
Ruhleder
would
call
a
substrate,
not
an
infrastructure,
the
former
being
a
8
material
base
upon
which
something
operates,
the
latter
being
the
interaction
of
this
material
base
with
social
and
cultural
knowledges
and
practices.
And
there
are
good,
strategic
reasons
for
defining
community
media
in
this
way,
at
least
publicly,
as
Rennie
points
out:
convincing
lawmakers,
public
benefactors,
and
funding
agencies
that
makers
of
community
media
need
money
is
important
work,
especially
if
it
is
to
survive
and
thrive
despite
the
move
towards
media
consolidation.3,4
I
wonder,
however,
if
these
strategic
definitions
of
community
media
infrastructures
as
necessarily
tied
to
old
media
technologies,
their
associated
practices
of
delivery,
and
other
already
recognized
material
structures
might
be
overlooking
valuable
tactical
contributions,
such
as
doing
a
small
project
in
a
service-‐learning
class,
getting
together
to
have
a
meeting
about
a
possible
community
media
initiative,
etc.5
I
wonder,
in
other
words,
if
these
small
steps
toward
larger
endeavors
might
be
some
of
the
most
important
ones
to
pay
attention
to.
3
And
I
mean
these
are
important
strategic
reasons
in
the
sense
that
de
Certeau
uses
this
word
to
mean
an
act
of
“will
and
power”
that
“assumes
a
place
that
can
be
circumscribed
as
proper
(propre)
and
thus
serves
as
the
basis
for
generating
relations
with
an
exterior
distinct
from
it
(competitors,
adversaries,
‘clientèles,’
‘targets,’
or
‘objects
of
research)”
(xix).
4
Media
consolidation
commonly
refers
to
the
ownership
of
more
and
more
media
outlets
by
fewer
and
fewer
large
corporations
such
as
Disney,
MSNBC,
and
Clear
Channel.
5
Again,
I
am
borrowing
tactical
from
de
Certeau
in
suggesting
that
many
of
the
contributions
rhetoric
and
writing
teachers,
researchers,
and
students
might
be
able
to
make
to
community
media
are
those
“which
cannot
count
on
a
‘proper’
(a
spatial
or
9
Some
of
my
experiences
working
on
and
studying
community
media
initiatives
in
the
community
of
Lansing,
Michigan
have
convinced
me
that
this
might
be
case.
One
of
the
primary
means
through
which
I
have
done
this
for
the
past
several
years
has
been
through
the
Capital
Area
Community
Media
Center,
a
non-‐profit
organization
founded
through
the
Writing
in
Digital
Environments
(W.I.D.E.)
Research
Center
housed
at
Michigan
State
University.
The
CACMC’s
primary
purpose
has
been
to
help
build
local
infrastructures
through
technology
consulting,
media
design,
serving
as
a
liaison
between
service-‐learning
students
and
local
organizations,
and
helping
organizations
net
grant
funding
in
order
to
accumulate
technological
resources.
Its
primary
purpose,
in
other
words,
has
been
to
do
as
much
for
the
social
practices
and
knowledges
associated
with
community
media
in
Lansing,
as
it
has
for
the
material
bases
that
those
practices
and
knowledges
interact
with.
One
institutional
localization)”
(xix).
At
the
same
time,
however,
I
do
not
mean
to
suggest
that
rhetoric
and
writing
teachers
cannot
or
should
not—let
me
rephrase:
they
can
and
should—contribute
to
helping
to
build
the
material
bases
for
community
media
infrastructures
the
same
way
that
communications
scholars
are
(and
at
least
one
rhetoric
and
writing
scholar
is:
see
Grabill),
but
what
I
mean
is
that,
as
rhetorical
as
well
as
literate
experts,
rhetoric
and
writing
teachers
and
scholars
can
contribute
to
community
media,
because
they
by-‐and-‐large
currently
do
not
have
a
disciplinary—or
community—seat
at
the
community
media
table—in
the
same
way
that
“because
it
does
not
have
a
place,
a
tactic
depends
on
time”—by
being
“always
on
the
watch
for
opportunities
that
must
be
seized
‘on
the
wing’”
(xix).
10
central
locus
of
this
capacity-‐building
effort
has
been
the
CACMC’s
work
through
the
Compassion
Capital
Fund,
a
grant
program
administered
by
the
Administration
for
Children
and
Families
of
the
U.S.
Department
of
Health
and
Human
Services
that
provides
funding
for
faith-‐based
and
community
organizations
(FBCO’s)
to
improve
their
technological
infrastructures.
Those
of
us
who
staff
and
volunteer
for
the
CACMC
have
helped
local
FBCO’s
improve
their
infrastructures
not
only
by
performing
on-‐site
technology
consultation
and
media
design,
but
also
by
hosting
workshops
at
MSU
that
encourage
sustainable
practices
such
as
designing
websites
that
the
organizations
themselves
can
maintain.
One
of
the
primary
reasons
for
this
focus
on
building
both
technological
practice
and
technological
knowledge
is
perhaps
best
illustrated
by
a
brief
story.
In
my
time
in
Lansing
as
a
doctoral
student
and
now
candidate
in
Rhetoric
and
Writing,
I
have
served
in
all
of
the
above-‐listed
capacities
with
CACMC,
in
addition
to,
as
I
will
detail
later,
conducting
an
in-‐depth
study
of
the
composing
practices
of
service-‐learning
students
working
with
community
partners
on
new
media
writing
projects.
I
also
served
for
several
months
as
the
Information
Officer
for
my
own
Graduate
Employees
Union.
These
may
sound
like
technologically
and
rhetorically
complex
endeavors,
which
they
are,
but
the
first
plot
point
in
this
story
is
about
a
young,
technologically
and
rhetorically
naïve
graduate
student
who
entered
into
a
Ph.D.
program
filled
with
technologically
and
rhetorically
advanced
folks,
surrounded
by
a
sea
of
highly-‐integrated
and
effective
community
organizations,
and
who
knew
very
little
about
technology-‐consulting,
media-‐design,
etc.,
in
fact:
he
knew
nothing
about
these
things.
11
Still,
he
was
offered
an
opportunity
to
work
on
a
documentary-‐like
project,
new
media
reporting,
his
would-‐be
mentor,
Jeff
Grabill
called
it,
with
a
local
organization
known
as
the
Allen
Neighborhood
Center.
In
response
to
negative
and/or
inaccurate
media
coverage
of
the
work
the
Allen
Neighborhood
Center
(ANC)
does
on
the
Eastside
of
Lansing,
Michigan,
he
was
asked
to
compose
a
‘multimodal
history’
of
the
organization
that
could
more
accurately
represent
for
outside
as
well
as
community
audiences
what
the
organization
is
and
what
it
does.
At
first
he
had
no
idea
what
this
might
look
like
as
a
finished
product,
but
as
he
began
to
conduct
videotaped
interviews
as
he
might
for
any
oral
history,
using
a
digital
video
camera
provided
by
MSU’s
College
of
Arts
and
Letters
Documentary
Lab,
a
certain
overarching
story
began
to
develop:
the
story
of
the
emergence
and
formation
of
the
ANC
as
an
icon
of
the
Eastside
community.
Important
to
this
status
is
the
notion
that
the
ANC
is
simply
built
from
the
existing
practices
of
activism
and
neighbor-‐
centered
activity
that
have
made
the
Eastside
what
it
is.
In
this
way,
then,
our
hero
would
come
to
realize
that
what
he
was
actually
doing
was
mediating
between
an
organization—
whose
central
role
was
to
mediate
between
the
activities
of
various
neighborhood
groups
on
the
Eastside
and
larger
institutions
at
the
city
and
state
level—and
larger
public
audiences.
After
dozens
of
hours
of
videotaping
events
with
the
organization,
editing
together
footage,
and
consulting
with
the
ANC,
he
developed
a
fifty
four-‐minute
documentary
exploring
what
the
ANC
was,
what
it
did,
and
how
it
did
it.
The
board
members
of
the
ANC
liked
it.
They
had
some
suggestions
for
revision,
but
overall
they
were
satisfied.
What
they
really
wanted,
however,
was
to
use
the
video
for
fundraising
purposes.
It
would
probably
need
to
be
shorter
to
do
this,
however...
and
different
aspects
of
the
organization
would
12
need
to
be
emphasized...
would
it
be
possible
to
just
reframe
the
video
a
bit
to
meet
these
new
expectations,
they
asked?
Of
course
our
hero
was
somewhat
taken
aback
by
this
request.
Sure,
he
would
do
his
best
to
repurpose
the
dozens
of
hours
of
footage
he
had
collected,
but,
he
wondered:
why
didn’t
they
just
ask
for
this
in
the
first
place
if
this
is
what
they
really
wanted?
This
question
would
plague
our
hero
for
the
next
several
months
while
he
invested
dozens
more
hours
creating
a
video
that
would
suit
the
rhetorical
situation
that,
it
turned
out,
the
ANC
cared
the
most
about:
appealing
to
funders,
and
anyone
else,
in
a
short,
pithy
way,
and
especially
emphasizing
all
the
programs
that
the
ANC
housed,
which
ranged
from
foreclosure
consultation
services
to
a
farmer’s
market
and
bread
house
(the
rest
of
the
story
will
make
a
lot
more
sense
if
we
watch
the
ten-‐minute
final
cut
of
this
video,
and
will
save
me
the
trouble
of
having
to
try
to
explain
the
ANC
in
a
few
sentences
when
it
took
me
months
to
create
a
video
which
did
so:
http://www.allenneighborhoodcenter.org/about/).6
He
would
succeed
in
producing
what
he
considered
to
be
a
pretty
good
ten-‐minute
video
that
accomplished
all
the
rhetorical
tasks
the
ANC
had
asked
for
(the
second
time),
but
still,
the
earlier
question
would
plague
him.
He
wasn’t
angry,
he
just
genuinely
wondered:
why
didn’t
they
just
ask
for
this
in
the
first
place
if
this
is
what
they
really
wanted?
6
A
bread
house,
at
least
at
it
has
been
used
in
the
Lansing
community,
refers
to
a
location
in
a
community
where
community
members
can
attain
free
foodstuffs,
usually
bread
but
often
other
items
that
get
donated,
one
or
more
days
out
of
the
week.
13
I
realize
now
that
wondering
what
went
wrong,
or
more
accurately
what
went
right,
with
that
initial
project
is
one
of
the
main
reasons
I
am
now
writing
a
dissertation
about
doing
new
media
writing
with
communities,
and
why
I
care
so
much
about
the
definition
of
community
media.
What
I
want
to
illustrate
with
this
story
is
one
of
the
primary
findings
of
the
research
conducted
for
this
dissertation:
infrastructures
are
not
just
things,
not
just
material
structures,
they
are
also
networks
of
carefully
coordinated
activity,
networks
of
people,
networks
that
rely
on
complicated
forms
of
knowledge
and
practice
to
survive.
In
many
ways,
then,
I
am
making
a
related
argument
to
that
of
Jeff
Grabill
when
he
exhorts
us
to
focus
on
infrastructure
rather
than
information.
When
we
do
so,
he
argues:
our
attention
shifts
radically
to
what
is
indeed
useful
for
individuals
and
communities
as
they
seek
to
generate
persuasive
discourse
about
what
is
good,
true,
and
possible...it
shifts
our
design
gaze
to
deep
issues
and
problems.
Infrastructures
are
not
just
information,
not
just
interfaces,
not
just
the
computers
or
the
wires.
Infrastructures
enact
standards,
they
are
activity
systems,
and
they
are
also
people
themselves
(and
all
that
people
entail,
such
as
cultural
and
communal
practices,
identities,
and
diverse
purposes
and
needs).
Community
networks
of
any
kind
are
social,
political,
and
technical;
they
get
work
done
and
allow
others
to
work;
and
they
embody
a
set
of
often
hidden
and
invisible
design
decisions
and
standards
that
change
people
and
communities.
It’s
not
information
that
is
powerful.
Infrastructures
are
powerful.
(40)
So,
like
Grabill,
I
would
exhort
us
to
remember
that
infrastructures
are
not
just
material
structures,
not
just
‘computers’
or
‘wires,’
they
are
networks
of
people,
too,
people
working
14
on
rhetorically
complex
activities
that
often
have
multiple
audiences,
activities
that
require
not
only
technological
know-‐how,
but
technological
skill,
not
only
knowledge
of
certain
modes
and
genres,
but
skills
suited
to
producing
those
modes
and
genres.
The
answer
to
my
earlier
question
was
staring
me
in
the
face
the
whole
time,
you
see:
the
ANC
didn’t
know
what
kind
of
video
it
wanted
until
that
moment,
because
through
producing
the
first
video,
through
meeting
and
filming
and
editing
and
discussing
and
collaborating,
I
had
helped
create
the
infrastructure
for
the
second
video,
the
one
that
the
ANC
did
want.
And
this
is
because,
as
I
will
endeavor
to
demonstrate
throughout
this
dissertation,
infrastructures
are
probabilistic
enterprises:
their
creation,
alteration,
and/or
maintenance
is
never
set,
but
is
instead
based
on
the
rhetorical
actions
of
people
working
within
networks
of
distributed
activity,
activity
not
only
on
material
structures,
but
also
on
knowledges
and
practices.
Infrastructures
rise
and
fall
based
on
the
motivated
and
distributed
knowledge
work
of
individuals
working
collectively
towards
common
goals,
but
goals
upon
which
their
perspectives
may
differ
or
even
be
antagonistic
to
each
other.
This
means
that
the
best
ways
for
people
from
various
walks
of
life,
such
as
rhetoric
and
writing
experts
and
their
students,
activists,
community
members,
digital
composers,
etc.,
to
build,
maintain,
and
change
infrastructures
for
the
better,
may
be
to
see
themselves
as
networks
of
writers
in
which
new
types
of
knowledge,
products,
and
practices
are
created,
knowledge,
products,
and
practices
that
can
then
be
used
to
do
work
in
the
world
through
(new)
infrastructures.
In
an
article
I
co-‐authored
with
Jessica
Rivait
and
Kendall
Leon,
we
noted
that
the
term
“distributed
knowledge
work”
is
typically
used
to
describe
work
that
is
collaborative
and
is
done
over
computer-‐based
networks.
Business
researcher
Eli
Hustad,
extending
Jean
15
Lave
and
Etienne
Wenger’s
communities
of
practice,
has
called
geographically
dispersed
electronic,
collaborative
partnerships
distributed
networks
of
practice
(DNoP)
(69).
Within
such
a
group,
a
distributed
knowledge
management
strategy
can
be
employed:
the
group
is
defined
by
a
project
of
interest,
maintains
a
flexible
configuration,
relies
on
a
recursive,
yet
somewhat
hierarchal
structure,
and
engages
in
decision-‐making
through
distributed
cooperation
(or
shared
authority)
(Ho,
et
al.
449).
However,
critics
have
demonstrated
that
the
issue
with
distributed
knowledge
models
is
that
they
often
represent
the
ideal
situation
rather
than
the
actual
complexities
of
knowledge
work.
Knowledge
is
often
situated,
and
“problems
of
transferring,
negotiating
or
co-‐constructing
knowledge
also
vary
with
[different]
distribution
types”
(Haythornthwaite
3,
7).
For
instance,
while
the
first
video
was
negotiated
and
co-‐constructed
with
the
ANC,
there
was
a
gap
in
the
infrastructure
of
the
ANC,
in
both
the
material
point
of
distribution
and
in
the
knowledge
and
practices
both
the
board
of
the
ANC
and
myself
had
about
digital
video,
a
gap
that
the
second
video
needed
to
fill.
Doing
distributed
knowledge
work
effectively
with
people
you
don't
already
know
well,
in
other
words,
as
often
happens
when
helping
to
build
new
infrastructures,
requires
an
attention
both
to
which
available
material
structures
(such
as
meeting
places
equipped
with
display
technologies
and
camera
equipment),
and
to
which
available
knowledge
and
practices
(such
as
how
to
use
a
camera
to
upload
and
edit
video
and
then
distribute
it
to
an
audience)
are
going
to
be
most
effective
for
facilitating
this
work.
If
infrastructures
are
probabilistic,
in
other
words,
then
decisions
that
get
made
within
them
are
rhetorical.
Like
me,
then,
rhetoric
and
writing
experts,
via
their
training
as
rhetoric
and
writing
experts,
might
contribute
to
community
media
by
being
sensitive
to
the
kairos
of
a
given
infrastructure
or
to
the
“appropriateness
of
the
discourse
to
the
16
particular
circumstances
of
the
time,
place,
speaker,
and
audience
involved”
(Kinneavy
74).
Whether
helping
to
build
a
community
radio
station
in
their
local
area,
or
performing
smaller,
more
tactical
media-‐based
contributions
to
local
community
organizations
like
I
have
in
the
Lansing
area,
rhetoric
and
writing
experts
should
have
a
voice
in
this
process
because
it
is
a
rhetorical
process,
and
also
one
that
involves
a
fair
amount
of
writing/knowledge
work.
Doing
so
might
also
enable
more
local
communities
to
have
a
voice
in
the
direction
of
their
local
infrastructures,
but
in
any
regard,
doing
so
would
involve
seeing
community
media,
and
the
multimedia
writing
that
happens
with
community
members
within
the
networks
that
make
it
possible,
as
more
than
just
a
structural
enterprise,
but
as
an
infrastructural
one,
as
an
enterprise
involving
distributed
knowledge
work
among
networks
of
people
and
the
material
structures
that
help
sustain
these
networks.
Enabling
Complexities:
More
Why,
More
How
The
consequences
of
choosing
not
to
have
a
voice
in
this
conversation,
on
the
other
hand,
would
be
the
status
quo
of
media
consolidation
by
corporate
interests,
unless
there
already
happens
to
be
an
active
community
media
organization
or
effort
in
one’s
local
community
that
is
being
fostered
by
someone
else.
As
Robert
McChesney
argues:
The
corporate
domination
of
both
the
[mass]
media
system
and
the
policy-‐
making
process
that
establishes
and
sustains
it
causes
serious
problems
for
a
functioning
democracy
and
a
healthy
culture.
Media
are
not
the
only
factor
in
explaining
the
woeful
state
of
our
democracy,
but
they
are
a
key
factor.
It
is
difficult
to
imagine
much
headway
being
made
on
the
crucial
social
issues
17
that
face
our
nation
given
how
poorly
they
are
covered
by
the
current
U.S.
media
system.
(7)
It
is
well
known
among
media
scholars
that
corporate
media
outlets
have
specifically
defined
ways
of
framing
their
stories,
including
framing
due
to
“the
editors’
and
working
journalists’
internalization
of
priorities
and
definitions
of
newsworthiness
that
conform
to
[a
given
news]
institution’s
policy,”
a
policy
that
often
includes
protecting
its
own
relationships
with
other
corporate
interests
(Herman
and
Chomsky
xi;
see
also
Deluca
88
and
Howley
21).
Helping
to
build
community
media,
then,
means
helping
to
build
grassroots
infrastructures
that
allow
local
communities
to
have
a
voice
in
the
way
they
are
framed,
because
they
get
to
represent
themselves
or
agree
to
be
represented
by
collaborators
that
they
trust
such
as
rhetoric
and
writing
researchers,
teachers,
and
students.
This
is
how
I
ended
up
doing
community
media
work
with
the
ANC:
the
local
newspapers
were
messing
up
their
name,
misrepresenting
their
community,
and
not
telling
all
the
sides
of
the
stories
they
did
tell
about
them.7
In
an
article
published
in
the
Lansing
State
Journal
in
September
of
2007
concerning
a
march
on
the
Eastside
of
Lansing,
Michigan
to
‘take
back
the
neighborhood’
after
two
brutal
killings
over
the
summer,
the
7
For
a
particularly
egregious
example
of
this,
see
the
article
by
Cochran
cited
in
my
works
cited,
an
article
produced
through
surprising
Joan
at
what
was
supposed
to
be
a
private
neighborhood
association
meeting.
18
headline
reads:
“Marchers
'take
back'
Allen
community”
(Geary).8
Apparently,
the
journalist
writing
the
story
thought
that
because
the
neighborhood
center
facilitating
the
march
was
called
the
Allen
Neighborhood
Center,
in
reference
to
one
of
its
cross-‐streets,
that
the
community
was
called
this,
too.
This
is
most
glaring
considering
that
the
journalist
is
undoubtedly
a
Lansing
resident,
but
not
uncommon,
according
to
both
informal
conversations
and
interviews
with
many
of
the
staff
of
the
ANC.
Many
of
the
staff
have
experienced
the
effects
of
both
extremely
positive
and
extremely
negative
press
coverage
of
the
neighborhood,
which
can
affect
such
elements
of
the
ANC’s
work
as
its
ability
to
retain
funding.
The
ANC
has
done
much
to
persuade
those
outside
the
community,
however,
that
the
Eastside
is
in
fact
a
thriving
place
to
live
filled
with
opportunities
and
a
sense
of
neighborhood
camaraderie
that
is
indeed
unique.
This
context
explains
the
seemingly
cryptic
comment
by
Joan
Nelson,
the
director
of
the
ANC,
quoted
in
the
article.
“Organizers
weren't
really
comfortable
with
the
name
of
Saturday's
event,
however,”
the
reporter
writes,
“‘The
truth
of
the
matter
is
the
neighborhood
was
never
lost,’
Neighborhood
Center
Director
Joan
Nelson
said”
(Geary).
Decontextualized
from
the
Eastside’s
many-‐decades-‐history
as
an
activist
neighborhood,
a
neighborhood
in
which,
as
Joan
would
later
say
in
an
interview
with
me,
“people
stand
a
good
chance
of
knowing
who
lives
next
door
to
them,”
the
comment
comes
off
as
defensive
and
bizarre,
especially
next
to
two
large
photos
of
Eastsiders
marching
to
Hunter
Park
with
signs
in
their
hands
(personal
interview).
But
taken
within
this
context,
it
seems
self-‐
8
The
LSJ
is
a
subsidiary
of
the
Gannett
media
corporation,
now
the
largest
media
conglomerate
in
the
world.
19
explanatory.
How
could
decades
of
dedicated
work
be
suddenly
wiped
away
by
two
murders,
no
matter
how
gruesome?
The
easy
answer
is,
they
couldn’t,
but
this
answer
belies
the
rhetorical
effects
of
the
mass
media
on
its
audience,
even
an
audience
living
only
a
few
miles
from
the
community
being
covered.
If
we
can
imagine
such
an
audience,
an
audience
who
has
perhaps
never
even
set
foot
on
the
Eastside
of
Lansing,
then
such
coverage
can
be
damaging
indeed,
damaging
not
to
the
story
that
residents
of
the
Eastside
tell
to
each
other
about
their
own
community,
but
damaging
to
the
story
that
is
being
told
about
them
by
people
outside
the
community.
My
video
work
for
the
ANC,
in
other
words,
arose
out
of
an
incredibly
complex
rhetorical
need,
the
need
to
be
represented
by
an
outsider
(me)
to
a
variety
of
audiences,
an
outsider
who
would
not
try
to
exploit
those
represented
for
some
hidden
motive
(i.e.,
creating
a
newsworthy
story).
It
was
necessary
for
me
to
learn
not
only
the
story
of
the
ANC,
but
to
learn
its
infrastructure
for
storytelling.
How
would
this
new
story
be
told
and
to
whom?
Who
would
be
involved
in
the
effort?
Who
would
maintain
it
when
I
was
gone?
This
was
the
first
time,
in
other
words,
that
I
had
begun
to
think
not
only
as
a
new
media
composer,
but
also
as
a
public
rhetorician:
I
had
to
think
of
myself
as
a
composer
within
several
networks
of
knowledges,
practices,
and
material
structures,
and
the
choices
I
made
would
affect
how
those
networks
would
align
to
support
the
text
I
was
composing,
or
not.
The
choices
I
made
would
affect
whether
or
not,
for
example,
enough
of
the
ANC
staff
got
invested
in
the
project
to
make
it
meaningful,
not
only
to
them
but
to
an
outside
audience
who
may
not
even
realize
the
ANC
has
a
broad
array
of
staff
members
and
volunteers.
Thus,
not
only
must
rhetoric
and
writing
scholars
who
wish
to
produce
new
media
with
community
members
locate
and
integrate
themselves
into
the
networks
of
people
and
20
material
structures
that
make
up
local
infrastructures,
they
must
also
be
mindful
of
the
meaning-‐making
processes
that
happen
within
these
networks.
Such
processes
have
already
been
studied
within
media
systems
by
several
contemporary
media
scholars
(including
the
internet,
Atton;
community
media
initiatives
such
as
local
radio
stations,
computer
networks,
and
street
newspapers,
Howley;
and
social
movement
organizations
like
Green
Peace,
DeLuca;
to
name
just
a
few).
Many
of
these
scholars
have
found
convincing
evidence
that
new
media
infrastructures,
as
well
as
infrastructures
that
combine
new
and
old
media,
have
the
potential
to
be
more
participatory,
more
collectively—and
thus
democratically—maintained
and
operated,
and
can
thus
focus
more
on
local
issues
due
to
their
“prosumer”
nature,
or
the
ways
in
which
they
allow
user/consumers
to
become
producers.
This
is
due,
in
large
part,
to
not
only
a
technological
but
also
a
“cultural
shift
as
consumers
are
encouraged
to
seek
out
new
information
and
make
connections
among
dispersed
media
content”
(Jenkins
3).
Henry
Jenkins
goes
on
to
reflect
on
the
takeover
of
folk
culture
by
the
mass
media
in
the
twentieth
century,
but
claims
that
what
he
calls
“convergence
culture,”
or
the
culture
emerging
due
to
the
clash
between
old
and
new
media
infrastructures,
is
a
reemergence
of
a
folk
culture
around
the
“common
culture”
of
commercially
produced
popular
culture
(135-‐7).
In
the
age
of
mass
media,
however,
“the
culture
industries
never
really
had
to
confront
the
existence
of
[the]
alternative
cultural
economy
base
[produced
by
user-‐generated
content]...
Home
movies
never
threatened
Hollywood,
as
long
as
they
remained
in
the
home”
(136).
Thus,
“convergence
culture
represents
a
shift
in
the
ways
we
think
about
our
relations
to
media[.
W]e
are
making
that
shift
first
through
our
relations
with
popular
culture,
but...the
skills
we
acquire
through
play
may
have
implications
for
how
we
learn,
21
work,
participate
in
the
political
process,
and
connect
with
other
people
around
the
world”
(23).
This
relationship
between
culture
and
media
production/consumption
is
possible
because,
as
Lisa
Gitelman
attests,
echoing
Star
and
Ruhleder,
media
are
more
than
just
platforms
for
disseminating
information,
they
are
“socially
realized
structures
of
communication,
where
structures
include
both
technological
forms
and
their
associated
protocols,
and
where
communication
is
a
cultural
practice,
a
ritualized
collocation
of
different
people
on
the
same
mental
map,
sharing
or
engaged
with
popular
ontologies
of
representation”
(7,
emphasis
mine).
In
other
words,
media
infrastructures
are
systems
of
meaning-‐making
that
get
used
by
people,
people
who
gather
in
space
and
time
(if
not
always
a
bounded
geographical
space)
in
order
to
communicate
through
shared
forms
of
representation
and
expression,
forms
that
change
over
time
because
of
their
use
by
people.
In
addition,
media
infrastructures
and
the
genres
of
communication
found
within
them
can
be
as
important
to
communities
as
are
more
conventional
forms
of
writing.
They
are
important,
because
like
more
conventional
literate
texts
(like
academic
essays)
housed
within
other
kinds
of
infrastructures
(like
universities),
new
media
genres
involve
shared
and
culturally
and
historically
situated
forms
of
representation
and
expression,
but
unlike
more
conventional
texts,
new
media
genres
often
also
constitute
more
publicly
shared
(and
often
contested)
forms
of
representation
and
expression,
and
thus
have
the
potential
not
only
to
be
used
by
a
sizable
local
community
for
meaning-‐making
practices,
but
also
to
be
used
to
reach
audiences
outside
of
it
as
well
(e.g.,
new
media
genres
often
have
more
22
potential
for
reaching
broader
and
more
diverse
audiences
than
an
academic
essay
would).9
This
is
why
I
am
suggesting
we
“open”
community
media
to
rhetoric
and
writing
experts,
in
the
same
way
new
media
writing
is
being
opened
to
us:
the
historical
moment
we
are
in—one
where
a
“convergence”
of
old
and
new
media
infrastructures
is
allowing
for
groups
of
people
that
were
previously
primarily
consumers
of
media
to
become
producers
of
it—is
ripe
for
the
facilitation
of
new
forms
of
university-‐community
relationships,
ones
founded
around
the
production,
circulation,
and
consumption
of
new
media.
These
newly
mediated
relationships
can
be
similar
to
the
types
of
ones
currently
being
developed
under
the
ospisis
of
community
literacy
and
public
rhetoric,
but
can
also
have
the
added
benefit
of
increasing
the
abilities
of
community
members
to
make,
share,
and
broadly
circulate
their
own
new
media
genres,
as
well
as
to
give
rhetoric
and
writing
teachers
and
students
valuable
opportunities
to
learn
and
practice
these
skills
themselves,
skills
that
are
increasingly
necessary
to
participate
fully
in
our
media-‐saturated
culture.
Linking
Thomas
9
Though
defining
a
spectrum
of
publicity
along
which
texts
reside
is
beyond
the
confines
of
this
chapter,
and
this
dissertation,
here
I
am
drawing
on
the
Deweyian
tradition
that
assumes
a
public
is
built
around
issues,
meaning
that
people
come
together
not
just
to
share
but
to
contest
meanings,
often
meanings
from
more
‘official’
sources
like
government
agencies
(see
Matthews
for
a
contemporary
take
on
this
idea).
My
point
is
only
that
a
media
text,
like
a
website,
is
often
going
to
fit
this
definition
of
publicity
better
for
a
local
community
than
an
academic
essay
would
(unless
of
course
that
local
community
is
composed
of
academics).
23
Deans’s
observations
about
the
multiplicity
of
possible
service-‐learning
projects
and
the
idea
of
distributed
knowledge
work,
we
could
then
create
a
more
useful
shorthand
definition
for
community
media
by
saying
that
it
is
new
media
writing
and
rhetoric
made
by,
for,
and
with
local
communities.
This
definition
would
remind
us
that
it
doesn’t
matter
so
much
who
is
making
the
media
as
long
as
it
is
made
in
a
way
that
is
sustainable
and
sound
given
the
needs
of
community
members.
Once
again,
in
the
wake
of
the
pushes
towards
using
computers
in
the
classroom
and
hitting
the
streets
in
various
forms,
community
media
can
be
a
natural
combination
of
these
efforts.
Take
a
service-‐learning
class
that
a
colleague,
Jessica
Rivait,
and
I
developed
(in
collaboration
with
Kendall
Leon),
and
that
I
later
researched,
for
example.
The
class
was
entitled
Rhetoric/Writing:
Citizenship,
Service-Learning,
and
Community
Media.10
In
this
class,
students
chose
from
one
of
five-‐to-‐eight
community
partners
that
the
instructor
has
formed
relationships
with
before
the
semester
started.11
10
‘On
the
books’
this
class
is
called
WRA
135:
Public
Life
in
America.
We
adapted
the
existing
curriculum
to
include
community
media.
See
footnote
34
for
more
information
on
this.
11
I
taught
the
class
a
total
of
three
semesters
as
a
linked
course
with
a
section
taught
by
another
instructor,
and
it
continues
under
the
care
of
another
interested
instructor
at
the
time
of
writing.
The
last
time
I
taught
it
the
partners
were:
a
local
food
co-‐op
that
wanted
new
forms
of
advertising,
an
art
teacher
who
uses
new
media
in
his
classroom,
the
CACMC,
a
senior
care
center
that
wanted
newsletters,
a
local
peace
organization
that
wanted
short
books
on
peacemakers,
a
mentor
initiative
that
wanted
a
website
and
social
media
24
Four
of
the
five
major
‘written’
assignments
that
students
completed
involved
researching,
composing,
and
revising/editing
various
texts
that
could
be
directly
beneficial
to
the
community
partner,
including:
a
community
media
assessment
report
detailing
research
data
on
a
target
audience
for
the
media
text
students
will
compose,
several
drafts
of
a
new
media
(or
old
media)
genre
composed
in
close
collaboration
with
the
community
partner,
as
well
as
a
researched
essay
on
a
particular
media
and/or
literacy-‐based
problem
of
the
student’s
choice
that
the
community
partner
is
facing
(such
as
copyright
issues,
issues
with
a
certain
type
of
technology,
best
practices
for
delivery—oral
or
otherwise,
best
literacy
practices
for
promoting
a
‘green’
lifestyle,
etc.)
and
several
reflections
and
reports
on
developing
and
sustaining
the
project
after
the
semester
is
over
(more
about
the
class
can
be
found
at:
https://www.msu.edu/~rivaitje/WRA135Video1stDayS10.mov).
I
present
this
assignment
sequence
not
as
an
example
to
be
emulated,
necessarily,
but
as
one
that
combines
thinking
about
and
practicing
new
media
writing,
using
computers
and
other
forms
of
technology
in
the
classroom,
as
well
as
community
literacy/public
rhetoric.
As
I
explained
to
students
the
first
day
of
this
class,
these
five
emphases:
rhetoric,
writing/literacy,
citizenship,
service-‐learning,
and
community
media
make
sense
as
components
of
one
class
because
“[i]n
a
knowledge
society,
the
work
of
citizenship
is
knowledge
work”
(Grabill
2).
Grabill
goes
on
to
clarify
what
he
means
by
this:
when
citizens
find
themselves
in
a
situation
in
which
they
must
challenge
a
powerful
understanding
of
who
they
are,
what
they
are
capable
of,
or
the
utility
and
value
of
the
physical
space
they
inhabit,
they
find
themselves
at
a
campaign,
and
a
student
organization
trying
to
expand
its
membership
and
media
capacity—as
a
rule,
all
community
partners
got
students
placed
with
them.
25
moment
that
is
ambivalently
rhetorical.
They
find
themselves,
that
is,
confronting
audiences
that
understand
knowledge
to
be
produced
by
individuals
and
organizations
of
expertise,
but
who
do
not
understand
the
production
of
knowledge
to
entail
rhetoric.
At
the
same
time,
they
confront
exigencies
that
demand
new
knowledge
production
on
their
part
in
order
to
tell
an
alternative
story
about
identity,
capability,
and
place.
This
alternative
epistemological
process
is
understood
to
entail
rhetoric
to
the
extent
that
it
is
characterized
as
something
other
than
institutionalized
expertise–something
such
as
narrative
or
andecdote,
or
as
emotional
or
interested.
Thus,
rhetoric
exists
in
an
uneasy
tension
with
science,
just
as
citizens
and
communities
exist
in
an
uneasy
tension
with
expert
institutions.
The
rhetorical
ambivalence
of
this
situation
becomes
explicit
when
these
forms
of
knowledge
converge.
(14-‐15;
emphasis
his)
Like
Grabill,
I
think
that
many
students,
as
non-‐experts
entering
into
various
new
(and
often
alienating
and
frustrating)
rhetorical
situations
with
individuals
and
groups
who
possess
vast
amounts
of
expert
knowledge
that
they
do
not,
have
something
in
common
with
local
community
members
facing
similar
rhetorical
situations.
In
other
words,
by
teaching
a
first
year
composition
class
in
this
way,
I
believe
I
am
putting
students
in
rhetorical
situations
that
will
better
mirror
the
types
of
rhetorical
situations
they
will
face
in
other
classes,
and
as
citizens,
workers,
and
community
members.
In
this
way
I
agree
with
Anthony
Michel,
Jim
Ridolfo,
and
David
Sheridan
that
often
“both
the
civic
and
the
multimodal
continue
to
be
integrated
into
our
classrooms
in
reductive,
limiting
ways...
That
is,
we
have
students
write
about
the
civic
sphere,
not
in
it”
26
(805;
emphasis
in
original).
In
place
of
current
conceptions
of
public
writing
in
the
classroom,
then,
they
offer
an
“admittedly
utopian
vision”
of
the
public
sphere
in
which
it
“becomes
a
space
where
non-‐specialists
self-‐reflexively
engage
in
a
‘conversation’
characterized
by
the
rhetorically
effective
integration
of
words,
images,
sounds
and
other
semiotic
elements”
(805).
Integrating
kairos,
or
the
opportune
moment,
into
their
conception
of
public
rhetoric,
they
further
advocate
extending
rhetoric’s
reliance
on
the
“available
means
of
persuasion”
to
include
“assessments
of
the
material
and
discursive
conditions
that
shape
the
production,
distribution,
and
reception
of
the
rhetor’s
argument”
(805-‐6).
Rather
than
simply
reflecting
on
(or
even
doing)
new
media
writing,
public
rhetoric/community
literacy,
technology-‐enhanced
teaching,
etc.,
and
the
inherent
rhetorical
situations
around
any
of
these
areas,
why
not
have
students
reflect
on
and
use
all
of
them?
Why
not
introduce
students
to
all
of
the
available
means
of
persuasion
at
their
disposal
in
the
information
and
media-‐saturated
culture
in
which
they
live?
Likewise,
Elenore
Long
attempts
a
redefinition
of
what
the
community
of
community
literacy
might
mean,
suggesting
that
it
“might
be
best
understood
in
terms
of...
discursive
sites
where
ordinary
people
go
public.
From
a
rhetorical
perspective,
then,
community
[would]
refer[]
not
to
existing
geographic
locales
as
the
idea
of
a
neighborhood
would
suggest...but
to
symbolic
constructs
enacted
in
time
and
space
around
shared
exigencies—in
other
words,
local
publics”
(15,
emphasis
hers).
To
my
mind,
this
definition
of
community
as
local
public
makes
a
good
deal
of
sense
for
talking
about
how
the
production
of
a
community
media
text
might
respond
to
local
exigencies—such
as
the
need
for
senior
care
center
residents
to
27
represent
their
lives
to
both
their
family
members
and
fellow
residents
as
well
as
to
people
beyond
the
walls
of
their
short-‐term
or
long-‐term
home.
In
line
with
much
of
new
literacy
studies,
then,
I
am
claiming
that
community
media
texts—texts
produced
by,
for,
and
with
local
community
members
by
rhetoric
and
writing
experts
and/or
their
students—might
come
to
replace
some
of
the
more
traditional
texts
that
are
currently
being
produced
in
first
year
writing
classes
and
other
academic
venues
(like
as
part
of
research
projects
performed
by
rhetoric
and
writing
professors).
I
think
they
might
also
be
thought
of
as
adaptations
of
the
new
media
writing
going
on
in
many,
but
not
all,
composition
classes
and
departments.
Rhetoric
and
writing
experts
and/or
their
students,
when
composing
new
media
texts,
might
produce
these
texts
in
deep
partnership
with
local
community
members,
with
the
purpose
being
the
same
as
all
community
literacy
texts:
to
mediate
between
broader
cultural
practices
and
more
local
ones
(see
Barton
and
Hamilton
6-‐13,
Street
1-‐2,
Brandt
3).
Mapping
Complexities:
The
Why
and
How
to
Come
While
I
hope
the
above
reflections
have
provided
a
strong
disciplinary
and
theoretical
background
for
this
dissertation,
there
is
much
complexity
still
left
to
explore.
In
the
next
chapter,
for
example,
I
lay
out
a
methodology
for
studying
media
infrastructures
that
I
used
to
track
the
composing
practices
of
two
student
groups
as
they
endeavored
to
create
new
media
writing
projects
with
community
partners
in
the
above-‐mentioned
service-‐learning
class.
This
methodology
involved
using
a
type
of
observation-‐based
research
similar
to
documentary
in
which
I
filmed
students
doing
discrete
composing
tasks
(meeting,
brainstorming,
filming,
editing
digital
video
or
HTML,
etc.),
in
addition
to
28
collecting
interviews
and
written
artifacts.
I
then
analyzed
the
footage
to
describe
both
their
collaborative
activity
and
their
relationships
to
the
modes
and
technologies
with
which
they
were
composing.
In
Chapter
2,
I
thus
describe
this
methodology
in-‐depth,
as
well
as
the
theoretical
and
empirical
precedents
for
it,
which
largely
come
from
the
disciplines
of
education
and
professional
writing,
as
empirical
research
into
new
media
writing
within
composition-‐
and-‐rhetoric-‐proper
is
scant.
It
was
my
goal
to
design
a
methodology
that
enabled
me
to
fully
describe
the
rhetorical
and
literate
complexity
of
the
activity
I
was
studying,
as
new
media
writing
is
a
multi-‐faceted
and
complicated
form
of
knowledge
work
that
is
difficult
to
account
for.
It
was
also
my
goal
to
create
a
methodology
flexible
enough
to
help
me
say
something
about
infrastructures.
I
first
review
research
in
new
media
writing
in
order
to
explicate
previous
objects
of
inquiry
for
this
research,
and
then
explain
why
these
need
to
be
expanded
if
we
want
to
study
the
infrastructures
that
support
this
writing,
instead
of
just
the
writing
itself.
I
finish
the
chapter
by
detailing
what
guided
the
decisions
I
made
during
my
research,
which,
I
argue,
should
always
be
the
exigencies
of
the
research
situation
itself.
I
begin
to
detail
findings
from
this
research
in
Chapter
3,
arguing
that
students
drew
on
their
existing
knowledge
about
new
media
genres,
such
as
digital
videos
and
interactive
websites,
in
order
to
address
social
issues
of
common
concern
in
community
settings.
What's
more,
students
worked
with
community
partners
to
generate
new,
locally
situated
knowledge.
They
modified
or
invented
new
genres
(e.g.,
an
online
‘splash
page’
with
Twitter
integration),
introduced
new
resources
to
their
partners
(e.g.,
websites
that
provide
copyright-‐free
music
useful
for
digital
video
composing),
and
created
sustainability
29
guides
that
enabled
their
partners
to
maintain
and
alter
these
projects
after
the
semester
ended.
After
exemplifying
these
findings
through
close
analysis
of
my
data,
I
ultimately
argue
for
an
iterative
and
situated
conception
of
the
elements
of
writing
processes
that
is
about
understanding
what
the
different
components
allow
writers
to
do.
In
Chapter
4,
I
reflect
on
the
interactions
between
student
composing
and
the
infrastructure
that
it
both
impacted
and
was
impacted
by.
My
main
finding
regarding
this
interaction
is
that
the
student
groups
entered
into
a
network
of
distributed
knowledge
work
that
not
only
influenced
and
was
influenced
by
the
infrastructure
in
and
around
the
classroom,
but
that
was
also
influenced
by
composing
experiences
that
students
had
been
part
of
before
the
class
started.
This
further
implies
that
writing
infrastructures
are
actually
systems
invented
through
the
mobilization
of
resources
by
writers,
and
that
students
can
contribute
to
this
work
through
their
interaction
with
infrastructural
elements.
In
Chapter
5,
I
draw
out
this
implication
and
other
implications
for
thinking
of
community
media
as
a
kind
of
distributed
new
media
writing
work
done
with
community
members.
Mostly
I
attempt
here
to
provide
heuristics
for
researching
and
helping
to
build
infrastructures
for
community
media
by
doing
new
media
writing
with
communities.
In
doing
so,
I
name
what
I
consider
to
be
important
considerations
in
my
experiences
of
trying
to
sustainably
and
democratically
contribute
to
the
local
infrastructures
I
have
worked
with
during
my
time
in
the
Lansing
area.
As
part
of
this
reflection,
I
also
provide
considerations
for
bringing
students
into
this
kind
of
work
in
the
most
ethical
ways
possible.
30
CHAPTER
2:
RESEARCHING
WRITING
INFRASTRUCTURES
In
the
previous
chapter
I
argued
for
a
shift
in
the
way
writing
educators
use
emergent
forms
of
media
(or
new
media)
in
scholarly
practice.
Specifically,
I
claimed
that
thinking
of
new
media
writing
as
forms
of
community
media
might
allow
for
useful
interventions
into
local
communities
by
scholars
trained
in
thinking
of
writing
as
a
set
of
practices,
knowledges,
and
structural
supports.
These
interventions
might
include,
I
also
claimed,
facilitation
of
the
creation
of
new
media
projects
and
infrastructures
to
support
them
by,
for,
and
with
local
community
members.
I
also
mentioned
a
class
that
my
colleagues
and
I
at
Michigan
State
University
developed
that
allowed
for
students
to
be
part
of
this
work,
and
a
study
I
conducted
into
the
composing
practices
of
some
students
of
that
class.
In
this
chapter,
I
will
discuss
the
methodology
I
utilized
to
conduct
this
study,
a
discussion
which
will
also
serve
as
a
forum
for
my
argument
for
another
type
of
intervention:
researching
writing
infrastructures.
Since
they
are
both
structures
and
networks
of
knowledge
and
practice,
the
best
way
to
study
writing
infrastructures
is
from
the
ground
up.
Though
no
researchers,
to
my
knowledge,
have
conducted
empirical
studies
geared
toward
understanding
the
infrastructure
necessary
for
writing,
per
se,
I
draw
on
previous
research
on
new
media
writing,
as
this
is
the
genre
my
participants’
writing
most
closely
resembled,
and
the
genre
of
writing
that
draws
the
most
heavily
on
its
infrastructure.12
Before
getting
into
this
12
Both
of
Spinuzzi’s
works
cited
below
are
important
exceptions
to
this
statement,
though
it
is
still
arguable
that
both
of
these
articles
are
reports
of
empirical
investigations
of
31
research,
however,
I
feel
it
necessary
to
take
a
moment
to
unpack
what
I
just
said:
that
new
media
writing
draws
most
heavily
on
its
infrastructure.
An
important
argument
throughout
this
dissertation,
and
which
I
synthesize
and
make
most
explicit
in
Chapter
5
when
I
fully
describe
what
a
rhetoric
of
infrastructure
could
look
like,
is
that
writers
utilizing
any
medium
utilize
an
infrastructure,
or
a
network
of
practices,
knowledges,
and
material
structures.
All
writing,
then,
has
an
infrastructure,
but
infrastructures
of
certain
types
of
writing
are
more
or
less
stable.
In
most
university
classrooms,
then,
new
media
writing,
or
writing
utilizing
the
most
emergent
forms
of
writing
available,
will
have
the
least
stable
infrastructure,
or
will,
at
the
very
least,
demand
more
of
its
infrastructure
than
more
established
media.
New
media
writing
requires,
in
other
words,
a
broader
array
of
knowledges,
and
practices,
and
material
structures,
than
a
genre
like
the
essay,
a
genre
that
has
remained
a
relatively
stable
fixture
in
university
classrooms
for
several
generations
now.13
Like
Chapter
1,
then,
most
of
what
you
will
see
writing
networks
rather
than
infrastructures,
a
distinction
I
get
into
in
Chapter
4.
The
best
precedent
for
studying
infrastructures
empirically
is
the
article
by
DeVoss,
Grabill,
and
Cushman,
also
cited
below,
but
this
article
also
represents
more
of
a
descriptive
analysis
than
an
empirical
study.
13
It
may
sound
like
I
am
saying
that
essays
are
written
the
same
in
the
21st
century
as
they
were
by
Montaigne,
or
something
of
the
like,
but
I
am
not.
By
saying
they
are
a
‘relatively
stable
fixture,’
I
mean
exactly
that:
the
infrastructure
for
them
exists,
and
has
existed
for
some
time.
No
genre
is
fixed;
rather:
genres
are
constantly
in
flux,
but,
I
digress.
My
point
is
simply
to
say
that
the
infrastructure
(knowledges,
practices,
material
structures)
for
32
in
the
following
chapter
has
emerged
from
my
inductive
discovery
of
this
fundamental
element
of
new
media
writing.
My
research
into
and
practice
of
new
media
writing
has
made
writing
infrastructures
visible,
in
other
words,
in
a
way
that
they
weren’t
before.
And
this
new
way
of
seeing
the
elements
of
writing
has
impacted
my
view
of
it
in
important,
irrevocable
ways,
ways
that
I
hope
to
communicate
to
a
professional
audience
(writing
experts),
who
seem
to
thrive
on
having
their
views
of
writing
perpetually
challenged.
As
far
as
the
organization
of
this
chapter,
I
am
trying
to
accomplish
two
primary
goals:
1)
to
describe
and
ultimately
rearticulate
the
objects
of
inquiry
of
new
media
writing
researchers
from
the
current,
most
pervasive
ones
(e.g.
modes)
to
a
more
expanded
and
holistic
emphasis
on
new
media
writing
networks
and
infrastructures,
and
2)
to
provide
heuristics,
or
problem-‐solving
strategies,
for
thinking
about
the
rhetorical
moves
one
might
make
as
a
new
media
writing
researcher
interested
in
these
new
objects
of
inquiry14.
As
should
become
evident
in
what
follows,
I’m
also
arguing
that
these
two
larger
concerns,
rearticulating
objects
of
inquiry
and
thinking
about
rhetorical
moves
researchers
make,
are
key
for
developing
sound
methodologies
that
add
knowledge
about
writing
to
pertinent
bodies
of
literature,
such
as
new
media
writing
literature.
It
is
my
intent
below
to
provide
productive
(rather
than
reductive)
criticisms
of
existing
trends
within
this
literature
in
order
to
demonstrate
new
possibilities
rather
than
truncating
possibilities
through
an
all-‐
traditional
media
like
the
essay
have
become
invisible
to
us
because
they
have
been
with
us
for
so
long.
14
Though
a
common
enough
term
in
humanities
scholarship,
I’m
here
drawing
on
Stuart
Selber’s
definition
(40).
33
or-‐nothing,
I’m-‐right-‐and-‐everyone-‐else-‐is-‐wrong
approach,
an
approach
I
have
witnessed
too
often
in
academic
arguments
of
this
kind.
Modes
of
‘Mode’:
Objecting
to
the
Primary
Object
of
Inquiry
within
New
Media
Writing
Research
New
media
writing
research
has
recently
turned
toward
questions
of
the
interactivity
between
modes
of
expression
and
the
new
semiotic
resources
(e.g.
new
resources
for
making
meaning)
and
writing
processes
that
the
production
and
consumption
of
new
media
texts
makes
available
(for
a
few
recent
articles
on
production
and
consumption
itself,
see
Devoss
and
Webb;
Porter;
and
Tu
et
al).
Work
in
this
area
has
consisted
of
studies
in
workplaces,
classrooms,
and
a
few
other
sites
(such
as
online),
studies
that
mainly
seek
to
describe
how
composing
with
multiple
modes
is
done
by
various
groups
of
people
(e.g.
for
a
recent
workplace
study,
see
Spinuzzi,
“Compound”;
for
an
online
study,
see
Jones;
Ranker
looks
at
a
classroom
setting),
to
extrapolate
relationships
between
various
modes
used
by
writers
(e.g.
Ranker;
Bezemer
and
Kress;
Mayer),
and/or
to
describe
the
elements
of
new
media
writing
processes
(e.g.
for
a
study
on
revision,
see
Jones;
for
a
study
on
online
identity
as
it
connects
to
online
writing
see
Lam).
Much
like
my
efforts
in
Chapter
1
concerning
community
media,
I
see
myself
as
simply
seeking
to
extend
work
in
the
area
of
new
media
writing
research
by
introducing
a
different
perspective
into
a
conversation
in
which
researchers
have
been
more
focused
on
the
interaction
between
various
modes
and
on
writing
processes
themselves
than
on
the
interaction
between
writers,
their
writing
processes,
and
the
infrastructures
that
support
34
them15,16.
Currently,
Bezemer
and
Kress
have
defined
a
mode
as
“a
socially
and
culturally
shaped
resource
for
making
meaning,”
and
also
claim
that
within
modes
there
are
“modal
resources,”
a
term
which
they
do
not
operationalize,
but
which
seems
to
mean
something
like
a
grammar
of
a
specific
mode
(171).
Furthermore, Mayer has attempted to link modes with
channels of sense perception (sight, hearing, etc.) (363).
From
these
definitions
researchers
have
mostly
attempted
to
ascertain
how
the
modes
of
new
media
texts
(such
as
the
audio
in
a
video,
the
text
in
a
wikipedia
entry,
etc.)
allow
for
new
opportunities
for
meaning-‐
making
at
the
same
time
that
they
constrain
others
(Bezemer
and
Kress
171;
see
also
Hull
and
Nelson;
Ranker;
Carey).
As
I
suggest
below,
the
rubber
meets
the
road
of
new
media
composing
not
only
within
modes
themselves,
but
also
within
the
ways
modes
provide
15
Research
on
new
media
writing
is,
in
fact,
a
conversation
considered
by
many
to
be
a
subset
of
the
larger
conversation
of
New
Literacy
Studies,
which
has
roots
in
the
work
of
Brian
Street,
James
Paul
Gee,
David
Barton,
Mary
Hamilton,
and
many
others.
For
a
useful
collection
of
new
literacy
studies
research
on
new
media
writing,
see
Coiro
et
al,
cited
below.
16
Articles
like
the
ones
I
cited
above
concerning
consumption
and
production
are
arguably
about
infrastructure-‐related
issues.
These
authors
seem
to
consider
their
work
as
relating
to
digital
composition
and
not
new
media
writing
research,
per
se,
however.
Usually
this
work
is
not
empirical,
as
well,
and
so
is
not
precisely
a
research
precedent
for
me.
If
pressed,
I
would
argue
that
this
work
has
brought
our
attention
to
the
infrastructural
level
more
than
the
other
work
I’m
citing,
however.
35
composers
with
rhetorical
opportunities
to
do
knowledge/writing
work
through
infrastructures.
This
is
not
to
say
that
the
findings
of
such
researchers
are
not
substantive
or
useful.
It
is
an
important
contribution
to
rhetorical
scholarship
on
new
media,
for
example,
to
consider
a
la
Bezemer
and
Kress
that
translation
between
modes
is
always
occurring
as
the
affordances
(or
possibilities
and
limitations)
of
one
mode
are
chosen
by
a
composer
over
another
because
of
the
perceived
needs
of
an
audience,
such
as
if
information
originally
encountered
in
a
textual
format
is
thought
to
be
easier
to
understand
if
rendered
visually
(175).
In
an
expansion
of
this
relationship
between
modes,
in
one
exemplary
study
into
the
affordances
of
a
digital
video
called
“Life-‐N-‐Rhyme”
composed
as
part
of
a
digital
storytelling
project
run
out
of
a
community
technology
center,
Hull
and
Nelson
found
that
the
various
modes
of
the
text
studied,
such
as
language,
image,
and
music,
are
assembled
in
such
a
way
as
to
maximize
the
expressive
potentials
of
each
mode
(249-‐50).
Each
mode,
they
claim,
builds
on
the
one
before
it,
accruing
associative
meanings
so
that
the
impact
of
each
image,
for
example,
carries
with
it
the
images
that
have
come
before
it
(250).
This
is
not
a
simple
addition
of
meaning,
however,
for
ultimately
they
wish
to
claim
that
“a
multimodal
text
can
create
a
different
system
of
signification,
one
that
transcends
the
collective
contribution
of
its
constituent
parts.
More
simply
put,
multimodality
can
afford,
not
just
a
new
way
to
make
meaning,
but
a
different
kind
of
meaning,”
a
meaning
that
is
no
longer
dependent
on
the
meaning-‐making
potentials
of
the
individual
modes,
but
that
is
a
composite
of
all
the
modes
of
the
text
considered
as
a
whole
(225,
250).
These
are
important
findings
because
they
teach
us
about
the
rhetorical
possibilities
of
new
media
texts,
specifically
that
they
make
meaning
and
impact
audiences
in
very
36
different
ways
than
do
more
traditional
texts,
largely
because
the
possibilities
of
meaning-‐
making
are
expanded.
At
the
same
time,
however,
I
think
it’s
also
important
that
we
look
at
how
composers
of
new
media
texts
make
meaning
with
them
within
actual
infrastructures.
How
did
the
digital
video
that
was
described
above,
for
example,
impact,
and
how
was
it
impacted
by
the
actual
networks
of
people
that
helped
create
it?
Did
it
allow
them
to
do
any
work
in
the
world
besides
getting
screened
before
audiences
and
posted
to
the
web?
Did
it
enable
them,
for
example,
to
in
any
way
change
the
infrastructure(s)
that
it
arose
from?
Like
Paul
Prior,
in
other
words,
I
am
convinced
that
multimodality
is
a
“routine
dimension
of
language
use,
as
utterances
can
only
happen
in
embodied,
material,
multisensory,
multi-‐semiotic
worlds,”
and
is
thus
“not
some
special
feature
of
texts
or
certain
kinds
of
utterance,
and
certainly
is
not
a
consequence
of
technologies”
(“Speech”
27).
Following
from
the
work
of
Bahktin,
Prior
et
al
argue
that
we
thus
need
to
rethink
rhetorical
utterances
produced
through
literate
activity
as
both
mediated
and
dialogic,
meaning
“distributed
over
time
and
space
and
among
people,
artifacts,
and
environments
and
thus
also
laminated,
as
multiple
frames
or
fields
coexist
in
any
situated
act”
(Prior,
et
al
“resituating”
18,
emphasis
his).
Thus,
rather
than
thinking
of
new
media
as
a
completely
new
form
of
literate
activity,
perhaps
we
should
consider
them
to
be
opportunities
to
rethink
some
of
our
fundamental
assumptions
about
writing
and
rhetoric.
Whereas
much
of
this
thinking
has
focused
on
the
synchronic
or
individual
speech
act
frozen
in
a
moment
in
time,
then,
Prior
argues
for
thinking
of
writing
and
rhetoric
as
fundamentally
dynamic
and
historically
situated
activities.
I
agree
with
Prior,
then,
that
definitions
of
modes
like
those
that
have
guided
the
above
research
are
definitions
that
attempt
to
identify
discrete,
ontological
units
of
37
meaning
and
thus
attempt
to
treat
components
of
literate
systems
that
are
dynamic
as
fixed
and
stable
(Prior
“Moving”
24).
Rather
than
trying
to
define
how
specific
modes
make
meaning
as
modes,
in
other
words,
I
think
it
is
important
to
describe
how
specific
modes
make
meaning
as
components
of
infrastructures,
or
how
they
come
to
life
within
the
networks
and
material
structures
of
which
they
are,
after
all,
but
components.
My
original
idea
to
study
new
media
writing
as
infrastructural,
in
fact,
came
from
a
researcher
in
this
conversation
who
pointed
his
empirical
lens
just
a
little
off
from
the
modes
he
was
studying.
Ranker,
who
studied
the
composing
processes
of
fifth
graders
working
on
a
digital
video,
states
at
one
point
that
he
finds
much
promise
in
the
study
of
“how
social
interaction
and
reflective
conversations
during
composing
processes
lead
to
particular
types
of
uses
and
combinations
of
semiotic
resources
in
multimedia
composing
environments”
(230).
In
his
own
study,
for
example,
although
he
finds
that
for
two
fifth
grade
boys
composing
a
documentary
video
on
the
Dominican
Republic,
“what
was
already
written,
recorded,
and
imported
into
the
audio
track
of
the
baseball
chapter
framed
what
needed
to
be
done
next,”
he
was
“constantly
aware
of
the
boys’
conversations
as
a
medium,
of
sorts,
for
reflecting
on
the
relative
roles
and
uses
of
these
media.
As
the
boys
punctuated
their
meaning
at
various
points
in
time
through
ongoing
drafts
[liked
they
did
in
the
baseball
chapter],
they
reflected
on
these
moments
of
punctuation
by
discussing
from
where
they
had
come
and
where
they
would
go
next”
(214;
229-‐30).
This
says
to
me
that,
though
Ranker
chose
to
emphasize
the
ways
the
boys
used
a
“nonlinear,
intertextual
movement
between
the
creation
of
and
use
of
media
texts,”
their
social
interaction
may
have
been
key
to
this
process
(226).
38
What
I
hear
Ranker
saying
from
my
own
perspective,
is
that
outside
of
the
actual
modes
used
for
composing,
there
are
complex
things
happening
within
the
networks
of
people
doing
the
composing.
Had
he
tilted
his
gaze
a
little
farther
out
of
frame,
for
example,
he
may
have
noticed
interesting
things
about
the
conversations
these
fifth
graders
had
with
their
teacher,
or
their
facility
with
the
technology
they
were
using.
I’m
arguing
that
new
media
writing
researchers
should
expand
our
awareness
beyond
our
usual
objects
of
inquiry,
which
for
writing
researchers
are
writing
processes
and
products,
to
the
processes,
networks,
and
material
structures
which
support
that
writing.
(Re)articulating
New
(Media)
Objects
of
Inquiry:
Collaboration,
Technology,
and
Genre
One
of
the
processes
I’ve
become
interested
in
because
it
seems
to
happen
so
often
among
new
media
writers
I’ve
interacted
with
is
collaboration.
Like
the
other
objects
of
inquiry
named
in
this
section
title,
however,
collaboration,
though
usually
at
least
mentioned
in
studies
of
new
media
writing,
often
takes
a
back
seat
to
considerations
of
mode.
In
addition,
though
a
large
body
of
research
into
collaborative
writing
exists,
and
individual
studies
within
this
conversation
track
“the
conditions
and
variables
bearing
on
the
collaborative
process,”
these
conditions
and
variables
tend
to
vary
widely
from
study
to
study
(Knievel
336).
These
conditions
have
included
the
“organizational
environment”
in
which
writers
are
composing,
including
the
leadership
structure
of
the
organization
within
which
writers
are
composing
(Doheny-‐Farina)
and
“differences
in
understanding
the
organization’s
culture”
(Locker
quoted
in
Knievel
336).
Some
of
the
variables
have
included
“differences
in
group
processes
and
in
writing
processes”
such
as
individual
group
39
members
“understanding
of
the
rhetorical
situation”
and
the
“involvement”
of
individual
group
members
(Locker
quoted
in
Knievel
336).
As
Noël
and
Robert
contend,
however,
the
necessity
of
studying
small
groups
of
people
during
studies
of
collaborative
writing
tends
to
limit
the
generalizability
of
frameworks
for
organizing
the
various
elements
of
these
processes.
As
I
argue
in
Chapter
3,
however,
if
we
think
of
new
media
writing,
or
any
kind
of
writing,
really,
as
a
form
of
distributed
knowledge
work
in
which
writers
work
in
tandem
with
each
other,
mobilizing
different
knowledges
(i.e.
the
knowledge
of
how
particular
modes
work)
and
practices
(i.e.
playing
around
with
a
video
clip
to
get
it
to
fit
right
with
other
clips)
in
order
to
achieve
particular
goals,
then
we
would
be
more
interested
in
how
particular
writers
and
groups
of
writers
do
this
in
particular
situations,
rather
than
in
trying
to
generalize
to
all
writers.
The
closest
we
could
get
to
generalization
will
be
how
I
demonstrate
my
findings
in
the
next
two
chapters,
I
would
argue:
by
providing
heuristics
for
collaboration,
or
rhetorical
moves
that
might
be
productive
for
writers
to
make
if
they
are
in
a
similar
situation
to
the
researched
group.
As
Knievel
also
points
out,
much
collaborative
writing
research
has
focused
on
a
success-‐based
model
of
studying
collaboration,
meaning
that
studies
have
focused
on
which
variables
allow
for
success
or
failure
of
collaboration,
which
is
defined
as
coming
to
a
final
consensus
on
how
to
get
work
done,
a
consensus
that
allows
for
productivity
during
composing
(336).
I
agree
with
Kneivel,
however,
that
this
either-‐or
dichotomy
(either
a
certain
variable,
such
as
discussion,
leads
toward
successful
collaboration
or
causes
it
to
fail)
assumes
a
kind
of
a
priori
determinism
towards
consensus
that
may
cause
researchers
to
misrecognize
certain
kinds
of
activity
as
unproductive
when
they
really
aren’t.
40
I,
myself,
fell
victim
to
this
tendency
in
a
pilot
for
the
study
I
will
be
reporting
on
in
the
next
two
chapters,
when
I
asked
a
group
of
student
writers
enrolled
in
my
themed
service-‐learning
class
Rhetoric/Writing:
Citizenship,
Service-Learning,
and
Community
Media
if
I
could
pry
into
their
new
media
writing
processes
for
a
semester.
My
goal
was
to
study
their
writing
processes
and
the
ways
they
interacted
socially
during
composing,
because
I
felt
that
sociality
was
a
key
aspect
of
the
networks
and
infrastructures
of
new
media
writing
work
I
wanted
to
describe
(and
because
of
the
precedents
I
cited
above).
It
very
quickly
became
apparent
to
me,
however,
that
I
couldn’t
determine,
at
the
beginning
of
my
study,
what
types
of
interaction
or
composing
activity
were
meaningful
for
the
video
they
were
working
on
for
the
East
Lansing
Food
Co-‐op,
their
partner
organization.
Sometimes
students
would
bullshit
with
each
other,
for
example,
during
composing
sessions,
and
sometimes
they
wouldn’t.
Sometimes
they
would
reach
consensus,
and
sometimes
a
few
students
would
do
work
while
others
did
other
things
(sometimes
things
unrelated
to
their
project).
Their
whole
process
seemed
messy,
non-‐linear,
iterative,
and
difficult
to
even
describe
as
a
coherent
process.
The
only
commonality
I
could
find
in
their
whole
process,
in
fact,
a
commonality
that
would
impact
the
way
I
conducted
the
actual
study
two
semesters
later,
was
a
kind
of
iterative
understanding
the
students
developed
about
what
were
the
best
things
to
do
at
each
moment
of
composing.
I
would
later,
in
the
actual
study,
zero
in
on
the
aspects
of
composing,
such
as
meetings
with
community
partners,
in
which
this
understanding
was
performed
the
most
explicitly
in
the
pilot.
It
would
only
become
apparent
to
me
later
that
both
the
students
and
their
community
partners
were
mobilizing
a
complex
set
of
knowledges
and
practices
(modal,
technological,
generic)
in
a
very
contingent
and
41
pragmatic
way.
Had
I
gone
in
with
a
model
in
mind,
a
model
based
on
the
best
practices
of
a
zillion
other
writing
situations
that
may
have
been
very
different
than
the
one
I
was
researching,
I
probably
would
not
have
come
to
realize
this
was
happening
at
all.
Perhaps
new
media
writing
researchers
might
follow
my
lead
in
taking
a
more
rhetorical
and
situated
approach
toward
studying
writing,
as
have
genre
theorists
as
of
late,
especially
if
they
want
to
study
writing
as
it
interacts
with
infrastructures.
As
Amy
Devitt
says,
drawing
on
Carolyn
Miller’s
argument
that
genres
are
responses
to
recurrent
social
situations,
and
arguing
for
a
more
operationalized
theory
of
genre:
“Genres
help
people
do
things
in
the
world.
They
are
also
both
social
and
rhetorical
actions,
operating
as
people
interact
with
others
in
purposeful
ways.
To
say
that
genres
are
typified
actions
is
in
part
to
say
that
genres
are
classifications
but
classifications
made
by
people
as
they
act
symbolically
rather
than
by
analysts
as
they
examine
products”
(13-‐14).
We
could,
after
a
little
rephrasing
in
some
cases,
say
the
same
about
any
of
the
objects
of
inquiry
mentioned
thus
far:
technologies
are
used
for
social
and
rhetorical
actions,
modes
are
used
for
social
and
rhetorical
actions,
etc.
Like
modes,
however,
genre
has
been
largely
used
by
new
media
researchers
as
a
way
of
classifying
the
various
meaning-‐making
potentials
of
discrete
things
called
genres,
though
the
rhetorical
nature
of
genre
is
beginning
to
become
a
central
concern
to
these
thinkers
(see,
for
example,
Graham
and
Whalen).
Next,
though
mentioned
implicitly
in
all
the
literature
I
have
reviewed
thus
far,
material
components
of
writing
situations,
such
as
technologies,
are
perhaps
the
least
visible
component
within
the
conversation
of
new
media
writing
studies.
I
believe
Ranker’s
work
to
be
representative.
Here
is
how
he
describes
the
interface
of
the
software
the
students
he
studied
used
to
compose
their
text:
42
Video
Studio
Editor
offered
several
new
types
of
semiotic
resources
as
well.
These
resources
took
the
form
of
selected
parts
of
the
visual
representations
available
to
them
as
part
of
the
Video
Studio
interface
as
drafts
of
the
project.
For
example,
the
Video
Studio
Interface,
through
its
layout
(which
featured
a
film
“reel”
with
distinct
frames
or
places
to
insert
images,
a
clipboard,
and
audio,
video,
music,
and
title
tracks)
offered
up
new
semiotic
resources
for
the
boys
to
understand
the
current
shape
of
their
project
and
to
use
these
resources
in
perpetuating
their
composing.
(228)
What
we
see
here
is
a
very
nuanced
understanding
of
the
modes
his
students
were
using
as
they
are
represented
within
an
interface.
What
we
are
missing,
however,
is
an
understanding
of
the
type
of
computer
this
interface
is
operating
within,
or
the
room
within
which
this
computer
sits,
or
the
relative
positions
of
the
two
composers
in
relation
to
this
interface.
And
though
it
makes
a
lot
of
sense
to
me
why
researchers
have
not
paid
attention
to
such
material
affordances
up
until
now,
it
is
my
belief
that
such
affordances
can
have
just
as
important
a
bearing
on
new
media
composing
processes
as
the
modes
being
used,
and,
of
course:
this
is
exactly
one
of
the
findings
I
will
report
on
in
the
next
two
chapters.
Besides
broadening
our
focus
away
from
modes,
then,
I’m
also
arguing
that
we
should
stop
trying
to
figure
out
what
things
like
modes,
genres,
technologies,
and
collaboration
are,
and
should
instead
start
and
end
with
what
they
do
in
actual
writing
situations
(and
infrastructures).
We
should
take
as
our
main
direction
of
inquiry
the
affordances
components
of
new
media
writing
provide
for
doing
writing
work.
As
I
elaborate
on
in
Chapter
3,
this
would
involve
a
substantial
shift
from
an
ontological
43
perspective
to
a
rhetorical
one:
rather
than
trying
to
track
what
things
are,
we
would
focus
on
holistically
examining
particular
kinds
of
knowledge
work
with
the
understanding
that
all
such
work
is
highly
contingent
on
the
particulars
of
the
writing/rhetorical
situation
and
the
infrastructure
within
which
it
takes
place.
Toward
a
New
(Media)
Research
Methodology,
or
My
Favorite
Researchy
Moves
Let
me
be
clear
that
I
am
not
suggesting
that
everything
about
a
writing
situation
or
infrastructure
can
be
studied
at
once.
What
I
am
saying
is
that
infrastructures
are
complicated
things,
filled
with
people
and
all
their
attendant
beliefs,
attitudes,
knowledges,
skills,
and
practices,
as
well
as
technologies,
genres,
modes,
and
collections
of
knowledge
about
all
these
things.
In
order
to
study
a
writing
infrastructure,
one
may
need
to
stumble
around
inside
one
for
a
while,
to
try
looking
at
different
things
before
one
finds
a
good
vantage
point.
After
creating
the
videos
with
the
ANC
that
I
mentioned
in
Chapter
1,
for
example,
I
continued
to
work
with
the
Capital
Area
Community
Media
Center,
but
also
became
interested
in
service-‐learning.
I
thought
that
if
I,
with
as
little
technological
expertise
as
I
possessed,
could
be
a
productive
contributor
to
community
media
infrastructures
in
the
Lansing
area,
why
not
freshmen
writing
students,
many
of
which
had
much
more
technological
know-‐how
than
I
did?
At
this
same
time,
I
had
also
begun
to
research
the
conversation
of
new
media
writing,
and
had
stumbled
upon
some
of
the
sources
I
cite
above.
As
I
mentioned
before,
it
became
clear
to
me
that
people
were
mostly
interested
in
modes,
processes,
and
products,
but
the
research
situation
for
new
media
writing
seemed
so
much
richer
than
that,
at
least
as
I
had
experienced
it.
As
I
began
to
design
a
first
year
composition
and
service-‐learning
44
class
called
Rhetoric/Writing:
Citizenship,
Service-Learning,
and
Community
Media,
I
also
began
to
consider
how
I
would
bound
such
a
research
situation.
Where
would
I
find
new
media
composers
who
were
composing
projects
that
would
be
suitable
writing
processes
to
study?
And
better
yet,
where
might
I
find
composers
who
were
doing
new
media
writing
in
a
community
setting?
I
decided
that
since
no
one
to
my
knowledge
has
done
empirical
research
on
first
year
writers
doing
new
media
writing,
and
since
my
service-‐learning
students
were
in
fact
a
group
of
writers
attempting
to
contribute
to
community
infrastructures
in
an
easily
bounded
period
of
time,
that
both
my
research
and
teaching
interests
would
be
best
served
in
the
classroom.
I
decided
to
conduct
a
pilot
of
a
research
project
I
envisioned
in
which
I
would
videotape
student
composing
processes.
This
seemed
like
a
good
idea
because
there
seemed
to
be
so
much
to
document
about
the
research
situation.
I
wasn’t
sure
what
I
really
wanted
to
study.
I
had
a
hunch,
however,
that
because
infrastructures
are
systems
of
knowledges,
practices,
and
material
structures,
because
they
come
alive
through
work
done
by
people,
that
within
student
composing
activity
I
might
find
something
worthwhile
to
study,
maybe
several
somethings.
As
I
mentioned
before,
during
this
time
I
was
also
paying
attention
to
empirical
research
into
new
media
writing,
much
of
which,
I
would
find,
was
situated
or
ethnographic
in
nature
(in
addition
the
above-‐cited
sources,
see
Moura
for
a
good
example
of
an
ethnographic
study;
also
see
Leander
for
a
good
methodological
description
of
new
media
ethnography).
Other
researchers
seemed
to
believe
that
new
media
should
be
studied
as
a
situated
practice,
though,
as
I
mention
above,
I
would
part
ways
with
them
concerning
their
primary
focus
on
modes.
Again:
I
felt
that
researchers
were
treating
45
modes,
or
the
resources
writers
use
to
make
meaning,
as
a
priori
and
pre-‐existent
of
particular
writing
situations
(Spinuzzi’s
work
is
a
notable
exception
to
this).
Their
studies
were
fascinating
and
pushed
me
toward
doing
a
situated
study,
as
well
as
towards
looking
at
the
interactions
between
writers,
modes,
and
other
elements
of
the
writing
situation
I
mention
above.
This
reinscription
of
modes
as
pre-‐existing
seemed
omnipresent,
however.
Consider,
for
example,
the
following
excerpt
of
Moura’s
explanation
of
modes
as
part
of
her
ethnographic
study
of
embodiment
and
modes
of
communication:
Communicative
modes,
like
head
movement,
gesture,
and
spoken
language
are
all
systems
of
representation.
Kress
and
Van
Leeuwen
(2001)
affirm
that
a
system
of
representation
is
a
semiotic
system
that
includes
rules
and
regularities.
In
Norris
(2004a),
a
communicative
mode
is
never
a
static
unit,
but
a
heuristic
unit,
meaning
that
it
can
be
defined
in
various
ways
and
it
has
no
clear
boundaries.
For
instance,
furniture
can
me
a
communicative
mode
or
an
element
in
the
layout
mode…
The
behaviors
that
constitute
nonverbal
communication
can
be
categorized
into
seven
types
of
nonverbal
codes,
according
to
Ciccia,
Step
and
Turkstra
(2003)…
Despite
what
I
feel
like
is
a
circular
explanation
of
mode,
what
I
want
to
highlight
here
is
how
modes
are
explained
as
having
‘no
clear
boundaries,’
but
then
later
categorized
into
seven
types.
I
am
not
trying
to
pick
on
Moura,
here,
but
simply
to
demonstrate
one
instance
of
a
very
grounded
study
starting
in
a
very
deterministic
way:
new
media
research
is
rife
with
thinking
that
transforms
its
elements
into
neat,
generalizable
categories.
To
see
if
I
was
right
about
new
media
writing
overflowing
these
categories,
I
decided
to
follow
one
group
of
student
writers
as
closely
as
I
could
without
exhausting
46
both
myself
and
them.
Because
I
believed
that
infrastructures
were
omnipresent
in
writers’
lives,
something
that
I
detail
in
Chapters
3
and
4,
I
decided
to
conduct
interviews
with
students
right
as
they
chose
community
partners
for
the
class
and
I
put
them
into
work
groups.
I
asked
them
about
their
lives
as
media
producers
and
consumers
before
that
point.
I
was
trying
to
understand
their
experiences
as
new
media
composers
before
beginning
the
project.
Would
these
experiences
affect,
in
any
way,
their
lives
as
composers
during
the
class?
Because
I
also
wanted
to
understand
how
they
worked
together
to
compose,
and
how
they
figured
out
how
to
work
together
to
compose,
I
also
videotaped
some
of
their
composing
sessions,
most
of
their
meetings
with
their
community
partner,
and
did
a
group
interview
with
the
students
and
their
community
partner
at
the
end
of
the
project.
During
this
interview
I
performed
a
member
check
by
composing
some
of
the
footage
into
a
short,
10-‐minute
video
that
seemed
to
represent
their
writing
process.
I
wanted
to
understand
what
they
thought
was
important
or
not
important
about
their
writing
situation,
and
why
they
thought
this.
Mostly,
this
pilot
helped
focus
my
attention.
I
realized
that
what
I
was
most
interested
in
was
a
given
group
of
writers’
understanding
of
their
place
within
an
infrastructure.
This
makes
sense
when
we
think
of
infrastructures
as
rhetorical
enterprises:
like
a-‐choose-‐your-‐own-‐adventure
story,
writers
have
lots
of
options
for
what
to
do
at
each
stage
of
composing,
and
each
choice
will
take
them
(and
some
aspects
of
the
infrastructure)
in
an
entirely
new
direction.
After
months
of
research,
I
would
finally
find
an
emphasis
to
direct
my
attention,
an
emphasis
useful
in
describing
composers’
understanding
of
the
rhetorical
situation
they
found
themselves
in.
Gitelman
claims
that
a
protocol
can
be
discerned
for
a
particular
media
genre,
or
“a
vast
clutter
of
normative
rules
47
and
default
conditions,
which
gather
and
adhere
like
a
nebulous
array
around
a
technological
nucleus”
(7).
Further,
these
protocols
are
socially
formed
and
are
not
static,
but
change
over
time
(8).
I
became
most
interested
in
what
Gitelman
describes
as
“the
shared
sense
people
have
of
what”
a
given
media
genre
is,
however,
or
in
how
students
used
different
types
of
knowledge
and
practice
(modal,
technological,
generic,
collaborative)
to
come
to
a
shared
understanding
with
their
community
partner
and
each
other
of
what,
exactly,
kind
of
project
they
were
making,
and
the
best
way
for
them
to
make
that
kind
of
project
(8).
This
emphasis
allowed
me
to
tighten
and
revise
what
I
was
looking
for
in
the
real
study.
My
interview
questions
made
more
sense
(see
Appendix
A),
for
example.
I
understood
better,
after
stumbling
around
the
infrastructure
students
composed
in
for
a
few
months,
what
to
record
and
when,
etc.
I
chose,
for
example,
after
mulling
over
the
data
from
the
pilot
for
a
semester
and
seeking
IRB
approval,
to
study
two
groups
of
students
enrolled
in
Rhetoric/Writing:
Citizenship,
Service-Learning,
and
Community
Media17.
I
saw
these
students
as
potentially
contributing
to
the
infrastructure
of
several
organizations
and
institutional
entities
I’d
already
been
involved
with,
such
as
Writing,
Rhetoric,
and
American
Cultures,
the
department
that
housed
the
course,
my
graduate
program
in
Rhetoric
and
Writing,
a
local
food
co-‐op,
the
CACMC,
a
local
art
classroom
in
a
middle
school,
a
mentoring
initative,
the
MSU
College
of
Arts
and
Letters
Documentary
Lab,
etc.
I
thought
that
two
groups
would
create
a
better
chance
of
having
researchable
groups,
and
17
The
pilot
was
conducted
as
part
of
a
graduate
seminar,
and
so
the
professor
of
that
class
functioned
as
my
IRB
board.
48
would
also
allow
me
some
comparison
across
media
genres
if
the
two
groups
ended
up
composing
in
different
ones18.
The
two
groups
I
studied
ended
up
partnering
with
the
teacher
in
the
art
classroom,
Eric
Staib,
and
Dave
Mahorney,
the
head
of
MSU
Extension’s
Ingham
County
4-‐H
Mentorship
Program,
respectively19.
Once
again:
in
solidarity
with
other
new
media
writing
researchers,
I’m
arguing
for
a
situated,
empirical
approach
to
such,
especially
if
one
wants
to
describe
the
infrastructures
that
support
such
writing.
I
would
also
argue,
and
feel
that
many
new
media
researchers
would
agree,
that
the
entire
writing
situation
itself
should
guide
decisions
we
make
about
what
to
look
for,
as
arbitrarily
looking
only
at
genres,
collaboration,
or
even
composing
activity
itself
can
lead
to
overlooking
very
important
aspects
of
the
writing
situation
that
may
be
pertinent
to
the
particular
infrastructure
we
are
studying.
This
is
because,
as
I
discuss
in
Chapter
4,
infrastructures
are
not
only
complex
but
also
are
only
truly
understandable
from
a
heavily
situated
perspective.
Thus,
though
many
of
the
scholars
18
Because
I
was
the
teacher
of
the
students
who
would
be
my
participants,
Jeff
Grabill,
who
functioned
as
my
primary
investigator,
had
to
present
the
research
to
the
students
without
me
present
and
to
to
obtain
consent
from
individual
students.
Then,
after
students
articulated
their
1st,
2nd,
and
3rd
choices
for
community
partners
and
I
made
student
writing
groups,
I
had
to
send
Jeff
potential
groups
to
see
if
any
were
researchable,
meaning
that
all
the
students
in
the
group
had
consented
to
my
research.
Luckily,
after
a
few
iterations,
I
ended
up
with
two
groups
to
study.
19
All
my
participants
signed
off
to
have
their
full
names
used.
They
were
given
the
option
of
choosing
a
pseudonym,
but
chose
not
to.
49
cited
above
mention
components
of
new
media
writing
processes
that
are
pertinent
to
the
study
of
new
media
writing,
such
as
the
kinds
of
social
interaction
participants
engage
in,
the
technologies
they
use,
the
modes
they
work
with,
the
genres
they
compose
in,
and
the
types
of
knowledges
and
practices
that
are
displayed,
all
of
these
elements
may
be
pertinent
to
a
study
trying
to
understand
writers’
contributions
to
infrastructures.
Thus,
even
after
I
decided
I
was
trying
to
document
the
writers’
understanding
of
their
position
within
their
writing
infrastructure,
I
started
by
looking
at
objects
of
inquiry
that
were
more
palpable,
namely
the
kinds
of
collaboration,
technologies,
and
modes
used
by
students
to
reach
this
understanding.
In
the
actual
study,
I
focused
on
the
same
moments
as
the
pilot:
individual
interviews,
composing
sessions,
meetings
with
community
partners,
and
a
final,
group
interview
with
students
and
community
partners.
Such
a
framework
belies
the
complexity
of
decision-‐making
that
went
into
each
moment
of
data
collection,
however.
The
methodology
for
making
these
decisions
that
I
ended
up
adopting
most
closely
resembles
situational
analysis,
a
postmodern
rethinking
of
grounded
theory,
though
I
did
not
take
this
type
of
analysis
on
fully
as
my
research
methodology.
Intended
as
a
supplement
to
grounded
theory,
and
its
emphasis
on
tracking
“basic
social
processes,”
situational
analysis
invites
researchers
to
create
“situational
maps”
that
“center
on
elucidating
the
key
elements,
materialities,
discourses,
structures,
and
conditions
that
characterize
the
situation
of
inquiry”
(Clarke
xxii).
In
other
words,
while
grounded
theory
assumed
an
orientation
to
basic
social
processes
when
engaging
in
qualitative
research,
situational
analysis
assumes
that
even
this
orientation
is
a
metaphor
or
prior
scheme
for
studying
these
processes
(39).
Thus,
50
while
grounded
theory
attempts
to
be
inductive,
situational
analysis
is
arguably
abductive,
a
term
I
take
from
Ronald
Schleifer
and
Jerry
Vannatta’s
reading
of
Peirce.
For
them,
“[a]bduction
seeks
an
explanation
of
a
particular
fact
by
finding
some
salient
features
of
the
particular
that
allow
it
to
be
explained
by
some
more
general
causal
principle:
‘abduction,’
Peirce
writes,
‘is
the
process
of
forming
explanatory
hypotheses’”
(365).
In
other
words,
for
Schleifer
and
Vanatta,
hypothesis
formation
during
medical
diagnosis
(which
is
what
they
studied)
occurs
not
deductively
(in
which
a
hypothesis
would
be
formed
a
priori),
nor
inductively
(in
which
all
data
should
be
gathered
before
a
hypothesis
is
formed),
but
by
observing
a
“surprising
fact,”
developing
a
hypothesis
that
might
fit
that
fact,
and
then
testing
that
hypothesis
by
collecting
more
data.
My
own
methodology
for
making
research
decisions,
in
other
words,
is
closest
to
an
abductive
type
of
theory-‐building
based
on
the
research
situation
itself,
because
the
‘surprising
fact’
was
that
I
managed
to
compose
a
video
for
the
ANC
and
to
help
build
an
infrastructure
for
that
video.
This
was
before
my
research
study
actually
happened,
but,
as
I
mentioned
in
Chapter
1,
it
is
a
surprising
fact
that
would
plague
me
as
a
researchable
moment.
Would
other
new
media
composers
be
able
to
create
infrastructures
for
their
projects
as
they
were
making
them?
What
was
the
relationship
between
infrastructures
and
new
media
composers,
composing
processes,
and
products?
This
prior
scheme
of
thinking,
in
other
words,
a
scheme
relating
new
media
composition
to
its
infrastructure,
would
influence
the
way
I
conducted
my
research:
I
wanted
to
catch
such
a
process
in
the
act,
so
to
speak.
In
the
same
way,
each
stage
of
the
research
I
have
related
thus
far—from
the
prior-‐
to-‐research
situation
of
my
experiences
as
new
media
composer
to
the
pilot
study
to
my
51
experiences
in
the
classroom
to
the
actual
study—guided
the
next
stage
in
heuristic
fashion.
I
often
didn’t
know
what
I
wanted
to
study
until
I
stumbled
upon
that
surprising
fact
in
the
middle
of
a
writing
situation
and
started
hunting
around
for
an
explanation
for
it.
My
methods
tightened
considerably
throughout
this
process,
though,
as
my
heuristics
became
tighter
and
more
systematic.
I
planned
to
videotape
student
composing
sessions,
for
example,
as
well
as
meetings
with
their
community
partners.
How
I
did
this,
though,
was
in
response
to
the
research
situation.
I
had
to
decide,
for
example,
what
constituted
a
‘meeting’
with
a
community
partner.
If
a
student
just
went
to
get
some
pictures
of
Eric’s
art
students
creating
art,
did
that
count
as
a
meeting?
As
with
any
research
situation,
in
other
words,
I
couldn’t
study
everything.
I
also
enlisted
my
participants
to
help
me
make
decisions:
did
they
plan
on
discussing
anything
important
next
Tuesday?
If
they
changed
their
mind,
could
they
let
me
know?
Because
this
was
teacher
research,
this
added
a
new
level
of
complexity
to
the
research
situation.
At
every
step
of
the
way
I
had
to
make
sure
that
I
wasn’t
doing
anything
as
a
researcher
that
seemed
too
much
like
being
a
teacher,
even
though
there
was
inevitable
overlap
between
these
two
roles.
For
example,
while
videotaping
students,
I
would
only
provide
assistance
when
it
became
clear
to
me
that
a
problem
could
not
be
solved
by
the
group
itself,
and
when
it
was
something
that
I
would
already
know
about
come
class
time.
Other
student
groups
frequently
e-‐mailed
me
or
told
me
about
technology
problems
in
class,
for
example,
so
I
felt
free
to
provide
that
kind
of
assistance
to
my
research
groups.
Mostly,
however,
I
wanted
students
to
feel
free
not
to
treat
me
like
a
teacher
when
I
was
in
researcher
mode,
a
shift
that
I
knew
was
impossible
to
perform
completely,
but
which
students,
surprisingly,
did
rather
well
at.
52
Students
were
very
candid
about
choices
they
were
making,
for
example,
such
as
when
one
student,
Ivory,
couldn’t
make
a
composing
session
and
her
peers
decided
to
proceed
without
her.
There
was
some
concern
that
this
would
affect
her
grade,
but
once
I
assured
the
other
two
students,
Courtney
and
Valerie
(‘Val’
from
here
on
out),
that
I
wouldn’t
be
grading
anything
I
saw
during
my
research,
they
felt
much
more
free
to
not
always
be
on
task
during
composing
sessions
I
witnessed,
or
even
to
do
work
from
other
classes
when
they
‘should
have
been’
collaborating
(somewhat
to
my
teacherly
chagrin).
Mostly,
then,
I
practiced
an
ethics
of
erring
on
the
side
of
solid
and
repeatedly
professed
boundaries
between
my
researcher-‐
and
teacher-‐selves.
This
kind
of
heuristic-‐guided
decision-‐making
began
as
a
kind
of
meta-‐analysis
of
my
data,
as
with
any
attempt
at
grounded
theory,
and
started
as
soon
as
the
real
study
started.
This
situational
awareness
continued
as
I
entered
data
coding
and
analysis-‐proper.
I
started,
for
example,
when
I
had
a
significant
amount
of
codable
date,
to
build
coding
tags
from
what
was
present
in
the
data
itself,
from
what
I
was
most
interested
in
from
previously
published
researched,
and
from
what
seemed
most
pertinent
to
the
research
situation
(e.g.
the
writing
infrastructure
I
was
observing).
These
tags
started
out
loosely
clustered
around
collaboration,
modes,
and
technology.
As
my
understanding
of
the
research
situation
grew
through
further
coding,
additional
data
collection,
and
my
eventual
member
check,
these
tags
would
become
more
specific
and
descriptive
(for
a
full
chart
of
the
final
draft
of
my
coding
schema,
see
Appendix
B).
The
best
way
I
could
think
to
perform
my
member
check
was
to
do
some
preliminary
coding
as
I
had
done
in
my
pilot,
but
in
a
much
more
tightened
and
systematic
fashion
now
that
I
understood
the
research
situation
better,
and
to
edit
what
I
considered
53
to
be
interesting/pertinent
footage
of
each
group
into
a
kind
of
micro-‐documentary
so
that
my
participants
could
make
sure
that
my
initial
findings
were
representative.
In
order
to
create
this
representation,
I
did
my
preliminary
coding
across
as
much
of
the
data
as
I
could
by
the
time
of
the
member
check,
and
then
tried,
from
this
coded
data,
to
select
snippets
that
I
thought
represented
the
emergence
of
key
group
understandings
of
the
project.
These
methods
of
preliminary
data
analysis,
however,
also
affected
data
collection,
as
the
data
I
collected
was
subject
to
the
affordances
(limitations
and
possibilities
of
my
knowledge
and
practical
ability
with
genres,
modes,
and
technologies)
of
digital
video
recording
and
production.
Like
a
documentary
filmmaker
(generic
knowledge/practice),
for
example,
I
began
each
shot
of
a
composing
session
or
community
partner
meeting
with
an
establishing
shot
(modal
and
technological
knowledge/practice),
which
is
a
shot
within
a
scene
that
gives
an
audience
a
frame
of
reference
so
that
they
understand
what
is
happening
in
the
scene.
Additional
shots
within
scenes
in
documentaries,
sometimes
collected
using
different
cameras,
seek
to
document
the
pertinent
kinds
of
activity
happening
in
that
scene,
while
returning
to
the
establishing
shot
periodically
to
continue
the
frame
of
reference.
This
is
the
main
aspect
of
my
data
collection
that
is
replicable
and
aggregable:
in
each
shot
I
took,
I
sought
to
create
an
establishing
shot/frame
of
reference
from
which
to
represent
a
given
scene.
What
is
not
replicable/aggregable
about
this
method,
however,
at
least
not
in
the
same
way
that
other
methods
might
be,
is
what
gets
captured
from
there.
In
each
specific
scene,
for
example,
I
decided
to
follow
the
activity
that
seemed
the
most
pertinent
within
that
scene
(maybe
most
composers
in
the
scene
were
on
Facebook
on
54
their
laptops,
for
example,
rather
than
looking
at
the
overhead
projection
of
their
project
that
one
composer
is
working
tirelessly
at).
What
was
pertinent
in
the
next
scene,
and
thus
what
caused
me
to
stray
from
the
establishing
shot
in
that
next
scene,
was
often
different,
however
(someone
saying
something
interesting,
a
facial
expression
I
wanted
to
capture
that
seemed
somehow
key
to
understanding
of
the
composing
activity
under
way,
etc.).
This
was
all
purposeful,
of
course:
I
was
attending
to
pertinent
micro-‐level
moments
in
the
writing
situations
I
was
observing
(e.g.
participants
discussing
the
best
way
to
capture
a
shot,
framing
a
clip
in
a
video
editor,
etc.),
and
trying
to
holistically
and
abductively
uncover
what
was
really
important
within
that
writing
situation,
given
my
interests
as
a
researcher.
What
built
my
data
set
and
the
coding
scheme
in
Appendix
B,
then,
was
my
recursive
return
to
similar
surprising
facts
along
the
way.
As
I
mention
later,
for
example,
I
began
to
notice
early
on
that
some
of
the
questions
my
students
asked
didn’t
seem
like
questions,
at
least
not
as
they
impacted
the
writing
situation.
After
doing
some
preliminary
coding
and
returning
to
the
next
moment
of
data
collection,
I
began
to
ascertain
that
these
‘questions’
were
actually
tacit
suggestions.
This,
in
turn,
caused
me
to
recode
the
small
amount
of
data
I
had
already
coded
to
see
if
the
pattern
held,
and
it
did.
This
was
the
overall
pattern
of
my
data
collection,
coding,
and
analysis:
iteration,
recursivity,
and
constant
re-‐interrogation
of
claims.
This
kind
of
constant
reflexivity
was
possible
due
to
the
affordances
of
the
medium
I
recorded
most
of
my
data
in:
digital
video.
Because
I
recorded
a
lot
of
elements:
speech,
action,
body
language,
etc.,
I
could
return
to
footage
over
and
over
again
to
hunt
for
surprising
facts
I
hadn’t
noticed
at
first.
I
was
limited
by
what
a
digital
video
camera
could
55
capture,
however,
such
as
when
an
annoying
fan
made
some
student
comments
unintelligible
in
a
room
in
the
library,
or
when
Eric’s
exuberant
middle
schoolers
made
discerning
conversations
between
him
and
my
students
a
real
challenge.
Another
affordance
of
this
medium
was
being
able
to
incorporate
participants
into
the
research
process
by
watching
collected
footage
with
them,
however.
When
I
checked
with
my
members,
for
example,
I
showed
them
not
only
footage
of
themselves
working
together,
but
made
claims
in
text
after
the
clips
that
also
fueled
discussion
with
them
about
my
preliminary
claims,
discussion
I
was
again
able
to
capture
through
my
camera
during
the
group
interviews
at
the
end
of
data
collection.
This
allowed
participants
some
reflexive
control
over
how
I
described,
thought
about,
and
ultimately
analyzed
the
footage
I
had
collected.
This
is
also
exemplary
of
my
use
of
the
research
situation
itself
in
order
to
determine
what
gets
represented
from
it:
I
chose
to
highlight
the
particular
findings
I
present
in
the
next
two
chapters
largely
because
of
what
my
participants
and
I
hashed
out
as
important.
This
entire
process,
too,
seems
fairly
similar
to
the
process
of
building
scenes
for
a
documentary
film.
As
Nichols
describes,
“[c]ontinuity
editing…which
works
to
make
the
cuts
between
shots
in
a
typical
fiction
film
scene
invisible,
has
a
lower
priority.
We
can
assume
that
what
is
achieved
by
continuity
editing
in
fiction
is
achieved
by
history
in
documentary
film:
things
share
relationships
in
time
and
space
not
because
of
the
editing
but
because
of
their
actual,
historical
linkages.
Editing
in
documentary
often
seeks
to
demonstrate
these
linkages”
(28).
The
goal
in
my
research
through
the
medium
of
digital
video,
in
other
words,
was
not
to
represent
the
research
situation
in
real
time
(which
would
be
impossible
unless
an
audience
was
willing
to
sit
through
hours
upon
hours
of
56
footage),
but
instead
to
represent,
in
close
collaboration
with
participants,
the
most
important
linkages
in
that
research
situation.
What
composing
activities
should
I
highlight,
and
why?
How
would
I
best
make
sense
of
these
activities
to
both
my
participants
and
an
outside
audience?
What
could
I
safely
infer
from
these
activities
and
what
was
too
much
of
a
stretch?
These
are
all
questions
that
I
enlisted
the
help
of
my
participants
in
answering
(collaborative
knowledge/practice).
My
understanding
of
my
own
research
project,
then,
just
like
the
situation
I
was
studying,
was
built
through
practice
and
iteration
over
the
course
of
the
project,
a
practice
still
underway
at
the
time
of
this
writing
as
I
seek
to
accurately
describe
in
the
next
two
chapters
what
I
actually
found
through
this
research,
and
then
to
infer
something
about
the
infrastructures
bearing
on
this
writing/research
situation.
The
final
piece
of
this
process
of
analysis,
besides
the
writing
of
these
chapters,
came
in
the
form
of
a
triangulation
between
data
sources.
Like
every
other
element
of
my
research
process,
this
was
done
in
an
iterative
and
recursive
manner
in
order
to
interrogate
claims
I
had
made
to
students
during
my
member
check.
As
can
be
seen
from
Appendix
B,
I
had
a
lot
of
data
at
the
culmination
of
this
study,
probably
more
than
I
needed.
Such
is
the
risk
of
qualitative
data
collection
methods.
In
order
to
try
to
articulate
claims
from
this
slew
of
information,
then,
I
elected
to
focus
on
claims
made
from
the
video
footage,
and
then
to
purposefully
seek
out
counter-‐claims
in
my
other
data.
Did
what
they
said
in
response
to
claims
I
made
in
my
member
check
still
make
sense
given
their
initial
interviews,
for
example?
Or
their
cover
letters
written
for
their
major
projects?
This
kind
of
triangulation
happened
in
close
proximity
to
the
drafting
of
the
chapters
you
are
now
reading:
as
I
made
claims,
I
would
seek
validity
in
my
other
sources
of
data.
This
move
57
allowed
me
to
develop
what
I
feel
are
more
robust
claims
at
the
same
time
that
it
gave
me
a
framework
for
wading
through
these
secondary
data
sources.
Like
my
own
understanding
of
my
research,
then,
aspects
of
the
students’
understanding
of
their
projects
are
only
now
becoming
fully
articulated
as
I
have
been
through
my
data
enough
times
to
significantly
interpret
and
represent
them.
And
the
process
has
even
continued
to
the
final
editing
stages
of
this
dissertation:
at
the
same
time
that
this
draft
was
sent
to
my
dissertation
committee
members,
my
participants
received
a
draft
preceded
by
a
short
research
summary
that
highlights
the
claims
I
think
will
be
most
important
to
them
given
the
kind
of
writer
that
they
are
(e.g.
student
interested
in
new
media,
community
organizer
interested
in
social
media,
etc.).
All
of
this
recursive
work
has
enabled
me
to
boil
down
valid
claims
from
incredibly
complex
examples
of
rhetorical
decision-‐making
in
relation
to
writing
infrastructure.
These
claims
are
inevitably
a
shorthand
applied
by
myself,
the
researcher,
to
activities
that
far
outstrip
my
ability
to
account
for
all
aspects
of
them,
but
a
shorthand
triangulated
through
multiple
forms
of
data
collection,
coding,
analysis,
and
member-‐check.
It
is
my
hope
that
this
iterative,
situational,
and
abductive
methodology
has
produced
robust
results
that
more
accurately
represent
the
research
situation
I
studied.
At
the
same
time,
in
the
following
chapters
I
will
also
be
careful
to
articulate
which
findings
I
am
more
or
less
certain
of,
which
may
need
additional
research
to
validate,
and
which
are
limited
by
affordances
of
the
research
situation
itself.
58
CHAPTER
3:
STUDENT
KNOWLEDGE
WORK
AND
NEW
MEDIA
WRITING
As
I
related
in
Chapter
2,
in
order
to
understand
the
complex
composing
decisions
that
new
media
writers
make
within
a
given
infrastructure,
I
decided
to
study
the
new
media
composing
processes
of
students
enrolled
in
my
class
Rhetoric/Writing:
Citizenship,
Service-Learning,
and
Community
Media.
These
students
were
placed
in
rhetorically
complex
writing
situations,
situations
which
impacted,
and
were
impacted
by,
the
available
writing
infrastructure
at
Michigan
State
University
in
ways
similar
to
the
ways
in
which
my
‘multimodal
history’
of
the
Allen
Neighborhood
Center
impacted,
and
was
impacted
by,
that
organization’s
infrastructure
(as
well
as
elements
of
MSU’s).
Like
myself,
students
had
to
mobilize
and
invent
various
kinds
of
knowledge
and
practice
in
order
to
make
things
like
brochures,
posters,
bulletin
boards,
booklets,
digital
videos,
websites,
and
Facebook
pages.
Also
like
myself,
students
had
to
write
with
and
within
available
material
structures,
equipment,
and
materials
(classrooms,
computer
labs,
laptops,
digital
cameras,
etc.).
Finally,
and
as
it
also
was
for
me,
the
biggest
challenge
of
this
process
seemed
to
be
doing
so
for
a
community
audience
they
were
unfamiliar
with,
and
with
a
community
partner
that
they
had
never
met
before
the
class
started.
Because
of
this
complex
situation,
and
because
these
were
first
year
writing
students,
I
provided
as
much
support
as
I
thought
conducive
to
their
writing
processes,
support
like
homework
assignments,
in-‐class
activities,
readings,
and
major
assignments
that
sought
to
break
down
this
rhetorical
task
into
manageable
chunks.20
My
goal
was
to
20
I
detail
the
entire
assignment
sequence
for
the
class
in
Chapter
1,
page
25.
59
provide
enough
structure
for
the
students
that
they
wouldn’t
be
lost
with
the
new
methods
of
writing
that
I
was
introducing
them
to,
while
at
the
same
time
providing
enough
flexibility
to
encourage
them
to
draw
on
existing
knowledges/practices
developed
in
past
writing
situations
as
well
as
to
invent
new
ones
for
the
purposes
of
the
class.21
In
fact,
while
observing
the
composing
practices
of
the
two
student
groups
I
followed
during
my
research,
Eric
1
and
Team
4-‐H22
as
they
were
known
in
class,
it
became
clear
that
21
This
gap
between
previous
understanding
and
understanding
necessary
to
complete
assignments
is
central
to
many
educational
theories
of
development,
which
assume
that
a
teacher’s
job
is
to
scaffold
or
create
a
stepwise
structure
through
the
intellectual
activities
of
the
class,
a
structure
that
balances
student
needs
with
proposed
learning
outcomes
(see,
for
example,
Hartman;
Jaramillo;
and
Young).
In
composition
and
rhetoric,
this
space
has
been
referred
to
as
the
contact
zone,
but
has
cast
the
classroom
largely
as
a
political
arena
in
which
student
and
teacher
‘meet,
clash,
and
grapple’
around
attendant
cultural
discourses
(see
Bizzell;
and
Pratt).
There
is
perhaps
much
work
to
be
done
to
rectify
this
largely
political
conception
(which
I
partially
agree
with)
with
a
more
developmental
one
(which
I
partially
agree
with).
Britzman’s
work
on
injecting
psychoanalytic
theories
and
theories
of
power
into
views
of
student
development
seems
like
a
step
in
the
right
direction
(cited
below).
22
Typically
for
classroom
exercises
I
would
call
students
by
their
group
name,
which
was
a
shorthand
of
their
community
partner
affiliation.
Eric
1
became
known
as
Eric
1
because
there
were
two
groups
of
students
working
with
Eric
Staib,
a
local
art
teacher.
The
rest
of
60
knowledge/practice
associated
with
modes,
technologies,
and
genres
were
some
of
the
most
important
resources
drawn
upon
and
developed
by
these
students
to
create
new
media.
My
central
argument
in
this
chapter
is
thus
that
students
leveraged
these
types
of
knowledge
and
practice
throughout
their
composing
processes
in
response
to
this
complex
writing
situation.
They
did
so
by
making
connections
between
knowledge/practice
that
they
had
accumulated
through
past
experiences
with
modes,
technologies,
and
genres,
and
new
knowledge/practice
invented
through
the
current
writing
situation.
These
past
experiences
would
provide
them
with
the
necessary
resources
to
respond
to
the
situations
I
was
placing
them
in,
and
their
responses,
I
argue
below,
can
teach
us
something
about
how
writers
use
these
types
of
knowledge/practice
during
new
media
composing.
Ultimately,
the
way
these
students
used
these
various
types
of
knowledge/practice
provides
us
with
new
heuristics
for
thinking
about
the
components
and
activities
associated
with
new
media
writing
networks
and
infrastructures,
something
I
explore
more
fully
explore
in
Chapters
4
and
5.
One
of
these
heuristics
that
I’m
invoking
already
is
the
situated
nature
of
these
knowledges
and
their
interconnection
with
practice.
A
better
way
of
stating
this,
perhaps,
is
to
say
that
students
used
knowledge
as
a
form
of
rhetorical
action
in
response
to
their
writing
situation.
Students
not
only
used
writing
technologies,
for
example,
but
used
them
in
order
to
invent
and
mobilize
a
kind
of
technological
knowledge,
at
the
same
time
that
their
invention/mobilization
of
this
knowledge
better
enabled
them
to
use
writing
the
groups
were
typically
called
Team
[Community
Partner
Name],
though
I’m
not
sure
when
this
convention
arose.
61
technologies.
Each
knowledge
set
(technological,
modal,
generic)
was
used
in
reciprocal
tension
with
practical
writing
decisions,
in
other
words,
and
these
practical
writing
decisions
were
the
entire
impetus
to
leverage
these
knowledges
in
order
to
perform
as
writers.
Rather
than
continue
with
the
awkward
phrase
‘knowledge/practice,’
then,
it
should
be
assumed
below
that
when
I
invoke
a
specific
type
of
knowledge,
I
am
actually
invoking
its
deployment
as
a
form
of
action
in
response
to
a
writing
situation.
I
begin
by
detailing
below
specific
findings
regarding
each
of
the
knowledge
types
mentioned
above
(technological,
modal,
generic).
For
each
kind
of
knowledge,
I
detail
how
students
used
it,
describe
what
the
use
of
it
looked
like
in
my
video
data,
and
explain
how
common
it
was
in
my
overall
data
set.
I
close
the
chapter
with
implications
for
further
research
into
the
mobilization/invention
of
knowledge
during
new
media
composing.
It
is
my
hope
in
this
chapter
to
exemplify
the
complexity
of
this
writing
situation
as
well
as
the
complexity
of
student
responses
to
it
in
the
kind
of
granular
detail
that
one
can
only
reach
through
qualitative
research.
This
chapter
will
also
set
the
stage
for
me
to
describe,
in
the
next
chapter,
how
each
group’s
mobilization/invention
of
knowledges
interacted
with
the
infrastructure
that
supported
their
composing,
and
ultimately
will
serve
as
an
example-‐in-‐
practice
of
my
larger
argument
that
writing
researchers,
teachers,
and
students
might
contribute
to
local
communities
by
helping
to
build
infrastructures
through
similar
kinds
of
knowledge
work.
Mobilizing
and
Inventing
Technological
Knowledge
My
student
participants
utilized
a
variety
of
technologies
during
their
composing
processes,
from
computers
to
video
editing
and
web
design
software
to
digital
camcorders
62
and
digital
cameras.
In
order
to
use
these
technologies
to
produce
something
worthwhile,
they
had
to
mobilize
and
invent
a
large
repertoire
of
technological
knowledge.
As
evidenced
by
individual
interviews
with
students
before
they
joined
their
work
groups
for
their
respective
community
partners,
all
participants
entered
the
class
with
significant
amounts
of
technological
knowledge.
As
part
of
their
life
before
the
class,
they
used
technologies
like
Youtube,
digital
cameras,
cell
phones,
web-‐design
software,
social
media
applications,
and
I-‐pods
daily.
All
of
the
members
of
group
4-‐H,
Kirk,
Alex,
Emily,
and
Shalin,
had
designed
websites,
either
through
school
or
on
their
own.
One
of
the
members
of
group
Eric
1,
Val,
had
produced
programming
for
public
access
television,
utilizing
studio-‐grade
equipment
available
through
her
high
school.
Even
though
participants
like
Courtney
and
Ivory
from
Eric
1,
and
Emily
from
4-‐H,
described
themselves
as
having
more
experience
consuming
media
rather
than
producing
it,
they
still
mentioned
such
technologically
advanced
tasks
as
designing
simple
websites
and
creating
digital
videos
during
their
respective
interviews.
All
of
the
student
participants,
in
other
words,
were
fluent
in
enough
technologies
to
not
be
intimidated
by
complex
tasks
like
image
manipulation,
html
coding,
video
capture,
and
video
editing.
Throughout
their
composing,
in
fact,
students
displayed
an
intuitive
understanding
of
technologies,
an
understanding
that
appeared
very
mundane
to
them.
In
the
words
of
Emily:
E:
For
publishing
things
like
Powerpoint
and
stuff
I
was
never
taught
how
to
do
it.
I
just
did
it.
Like…just…easy…
G:
You
just
tried
it
out?
63
E:
Yeah,
because
we
had
to
do
it
for
some
class
but
I
never-‐no
one
ever
like-‐
like
walked
me
through
it
because
it’s
just
so
basic.
All
students
interviewed
made
similar
claims
about
technology:
it
was
something
they
could
figure
out
if
they
needed
to.
They
had
no
delusions
about
things
they
were
not
capable
of
doing,
like
making
a
professional-‐looking
website
from
scratch
without
any
help,
if
that
was
in
fact
beyond
them
at
their
current
level
of
expertise,
but
felt
confident
enough
that
if
they
valued
or
needed
to
use
a
certain
technology,
they
could
‘just
do
it.’
Such
confidence
with
technology,
in
addition
to
the
brief
histories
of
technology
usage
I
was
able
to
illicit
through
the
interviews,
exemplifies
a
collective
repertoire
of
technological
knowledge
for
each
group
dating
back
years
and
including
long-‐term
immersion
with
the
newest
available
software,
hardware,
and
devices.
These
were
students
who
had
never
wanted
for
access
to
technologies
they
valued,
in
other
words,
but
for
whom
levels
of
familiarity
with
particular
technologies
varied
significantly.
This
technological
knowledge
enabled
individual
students
to
mobilize
abstract
knowledge
of
available
technologies
and
procedural
knowledge
of
how
to
use
them
during
composing
that
literally
made
their
group
projects
possible.
This
was
not
purely
by
happenstance,
of
course,
as
one
of
the
key
homework
assignments
prior
to
placing
students
with
community
partners
was
a
skills
inventory
(see
Appendix
D)
for
which
students
detailed
not
only
what
skills
(broken
into
technologies
and
media,
writing
and
research
processes,
and
social
skill
sets)
they
possessed,
but
which
ones
they
most
wanted
to
develop
or
acquire
over
the
course
of
the
semester.
The
community
partners
for
the
class
had
needs,
too,
after
all,
and
one
of
my
obligations
as
a
service-‐learning
instructor
was
to
place
students
in
such
a
way
that
those
needs
had
the
best
chances
of
being
met.
At
the
64
same
time,
though,
it
was
impossible
for
me
to
know
how
individual
students
reporting
particular
skills
during
a
homework
assignment
would
be
able
to
mobilize
their
knowledge
sets
in
complex
ways
during
composing.
It
would
turn
out,
however,
that
both
student
groups
would
succeed
in
doing
just
that.
They
solved
every
complex
technological
problem
that
arose,
for
example,
such
as
how
to
get
their
project
to
display
on
a
Smartboard
in
a
wired
work
lab
in
the
library
into
which
none
of
the
members
of
either
group
had
set
foot,
or
how
to
use
iMovie,
a
program
none
of
the
members
of
Eric
1
had
ever
used
before.23
At
an
equally
granular
level,
students
used
technologies
to
solve
lots
of
small
problems
regarding
their
new
media
projects.
For
the
most
part
they
did
this
in
two
ways,
by
discussing
possibilities
for
composing
and
by
discussing
possible
composing
choices
while
composing.
Out
of
all
my
coded
data,
for
instance,
52%
of
all
tags
were
instances
of
students
making
suggestions
about
or
deliberating
suggestions
made
regarding
their
project
(Appendix
C
for
a
complete
coding
tally).24
This
means
that
a
majority
of
the
time
I
recorded
student
participants,
they
were
discussing
general
ideas
for
what
they
might
do
with
their
projects
or
deliberating
specific
composing
decisions
while
actually
producing
their
projects.
About
12%
of
the
time,
they
mentioned
a
technology
during
this
discussion,
23
As
mentioned
in
Chapter
2,
since
this
was
teacher
research,
I,
of
course
had
a
hand
in
solving
some
of
these
problems,
but
for
research
purposes
I
waited
to
see
if
students
could
solve
them
by
themselves
and
the
vast
majority
of
the
time
they
managed
without
my
help.
24
Percentages
like
these
are
not
meant
to
represent
any
kind
of
statistically
rigorous
figure,
but
are
instead
simply
indicative
of
rough
measures
of
what
participants
were
doing
during
the
footage
I
recorded.
65
and
about
5%
of
the
time
they
started
using
a
new
technology
during
this
discussion.25
So:
students
spent
a
significant
amount
of
their
time
discussing
their
projects,
some
amount
of
that
discussion
pertained
to
technologies
in
general
and
also
to
the
use
of
technologies
while
they
were
being
used
to
compose,
and
there
were
also
periods
when
students
were
using
technology
to
compose
and
not
talking
at
all
(though
these
moments
were
rare).
A
clear
example
of
technological
knowledge
invented/mobilized
by
students
is
visible
in
the
following
snippet
of
an
early
discussion
between
Val
and
Courtney
(of
Eric
1)
and
their
community
partner
Eric
Staib
regarding
how
they
might
produce
and
deliver
the
digital
video
they
were
creating
with
him:
Courtney:
We
were
like-‐we
were
gonna
do
the
music
and
like
everything
we
just
wanted
to
showcase
it
in
kind
of
like
more
an
organized
way
or
do
you
want
it
like
less
organized?
Eric:
That’s
a
good
one…[looks
at
camera]
You
waiting
for
an
answer?
[laughs]
[Val
and
Courtney
laugh]
E:
I
have
to
think
on
it…I
think
that’s
kind
of
cool.
Then
we
can
just
make
up
like
the
little
icons
like
on
movies,
we’ll
have
like
first,
second,
third,
fourth,
and
fifth
25
I
will
explain
how
I’m
using
the
term
technology
very
soon.
The
usage
percentage
is
indicative
of
starting
a
new
technology
only
because
during
coding
I
found
it
extremely
difficult
to
count
separate
instances
of
technology
usage
when
a
student
was
using
a
computer
for
15
minutes
straight
(for
example),
so
I
ended
up
only
tallying
the
start
of
the
usage
of
a
new
technology.
66
Val:
Like
words—
C:
yeah—
E:
And
they
can
just
click
on
that
movie
and
go
to
it.
We’ll
do
that
like
in
iDVD—
C:
[inaudible]
E:
huh?
C:
Like
the
different
chapters—
E:
Um-‐hm
C:
So
it
will
like
play
through
anyways
but
you’ll
have,
if
you
want
to
scene
select
you
can
like
kind
of
do
that
[to
Val]
Can
we
do
that?
I
mean,
I
don’t
know…
V:
Yeah,
depending
on
what,
like,
editing
thing
you
can
make
it
in
like
a
DVD
format.
C:
Okay.
E:
[inaudible]
C:
So
we
were
thinking
if
we
could
do
that—
V:
Did
you
want
it
on
like
a
Youtube?
Did
you
want
us
to
like
upload
it
to
Youtube?
E:
Probably,
yeah.
Probably
do
that
kind
of
thing—
V:
Okay.
…
E:
You
both—you’re
going
to
use
a
Mac
for
this?
C:
Yeah.
We’re
going
to.
67
V:
We
haven't
used
the…um,
the
editing
thing
yet,
but
we
are
using
a
Mac.
…
V:
Who
did
you
want
to
see—like,
who
did
you
want
to
be
able
to
see
this
video?
…
E:
Anybody.
V:
Anybody?
E:
Yeah,
we’ll
make
it
for
Youtube,
then
Channel
21.
It’ll
be
[Name]
who
does
our
broadcasting—
V:
Like
for
Lansing
[inaudible]?
C:
It’s
like
the
local
broadcasting?
E:
Yep!
And
then
he’ll
put
it
up
on
TV
for
like
fillers
between
his
shows
and
stuff.
What
is
important
to
note
here
is
the
way
knowledge
of
technologies
is
displayed.
Both
the
students
and
Eric
mention
things
like
Youtube,
Channel
21,
Macintosh
computers,
and
iDVD.
These
technologies
are
used
to
do
a
kind
of
rhetorical
work;
they
are
used
to
invent
an
array
of
technologies
to
choose
from
for
the
purposes
of
composing.
Both
the
students
and
Eric
are
proposing
and
deliberating
the
potential
use
of
different
writing
technologies
for
producing
and
delivering
their
project
before
they
begin
to
use
them.
These
students
know
quite
a
few
technologies.
But
more
important
for
my
argument,
they
leverage
this
knowledge
to
help
invent
possible
solutions
to
a
rhetorical
problem:
how
to
create
a
video
that
will
meet
complex,
but
ill-‐defined
audience
expectations
for
a
community
partner
who
is
very
open
to
possibilities.
Finding
technologies
to
help
them
do
the
work
is
not
the
issue;
68
the
issue
is
choosing
which
technologies
will
work
best
to
produce
and
deliver
some
kind
of
product
to
Eric,
a
product
he
can
then
deliver
to
his
proposed
audiences.
As
I
argued
in
Chapter
2,
rather
than
debate
the
ontology
of
the
components
of
new
media
writing
processes
(and
the
infrastructures
they
are
part
of),
or
what
they
intrinsically
are,
I
would
argue
that
in
instances
like
these,
students
used
and
invented
technological
knowledge
as
a
way
to
think
about
the
best
tools
(that
they
were
aware
of
and
had
access
to)
for
producing
and
delivering
their
projects.26
Sometimes
they
did
so
while
composing,
by
discussing
possible
technological
choices
they
might
make
as
did
4-‐H
during
a
composing
session
for
the
website
they
created:
Alex:
You
have
to
like,
I
don’t
know…
Kirk:
Yeah,
I’m
trying
right
now.
Alex:
…sneak
it
out
of
there.
…
Shalin:
You
could
use
screen
capture
Kirk:
Yeah,
I—I
agree
with
doing
it
in
Word.
…
K:
How
would
you
post
the
image,
would
you
have
to
save
it?
Alex:
Mmm…
S:
It
saves
it
to
your
desktop.
If
use
the
snipping
tool
or
whatever
you
call
it….
26
I
am
in
agreement
with
Stuart
Selber
that
we
should
reclaim
the
tool
metaphor
for
describing
technologies
(cited
below).
Additionally:
I
feel
that
this
is
the
best
metaphor
to
describe
the
ways
in
which
the
students
I
observed
used
technologies.
69
K:
What's
the
snipping,
snipping?
S:
I
don’t
know.
Alex:
I
don’t
think
he
has
that.
I
have
it.
S:
[to
me,
smiling]
I
use
command
shift
4.
Me:
Yeah,
that’s
what
I
do.
S:
[laughs]
Me:
A
Mac
thing,
yeah
S:
[laughs]
…
[K
uses
one
of
the
mentioned
technologies
on
his
computer…]
A:
I've
got
it
if
you…
K:
I
have
it
online,
but
it
doesn't
look
clean
at
all…[turns
laptop
around]
It's
really
choppy
for
some
reason.
…
A:
I
can
send
you
this
one.
K:
All
right.
A:
You
think
it
needs
to
be
bigger
than
that?
K:
Wait,
what?
A:
Does
it
need
to
be
bigger
than
that?
…
S:
let
me
see?
K:
I
think
that
we're
good,
because
up
here…
S:
You
can
readjust
on
here,
too
[points
to
smartboard]
70
A:
Hmm?
S:
You
can
readjust
it
when
you’re
ahead
of
there,
can’t
you?
A:
I
think
so—
S:
I’m
sure
you
will
to.
A:
but
that
will
screw
it
up
a
little.
Here
we
see
students
deliberating
a
small
element
of
production:
what
tools
they
think
are
best
for
moving
an
image
from
an
existing
website
to
Dreamweaver
so
that
it
can
be
added
to
the
production
process
of
the
new
website
they
are
creating.
Again,
then,
things
like
Word,
Snipping,
Command
Shift
4,
and
a
Macintosh
interface
are
used
as
tools
for
performing
rhetorical
work.
Students
here
are
mobilizing
and
inventing
technological
knowledge
by
working
together
to
come
up
with
a
way
to
move
this
image,
and
ultimately
a
way
to
continue
their
production
of
this
website.
At
the
same
time,
students
are
using
knowledge
in
a
more
procedural
way
as
well,
such
as
when
Courtney
asks
Val
if
it’s
possible
to
include
chapters
in
their
final
video,
and
Val
says
“Yeah,
depending
on
what,
like,
editing
thing
you
can
make
it
in
like
a
DVD
format.”
Val
here
is
mobilizing
her
understanding
of
the
procedures
of
video
production
from
past
writing
situations
to
invent
an
answer
to
this
important
question,
a
question
that
will
determine
the
shape
of
the
project.
The
members
of
4-‐H
similarly
display
knowledge
regarding
what
each
image-‐manipulation
tool
will
actually
allow
them
to
do.
In
both
cases,
however,
the
knowledge
is
less
probabilistic
than
the
question
of
what
types
of
image-‐
manipulation
tools
are
generally
best,
or
what
all
the
technologies
that
could
be
used
to
produce
a
video
are.
Val
believes
she
knows
what
is
possible,
and
what
isn’t,
when
71
producing
a
video
in
DVD
format.
This,
for
her,
is
a
simple
procedure
that
doesn’t
need
to
be
debated
or
treated
as
a
probabilistic
problem
to
be
solved.
This
is
not
to
indicate
a
hard
and
fast
distinction
between
the
ways
that
students
mobilized/invented
knowledge.
It
is
to
indicate
that
students
invented/mobilized
both
technological
knowledge
and
their
rhetorical
knowledge
of
the
writing
situation
to
decide
what
technologies
to
use
in
their
projects,
and
how
to
use
them.
In
other
words:
technologies
were
used
both
probabilistically
and
procedurally,
or
as
a
kind
of
antecedent
to
knowledge.
As
I
mentioned
above,
then,
I
am
arguing
that
these
students
used
technological
knowledge
as
a
form
of
rhetorical
action
in
response
to
their
writing
situation.
The
technologies
themselves
were
less
important
than
the
knowledge
students
mobilized/invented
in
relationship
to
these
technologies,
in
other
words.
The
members
of
4-‐H
above
are
debating
what’s
probably
the
best
tool
to
get
the
image
from
one
place
to
another
(more
probabilistic).
Val
perceives
that
she
can
definitely
include
chapters
in
the
final
product,
based
on
her
past
experiences
with
the
procedures
of
video
editing
and
delivery
software
(more
procedural).
Regardless,
they
all
have
knowledge
of
technologies
that
they
trust
to
guide
them
in
making
technological
choices
at
each
moment
of
the
composing
process.
They
mobilize
these
knowledges
in
order
to
invent
new
possibilities,
as
another
group
member
suggests
something
that
the
person
piloting
Dreamweaver
hasn’t
thought
of,
or
as
the
group
tries
something
the
members
have
each
individually
done
before
and
it
doesn’t
work
in
that
moment
of
the
composing
process.
This
kind
of
probabilistic
trying-‐out
of
solutions
to
these
smaller
problems
further
indicates
that
students
were
responding
to
what
Lee,
following
several
others,
calls
“perceived
affordances,”
a
term
grounded
in
the
belief
that
“text-‐making
practices
are
not
72
determined
by
what
the
resources
naturally
offer
but
are
shaped
by
how
people
perceive
what
various
representational
resources
can
or
cannot
do
for
them”
(227).
Another
way
to
say
this,
then,
is
that
based
on
past
knowledge
of
technologies,
students
apprehended
possible
options
for
using
tools
for
production
and
delivery
in
the
present
moment,
and,
from
what
they
understood
based
on
these
perceived
affordances,
made
the
best
choice
they
could.
As
I
will
argue
in
the
next
chapter,
however,
the
ways
in
which
students
mobilized
knowledge
as
a
group
was
highly
dependent
on
the
pattern
of
distribution
of
knowledge
within
each
group.
Certain
students,
for
example,
had
different
or
more
complicated
technological
knowledge.
Some
students
had
a
better
understanding
of
certain
modes.
And
this
distribution
would
affect
how
the
students
formed
their
network
of
distributed
work,
their
writing
group
that
helped
contribute
to
local
infrastructures.
I
mention
this
to
give
the
reader
a
sense
of
why
these
individual
knowledges
are
important
within
my
larger
argument,
but
turn
now
to
the
modal
and
generic
knowledges
displayed
by
the
students.
Mobilizing
and
Inventing
Modal
Knowledge
Like
technological
knowledge,
participants
invented
and
mobilized
what
I
came
to
understand
as
a
knowledge
of
modes
during
their
composing
processes.
As
was
the
case
with
technological
knowledge,
during
their
initial
interviews
students
indicated
that
they
had
lots
of
experience
with
and
knowledge
of
lots
of
different
modes.
Students
had
used,
made
and
were
knowledgeable
about
such
modes
as
Facebook
status
updates,
web
pages,
73
public
service
announcements,
iTunes
songs,
blogs,
and
text
messages.27
At
the
same
time,
like
technological
knowledge,
modal
knowledge
was
not
evenly
distributed
amongst
all
the
students.
Kirk,
Shalin,
and
Alex,
for
example,
had
considerable
experience
producing
the
modes
of
web
design
(such
as
html,
web-‐ready
images,
web
templates,
headers,
footers,
links,
etc.),
whereas
Emily
knew
these
modes
mostly
through
her
consumption
of
them
via
the
Internet,
though
she
didn’t
mention
having
design
a
simple
html
website
for
a
class
once.
Val,
too,
had
considerable
experience
with
the
shots,
timelines,
clips,
and
effects
of
digital
video
production,
whereas
Courtney
and
Ivory
indicated
and
demonstrated
significantly
less
knowledge
in
this
area
(though
they
did
have
some).
Like
technological
knowledge,
however,
students
professed
a
certain
confidence
with
the
modes
they
had
been
immersed
in.
Even
someone
like
Ivory,
for
example,
who
described
herself
as
“the
last
person
to
see
everything”
in
her
individual
interview,
also
indicated
a
proficiency
with
modes
like
Facebook
quizzes
and
the
meaning-‐making
resources
of
digital
video
editing.
Again,
even
the
most
‘modally-‐challenged’
students
considered
the
complex
manipulation
of
modes
like
digital
images,
video
clips,
and
components
of
social
media
to
be
basic
elements
of
their
daily
lives,
indicating,
again,
that
individual
students
brought
a
wealth
of
modal
knowledge
to
their
group
projects.
And
again,
these
knowledges
would
make
the
modally-‐complex
projects
the
students
were
endeavoring
to
create
possible.
As
mentioned
previously,
students
spent
most
of
their
time
discussing
and
deliberating
potential
composing
options.
Roughly
19%
of
the
time,
they
were
discussing
modes,
meaning
that
they
talked
about
the
modes
involved
with
their
project
almost
four
27
Again,
I
will
define
what
I
mean
by
modes
very
soon.
74
times
as
much
as
they
discussed
the
technologies
involved.28
They
only
got
tagged
as
using
modes
less
than
2.5%
of
the
time,
but
this
figure
is
low
for
the
same
reasons
usage
of
a
technology
is
low.29
Discussing
modes
was
a
big
deal
to
students,
as
is
evidenced
by
the
following
exchange
amongst
the
members
of
group
Eric
1
during
a
composing
session:
Val:
[using
iMovie]
I
just-‐I
don't
know
how
to…where
the
audio
adjustment
thing
is?
…Like
I
don’t
know
how
to
move
the
music
without
moving
all
the
clips.
Courtney:
It
says
it;
there's
an
option.
V:
Aw,
I
just
did
iiiiiiiit!
[Ivory
and
C
laugh]
…
[Val
plays
the
movie
and
the
other
students
watch]
V:
Yeah,
I
think
I’m
going
to
move
that
to
the
beginning
of
the
crater
part.
C:
Okay.
C:
I
kind
of
like
the
chaos
in
the
background
of
the
music.
I:
That’s
what
I
was
just
thinking.
28
It
is
not
clear
to
me
from
the
findings
of
this
study
why
this
was,
but
could
indicate
that
technologies,
as
more
material
aspects
of
multimodal
writing
situations
and
infrastructures,
are
considered
part
of
the
background
of
multimodal
composing
rather
than
the
foreground
(until,
of
course,
they
don’t
work).
Much
more
research
would
be
needed
to
verify
this
claim.
29
See
footnote
5.
The
same
coding
rationale
applies
to
the
usage
of
modes.
75
V:
We
could
make
the
music
louder
than
the-‐like
what
they’re
doing
so
it
doesn't
sound
like
they’re
trying
to
compete.
C:
Okay,
we
definitely
need
a
different
song.
V:
Well
yeah,
but…
C:
But
I
definitely
like
the
music…
I
think
even
with
the-‐I
don't
think
it
sounds
like
it’s
competing,
I
think
it’s
just
giving
it
some
like…
V:
Character.
C:
Maybe
depth?
Yeah,
character
V:
Depth?!
[laughs]
C:
Depth.
Let's
make
it
a
mathematical
equation
and
see
if
it
works.
V:
I
kind
of
like
this
upbeat
music
a
little
bit.
…
C:
I
think
we
should
get
something
upbeat
that
fits
with
the
theme
of,
like,
they’re
working
on
like…space
projects...
Here
we
see
students
treating
things
like
audio,
movie
clips,
and
music/songs
much
as
Bezemer
and
Kress
define
modes:
as
resources
for
making
meaning
(171).
Val
wants
to
move
the
audio
to
a
different
place
in
the
video
clip
because
it
will
impact
the
way
the
entire
composition
is
means.
As
the
students
watch
the
video,
they
try
to
describe
the
perceived
affordances
of
these
modes
coming
together
into
a
composition.
Perhaps
the
music
and
the
background
noise
of
the
art
classroom
are
competing
or
perhaps
they
give
the
video
‘depth’
or
‘character.’
These
resources
are
used
to
do
rhetorical
work,
though,
within
the
composing
process.
Val
says
she
wants
to
move
the
music,
a
small
unit
of
an
overall
iMovie
project,
to
a
76
different
part
in
the
time
sequence
where
it
might
be
more
rhetorically
effective
for
its
intended
audience,
a
primary
member
of
this
audience
being
Eric
Staib,
who
expressed
to
students
early
on
that
he
wanted
to
capture
the
‘chaos’
of
his
art
classroom
in
order
to
deliver
it
to
outside
audiences
such
as
other
art
teachers
across
the
country.
Courtney
says
she
thinks
the
music
works
well
in
the
overall
video,
that
it
gives
the
video
‘depth,’
which
seems
to
mean
that
the
music
seems
appropriate
given
the
overall
purpose
of
the
video.
In
other
words,
though
I
could
compare
my
research
to
Hull
and
Nelson’s
and
the
other
empiricists
I
reviewed
in
Chapter
2
in
order
to
validate
my
findings,
though
I
could
claim
with
them
that
new
media
allows
for
new
meaning-‐making
possibilities,
could
even
mobilize
the
very
data
I’m
exemplifying
now
in
service
of
that
argument,
I
am
purposefully
trying
to
push
the
new
media
conversation
in
a
different
direction.
I
just
think
it
is
not
empirically
justifiable
to
claim
that
certain
modes
will
always
mean
in
completely
generalizable
ways,
or
will
even
accrue
meaning
in
generalizable
ways,
as
Hull
and
Nelson
would
have
it.
I
coded
a
component
of
students’
composing
process,
mentioned
or
used,
as
a
mode,
in
other
words,
if
it
was
a
component
that
was
used
or
mentioned
as
a
resource
for
meaning-‐making
in
the
service
of
the
production
or
delivery
of
their
projects.
Modes
were
the
building
blocks
of
student
projects,
certainly,
but
they
functioned
in
this
way
because
students
treated
them
this
way.
Again,
this
is
a
definition
for
modes
as
an
antecedent
to
knowledge
used
as
rhetorical
action:
something
that
is
a
basic
resource
for
making
meaning
for
one
piece
of
new
media
may
not
function
in
the
same
way
in
the
next;
in
fact
I’d
go
so
far
as
to
say
it
probably
won’t.
To
evidence
this,
students
often
referred
to
different
parts
of
the
same
technology/mode
cluster
in
different
ways
as
77
evidenced
by
this
exchange
between
Alex
and
Shalin
of
4-‐H
and
Dave
Mahorney,
their
community
partner:
S:
This
is
our
website
that
we
made.
A:
A
mock-‐up…
The
links,
the
top
thing
doesn’t
work
yet,
because,
y’know…
…
A:
Um,
nothing
works
really
yet,
just
because
we
wanted
to
show
you
the
basic
layout
we
have
so
far.
Well,
it’s
pretty
simple,
um…
D:
That’s
what
I
need,
pretty
simple.
A:
Yeah,
I
don’t
know
what
else
to
add
to
it—
D:
So,
you
know,
as
long
as
you
got
those-‐yep,
you
got
all
headers
there
I
was
looking
at.
A:
And
like,
for
the,
uh,
those
buttons,
those
really
wouldn’t
be…I
feel
like
there’s
a
different
way
to
do
it
so
that
you
could
integrate
the
actual
statuses
from
Facebook
and
Twitter
there.
So
those
are
just
kind
of
like
placeholders.
D:
Gotcha.
I
like
that.
S:
Especially
Twitter,
I
know
you
can
have
like
a
running
feed
or
whatever.
D:
Sure.
Sure.
A:
And
that
would
definitely
be
easier
to
maintain
because
then
you’re
just
typing
news
into
Twitter
and
Facebook
than
editing
this.
In
this
case,
I
coded
Facebook
and
Twitter
updates
as
modes
rather
than
technologies
because
they
were
treated
as
basic
resources
for
making
meaning
within
the
social
media-‐
infused
website
the
students
were
creating.
Alex
mentions
the
‘actual
statuses’
that
viewers
of
the
website
would
see
as
opposed
to
Facebook
and
Twitter,
the
tools
for
delivering
those
78
statuses
to
the
website
and
its
audience.
It
is
also
arguable,
however,
that
the
students
and
their
community
partner
were
treating
these
components
as
tools
for
producing
and
delivering
modes:
they
mention
buttons,
typing
news
into
Twitter
and
Facebook
rather
than
editing
the
website.
Is
it
justifiable,
then,
to
treat
the
way
Facebook
and
Twitter
enable
meaning
making
as
a
stable
component
of
this
writing
process?
Again:
knowledge
is
what
seems
to
matter
in
this
writing
process,
with
available
resources
and
tools
becoming
ancillary
to
it.
As
with
technologies,
for
example,
modes
require
lots
of
knowledge
to
be
effectively
used.
And
again,
students
often
displayed
more
probablistic
and
more
procedural
rhetorical
knowledges
of
technology.
In
the
above
instances,
for
example,
Val
is
drawing
on
a
probabilistic
knowledge
of
how
a
video-‐editing
timeline
translates
into
what
the
video
will
look
like,
as
well
as
a
procedural
knowledge
(or
lack
thereof)
regarding
how
to
actually
use
that
timeline.
Courtney
is
drawing
on
knowledge
of
what
qualities
of
music
would
probably
work
best
in
this
particular
instance
of
composing,
as
well
as
a
more
procedural
knowledge
that
she
has
apprehended
(either
in
the
moment
or
from
another
writing
situation)
regarding
how
music
works
with
other
elements
of
sound
(such
as
the
noise
of
the
art
classroom).
It’s
also
important
to
understand
that
mobilization
of
existing
knowledge
and
invention
of
new
knowledge
by
students
was
so
highly
interrelated
as
to
be
difficult
to
separate.
I
know
from
other
parts
of
my
data
set,
for
example,
that
Val
had
not
used
iMovie
before
the
class,
which
would
explain
her
inability,
at
first,
to
move
the
music
clip.
Courtney
knows
that
there’s
a
way
to
do
it,
which
is
clearly
past
knowledge.
And
there
is
an
invention
of
new
knowledge
going
on
because
Val
figures
it
out:
she
invents
new
knowledge
for
herself
and
the
group,
knowledge
that
is
a
combination
of
the
past
rhetorical
knowledge
of
79
herself
and
Courtney.
Like
the
relationship
of
probabilistic
to
procedural
types
of
knowledge,
it’s
the
exact
ratio
between
the
mobilization
of
past
knowledge
and
the
invention
of
new
knowledge
that
seems
impossible
to
ascertain
in
situations
like
this.
What
we
can
be
certain
of
is
that,
like
technologies,
students
apprehended
which
basic
resources
for
making-‐meaning
were
available
from
their
past
knowledge
of
modes
in
order
to
make
moment-‐to-‐moment
decisions
for
creating
their
projects.
Alex
says
he
‘feels
like’
there’s
a
better
way
to
integrate
the
modes
of
Twitter
and
Facebook
into
the
website
(more
probabilistic),
and
then
invents
new
knowledge
with
Shalin
when
he
states
in
the
moment
that
having
a
running
Twitter
feed
would
be
easier
to
maintain
(more
procedural).
This
apprehension,
mobilization,
and
invention
was
always
fluid,
then,
always
changing.
Students
checked
in
with
each
other,
looked
at
a
screen,
noticed
a
particular
resource
for
making
meaning
for
the
first
time,
deliberated
what
they
understood
about
that
resource,
and
then
made
a
decision
that
combined
all
of
these
elements.
As
I
explore
in
the
next
section,
then,
the
mobilization
and
invention
of
technological
and
modal
knowledge
was
highly
intertwined
with
what
I’m
calling
generic
knowledge.
Mobilizing
and
Inventing
Generic
Knowledge
Like
the
other
two
types
of
knowledge
discussed
so
far,
students
were
immersed
in
various
new
media
genres.
As
they
engaged
in
activities
like
social
networking,
texting,
researching
things
online
to
do
with
their
friends,
and
projects
for
school,
students
used
a
variety
of
genres,
including
news
websites,
Facebook
quizzes,
school
digital
video
projects,
80
and
online
social
networks.30
Near
the
end
of
interviews
with
every
student,
in
fact,
they
strongly
emphasized
the
social
relationships
behind
the
basic
resources
(modes)
and
tools
of
expression
(technologies)
involved
with
the
media
they
used
on
a
daily
basis.
All
of
the
students,
in
fact,
were
asked
to
define
for
me
what
the
value
of
modes
and
technologies
were
in
their
lives,
and
all
of
them
said
that
the
point
of
media
should
be
to
facilitate
relationships
between
people.
For
example,
during
this
final
section
of
her
interview,
Courtney
said:
Definitely
I
like
I
think
it
the
media
project
which
I’m
like
Eric
Staib,
um,
his,
like
working
with
children
like
I
that’s
going
to
have
the
relationship
where
we’re
going
to
get
to
work
with
like
an
actual
person
versus
sitting
online…it’s
not
only
like
media
doesn’t
like
I
think
I—think
media—it
connects
people
to
ideas.
It’s
like
ideas
of
like
the
success
of
certain
projects
versus
like
the
failures
and
I
think
definitely
like
in
a
classroom
setting
especially
little
kids
and
what
it
seems
like
to
be
an
underprivileged
area,
um,
30
Did
you
catch
it?
Earlier
in
this
chapter
I
claimed
that
Ivory
was
familiar
with
the
mode
of
the
Facebook
quiz,
but
now
I
just
called
it
a
genre.
I
will
define
genre
soon,
but
obviously
this
dual
usage
in
purposeful:
in
one
instance
I
am
claiming
that
a
participant
talked
about
a
Facebook
quiz
as
a
resource
for
making
meaning
within
her
online
social
network.
In
another
instance,
I
am
claiming
that
this
same
piece
of
media
was
used
to
mobilize/invent
generic
knowledge
by
4-‐H
when
they
used
a
Facebook
quiz
to
make
an
argument
for
a
social
media
campaign
as
they
the
project
they
would
deliver.
Again:
is
it
a
mode?
A
genre?
Both?
Again
I’d
argue
it
depends
on
its
usage
in
a
particular
writing
situation.
81
his
little
kids
are
like
working
on
their
art
projects
and
I
don’t
think
people
like
a
lot
of
people
don’t
see
the
value
in
art
and
like
I
think
showing
like
this
kind
of
video
will
be
able
to
show
them
like
the
value
of
like
what
these
kids
are
learning.
In
this
way,
I
would
argue
that
all
student
participants
displayed
nearly
equal
levels
of
a
kind
of
social
knowledge
involving
media,
or
a
knowledge
of
the
social
expectations
involving
various
kinds
of
media.
The
rest
of
the
students
were
equally
suspicious
of
using
media
for
media’s
sake,
for
instance:
all
of
the
students
interviewed
expressed
some
need
to
use
media
to
impact
the
‘real
world,’
which
I
took
to
mean
the
offline
world.
Most
of
the
students
(Courtney,
Ivory,
Val,
Shalin,
and
Alex)
had
engaged
in
intensive
forms
of
service
work
such
as
helping
elderly
members
of
their
church
with
life
tasks
that
were
difficult
for
them,
or
working
as
a
tutor
with
special
needs
children,
but
more
importantly:
all
of
the
students
had
engaged
in
lots
of
situations
where
they
had
to
plug
their
individual
knowledge
into
a
group
or
network
of
other
people
in
other
to
do
some
social
and/or
collective
work.
Because
of
this
past
experience
mobilizing
this
social
knowledge,
the
high
value
students
placed
on
this
form
of
knowing,
and
the
fact
that
the
projects
they
decided
to
work
on
required
them
to
carefully
coordinate
with
each
other
to
get
work
done,
it
only
makes
sense
that
students
would
spend
the
majority
of
their
composing
time
interacting
socially.
Nearly
58%
of
all
codes
tallied
were
associated
with
a
type
of
social
coordination,
in
fact,
which
meant
that
students
were
making
suggestions
to
each
other
(29%
of
the
time),
deliberating
over
these
suggestions
(a
little
over
23%
of
the
time),
or
utilizing
each
others’
suggestions
(a
little
over
5%
of
the
time).
Unlike
the
other
forms
of
knowledge
discussed,
82
however,
students
displayed
probabilistic
and
procedural
elements
of
this
knowledge
in
different
ways.
Students
did
not
discuss
available
types
or
models
of
collaboration,
for
example,
as
they
did
with
modes
and
technologies.
What
they
did
do,
however,
was
make
suggestions
about
and
deliberate
about
what
they
thought
was
best
for
their
project.
Let’s
revisit
the
following
conversation
between
Eric,
Courtney,
and
Val
to
exemplify
what
I
mean
by
this:
Courtney:
We
were
like-‐we
were
gonna
do
the
music
and
like
everything
we
just
wanted
to
showcase
it
in
kind
of
like
more
an
organized
way
or
do
you
want
it
like
less
organized?
Eric:
That’s
a
good
one…[looks
at
camera]
You
waiting
for
an
answer?
[laughs]
[Val
and
Courtney
laugh]
E:
I
have
to
think
on
it…I
think
that’s
kind
of
cool.
Then
we
can
just
make
up
like
the
little
icons
like
on
movies,
we’ll
have
like
first,
second,
third,
fourth,
and
fifth
Val:
Like
words—
C:
yeah—
E:
And
they
can
just
click
on
that
movie
and
go
to
it.
We’ll
do
that
like
in
iDVD—
C:
[inaudible]
E:
huh?
C:
Like
the
different
chapters—
E:
Um-‐hm
C:
So
it
will
like
play
through
anyways
but
you’ll
have,
if
you
want
to
scene
select
you
can
like
kind
of
do
that
[to
Val]
Can
we
do
that?
I
mean,
I
don’t
know…
V:
Yeah,
depending
on
what,
like,
editing
thing
you
can
make
it
in
like
a
DVD
format.
83
C:
Okay.
E:
[inaudible]
C:
So
we
were
thinking
if
we
could
do
that—
V:
Did
you
want
it
on
like
a
Youtube?
Did
you
want
us
to
like
upload
it
to
Youtube?
E:
Probably,
yeah.
Probably
do
that
kind
of
thing—
V:
Okay.
…
V:
We'll
probably
start
out,
though,
making
it
more
of
like
a
progression
from
each
grade
and
then
show
it
to
you…once
we
like
upload
the
footage…and
then
from
there
we
can
see
if
like
that’s
the
road
you
want
to
take
or
you
want
to
go
back
with
the
hodge-‐podge
of
things…
C:
So
then
it’ll
give
you
kind
of
an
option.
E:
I
think
we’ll
pick
whatever
works
for
you
guys—that’ll
be
your
specific,
what-‐you-‐
want-‐to-‐do.
C:
Okay.
E:
Your
idea—we’ll
run
with
that,
and
then
we'll
talk
about
transitions
for
videos,
so
they’re
all
the
same.
Clean
transitions.
You
know
how
some
people
will
do
powerpoints
and
stuff—they’ll
try
to
put
every
bell
and
whistle,
like
‘look
at
this
little
effect,
okay
look
at
this
effect—
C:
Because
my
dad
will
take
like
part—
E:
It’s
annoying!
V:
Yeah,
it
is
annoying.
84
The
social
context
of
this
conversation
is
equally
important
to
understanding
it.
Val,
Courtney,
and
Ivory
had
all
expressed
to
me,
as
a
group,
that
they
were
concerned
about
the
direction
of
their
project.
They
wanted
to
make
a
project
that
fit
Eric’s
needs,
but
didn’t
feel
he
was
giving
them
enough
guidance.
At
the
same
time,
they
didn’t
want
to
over-‐
determine
the
direction
of
the
project,
or
to
make
something
that
wouldn’t
be
useful
to
him.
They
decided
to
suggest
different
directions
the
project
might
take,
then,
based
on
past
conversations
they’d
had
with
Eric,
and
to
feel
him
out
for
which
direction
he
might
prefer.
In
the
above
conversation,
then,
we
see
students
being
very
careful
to
ask
questions
rather
than
making
statements.
Val
says,
“Did
you
want
it
on
like
a
Youtube?”
rather
than
saying
something
like
‘I
think
we
should
put
the
video
on
Youtube.’
Coding
for
what
I’m
calling
generic
knowledge,
in
other
words,
was
about
understanding
something
of
the
rhetorical
context
behind
a
participant
saying
something.
Generic
knowledge,
in
other
words,
became
evident
when
individual
students
suggested
a
way
or
deliberated
on
the
best
way
to
move
composing
activity
forward
based
on
their
knowledge
of
modes
and
technologies
and
their
knowledge
of
the
writing
situation.
It
also
became
evident
when
students
utilized
each
others’
suggestions
for
the
project.
Like
my
other
two
terms,
modes
and
technologies,
I
cared
more
about
what
types
of
knowledge
work
students
were
doing
with
genres,
in
other
words,
then
how
to
ontologically
define
this
term.
As
Amy
Devitt
contends,
in
her
landmark
book
Writing
Genres,
genre
theorists
are
“shifting
from
a
formalistic
study
of
critics’
classifications
to
a
rhetorical
study
of
the
generic
actions
of
everyday
readers
and
writers.”
(1-‐2).
This
is
because
“people
construct
genre
through
situation
and
situation
through
genre;
their
relationship
is
reciprocal
and
dynamic.
If
genre
responds
to
recurring
situation,
then
a
85
particular
text’s
reflection
of
genre
reflects
that
genre’s
situation.
Thus
the
act
of
constructing
the
genre—of
classifying
a
text
as
similar
to
other
texts—is
also
the
act
of
constructing
the
situation”
(21).
I
saw
evidence
of
generic
knowledge,
in
other
words,
when
students
made
rhetorical
choices
with
modes
and
technologies
that
were
responsive
to
their
understanding
of
the
type
of
new
media
project
they
were
working
on
and
the
social/writing
situation
they
saw
that
project
as
part
of.
Again,
despite
the
deeply
social
nature
of
the
way
these
students
used
media,
we
can
see
in
the
above
sequence
that
the
students
are
also
as,
if
not
more,
invested
with
classifying
the
type
of
text
they
are
creating.
Is
it
a
Youtube
video?
A
DVD?
A
video
focused
on
a
single
class
or
on
multiple
grade-‐levels?
This
makes
sense
given
that
students
were
not
only
deeply
invested
in
the
social
affordances
of
media,
as
mentioned
above,
but
were
also
immersed
in
a
variety
of
different
new
media
genres
even
before
they
began
a
class
focused
on
community
media.
These
students
were
already
aware
of
the
variety
of
new
media
genres
available
to
them,
both
from
consuming
them
on
a
daily
basis
and
from
having
produced
several
of
them.
Once
again,
then:
the
invention
of
generic
knowledge
had
at
least
as
much
to
do
with
the
mobilization
of
their
past
experiences
with
new
media
genres
as
it
did
with
the
need
to
invent
new
generic
knowledge
in
response
to
their
current
writing
situation:
addressing
an
issue
of
common
concern
to
a
community
partner,
such
as
the
ability
to
reach
a
geographically-‐dispersed
audience
of
other
art
teachers.
Unlike
modes
and
technologies,
however,
students
mobilized
and
invented
more
probablistic
forms
of
generic
knowledge
with
their
community
partner,
and
more
procedural
forms
of
this
knowledge
with
each
other.
As
the
percentages
above
suggest,
for
example,
the
vast
majority
of
suggestions
made
didn’t
end
up
in
final
projects.
The
vast
86
majority
of
suggestions
were
what-‐ifs:
they
remained
in
the
probablistic
space
of
this
is
something
we
could
do.
Rarely:
they
went
right
into
the
project,
as
Eric’s
above
suggestion
regarding
transitions
would.
Students
were
careful,
as
part
of
the
genres
they
were
creating
involved
a
community
partner,
to
be
much
more
probabilistic
and
open
to
new
ideas
when
meeting
with
their
community
partner.
They
made
fewer
suggestions
and
asked
more
questions.
I
read
this
as
the
students
making
every
attempt
to
allow
their
community
partners,
during
those
meetings,
to
set
parameters
for
the
genre
that
would
be
created.
In
meetings
with
each
other,
however,
students
acted
more
procedurally
to
get
work
done.
Suggestions
were
rarely
used
without
any
comment
by
other
students.
Much
of
the
time:
they
were
deliberated,
or
elaborated
on,
added
to,
or
argued
against
by
other
students
until
they
seemed
most
fitted
to
the
evolving
writing
situation,
but
this
was
all
done
in
service
of
getting
the
job
done,
of
figuring
out
what
shape
their
project
should
take,
what
genre
would
best
serve
their
community
partner.
By
making
suggestions,
deliberating
about
those
suggestions,
and
utilizing
each
others’
suggestions,
in
other
words,
students
began
to
create
the
social
situation
out
of
which
their
composing
work
would
be
accomplished,
at
the
same
time
that
they
were
constructing
a
genre
to
the
specifications
of
their
community
partner.
The
new
media
genres
students
created,
and
the
social
expectations
associated
with
those
genres,
were
defined
and
assembled
in
the
moment-‐to-‐
moment
choices
students
made
during
composing.
Students
were
very
careful,
however,
to
make
sure
that
their
community
partners
were
involved
with
key
moments
of
this
evolving
social/composing
situation.
I
have
used
the
term
‘collaboration’
to
denote
writerly
behavior
in
knowledge
networks
like
the
ones
I
have
described
thus
far.
These
students
rarely
reached
consensus
87
in
the
way
that
success-‐based
models
of
collaboration
would
suggest,
however
(Knievel
336).
Where
would
consensus
be
located
in
the
above
conversation
or
in
any
of
the
conversations
I’ve
included
in
this
chapter?
Rather
than
all
students
consenting
to
a
certain
direction
for
their
project,
a
kind
of
iterative,
or
additive
generic
knowledge
was
displayed:
students
responded
to
what
other
students
had
said
about
their
developing
text,
pointed
something
out
that
might
not
be
noticed
or
known,
or
asked
questions
that
might
move
the
composing
process
forward.
Rather
than
consensus,
the
goal,
even
as
it
was
expressed
by
students
during
member
checks,
was
productivity:
getting
work
done,
or
getting
their
project
completed
in
what
they
perceived
as
the
best
way.
Again:
these
were
the
genres
students
were
producing,
new
media
projects
built
from
a
common,
social
understanding
particular
to
each
group
of
students
and
their
community
partner.
I
would
eventually,
for
example,
come
to
realize
that
student
participants
often
used
questions
as
gentler
kinds
of
suggestion
(8%
of
the
time).
Because
Val
didn’t
want
to
push
Eric
toward
Youtube,
but
because
he
had
mentioned
Youtube,
she
asked
a
question
rather
than
stating
that’s
what
she
thought
the
project
should
be.
Rhetorically,
this
pushed
the
project
forward
while
also
giving
Eric
the
opportunity
to
move
it
in
a
different
direction,
towards
a
different
genre:
students
were
tacitly
suggesting
a
direction
in
the
above
conversation,
but
were
doing
so
in
a
way
that
suggested
they
understood
how
to
make
suggestions
in
a
way
that
invited
collaboration
from
others
(mobilization
of
past
knowledge)
and
was
also
pertinent
to
the
writing
situation
(invention
of
new
knowledge
based
on
the
current
writing
situation).
A
similar
moment
is
evidenced
below
during
a
composing
session
with
4-‐H
in
the
library
as
Alex
is
altering
the
group’s
website
template
on
the
Smartboard:
88
Alex
[using
Dreamweaver]:
There’s
a
search
bar
Shalin:
Yeah.
A:
Wow.
Kirk:
That’d
be
good
to
have.
A:
Does
it
work?
[tries
searching
for
something]
No.
Shalin:
[laughs]
Shalin:
We
can
delete
that,
too.
I
don’t
know
if
people
are
going
to
be
searching—
Emily:
Yeah.
Shalin:
—for
stuff
on
that
big
of
a
website.
Alex:
Yeah.
[delete’s
search
bar]
Again,
I
would
be
hard-‐pressed
to
designate
whether
or
not
this
was
successful
collaboration.
It
sort
of
demonstrates
consensus,
but
is,
again,
I
think
better
described
as
a
moment
of
getting
generic
work
done.
Alex
calls
the
group’s
attention
to
the
fact
that
there’s
a
search
bar.
Kirk
suggests
they
keep
the
search
bar.
This
suggestion
gets
ignored,
or
(more
likely)
doesn’t
get
heard
by
the
other
group
members.
Shalin
then
mobilizes
past
knowledge
of
how
websites
work
to
invent
a
suggestion
for
what
the
group
should
do,
a
suggestion
that
gets
utilized.
It
is
arguable,
however,
that
Shalin
also
is
mobilizing
and
inventing
generic
knowledge,
here,
too:
he
doesn’t
simply
say
‘I
think
that
wouldn’t
be
useful.’
He
gives
a
rationale
for
not
including
a
search
bar
that
he
probably
thinks
will
be
persuasive
to
the
group,
and
to
composing
an
effective
website
within
the
writing
situation
of
that
group.
89
These
findings
further
suggest
that
students
also
used
perceived
affordances
of
the
writing
situation
in
order
to
utilize
their
generic
knowledges.
They
seemed
to
be
constantly
looking
for
moments
in
which
to
interject
something
that
would
be
useful
to
the
developing
project,
and
that
took
into
account
all
the
possibilities
and
limitations
of
that
project
and
the
way
their
group
worked
as
a
group.
Highly
entwined
with
individual
students’
modal
and
technological
knowledges,
as
well
as
the
social
dynamics
of
the
group
and
their
relationship
with
their
community
partner,
then,
the
process
of
apprehension,
mobilization,
and
invention
of
their
evolving
genres
was
as
fluid
and
difficult
to
nail
down
as
the
other
knowledges
discussed
above.
As
I
argue
below,
findings
like
these
should
mitigate
more
careful
arguments
regarding
what
new
media
writing
processes
are
and
what
they
should
be
like.
Transitioning
to
Writing
Networks
within
Writing
Infrastructures
The
above
findings
argue
for
an
iterative
or
additive
understanding
of
how
writing
work
happens
within
specific
networks
of
writers,
especially
writing
that
involves
multiple
modes
and
technologies
(as
most
writing
nowadays
does).
Rather
than
accumulating
empirical
research
and
theories
that
assume
that
components
like
modes,
technologies,
and
genres
can
be
identified
based
on
what
they
are,
we
might
save
ourselves
lots
of
trouble
by
describing
what
they
do,
or
how
they
enable
writers
to
perform
rhetorical
work
in
actual
writing
networks,
as
I
have
begun
to
do
above.
We
might
ask
questions
like:
what
basic
resources
do
different
kinds
of
writers
use
in
their
particular
writing
situations?
What
tools
for
production
and
delivery
do
they
use?
How
do
they
interact
socially
while
90
composing
and
who
is
invited
to
be
part
of
that
interaction?
What
resources
(knowledges,
materials)
do
they
leverage
during
these
usages?
Aggregating
such
data
might
then
give
us
a
broader
view
of
the
writing
process
in
general,
and
the
new
media
writing
process
in
particular.
It
might
not.
Perhaps
there
is
no
such
thing
as
a
‘new
media
writing
process.’
Perhaps
there
are
only
networks
of
writers
mobilizing
different
kinds
of
resources
and
engaging
in
particular
kinds
of
activities
in
order
to
get
particular
kinds
of
work
done.
This,
in
and
of
itself,
however,
would
be
an
ontological
understanding
of
writing
processes:
if
all
writers
studied
engaged
in
some
kind
of
network,
this
would
tell
us
something
about
writing.
If
that
network
existed
within
a
nexus
of
people,
practices,
and
material
structures
(or
within
infrastructures),
that
would
tell
us
something,
too.
As
I
hope
to
demonstrate
in
the
next
chapter,
for
example,
the
students
mentioned
above
were
in
fact
writing
in
networks
nested
within
infrastructures,
or
work
groups
in
which
they
were
able
to
aggregate
their
separate,
individual
knowledges
with
available
tools
and
resources
in
order
to
form
organic
knowledge-‐networks
that
facilitated
their
writing.
These
organic
networks
were
understood
by
students
as
a
kind
of
generic
knowledge:
as
a
cluster
of
perceived
audience
expectations,
and
modal,
technological,
and
social
affordances.
These
networks,
furthermore,
impacted
and
were
impacted
by
lots
of
infrastructural
components,
such
as
the
class
itself,
the
department
in
which
the
class
was
taught,
social
media
networks,
and
community
partners’
organizations.
Through
elucidating
these
relationships
in
the
next
chapter,
I
hope
to
further
my
argument
for
a
rhetorical
understanding
of
new
media
writing
processes,
and
writing
processes
in
general.
Furthermore,
I
hope
to
explicate
and
demonstrate
an
infrastructural
understanding
of
the
91
processes
I
observed,
an
understanding
that
provides
actual,
empirical
evidence
for
the
relationships
between
writers,
networks,
material
structures,
knowledges,
and
practices,
an
understanding
that
could
substantially
further
our
ability
to
research,
teach,
and
make
a
difference
through
writing.
92
CHAPTER
4:
WRITING
NETWORKS
AND
WRITING
INFRASTRUCTURES
In
the
last
chapter,
I
argued
that
my
student
participants
mobilized
and
invented
knowledge
of
technology,
modes,
and
genres
in
careful
coordination
with
not
only
their
fellow
group
members
but
also
their
community
partners.
I
argued
that
this
was
a
form
of
rhetorical
action
in
the
form
of
procedural
and
probabilistic
knowledge-‐making
based
on
perceived
affordances.
Here
I
argue
that
this
student
knowledge-‐making
was
also
a
form
of
networking
whereas
students
coordinated
with
one
another
and
with
their
community
partner
by
sharing
and
making
knowledge
in
strategic
ways.
I
also
argue
that
these
students
leveraged
elements
of
infrastructure
through
their
networking
to
accomplish
their
writing
work.
Students
worked
this
way
out
of
necessity.
Their
new
media
projects
required
coordination
and
the
distribution
of
tasks
and
knowledge
across
everyone
involved.
Each
project
exceeded
the
capabilities
of
any
one
writer
to
manage
himself
or
herself,
in
other
words,
and
required
the
knowledge
and
capabilities
of
not
only
the
entire
student
group,
but
also
the
community
partner
attached
to
each
group,
as
well
as
the
infrastructure
available
at
MSU
and
the
community
partner’s
site.
My
overall
purpose
in
this
chapter
is
not
only
to
further
analyze
and
elucidate
these
relationships
via
my
empirical
evidence
for
this
student
writing
work,
then,
but
also
to
mobilize
this
evidence
in
the
service
of
my
overall
argument
that
such
student
writing
work
can
be
a
useful
addition
to
writing
infrastructures
such
as
writing
programs
and
community
literacy
initiatives.
It
is
my
finding
that
the
students
I’ve
been
discussing
mobilized
and
invented
knowledge
within
the
specific
network
they
found
themselves
in,
and
in
response
to
the
resources/components
they
found
available
within
that
network.
93
This
involved
not
only
sharing
and
making
knowledge
with
each
other
and
with
their
community
partners,
then,
but
also
locating
and
utilizing
technologies,
modes,
genres,
practices,
spaces,
kinds
of
expertise,
etc.
in
order
to
address
issues
of
common
concern
with
their
community
partner,
issues
such
as
the
ability
to
reach
new
audiences,
to
create
new
forms
of
media,
and
to
document
ongoing
projects.
At
a
larger
level,
too,
my
argument
in
this
chapter,
an
argument
I
forecasted
in
Chapter
2,
is
that
the
burdens
of
infrastructure
are
primary
and
felt
more
deeply
in
new
media
writing
than
in
writing
that
uses
modes
longer
established
within
universities,
such
as
essayistic
forms
of
writing.
As
I’ve
mentioned
in
previous
chapters,
new
media
writing
means
greater
potential
to
go
public,
but
also
means
a
proliferation
of
modes,
genres,
and
technologies
available
to
writers.
Each
of
these
components
requires
infrastructure,
requires
coordination,
knowledge,
practice,
technologies
and
their
various
components,
and
particular
ways
of
interacting
with
all
these
elements.
It
is
these
interactions
with
the
MSU
infrastructure
that
I
ultimately
hope
to
describe
here,
a
description
that
will
also
create
a
grounding
for
the
heuristics,
or
problem-‐solving
strategies,
that
I
provide
in
the
final
chapter
for
building
new
media
infrastructures
with
communities.
‘Net
Work’
vs.
Network:
Leveraging
Resources
to
Learn
Students,
collectively,
mentioned
many
networks
of
people
and
resources
in
their
initial
interviews
and
throughout
my
research,
including
social
media
networks,
school
systems,
their
families,
peer
groups,
volunteer
organizations,
etc.
These
networks
supported
students
as
they
made
and
consumed
media,
did
volunteer
work,
produced
writing
for
school,
etc.
Students
were
familiar,
in
other
words,
with
leveraging
resources,
94
including
coordination
with
other
people
who
possessed
knowledge
they
needed,
in
order
to
perform
work
as
students,
citizens,
and
volunteers.
My
interview
data
tells
me
that
much
of
this
work
was
similar
to
the
kinds
of
writing
work
students
performed
as
part
of
Rhetoric/Writing:
Citizenship,
Service-Learning,
and
Community
Media:
work
that
necessitated
relying
on
others,
that
involved
various,
and
often
disparate,
forms
of
resources
(e.g.
knowledges,
modes,
technologies,
genres),
and
that
was
highly
inventive
and
highly
social
in
nature
(e.g.
designing
a
website
for
a
client,
building
a
Powerpoint
presentation
for
a
class,
tutoring
children
with
autism).
It
is
possible,
in
fact,
that
students
had
already
worked
in
what
I’m
calling
distributed
knowledge
networks
before
the
class,
though
I
have
no
way
of
verifying
this
claim.
Much
of
the
work
they
described
in
their
interviews
sounded
similar
to
what
I
observed
them
doing
in
their
student
groups
and
with
their
community
partners:
namely
mobilizing
resources
in
a
highly
coordinated
manner
in
order
to
address
an
issue
of
common
concern,
an
issue
that
required
knowledge
work.
The
students,
in
other
words,
wanted
not
only
to
succeed
in
a
college-‐level
class,
but
also
to
produce
useful
media
for
their
community
partners.
The
community
partners,
in
turn,
wanted
to
work
with
students
to
create
media
for
various
reasons,
often
because
they
thought
the
students
could
help
them
reach
new
audiences
or
could
simply
do
work
for
them
that
they
didn’t
have
time
to
do
for
themselves.
The
particulars
of
this
writing
situation
created
an
interesting
distribution
of
work,
in
other
words.
4-‐H,
for
example,
was
composed
of
a
group
of
four
students,
three
of
whom
had
intermediate-‐to-‐advanced
technological
and
modal
knowledge
that
was
directly
applicable
to
their
developing
website,
a
genre
usually
called
exactly
that
by
students,
but
95
called
a
‘splash
page’
by
their
community
partner,
Dave
Mahorney
of
MSU’s
4-‐H
Extension.
Dave
had
about
the
same
level
of
web-‐related
technological
and
modal
knowledge
as
the
three
more
advanced
students,
but
the
fourth
student,
Emily,
had
only
a
beginner’s
level
grasp
of
website
development
(which
was
how
she
characterized
herself).31
In
addition,
Dave’s
brother
and
technology
adviser,
Jesse
Mahorney,
attended
one
meeting
to
lend
his
considerable
social
media
and
web-‐based
expertise
to
the
developing
project.
These
factors
strongly
affected
the
ways
in
which
the
group,
as
a
network,
leveraged
the
resources
available
to
them,
including
technologies
like
Dreamweaver,
and
modes
like
images
from
the
existing
4-‐H
website.
Two
of
the
web-‐design
experienced
students,
Alex
and
Kirk,
had
Dreamweaver
installed
on
their
laptops
that
they
used
for
school,
for
example,
and
thus
became
the
key
coders
of
the
website.
In
other
words:
the
way
knowledge
work
was
distributed
throughout
the
group
depended
heavily
on
past
knowledge
that
students
31
I
think
a
note
here
regarding
how
students
were
put
into
groups
is
warranted.
As
I
mentioned
in
Chapter
3,
students
were
required
to
fill
out
a
skill
set
inventory
sheet,
in
which
they
detailed
their
existing
skill
sets
as
well
as
those
they
wanted
to
work
on
most
during
the
semester
(see
Appendix
D).
They
also
indicated
their
preferences
for
community
partners,
and
in
Project
#1
reflected
on
how
they
would
continue
their
work
as
writers
and
citizens
with
specific
community
partners.
Based
on
this
information
and
the
needs
of
community
partners,
I,
and
any
instructors
sharing
the
same
pool
of
community
partners,
then
placed
students
in
the
ways
that
most
met
their
preferences
while
setting
them
up
for
success.
96
possessed
going
into
the
project,
and
on
how
students
mobilized
that
knowledge
in
relation
to
the
resources
the
group
perceived
as
they
made
moment-‐to-‐moment
writing
decisions.
In
this
way,
each
student
group
(4-‐H
and
Eric
1)
and
its
attendant
community
partner
(Dave
Mahorney
and
Eric
Staib,
respectively),
formed
something
like
a
distributed
knowledge
network.
Following
the
findings
of
Spinuzzi
and
others
(Haythornthwaite,
Ho
et
al.,
and
Hustad),
I
define
a
distributed
knowledge
network
as
the
social
and
material
interconnections
between
a
group
of
knowledge
workers
engaged
in
deeply
coordinative
work,
typically
work
that
involves
computer
technology.
Such
a
network
is
distributed
because
knowledge
is
shared
or
outsourced
amongst
its
various
elements,
which
include
people,
technologies,
modes,
genres,
knowledge
that
gets
mobilized
in
an
ad
hoc
fashion
to
do
specific
kinds
of
work,
etc.
Like
the
other
terms
I
have
used
(e.g.
technology,
mode,
genre),
however,
there
are
arguments
for
moving
away
from
an
ontological
definition
for
a
distributed
knowledge
network
toward
a
relational
one
(see,
for
instance,
Bay;
Spinuzzi
“Guest;”
and
Spinuzzi
Network).
Clay
Spinuzzi
views
one
driving
force
behind
this
move
as
a
split
between
two
prevailing
paradigms
for
network
theory:
activity
theory
and
actor-‐network
theory.
As
he
explains,
in
the
context
of
a
study
of
a
telecommunications
company:
Activity
theory
provides
a
cultural-‐historical,
developmental
view
of
networks
grounded
in
the
orientation
of
particular
activities
toward
particular
objects.
It
foregrounds
the
development
of
competence
and
expertise
as
workers
labor
to
make
Telecorp
a
success…
Actor-‐network
theory
provides
a
political
and
rhetorical
view
of
networks
and
foregrounds
the
continual
recruiting
of
new
allies—both
human
and
nonhuman—to
97
strengthen
the
Telecorp
network.
The
two
frameworks
are
very
different,
even
contradictory,
and
can
lead
to
very
different
conclusions.
(Network
25)
Because
of
this
basic
inconsistency
between
these
paradigms,
Spinuzzi
feels
that
the
concept
of
the
network
is
being
abandoned
by
many
theorists
unnecessarily
and
argues
for
reclaiming
it
by
grounding
his
thoughts
about
the
concept
in
the
actual
network
of
a
telecommunications
company
he
calls
‘Telecorp’
(Network
12).
Spinuzzi’s
solution
to
this
divide
is
to
look
at
Telecorp’s
network
through
both
lenses,
and
ultimately
to
attempt
to
describe
what
he
calls
the
net
work
of
Telecorp,
or
the
ways
in
which
assemblages
of
material
components
(e.g.
Internet
Help
Desk
workers,
computers,
fibers,
sales
reps,
telephones,
software)
are
“enacted,
maintained,
extended,
and
transformed;
the
ways
in
which
knowledge
work
is
strategically
and
tactically
performed
in
a
heavily
networked
organization”
(Network
25).
Later
Spinuzzi
lists
what
he
feels
are
some
of
the
essential
qualities
of
knowledge
work
at
Telecorp,
or
namely
that
it
is
“deeply
interpenetrated,
deeply
rhizomatic:
it
has
multiple,
multidirectional
information
flows.
Yes,
work
may
resemble
a
process…
But
within
the
black
box,
work
is
performed
by
assemblages
of
workers
and
technologies,
assemblages
that
may
not
be
stable
from
one
incident
to
the
next
and
in
which
work
may
not
follow
predictable
or
circumscribed
paths”
(137).
Stemming
from
this,
I
would
argue
that
my
student
participants
exhibited
some
of
these
elements
of
networked/distributed
knowledge
work,
and
that
the
highly
coordinated
work
I
witnessed
students
performing
almost
rose
to
this
level
of
‘deeply
interpenetrated’
and
‘deeply
rhizomatic.’
As
Deleuze
&
Guattari
explain
the
notion
of
the
rhizome,
"any
point
in
the
rhizome
can
be
connected
to
anything
other,
and
must
be."
And
"a
rhizome
may
be
98
broken,
shattered
at
a
given
spot,
but
it
will
start
up
again
on
one
of
its
old
lines,
or
on
new
lines"
(9;
also
quoted
in
Spinuzzi,
Network
11).
As
Spinuzzi
goes
on
to
explain,
“[r]hizomes
are
made
up
of
diverse,
heterogeneous
acts
and
materials
that
cannot
and
should
not
be
categorized,
placed
in
subject-‐object
distinctions,
or
otherwise
separated
to
generate
strong
explanations
of
their
workings”
(Network
11).
So,
while
not
quite
as
heterogeneous,
diverse,
and
omni-‐directional
as
knowledge
and
textual
flows
within
a
telecommunications
company,
clearly
4-‐H
was
forced
to
work
in
a
somewhat
rhizomatic
fashion,
a
fashion
deeply
interpenetrated
with
available
information
and
other
resources.
4-‐H
had
to,
for
example,
learn
and
connect
elements
of
infrastructure
at
MSU
that
had
never
been
connected
before
(such
as
the
knowledge
base
of
two
community
organizers
and
the
work
lab
in
the
MSU
library).
They
did
this
in
a
mostly
haphazard
fashion,
without
sure
direction,
and
by
making
moment-‐to-‐moment
decisions
about
the
next
step
in
their
composing
process
as
that
step
became
apparent
and
as
the
infrastructure
needed
for
that
step
was
ascertained.
Consider,
for
example,
the
following
composing
story
reconstructed
partially
from
video-‐taped
data
and
partially
from
research
notes
I
took
after
class
sessions:
the
4-‐H
group
meets
with
Dave
for
the
first
time
to
present
a
Facebook
survey
they
have
prepared
regarding
students
in
their
social
network
and
their
feelings
about
mentoring.
They
ask
him
questions
about
the
work
he
does
through
4-‐H,
how
he
wants
to
communicate
that
work
to
an
audience,
and,
in
general,
what
he
wants
to
do
through
media.
They
get
from
the
conversation
that
he
wants
some
kind
of
social
media.
Through
additional
conversations,
mostly
over
e-‐mail,
they
begin
to
suggest
a
simple
website
that
integrates
social
media
such
as
Twitter
and
Facebook.
4-‐H,
during
an
in-‐class
activity,
works
together
to
invent
ideas
for
99
a
simple
website.
This
consists
of
Kirk
building
the
HTML
framework
of
a
website
in
Notepad
and
messing
around
with
it,
occasionally
loading
it
via
an
Internet
browser
to
see
what
it
looks
like.
Alex
searches
for
an
open
source
web
template
online.
Shalin
and
Emily
contribute
by
explaining,
mostly
to
Alex,
what
they
think
the
overall
website
should
look
like
and
what
it
should
do.
Kirk
gives
some
feedback
about
what
the
template
should
do
as
well
between
his
HTML-‐playing.
As
a
group,
they
find
a
suitable
template
and
present
it
to
the
class
and
then
a
few
days
later
to
Dave.
After
some
negotiation,
Dave
agrees
to
the
template
as
a
suitable
starting
point
for
the
simple
‘splash
page’
he
wants.32
I
give
students
a
day
off
from
class
later
on
in
the
project
to
actually
compose
a
full
draft,
suggesting
they
utilize
the
work
labs
in
the
library
that
have
a
Smartboard
and
a
desktop
computer
with
some
software
available.
4-‐H
chooses
to
do
this,
and
sets
up
a
32
In
the
interests
of
space
and
sense-‐making
within
this
process
story,
I
have
glossed
over
what
these
negotiations
looked
like.
It
is
worth
noting
that
they
also
involved
myself
and
another
service-‐learning
instructor,
Jessica
Rivait,
whose
Professional
Writing
students
were
also
working
with
Dave.
During
the
first
meeting
in
which
4-‐H
presented
their
prospective
web
template,
Dave
actually
wanted
Jessica’s
students
to
create
the
website,
in
addition
to
a
new
4-‐H
logo.
After
some
discussion,
he
then
proposed
that
4-‐H
create
a
technology
plan
for
him.
Upon
reflection,
however,
we
felt
that
this
original
plan
was
a
recipe
for
failure,
given
the
difficulty
level
of
each
project
and
the
skill
sets
of
each
student
group,
and
suggested
he
allow
4-‐H
to
create
the
simple
website
he
desired
and
that
he
task
the
Professional
Writing
students
with
the
logo
and
the
technology
plan,
a
plan
which
he
eventually
agreed
to.
100
composing
session
in
which
Kirk
initially
does
some
of
the
coding
for
the
website
with
Dreamweaver
while
Shalin,
Emily,
and
Alex
make
suggestions
and
Alex
simultaneously
attempts
to
get
the
Smartboard
to
display
the
screen
of
the
desktop.
When
even
a
library
staff
member
can’t
get
the
Smartboard
to
work,
Alex
finally
decides
to
try
plugging
his
laptop
into
it
and
finally
the
Smartboard
starts
working,
at
least
as
a
simple
display.
The
only
problem:
Alex
doesn’t
have
Dreamweaver
on
his
laptop.
Kirk
continues
to
code
while
the
other
group
members
make
suggestions
and
Alex
flicks
back
and
forth
between
the
existing
4-‐H
website
and
his
searches
for
a
free
trial
version
of
Dreamweaver.
Finally,
Emily
says
that
she
wishes
they
could
all
see
what
Kirk
is
doing,
and
Alex
asks
Kirk
to
e-‐
mail
him
the
index.html
file
so
he
can
code
and
everyone
can
make
suggestions
(see
Appendix
E).
They
finish
the
composing
session
this
way:
with
Alex
coding
and
the
rest
of
the
group
making
suggestions.
After
this
discussion,
Alex
makes
a
command
decision
that
the
existing
template
will
not
work,
and
communicates
this
to
the
group
over
e-‐mail.
Shalin
agrees.
The
other
group
members
do
not
respond.
On
his
own,
Alex
prepares
another
sample
template
using
Dreamweaver
and
presents
it
to
the
other
group
members
at
the
beginning
of
the
next
class.
They
agree
it
is
simpler,
cleaner,
and
discuss
next
steps.
They
present
this
preliminary
website
to
Dave,
whose
brother
joins
the
meeting,
and
as
a
group
they
discuss
integrating
social
media
into
the
website
more
fully.
Over
the
rest
of
the
semester,
the
101
group
continues
to
refine
the
website
and
creates
a
how-‐to-‐update
guide
for
Dave
that
is
usable
in
any
format,
including
Notepad
(see
Appendix
E).33
So:
though
we
could
draw
a
linear
narrative
through
this
story,
it
is
clearly
somewhat
non-‐linear,
recursive,
haphazard,
trial-‐and-‐error,
and
interpenetrated
by
a
variety
of
information
flows
(social,
technological,
generic,
classroom-‐based,
community-‐
based
etc.).
Again,
however,
these
were
students
who
didn’t
know
each
other,
who
worked
together
for
a
short
time.
So
they
did
something
like
distributed
knowledge
work:
they
shared
knowledge,
they
leveraged
technologies
and
other
resources
together,
they
coordinated
what
they
were
doing
with
one
another
and
with
their
community
partner.
Recently,
Jennifer
Bay
has
gestured
toward
a
model
of
networked
learning
that
I
think
fits
better
with
what
these
students
were
doing,
perhaps.
Bay’s
concept
of
networked
learning
is
based
partly
in
Spinuzzi’s
definition
of
net
work,
and
partly
on
the
premise
that
“[i]n
workplace
environments,
professional
writers
operate
in
a
rhetorical
network
that
incorporates
people,
technologies,
texts,
and
media.
In
these
contexts,
media
and
texts
are
just
as
significant,
and
a
great
deal
of
learning
can
occur
as
individuals
interact
with
these
sources.”
“Unlike
in
times
past,”
however,
“this
network
has
expanded
beyond
the
traditional
workplace
to
include
social
and
personal
life.”
And
thus,
for
Bay,
networked
learning
is
“learning
that
happens
through
interactions
among
33
It
also
bears
mentioning
that
4-‐H
also
made
a
Facebook
fan
page
for
Dave
early
on
in
the
semester,
a
fan
page
that
became
live
shortly
after
they
made
it.
This
was
not
the
main
focus
of
much
of
the
work
of
the
group,
however,
and
so
I
have
chosen
not
to
focus
on
it
in
the
above
process
story.
102
individuals,
sites,
media,
technologies,
and
materials.”
These
types
of
‘interactions’
seem
to
me
like
a
learning
model
that
assumes
students
will
one
day
engage
in
work
that
is
rhizomatic
and
informationally
unstable,
that
requires
interactions
rather
than
hard
and
fast
protocols
for
dealing
with
various
kinds
of
knowledge.
This
type
of
learning
connects
well
with
the
above
composing
story,
as
well.
What
I
observed
was
a
series
of
interactions
among
the
people,
sites,
media,
technologies,
and
materials
of
the
4-‐H
network,
and
the
learning
and
knowledge
work
necessary
to
push
those
interactions
forward.
The
4-‐H
network,
then,
was
composed
of
the
strength
of
those
interactions
as
students
mobilized
and
invented
knowledge,
made
decisions,
and
interacted.
It
was
more
or
less
haphazard,
rhizomatic,
and
kairotic
at
each
stage:
the
moment-‐to-‐moment
interactions
were
what
mattered.
The
decisions
and
kinds
of
knowledge
pertinent
to
one
situation
wouldn’t
necessarily
be
pertinent
to
the
next.
There
was
an
accumulation
of
knowledge
as
the
project
was
pushed
forward,
no
doubt—as
I
described
in
the
last
chapter,
a
kind
of
iterative
knowledge-‐making
around
modal,
technological,
and
generic
knowledges
was
exhibited—but
it
was
often
difficult
to
assess
this
accumulation
of
knowledge,
to
nail
it
down
and
account
for
it,
so
frequently
did
it
change
and
mutate
from
decision
to
decision.
One
way
I
have
attempted
to
account
for
the
learning/knowledge
work
students
performed
is
by
highlighting
key
elements
of
it
as
I
did
in
the
last
chapter.
In
this
chapter,
I
am
attempting
to
tell
stories
about
student
composing
that
will
give
a
picture
of
the
interactions
I
observed
as
a
series
of
interactions.
Another
key
element
of
this
story,
is
the
types
of
interactions
students
engaged
in
around
infrastructure
available
for
new
media
composing
at
MSU.
Through
their
networked
learning,
through
their
pseudo-‐net
work,
103
students
also
needed
to
leverage
various
elements
of
this
infrastructure
in
order
to
perform
their
work,
sometimes,
as
described
above,
by
plugging
holes
in
it
through
their
knowledge
work.
Another
important
element
of
this
relationship
between
the
student
networks
and
the
MSU
infrastructure,
was
how
these
networks
nested
within
this
infrastructure,
or
how
these
networks
interacted
with
resources
available
to
them
to
produce
new
media,
a
description
I
turn
to
now.
Nested
Net
Work:
Students
Composing
Infrastructure
Compared
to
knowledge
networks,
an
infrastructure
can
be
defined
as
the
total
system
of
available
individuals,
sites,
media,
technologies,
and
materials
given
a
particular
writing
situation,
a
system
that
“emerges
for
people
in
practice,
connected
to
activities
and
structures”
(Star
and
Ruhleder
112).
An
infrastructure
is
composed
of
all
the
elements
that
enable
writing
work,
including
standards/conventions,
cultural
and
communal
practices,
identities,
and
diverse
purposes
and
needs,
as
well
as
more
technological
or
structural
elements
such
hard-‐wired
networks,
technologies,
and
information
systems
(Grabill
40).
Star
and
Ruhleder
provide
a
very
complete
list
of
the
essential
attributes
and
components
of
a
given
infrastructure:
•
Embeddedness.
Infrastructure
is
“sunk”
into,
inside
of,
other
structures,
social
arrangements
and
technologies;
•
Transparency.
Infrastructure
is
transparent
to
use,
in
the
sense
that
it
does
not
have
to
be
reinvented
each
time
or
assembled
for
each
task,
but
it
invisibly
supports
those
tasks;
•
Reach
or
scope.
This
may
be
either
spatial
or
temporal—infrastructure
has
reach
beyond
a
single
event
or
one-‐site
practice;
104
•
Learned
as
part
of
membership.
The
taken-‐for-‐grantedness
of
artifacts
and
organizational
arrangements
is
a
sine
qua
non
of
membership
in
a
community
of
practice
[.
.
.].
Strangers
and
outsiders
encounter
infrastructure
as
a
target
object
to
be
learned
about.
New
participants
acquire
a
naturalized
familiarity
with
its
objects
as
they
become
members;
•
Links
with
conventions
of
practice.
Infrastructure
both
shapes
and
is
shaped
by
the
conventions
of
a
community
of
practice;
e.g.,
the
ways
that
cycles
of
day-‐night
work
are
affected
by
and
affect
electrical
power
rates
and
needs.
Generations
of
typists
have
learned
the
QWERTY
keyboard;
its
limitations
are
inherited
by
the
computer
keyboard
and
thence
by
the
design
of
today’s
computer
furniture
[.
.
.];
•
Embodiment
of
standards.
Modified
by
scope
and
often
by
conflicting
conventions,
infrastructure
takes
on
transparency
by
plugging
into
other
infrastructures
and
tools
in
a
standardized
fashion;
•
Built
on
an
installed
base.
Infrastructure
does
not
grow
de
novo;
it
wrestles
with
the
“inertia
of
the
installed
base”
and
inherits
strengths
and
limitations
from
that
base
[.
.
.]
(Monteiro,
et
al.
1994);
•
Becomes
visible
upon
breakdown.
The
normally
invisible
quality
of
working
infrastructure
becomes
visible
when
it
breaks;
the
server
is
down,
the
bridge
washes
out,
there
is
a
power
blackout.
Even
when
there
are
back-‐up
mechanisms
or
procedures,
their
existence
further
highlights
the
now-‐visible
infrastructure.
(Star
and
Ruhleder
113,
italics
theirs;
also
quoted
in
DeVoss,
Cushman,
and
Grabill
20-‐21)
105
Without
analyzing
the
entire
composing
infrastructure
of
MSU,
a
task
already
completed
by
DeVoss,
Cushman,
and
Grabill
in
the
above-‐cited
article,
I
will
now
turn
to
the
elements
of
this
infrastructure
that
the
students
I
observed
used
in
their
composing
work,
and
the
ways
in
which
student
networks
nested
within
this
infrastructure
(21-‐22).
From
there,
I
will
tell
the
other
composing
story
I
have
to
tell,
that
of
Eric
1,
highlighting
the
ways
in
which
the
students
used
their
network
to
leverage
particular
infrastructural
elements.
•
The
components
of
the
composing
infrastructure
for
Eric
1
and
4-‐H
included:
Individual
students
and
community
partners
and
their
individual
knowledges
going
into
the
project
(modal,
technological,
generic)
•
Individual
student
laptops
and
installed
software,
including
Dreamweaver
and
iMovie
•
Computer
labs
in
the
library
which
included
a
networked
computer,
a
Smartboard,
and
some
software
•
The
MSU
wireless
network
•
The
World
Wide
Web
•
The
Writing,
Rhetoric,
and
American
Cultures
department
and
its
attendant
standards,
requirements,
and
resources
(including
digital
video
cameras
available
for
students
to
check
out)
•
The
availability
and
methods
of
accessing
the
computer
labs,
the
wireless
network,
and
the
digital
video
cameras
106
•
The
Rhetoric/Writing:
Citizenship,
Service-Learning,
and
Community
Media
curriculum
and
its
attendant
learning
goals,
homework
assignments,
major
writing
assignments,
key
terms,
peer
support
network,
etc.34
•
The
design
and
arrangement
of
both
the
classroom
in
which
this
section
of
WRA
135
was
held
and
the
library
computer
labs
•
Community
partner
organizations
and
their
attendant
standards,
requirements,
and
resources
•
Audiences
for
the
projects
identified
by
community
partners
All
these
components
of
infrastructure
appeared
in
my
data
as
things
students
used
during
their
composing.
Discussing
each
of
them
in
detail
would
be
a
dissertation
in
itself,
however,
and
certainly
beyond
the
purview
of
this
chapter.
Instead
I
will
focus
on
what
I
see
as
some
of
the
key
elements
of
infrastructure
that
students
used,
the
elements
that
were
most
frequently
used
and
that
seemed
to
be
the
most
important
to
students,
based
on
how
they
interacted
with
them.
These
were
also
the
elements
that
seem
to
form
the
largest
constellation
around
student
composing
work:
the
elements
students
came
back
to
the
most.
These
elements
are
depicted
in
Figure
1,
below:
34
The
curriculum
for
the
class
listed
‘on
the
books’
at
MSU,
WRA
135:
Public
Life
in
America,
was
originally
developed
by
Laura
Julier
and
David
Cooper
and
the
process
of
its
development
is
described
in
the
book
edited
by
them
that
is
cited
below.
It
was
conceived
as
a
class
in
which
students
did
writing
the
served
the
public
interest.
Several
colleagues
and
I
created
a
version
of
the
class
that
included
new
media
as
the
central
path
to
enter
the
local
public
sphere.
107
Note:
for
interpretation
of
the
references
to
color
in
this
and
all
other
figures,
the
reader
is
referred
to
the
electronic
version
of
this
dissertation.
In
Figure
1
we
see
a
kind
of
closed
feedback
loop.
As
student
composers
mobilized
resources,
such
as
modes,
technologies,
and
their
respective
knowledge
about
these
components,
and
paired
this
resource
mobilization
with
their
understanding
of
the
writing
situation,
they
made
texts
that
they
then
classified
in
relation
to
this
writing
activity
(genres),
texts
which
became
part
of
infrastructures.
The
reality
of
this
process
was
more
like
Figure
2,
however,
or
perhaps
an
imagined
combination
of
these
two
figures:
108
Students
made
moment-‐to-‐moment
decisions
that
moved
their
project
in
many
directions
at
once,
but
overall
there
was
a
progression
toward
a
finished
product.
This
was
an
iterative
progression,
however,
filled
with
stops
and
starts,
setbacks,
decisions,
and
the
mobilization
of
resources.
Again,
we
can
think
of
the
notion
of
the
rhizome
and
the
interpenetration
of
their
writing
processes
by
a
variety
of
information:
often,
all
four
student
composers
within
4-‐H
were
engaged
in
some
kind
of
related
but
separate
activity,
for
instance.
4-‐H
also
engaged
in
significant
asynchronous
forms
of
coordination
by
communicating
over
e-‐mail
between
meetings.
At
their
first
real
composing
session
outside
class,
they
developed
and
classified
one
text
as
meeting
generic
specifications
for
a
simple
website
or
splash
page,
only
to
fall
back
quickly
into
one
group
member’s
composing
followed
by
the
development
of
a
new
text
that
the
entire
group
felt
better
met
these
specifications.
109
It
was
student
interactions
with
technologies,
modes,
etc.
within
their
networks
that
composed
the
infrastructure
students
needed
for
their
writing.
And
the
converse
was
also
true:
through
composing
infrastructures,
or
interacting
with
the
disparate
elements
available
to
them,
students
strengthened
their
networks
for
the
continued
building
of
further
infrastructure.
This
may
sound
like
a
perfect
iterative
loop,
but
again,
it
was
a
rhizome:
as
they
sought
out
new
technologies,
modes,
generic
knowledge,
etc.
to
build
their
projects,
students
made
new
connections
among
these
elements
of
infrastructure
in
a
multidirectional
fashion,
by
doing
many
things
at
once
and
by
handling
many
different
types
of
information
at
once
in
a
haphazard
and
iterative
way.
A
new
technology
might
lead
to
discussion
of
a
new
generic
element,
for
example,
or
a
new
mode.
There
was
no
definite
direction
their
work
took.
Instead,
each
moment
of
composing
led
them
in
a
mostly
unexpected
direction.
I’m
thus
arguing
that
4-‐H’s
composing
process
was
a
form
of
distributed
knowledge
work
that
iteratively,
but
eventually,
produced
a
new
genre
for
use
in
an
infrastructure,
the
infrastructure
of
the
4-‐H
mentorship
website,
specifically.
This
genre
would
have
been
very
different
had
different
students
leveraged
different
resources
in
order
to
classify
and
create
it
the
way
that
they
did.
The
simple
website
the
students
created
and
their
letter
to
Dave
explaining
how
to
integrate
and
sustain
it,
in
fact,
is
best
thought
of
as
a
record
of
the
rhetorical
responses
of
the
members
of
4-‐H
to
several
smaller
problems,
such
as
what
would
best
serve
Dave’s
communication
needs,
Dave’s
level
of
expertise
with
web
design,
etc.
(see
Appendix
E).
Like
the
video
I
made
for
the
Allen
Neighborhood
Center,
then,
4-‐H
invented
an
infrastructure
for
their
project
as
they
composed
it.
Another
way
of
saying
this
is
that
they
made
what
they
felt
like
was
good
use
of
available
resources
in
order
to
create
a
110
project
that
they
felt
was
best
suited
to
those
resources
available
to
their
community
partner.
The
success
and
failure
(there
was
some
of
both)
of
this
invented
infrastructure
is
something
I
will
turn
to
in
Chapter
5,
because
it
can
tell
us
something,
I
believe,
about
the
successes
and
failures
of
infrastructures
in
general.
The
composing
process
of
Eric
1
was
similarly
messy,
iterative,
and
infrastructurally
productive,
and
involved
the
same
rough
patterns
of
resource
mobilization
that
was
procedural,
probabilistic,
and
based
in
both
past
knowledge
and
knowledge
invented
in
relation
to
the
writing
situation.
Eric
1’s
composing
process
story
starts
when
they
meet
with
Eric
Staib,
their
community
partner
and
a
local
art
teacher
interested
in
new
media,
particularly
digital
video.
Like
4-‐H,
Val,
Courtney,
and
Ivory
set
the
tone
for
this
meeting
by
asking
Eric
carefully
crafted
questions
about
the
type
of
project
he
wants.
In
response,
Eric
excitedly
describes
shot
angles
for
shooting
his
kids
with
a
digital
camera,
putting
this
footage
on
Channel
21,
and
making
Youtube
videos
from
it.
He
invites
students
to
immediately
jump
into
shooting,
and
since
the
students
haven’t
brought
a
camera
of
their
own,
I
make
the
decision
as
a
teacher-‐researcher
to
donate
the
camera
I
am
using
for
my
research
to
this
endeavor,
with
the
caveat,
of
course,
that
I
will
need
it
back
the
moment
anything
pertinent
to
my
research
happens.
After
all:
if
there
is
no
activity
for
me
to
observe,
then
I
have
no
research.
This
becomes
the
main
activity
students
engage
in
for
some
time:
going
to
Eric’s
classroom
and
capturing
video
footage
and
photographs
of
Eric’s
students
and
their
art
work.
Because
of
scheduling
conflicts,
Ivory
can’t
attend
the
same
class
that
Courtney
and
Val
do,
and
so
goes
on
a
separate
day
to
capture
footage
and
photographs.
This
process
lasts
for
a
few
weeks,
but
as
mentioned
in
Chapter
3,
the
students,
especially
Courtney
and
111
Val,
quickly
become
concerned
that
the
amount
of
footage
and
photos
they
are
collecting
is
piling
up
with
no
shape
to
the
project.
They
are
equally
concerned
that
when
they
ask
Eric
about
the
overall
shape
of
the
project,
he
tells
them
that
whatever
they
decided
to
create
will
be
fine,
and
then
proceeds
to
describe
various
modes
of
the
project,
such
as
new
shot
angles
he
has
thought
of.
I
encourage
them
to
come
up
with
a
scope
for
a
project
that
will
accomplish
what
Eric
is
asking
them
to
do,
to
start
making
suggestions
rather
than
just
asking
questions.
The
scene
that
results
from
this
suggestion
is
depicted
in
Chapter
3,
but
in
general
represents
a
major
shift
in
the
relationship
between
the
members
of
Eric
1
and
Eric.
The
students
begin
to
make
more
suggestions
during
meetings,
and
to
follow
them
up
with
questions.
They
continue
to
collect
footage,
but
are
now
making
decisions
in
coordination
with
Eric
as
to
the
shape
of
the
project.
Val,
the
student
with
the
most
video
editing
experience,
begins
trimming
clips
and
putting
them
into
an
I-‐Movie
project
outside
class.
The
group
elects
to
meet
outside
of
class
around
the
same
time
4-‐H
does,
and
in
a
similar
room.
During
this
first
official
composing
session,
Val
leads
the
composition
of
the
project
but
continually
asks
for
suggestions.
Courtney
is
more
vocal
in
this
initial
discussion,
but
Ivory
participates
significantly
as
well,
largely
by
adding
to,
agreeing
with,
or
problematizing
Courtney’s
comments.
In
two
composing
sessions,
the
group
creates
a
rough
draft
of
their
project
that
they
feel
meets
Eric’s
needs
and
wants.
They
show
it
to
him
and
he
has
few
suggestions.
Despite
this,
they
ask
him
several
follow-‐up
questions
about
where
to
go
next.
This
is
the
pattern
that
continues
for
the
remainder
of
this
group’s
composing
process:
students
utilize
Eric’s
knowledge
of
digital
video
and
his
preferences
as
a
resource
that
they
mobilize
in
relation
112
to
all
the
other
resources
they
can
find,
including
Val’s
understanding
of
video
production,
and
the
knowledge
that
Courtney
and
Ivory
possess
concerning
iMovie,
a
technology
Val
has
never
used.
The
only
time
this
pattern
is
disturbed
is
during
the
moment
of
delivery.
The
group
reports
that
they
are
going
to
export
their
developing
project
as
a
Quicktime
file.
I
think
this
is
a
problem,
as
Eric
would
have
to
re-‐import
the
file
into
iMovie,
the
program
he
uses
to
edit
footage
for
his
various
projects,
which
would
indelibly
compress
all
the
modes
of
the
project
and
also
lower
its
video
quality.
I
suggest
they
just
hand
over
their
entire
iMovie
project
and
its
associated
files,
tying
this
suggestion
to
a
conversation
we’ve
just
had
about
the
sustainability
of
new
media
projects.
After
much
discussion,
my
knowledge
as
their
teacher
prevails
and
they
turn
in
their
entire
iMovie
project
to
Eric.
Like
4-‐H,
then,
Eric
1’s
composing
process
was
iterative
and
rhizomatic:
the
students
made
moment-‐to-‐moment
decisions,
decisions
based
on
the
modal,
technological,
and
generic
resources
available,
and
decisions
that
took
them
in
unexpected
directions.
Their
process
fits
under
the
same
general
heuristic
of
distributed
knowledge
work
that
iteratively,
but
eventually,
produces
a
new
genre
for
use
in
an
infrastructure,
but
is
also
very
different
in
its
shape
of
iteration.
Eric
1
met
more
in
person,
for
example,
and
interacted
less
over
e-‐mail.
They
met
with
their
community
partner
more
often
and
elicited
more
feedback.
In
addition,
the
modes,
technologies,
and
generic
elements
they
composed
in
were
radically
different,
requiring
a
prolonged
period
of
capturing,
uploading,
editing,
and
exporting/rendering
digital
video
and
photographs.
Given
the
research
reviewed
above,
it
is
arguable
that
as
networks
of
writers
do
work,
they
leverage
resources
available
within
their
infrastructure
in
order
to
accomplish
specific
tasks,
and
this
leveraging
affects
infrastructures
in
various
ways,
sometimes
113
making
interconnections
within
an
infrastructure
stronger
or
weaker
depending
on
how
these
resources
are
leveraged.
Based
on
my
research,
student
net
work,
as
depicted
above,
has
a
similar
relationship
to
its
infrastructure,
though
admittedly
weaker
than
more
engaged
and
durable
forms
of
net
work,
such
as
would
occur
within
a
group
of
professional
writers
working
in
industry,
or
from
within
the
board
of
a
non-‐profit
organization.
Regardless:
it
can
be
very
productive
for
university
infrastructures,
especially
those
that
seek
to
enact
missions
of
community
engagement.
As
I’ve
described
thus
far,
the
students
I
observed
appeared
very
committed
to
networking
and
building
infrastructures
in
a
way
that
was
as
sensitive
to
the
needs
of
their
community
partners
as
they
thought
possible.
Toward
a
Heuristic
View
of
Writing
Networks
and
Writing
Infrastructure
Students
producing
new
media,
especially
for/with
a
client
or
community
partner,
undoubtedly
compose
infrastructure
as
they
go,
through
making
interconnections
within
existing
infrastructure
that
are
not
necessarily
apparent,
through
contributing
new
elements
to
that
infrastructure,
and,
as
I
will
explain
in
the
next
chapter,
by
pointing
out
holes,
breaks,
and
ruptures
in
existing
infrastructure.
I
say
‘undoubtedly’
based
on
my
own
findings
and
experience,
but
at
this
point
you
may
be
asking:
but
don’t
students
regularly
fail
to
do
this?
Even
students
in
a
service-‐learning
class
with
lots
of
access
to
technology?
Or:
don’t
community
partners
ever
fail
to
appropriately
interact
with
students,
to
make
their
knowledge
and
other
resources
sufficiently
available
to
willing
students?
Certainly.
In
fact,
in
the
next
chapter
I
will
describe
not
only
what
I
think
makes
it
more
likely
for
students
to
fail
at
networking
and
composing
infrastructure,
but
instances
in
which
this
happened,
even
one
involving
one
of
the
above
research
groups.
I
will
not,
of
course,
be
114
able
to
describe
in
detail
other
instances
of
failure,
because
I
thoroughly
believe
students
in
classrooms
should
either
be
research
subjects
or
not:
I
have
seven
students
and
three
community
partners
who
gave
me
permission
to
poke
around
in
their
writing
lives;
other
students
and
partners
did
not.
Nevertheless,
drawing
on
the
research
I’ve
represented
primarily
in
this
dissertation
and
teaching
experiences
I
haven’t,
and
won’t
directly,
I
will
attempt
to
elucidate
heuristics
or
ways
of
solving
problems
within
university
networks
and
infrastructures
attempting
to
create
new
media
with
local
communities.
These
heuristics
will,
of
necessity,
be
tacit,
tactical,
and
guaranteed
only
to
work
some
of
the
time
in
other
contexts,
but
will
nonetheless
hopefully
be
productive
for
other
researchers,
teachers,
and
students
seeking
to
engage
in
similar
kinds
of
infrastructure-‐building.
115
CHAPTER
5:
THE
WHERE
OF
NEW
MEDIA
WRITING
You
might
expect
that
a
dissertation
that
has
studiously
avoided
solidly
defining
one
of
its
key
terms
would
end
with
a
chapter
called
‘the
what
of
new
media
writing,’
but
that
is
exactly
the
point
of
this
chapter:
to
argue
that
new
media
writing
should
be
defined
by
its
location
in
an
infrastructure,
rather
than
by
what
it
intrinsically
is,
divorced
of
any
specific
infrastructure.
In
the
rest
of
this
dissertation
I
have
endeavored
to
provide
examples,
findings,
and
contexts
of
new
media
that
I
have
personally
experienced
in
my
efforts
to
do
new
media
writing
with
community
members.
In
this
final
chapter
I
will
provide
heuristics,
or
problem-‐solving
strategies,
for
any
readers
interested
in
doing
infrastructure-‐building.
I
also
draw
out
the
implication
that
writers
leveraging
resources
to
accomplish
new
media
writing
projects
within
networks
helps
build
new
media
writing
infrastructures.
I
begin,
below,
with
my
much-‐awaited
definition
of
new
media,
which
is
of
course
more
a
heuristic
than
a
definition,
because
like
all
the
terms
used
in
this
dissertation,
I
find
new
media
useful
more
for
its
heuristic
function
than
for
what
scholars
agree
it
actually
is.
The
reason
I
have
held
off
defining
new
media
until
now
is
that
I
thought
my
heuristic
definition
for
it
would
make
more
sense
after
seeing
my
data.
My
student
participants
pushed
their
projects
forward
by
leveraging
resources,
most
notably
very
specific
and
situated
forms
of
knowledge,
and
from
this
rhetorical
mobilization
of
knowledge
‘opened’
some
of
the
most
emergent
genres
of
new
media
to
their
community
partners,
partners
who
sometimes
knew
the
genre
almost
as
well
as
the
students
did.
I
argue
below
that
new
media
is
therefore
emergent
in
the
sense
of
being
the
most
emergent
in
relation
to
established
forms
of
media
that
a
given
community
has
access
to
within
its
infrastructure.
116
Eric,
the
school
teacher,
was
using
new
media
by
shooting
and
editing
digital
video
because
he
is
the
only
teacher
in
his
school
that
does
so.
Dave,
the
4-‐H
mentorship
facilitator,
was
using
new
media
by
trying
to
make
the
web
presence
of
his
initiative
more
interactive.
As
I
argue
below,
then,
the
problem
within
the
loose
aggregation
of
scholars
and
publications
that
could
be
called
‘new
media
studies’
is
a
problem
similar
to
the
one
that
‘community
media’
scholars
face:
too
many
of
us
are
trying
to
figure
out
what
it
is,
and
how
it
is
different
from
other
forms
of
media,
rather
than
simply
trying
to
figure
out
where
it
is
and
what
it
does,
or
can
do,
for
people
using
it.
Perhaps,
I
suggest
below,
it
would
be
more
productive
for
scholars
to
shift
their
focus
not
only
to
the
how
of
new
media,
then,
or
how
citizens,
workers,
students,
teachers,
and
community
members
are
using
new
media
to
represent
themselves
and
others,
but
also
to
the
where
of
new
media,
or
to
the
specific
contexts
in
which
emerging
forms
of
media
are
taking
root
and
being
used
to
build
networks
and
infrastructures.
If
we
were
to
assemble
such
a
map
of
new
media,
such
an
understanding
of
how
it
is
used,
by
whom,
and
where,
then
we
would
perhaps
be
moving
toward
a
rhetoric
of
infrastructure,
or
a
collection
of
considerations
useful
for
thinking
about
building
the
networks,
material
structures,
practices,
knowledges,
and
other
resources
essential
for
democratically
and
collaboratively
sustaining
new
media
writing
wherever
it
may
emerge.
(Re)defining
New
Media:
Many
Times
and
(Hopefully)
for
All
If
it
is
not
obvious
at
this
point
why
I
have
chosen
to
abandon
‘multimedia
writing’
as
a
framing
term,
let
me
briefly
review:
I
whole-‐heartedly
agree
with
Paul
Prior’s
arguments
in
his
works
cited
below
that
we
would
be
hard-‐pressed
to
find
a
type
of
writing
117
that
is
not
interpenetrated
by
a
variety
of
different
technologies,
modes,
and
generic
specifications.
A
book
is
not
just
a
book
anymore,
but
can
be
an
e-‐book,
a
citation,
an
annotated
bibliography
entry
e-‐mailed
to
an
entire
scholarly
listserv,
the
list
goes
on.
Writing
is
too
flexible
now
not
to
be
‘multimodal,’
and
so,
I
would
argue,
claiming
that
there
is
a
specific
kind
of
writing
that
is
multimodal,
as
opposed
to
writing
that
is,
unimodal(?),
seems
like
a
useless
endeavor,
an
endeavor
that
doesn’t
get
those
of
us
who
study
writing
and
communication
any
closer
to
understanding
the
affordances
of
the
zillions
of
communication
and
writing
media
available.
35
As
for
the
term
‘new
media,’
collections
of
trends
and
definitions
for
it
are
plentiful
within
new
media
studies.
A
particularly
good,
oft-‐cited
collection
is
Terry
Flew’s
New
Media:
An
Introduction,
in
which
the
author
looks
at
“some
of
the
key
terms
in
discourses
about
new
media,”
such
as
“digitality,
interactivity,
hypertextuality,
dispersal,
and
virtuality”
(13).
I
find
this
work
useful
for
my
own
thoughts
about
new
media
because
the
author
is
aware
that
“a
whole
range
of
different
practices
and
processes
are
subsumed
by
this
blanket
description”
(9).
Indeed.
So
much
so,
that
the
author
fills
a
three
hundred
twenty
page
book
with
in-‐depth,
historically-‐situated
discussions
of
the
history
and
senses
in
which
media
have
come
to
be
considered
‘new,’
the
ideological
connotations
of
this
newness,
and
what
these
connotations
mean
for
scholars
silly
enough
to
unproblematically
35
I
define
a
medium
along
the
lines
of
Bezemer
and
Kress,
as
a
method
or
channel
of
“distribution
involved
in
communication”
(172).
As
with
all
terms,
of
course,
though:
I
feel
that
what
a
medium
is
is
less
important
than
how
it
works,
so
when
I
use
this
term
I
am
simply
invoking
a
heuristic
sense
of
how
a
message
gets
from
point
A
to
point
B.
118
invoke
the
term
new
media.
Like
multimedia,
then:
new
media
comes
to
us
far
from
baggage-‐free.
In
fact:
one
might
argue
that
the
term
new
media
is
just
as
problematic
as
multimedia,
an
argument
I
would
completely
agree
with.
As
with
all
terms
used
in
this
dissertation,
however,
I
have
chosen
new
media
over
multimedia
because
I
find
the
affordances
of
the
former
more
useful
for
describing
my
experiences
both
as
a
scholar/researcher
and
as
a
teacher,
and
think
that
these
affordances
might
be
more
useful
to
others.
Clearly
many
scholars
agree.
Bolter
and
Grusin
have
famously
argued
that
new
media
are
just
an
extension
of
all
media
forms,
which
exhibit
affordances
that
they
call
the
double
logic
of
remediation.
This
logic
occurs
whereby
“[o]ur
culture
wants
both
to
multiply
its
media
and
to
erase
all
traces
of
mediation:
ideally,
it
wants
to
erase
its
media
in
the
very
act
of
multiplying
them”
(5).
Lev
Manovich
has
(equally
famously)
attempted
to
map
“the
general
principles
of
new
media
that
hold
true
across
all
media
types,
all
forms
of
organization,
and
all
scales”
by
“scrutiniz[ing]
the
principles
of
computer
hardware
and
software
and
the
operations
involved
in
creating
cultural
objects
on
a
computer”
in
order
to
“uncover
a
new
cultural
logic
at
work”
(14;
10).
If
we
add
in
the
voices
of
the
scholars
that
I
have
already
reviewed
who
take
new
media
or
transitions
from
more
traditional
media
forms
as
central
to
their
work,
then
we
have
a
clear
consensus
that
a)
the
most
recent
media
forms
are
altering
(as
well
as
being
altered
by)
the
way
our
culture
works;
b)
this
alteration
is
important
to
those
of
us
interested
in
communication
and
writing;
and
c)
we
want
to
know
how
this
alteration
is
occurring
(e.g.
Atton;
Bezemer
and
Kress;
Cushman
“Toward”;
DeLuca;
DeVoss,
Cushman,
and
Grabill;
Gitelman;
Graham
and
Whalen;
Jewitt;
Prior;
Ranker;
Rennie;
Selber;
Spinuzzi;
and
Wysocki,
to
name
just
a
few).
119
More
than
that,
of
course,
we
can
cull
from
these
cited
works
(of
this
admittedly
small
group
of
scholars
that
I
have
found
useful
for
thinking
about
new
media
writing)
a
large
collection
of
considerations
for
thinking
about
resources
essential
to
and
made
available
by
new
media,
resources
such
as
various
technologies,
modes,
genres,
knowledges,
material
structures,
and
practices.
As
an
emerging
scholar
joining
this
conversation,
in
fact,
I
feel
incredibly
daunted
by
what
I
might
contribute
to
it.
New
media
(or
a
discussed
term
similar
enough
to
share
most
agreed-‐upon
attributes)
seems
to
have
been
defined
many
times,
in
fact,
its
affordances
discussed
in
the
context
of
a
plethora
of
uses
and
users,
and
its
history
interrogated,
critiqued,
and
elucidated.
From
the
perspective
located
by
my
own
experiences
researching
and
teaching
new
media,
however,
we
are
still
in
need
of
a
better
understanding
of
three
things:
how
it
works
in
everyday
situations,
who
uses
it,
and
where
they
use
it.
As
with
the
other
terms
I
have
used
in
this
dissertation,
then,
I
would
like
to
call
for
a
moratorium
on
trying
to
once
and
for
all
define
new
media
and
on
trying
to
critique
its
history,
ideology,
and
cultural
logics.
I
would
like
to
call
a
moratorium
on
big
thinking
about
new
media
and
its
effect
on
something
as
large
as
‘cultural
transformation,’
in
other
words.
Or,
at
the
very
least:
I
would
like
to
push
this
conversation
towards
a
lot
more
situated
investigations
of
what
we
might
call
infrastructural
transformations.
After
all,
forms
of
writing
and
communication
are
always
used
in
dynamic
tension
with
infrastructures,
or
with
systems
of
knowledge,
practice,
and
material
structure.
If
there
is
one
ontology
I
will
add
to
this
conversation
it
is
this.
And
though
there
are
a
variety
of
permutations
for
how
media
emerge
within
a
given
infrastructure,
as
represented
by
the
above
scholars’
work
on
such
systems
as
available
computer
technologies
(Manovich;
120
Selber),
the
Internet
(Atton),
established
media
corporations
(DeLuca),
and
university
writing
systems
(DeVoss,
Cushman,
and
Grabill),
we
might
begin
to
think
of
new
media
as
the
most
emergent
forms
of
writing/communication
within
a
given
infrastructure
or
local
system
of
knowledges,
practices,
and
material
structures.
If
we
must
think
of
what
new
media
is,
to
invoke
Gitelman,
perhaps
we
could
call
it
an
emergent
but
shared
ontology
of
representation
within
a
given
infrastructure,
or
a
new
way
of
thinking
about
what
communication
is
that
is
shared
by
a
specific
network
of
people.
New
media
is
clearly
more
than
a
thing,
in
other
words,
more
than
a
collection
of
wires,
computers,
fonts,
and
images;
it
also
an
idea,
an
idea
that
is
important
to
a
lot
of
different
people
for
a
lot
of
different
reasons.
Reducing
new
media
to
a
thing
belies
this
importance,
actually,
I
would
argue,
because
it
reduces
it
to
a
set
of
reified
technologies,
modes,
and/or
genres.
New
media
is
what
we
strive
to
create
with
the
most
emergent
forms
of
communication
we
can
make
sense
of
as
writers
and
communicators
within
the
systems
of
knowledge,
practice,
and
material
structure
in
which
we
write
and
communicate
daily.
It
is
the
newest,
most
emergent,
most
‘cutting-‐edge,’
or
least
established
forms
of
writing/communication
we
can
imagine
using
to
reach
audiences.
It
is
writing
that
is
always
always
already
new
to
someone
involved
with
a
particular
writing/communication
situation,
in
other
words,
either
to
the
writer/communicator,
the
audience,
or
both.
Such
a
shift
would,
I
argue,
require
a
move
similar
to
the
one
I
called
for
in
Chapter
1:
scholars
would
have
to
start
paying
more
attention
to
and
working
within
infrastructures
local
to
them,
but
again,
I
feel
this
is
a
small
price
to
pay
compared
to
the
rich
infrastructural
narratives,
and
new
community
projects,
this
shift
might
produce.
All
of
these
scholars,
many
of
whom
I
have
met
personally,
are
constantly
doing
work
similar
to
121
the
work
both
I
and
my
student
participants
have
engaged
in:
they
are
contributing
to
networks
of
writers
and
communicators,
and
mobilizing
resources
in
order
to
do
so.
Whether
they
are
explicitly
trying
to
strengthen
the
connections
between
those
resources,
whether
they
are
explicitly
trying
to
build
infrastructures,
however:
that
is
something
I
don’t
think
we
see
enough
of
in
new
media
scholarship.
Again
I
would
urge
scholars
of
new
media
to
do
new
media
writing
with
local
communities,
to
invest
in
creating
shared
ontologies
of
representation
with
their
students,
research
participants,
and
local
community
members.
Such
new
media
writing
might
‘open’
the
work
of
classifying,
interrogating,
and
cataloguing
new
media
to
other,
extra-‐academic,
systems
of
representation.
Such
new
media
writing,
a
new
media
writing
borne
of
work
of,
for,
and
with
members
of
local
networks
and
infrastructures
outside
our
usual
scholarly
haunts,
would
almost
certainly
add
rich,
contextualized,
and
infrastructurally
productive
accounts
to
our
understandings
of
new
media.
Outside
to
Where?:
Toward
Some
Rhetorical
Heuristics
for
Building
(New
Media)
Writing
Infrastructures
As
I
have
mentioned
and
alluded
to
many
times
now,
one
of
the
most
important
implications
of
my
research
into
and
experiences
with
new
media
writing
infrastructures
is
that
they
are
probabilistic
enterprises:
they
rise
and
fall
based
on
the
motivated
and
distributed
knowledge
work
of
individuals
working
collectively
towards
common
goals,
but
goals
upon
which
their
perspectives
may
differ
or
even
be
antagonistic
to
each
other.
This
means
that
the
best
ways
for
people
from
various
walks
of
life,
such
as
rhetoric
and
writing
experts
and
their
students,
activists,
community
members,
digital
composers,
etc.,
to
build,
122
maintain,
and
change
infrastructures
for
the
better,
may
be
to
see
themselves
as
networks
of
writers
in
which
new
types
of
knowledge,
products,
and
practices
are
created,
knowledge,
products,
and
practices
that
can
then
be
used
to
do
work
in
the
world
through
(new)
infrastructures.
The
where
of
this
work
can
be
wherever
we
find
ourselves.
I
am
thus
in
solidarity
with
Grabill
as
he
advocates
a
rhetoric
of
designing
technologies
for
citizen
action
“rooted
in
an
epistemology
that
values
metis
and
local
expertise,
requires
the
technologies
and
infrastructures
to
support
knowledge-‐making
practices,
and
therefore
is
focused
on
transformative
and
transgressive
possibilities”
(84;
emphasis
in
original).
A
civic
rhetoric
must
contain
these
elements,
he
argues,
“[b]ecause
those
in
positions
of
structured
inequality—I
have
called
them
‘citizens’—can
make
things—arguments,
documents,
media—that
enable
reversals
in
particular
places
and
at
specific
times”
(84).
To
meet
the
specifications
of
Grabill’s
rhetoric
of
technological
design,
new
media
writing
must
therefore
rise
to
the
level
of
a
techne,
an
ancient
Greek
concept
identified
with
metis,
or
cunning
knowledge
(84).
“Thus,
techne
becomes
subversive,
a
way
of
inventing
knowledge
and
persuasive
discourse
that
seeks
to
counter
domination”
(85;
emphasis
in
original).
For
me,
the
where
of
new
media
writing
has
been
manifold,
for
example:
I
have
worked
with
various
community
organizations
from
a
neighborhood
center
to
my
own
Graduate
Employees
Union,
from
small
student
groups
partnered
with
local
organizations,
to
online
social
networks
populated
by
like-‐minded
people.
In
each
of
these
infrastructures,
each
of
these
systems
of
resources
for
performing
writing
and
rhetorical
action,
in
other
words,
I
have
asked
myself:
how
can
I
be
of
use?
This
is
thus
one
of
the
first
and
most
important
heuristics
for
mobilizing
resources
within
a
new
media
writing
infrastructure,
123
for
helping
to
strengthen
networked
connections
within
such
an
infrastructure,
for
helping
to
build
infrastructure:
doing
so
in
a
way
that
is
not
of
use
to
others,
that
does
not
try
to
counter
domination,
that
does
not,
in
a
word,
transgress,
is
worse
than
pointless:
it
is
procedurally
harmful
to
infrastructure-‐building.
Heuristic
1:
Being
of
Use
Had
I
decided,
for
example,
that
the
original
video
I
had
created
for
the
ANC
was
somehow
a
more
important
statement
about
what
I
saw
as
the
best
representation
of
that
organization,
I
would
have
failed
to
produce
a
video
that
the
members
of
the
organization
felt
was
important
for
countering
stereotypes
about
their
neighborhood
perpetuated
by
more
established
media
systems.
The
video,
as
a
more
nuanced,
better
contextualized,
or
more
‘post-‐narrative’
new
media
composition,
would’ve
failed
utterly
except
as
being
a
useful
experiment
for
my
own
edification.
Building
infrastructures
starts
by
putting
our
egos
aside,
then,
and
rolling
up
our
sleeves.
It
does
not
start
by
putting
blinders
on,
however.
By
using
the
term
heuristic,
I
am
invoking,
along
with
Selber,
the
following
connotation:
From
the
Greek
term
heuriskein,
meaning
to
discover
or
find,
heuristics
are
problem-‐solving
strategies
that
can
guide
students
as
they
attempt
to
formulate
possible
responses
to
a
writing
or
communication
problem.
As
opposed
to
algorithmic
approaches,
which
are
precisely
defined
and
structured,
heuristic
approaches
provide
a
suggestive
framework
that
can
help
students
systematically
probe
the
contingencies
and
dynamics
of
the
author-‐to-‐readers
intention
structure,
including
the
rhetorical
situation.
Whereas
algorithmic
approaches
set
down
fixed
124
rules
for
organizing
an
argument,
for
instance,
heuristic
approaches
help
students
determine
the
most
effective
organizational
pattern
given
the
particulars
and
complexities
of
a
specific
communication
situation.
(95-‐96)
Outside
of
a
student
writing
assignment,
the
current
phrasing
of
Selber’s
very
useful
explication
of
the
term
heuristic
might
not
appear
to
work
well
for
thinking
rhetorically
about
how
to
building
new
media
writing
infrastructures.
I
would
claim
that
it
does
just
this
when
we
broaden
“specific
communication
situation”
to
include
the
total
system
of
resources
available
that
one
perceives
at
a
given
moment
of
writing/communication,
however.
In
this
broader
context,
a
heuristic
like
being
of
use
becomes
a
suggestive
framework
for
communication
and
rhetorical
action
given
the
local
ethics
of
a
specific
writing/communication
situation.
My
heuristics
for
infrastructure-‐building
like
being
of
use,
in
other
words,
are
ethically
“grounded
in
community
or
local
standards,”
and
thus
have
something
in
common
with
Porter’s
definition
of
a
postmodern
ethics:
Ethics
in
the
postmodern
sense,
then,
does
not
refer
to
a
static
body
of
foundational
principles,
laws,
and
procedures;
it
is
not
to
be
confused
with
particular
moral
codes
or
with
particular
sets
of
statements
about
what
is
appropriate
or
inappropriate
behavior
or
practice.
Ethics
is
not
a
set
of
answers
but
a
mode
of
questioning
and
a
manner
of
positioning.
That
questioning
certainly
involves
principles—but
it
always
involves
mediating
between
competing
principles
and
judging
those
principles
in
light
of
particular
circumstances.
Ethics
is
decision
making—but
it
is
decision
125
making
that
involves
question
and
critique.
It
is
informed,
critical,
and
pluralistic
decision-‐making.
(216;
218)
Being
of
use
will
rarely
mean
the
same
thing
in
two
different
infrastructures,
then.
Being
of
use
means
being
kairotic,
cunning,
and
aware
of
the
affordances
of
infrastructural
power
dynamics,
or
of
the
complex
interaction
of
standards,
identities,
and
possibilities
within
a
new
media
composing
situation.
Within
the
story
that
I
have
told
about
the
birth
of
one
instance
of
new
media,
for
example,
a
video
for
the
website
of
a
neighborhood
center,
there
is
another
story,
a
more
transgressive
one.
A
meeting
or
so
after
the
meeting
in
which
our
intrepid
young
new
media
composer
receives
news
that
his
primary
audience
wants
to
reconceptualize
the
entire
project,
he
is
discussing
the
newly
conceived
project
with
the
member
of
the
ANC
staff
that
has
agreed
to
collaborate
most
closely
with
him
on
the
revisions
to
the
project.
He
is
again
surprised
when
the
staff
member
seems
surprised
that
he
hasn’t
extracted
from
the
dozens
of
hours
of
footage
taken
for
the
original
project
concise
and
well-‐thought-‐out
commentaries
on
what
she
considers
to
be
two
of
the
most
exciting
programs
the
organization
has
recently
developed:
a
farmer’s
market
and
a
community
gardenhouse.36
She
is
also
initially
opposed
to
the
idea
of
simply
reshooting
some
footage
where
her
and/or
some
other
staff
members
could
give
scripted,
concise
explanations
of
these
programs.
“Surely
I
talked
about
them
in
my
interview,”
she
says,
rather
pointedly.
As
our
hero
continues
to
press
that
he
should
simply
reshoot
the
footage,
she
continues
to
exhort
36
This
‘gardenhouse’
is
a
greenhouse
where
community
members
can
maintain
their
own
beds
for
growing
plants,
as
well
as
a
hub
for
classes
on
community
gardening.
126
him
to
look
through
the
footage,
just
please:
look
through
the
footage.
It
occurs
to
him
after
some
more
back
and
forth
that
continuing
to
be
of
use
in
this
writing
situation
means
that
he
should,
indeed,
look
for
something
in
the
footage
that
he
knows
isn’t
there.
How
is
this
being
of
use,
you
may
ask,
and
not
just
my
inability
to
set
boundaries
with
a
willful
community
partner?
Without
researched
precision,
my
sense
is
that
my
partner
in
this
instance
needed
to
feel
like
she
was
an
effective
communicator,
needed
to
feel
that
she
was
contributing
to
the
project.
There
was,
after
all,
an
imbalance
of
writerly
power
in
my
favor
at
this
point:
I
was
the
one
who
had
spent
all
the
hours
deeply
involved
with
this
footage,
footage
of
not
only
herself,
but
of
an
organization
she
had
spent
years
contributing
to.
She
was
also
far
too
busy
to
edit
the
footage
along
with
me.
This
was
one
of
my
main
contributions
to
this
infrastructure,
in
fact:
the
pain-‐staking,
intellectual
labor
of
building
a
story
from
disparate
pieces
of
video
footage,
a
process
that
anyone
who’s
done
it
knows
is
one
of
the
most
time-‐consuming
and
frustrating
types
of
new
media
composition
available.
In
other
words:
the
affordances
of
this
moment
of
composing,
including
power
dynamics,
technological
knowledge,
generic
knowledge,
etc.,
called
for
a
concession,
a
good
faith
act
of:
well,
maybe
I’m
wrong.
Maybe
the
footage
is
there.
The
ideal
would’ve
been
some
kind
of
utopian
collaboration
in
which
my
technological
and
generic
knowledge
was
shared
equally
with
my
partner,
but
how
often
does
being
of
use
mean
such
an
equally-‐
balanced
act
of
collaboration?
How
often
does
it
resemble
this
moment:
two
knowers
with
very
different
conceptions
of
what
it
means
to
write,
trying
to
come
to
a
shared
understanding
of
how
a
project
should
represent
its
subject?
The
latter
has
been
my
experience
more
often
than
not.
More
often
than
not,
being
of
use
has
meant
subtle
127
concessions
or
acts
of
transgression
in
service
of
larger
goals,
has
meant
deciding
how
to
support
one
communal/local
standard
within
an
infrastructure
(in
this
case:
respecting
a
partner’s
local
knowledge
of
their
organization
and
the
way
it
is
represented),
while
potentially
subverting
or
transgressing
another
(the
need
to
explicate
the
nuances
of
digital
video
editing
in
the
name
of
sustainability).
The
largest
way
to
subvert
or
transgress
within
a
given
infrastructure,
then,
is
not
to
be
of
use
to
a
particular
network.
This
is
a
powerful
act,
an
act
that
has
consequences
for
all
connected
to
an
infrastructure.
I
have
walked
away
from
community
partnerships
after
a
semester,
because
it
became
clear
to
me
that
a
given
partnership
was
not
in
the
best
interests
of
writing
students,
was
not
conducive
to
student
development
as
writing
students.
I
have
shifted
certain
students
from
the
group
working
with
the
partner
they
clearly
wanted
to
work
with
because
I
was
concerned
that
they
wouldn’t
be
able
to
handle
that
partner’s
needs,
either
because
of
the
skill
set
the
partner
required,
or
even
because
of
a
felt
sense
of
how
that
student
operated
as
a
writer,
gleaned
from
the
few
weeks
I
had
spent
with
them.
I
have
refused
to
partner
with
community
members
when
I
couldn’t
ideologically
support
their
community
project
as
something
students
should
be
doing
for
a
service-‐learning
class,
such
as
when
I
discovered,
for
example,
that
one
potential
community
partner
wanted
students
to
confront
military
recruiters
in
public
schools.
To
elucidate
what
being
of
use
means
further,
I
identify,
politically,
as
a
democratic
socialist:
http://www.guiseppegetto.com/personal-‐commitments/politics/.
My
problem
in
the
above
instance
was
not
with
kicking
military
recruiters
out
of
public
schools,
then,
a
space
I
don’t
think
they
belong
in
in
the
first
place.
It
was
assigning
a
group
of
first
year
writing
students
who
had
signed
up
for
a
class
called
WRA
135:
Public
Life
in
America
to
128
confront
military
recruiters
in
public
schools.
Even
had
I
had
some
way
of
finding
a
group
of
democratic
socialist
students
to
partner
with
this
organization,
I
don’t
know
that
I
could’ve
prepared
them
to
engage
in
such
a
radical
and
transgressive
act
during
the
course
of
a
semester.
There
are
always
limits
to
transgression,
then,
to
when
transgression
tip-‐
toes
into
some
new
form
of
domination.
As
a
teacher,
I
transgress
by
engaging
students
in
infrastructure-‐building,
a
project
they
probably
do
not
face
in
the
majority
of
their
college
classes.
This
is
also
of
use
to
community
partners,
though
this
can
also
proliferate
into
many
considerations,
such
as
concerning
what
kind
of
use
students
can
be
to
someone
they
have
just
met.
Being
of
use,
then,
is
a
complex
heuristic,
possibly
the
most
complex
I
will
present
here.
To
what
use
should
I
put
myself?
One
might
ask,
or,
more
specifically:
what
value
systems
am
I
prepared
to
promote?
Infrastructures,
like
all
systems
of
people,
networks,
and
resources,
are
permeated
by
value
systems,
or
heuristics
for
deciding
what
is
good,
true,
and
possible.
Being
of
use
is
always
the
first
heuristic,
then,
because
it
means
being
a
kind
of
Jedi
warrior.
In
an
infrastructure,
there
is
only
being
of
use
or
not
being
of
use;
there
is
no
‘try.’
When
it
became
clear
to
me
that
one
community
partner,
who
was
working
with
students
in
a
colleague’s
class,
for
instance,
was
committed
to
interacting
with
students
in
a
way
that
I
judged
to
be
dominating
and
even
racist,
I
made
the
decision
not
to
be
of
use
to
her
organization
anymore,
and
to
ensure
that
students
associated
with
me
never
had
to
be
put
in
that
position
again,
either.
I
wanted
my
students
to
be
able
to
be
of
use,
and
a
partner
looking
down
on
them
because
of
their
ethnic
background
obviously
does
not
meet
this
criteria.
Being
of
use
means
having
the
capacity
to
be
of
use
in
a
given
network
and
its
infrastructure,
in
other
words,
which
usually
means
a
certain
level
of
solidarity
of
values,
a
129
likeness
of
belief
about
what
is
good,
true,
and
possible.
In
order
to
be
of
use,
one
has
to
believe
that
being
of
use
is
good,
true,
and
possible,
in
other
words,
and
if
any
of
these
criteria
aren’t
met,
then
one
might
ask
oneself:
can
I
really
be
of
use
here
at
all?
The
same
goes
with
students.
Part
of
my
project
of
infrastructure-‐building
puts
students
in
connection
with
new
identities,
value
systems,
and
personalities,
which
I
think
is
essential
for
their
growth
as
they
think
about
contributing
to
new
infrastructures
after
the
class
is
over.
One
can’t
often
choose
the
exact
combination
of
identities,
value
systems,
and
personalities
one
joins
as
a
citizen
or
worker.
When
students
have
severely
negative
reactions
to
a
new
partnership,
however,
such
as
a
student
I
had
who
would
start
each
class
session
loudly
explaining
to
the
entire
class
that
she
hated
her
community
partner
and
thought
that
they
were
stupid,
these
reactions
should
be
challenged
strongly.
Students
can
find
ways
to
dominate
community
partners,
even
community
partners
that
have
a
position
of
authority
within
the
university
the
students
are
part
of.
If
this
happens:
being
of
use
means
challenging
that
student
to
rethink
their
behavior
and
to
ask
themselves
if
their
view
of
what
is
good,
true,
and
possible
is
really
in
conflict
with
their
community
partner’s
view
of
these
things,
or
whether
they
are
just
(as
I
would
eventually
judge
the
above
student
to
be)
irritated
because
of
the
nature
of
the
class
and
vicissitudes
of
working
a
community
partner
in
general
(such
as
this
student’s
partner
who
wasn’t
giving
them
substantive
feedback
on
their
project).
Heuristic
2:
Dwelling
and
Paying
Attention
There
is
a
growing
trend
within
community
literacy
studies
urging
scholars,
practitioners,
and
teachers
of
community-‐based
pedagogies
to
pay
attention
to
what
Grabill
130
would
call
metis
or
local
knowledge.
Calling
for
a
tactical
rather
than
strategic
orientation
toward
work
with
local
communities,
for
instance,
Paula
Mathieu
has
warned
about
the
trend
“toward
creating
long-‐term,
top-‐down,
institutionalized
service-‐learning
programs,”
and
has
urged
compositionists
to
“critically
examine
the
kinds
of
projects
or
relationships
we
are
seeking
to
inscribe
and
repeat”
(96,
99).
The
kinds
of
relationships
we
should
be
building
between
universities
and
local
communities,
she
goes
on
to
say,
should
be
grounded
in
“values
inherent
in
more
tactical
projects:
organic
origins,
a
project
orientation
that
frames
the
community
as
a
source
of
knowledge,
genuine
community
involvement
in
planning
and
evaluation,
and
a
rhetorical
sense
of
timeliness
and
the
limitations
of
time”
(114).
Similarly,
both
Himley
and
Schutz
and
Gere
bemoan
models
of
service-‐learning,
such
as
the
tutoring
model,
which
encourage
in
students
a
certain
“missionary
zeal”
to
help
down-‐trodden
members
of
communities
through
their
superior
language
skills
(Himley
417;
see
also
Schutz
and
Gere
133).
Such
models,
as
Himley
points
out,
often
end
up
figuring
community
members
as
“strangers,”
or
“those
who
don’t
belong
(yet)
to
mainstream
American
life
because
of
race,
class,
life
chances,
immigration
or
other
reasons”
(421).
For
Himley,
this
figuring
involves
a
discursive
turn
inscribed
within
the
history
of
volunteerism
itself,
a
history
in
which
“white
middle-‐
and
upper-‐class
women
in
this
country…
went
out
into
poor
and
working
class
neighborhoods
to
improve
the
material
and
moral
lot
of
the
less
fortunate
they
found
living
there”
(419).
Citing
similar
issues,
Linda
Flower
and
Shirley
Brice
Heath
have
recently
sought
to
redefine
service-‐
learning
initiatives
around
the
valuing
of
community
expertise,
or,
in
other
words,
“to
131
transform
service
into
a
collaboration
with
communities
and
learning
into
a
problem-‐
driven
practice
of
mutual
inquiry
and
literate
action”
(43).
This
and
other
work,
as
well
as
several
professional
mishaps
when
I
failed
to
do
this,
has
influenced
me
to
dwell
and
pay
attention
before
undertaking
projects
with
community
members.
In
Chapter
1,
I
mentioned
dwelling
with
the
ANC
before
creating
the
video
I
would
create
for
them,
but
within
the
exigencies
of
semester-‐long
classes
and
the
requirements
of
graduate
school,
teaching,
and
tenure,
as
well
as
the
need
to
find
community
partners
that
work
well
with
students,
this
kind
of
in-‐depth
dwelling
is
not
always
possible.
Let
me
focus
our
gaze
then
on
what
I
found
it
useful
to
pay
attention
to
when
thinking
about
infrastructure-‐building.
I
can’t
help
but
mention,
for
instance,
that
scholarship
like
the
above
seems
to
create
a
binary
between
institutionalized
practices
and
localized
ones.
Service
programs
in
which
students
are
regularly
and
reliably
sent
into
the
community
aren’t
really
of
use,
but
tactical,
localized
interventions
avoid
this
kind
of
“top-‐down”
approach
that
can
so
often
figure
community
partners
as
“strangers.”
And
though
I
don’t
particularly
disagree
with
the
potential
for
this
to
happen,
I
think
that
avoiding
this
kind
of
problem
involves
more
than
the
very
important
reconceptualizations
of
knowledge-‐making
and
institutionalized
practices
called
for.
In
addition
to
rethinking
knowledge-‐making
and
what
becomes
a
fixture
in
institutions,
in
other
words,
I
would
argue
that
we
also
need
to
rethink
how
and
what
we
pay
attention
to
within
the
infrastructures
that
support
community-‐based
projects.
As
I’ve
written
about
with
Shreelina
Ghosh
and
Ellen
Cushman,
there
are
some
key
considerations
to
attend
to
during
the
process
of
producing
new
media
writing
with
132
communities,
considerations
that
can
help
us
build
infrastructures
that
are
more
responsive
to
community
exigencies,
and
can
thus
help
foster
more
democratic
and
collaborative
relationships
between
ourselves,
our
students,
and
our
community
partners
connected
with
those
infrastructures.
This
involves
constant
“negotiation
between
positions,
values,
and
stakeholders
to
come
to
some
compromise
that
always
includes
and
excludes
selected
people,
practices,
and
resources”
(3).
An
ethical
framework
for
what
we
call
“community
mediation,”
or
what
I’ve
called
in
this
dissertation
‘doing
new
media
writing
with
communities,’
then,
would
thus
be
one
that:
1)
attends
to
local
community
practices
already
in
place,
2)
that
uses
these
existing
practices
as
an
infrastructure
for
producing
media,
3)
and
that
attempts
to
bridge
both
local
and
external
understandings
and
values
of
the
medium
itself
so
that
community
practices
are
understandable
to
audiences
both
within
and
outside
the
community
itself.
(5)
These
three,
albeit
complex,
considerations,
flesh
out
my
heuristic
for
dwelling
and
paying
attention.
They
are
what
I
have
found
it
useful
to
pay
attention
to
when
thinking
about
infrastructure-‐buidling,
in
other
words.
They
involve
a
certain
amount
of
dwelling:
in
order
to
attend
to
local
community
practices,
for
example,
one
must
first
understand
what
practices
are
important
to
a
given
community
or
network,
but
are
more
contingent,
as
is
every
heuristic
I
have
presented
in
this
dissertation,
on
the
particulars
of
the
writing
situation
and
on
the
networks
and
resources
sustaining
it.
One
might
discover,
as
I
and
many
of
my
students
have,
for
example,
that
the
first
few
interactions
with
a
new
partner
do
not
reveal
the
most
valued
practices
that
will
become
infrastructurally
important
to
the
project.
It
is
also
possible
that
what
the
partner
133
values
will
change
as
new
knowledges,
practices,
and
resources
are
introduced
to
him/her.
As
we
point
out
in
the
above
article,
then:
paying
attention
within
a
new
infrastructure,
dwelling
within
it,
is
an
active
process.
Trying
to
gauge
complex
understandings
of
a
given
medium
with
a
partner,
for
instance,
and
finding
potential
audiences
can
take
months
or
can
be
an
ongoing
project
in-‐and-‐of-‐itself,
a
project
that
involves
generations
of
students.
My
various
community
partners
for
Rhetoric/Writing:
Citizenship,
Service-Learning,
and
Community
Media
(including
my
research
participants)
are
people
that
I
have
longstanding
relationships
with,
and
to
which
I
have
sent
scores
of
students
to
during
my
time
at
MSU
(though
this
is
more
true
with
some
than
others).
Each
semester
I
have
learned
a
little
bit
more
about
their
infrastructural
needs,
their
understandings
of
the
media
and
audiences
they
are
trying
to
connect,
and
what
practices
they
value
the
most.
Bringing
students
into
this
process
means
facilitating
collaboration
and
coordination
between
students
and
community
partners
in
a
way
that
is
based
in
this
local
knowledge
of
community
partner
infrastructures
that
students
don’t
possess
coming
into
the
class.
For
me,
this
has
involved
introducing
students
to
community
partners
early
on
in
the
class
via
digitally-‐recorded
interviews
and
a
sheet
I
have
all
new
partners
fill
out
called
a
“Community
Partner
Needs
Assessment”
(see
Appendix
E
for
this
sheet;
see
the
following
link
for
some
sample
interviews:
https://www.msu.edu/~rivaitje/WRA135Video1stDayS10.mov).
Additionally,
once
it
has
begun,
student
and
community
partner
collaboration
inevitably
results
in
a
question
from
students
that
is
a
version
of
my
own
that
sparked
this
entire
dissertation:
why
did
they
do
X?
I
would
not
be
of
use
to
my
students
were
I
to
withhold
knowledge
I
have
about
a
partner
I
have
worked
with
for
years,
or
at
the
minimum
have
met
much
earlier
than
134
students,
nor
would
I
be
of
use
to
that
partner
to
betray
some
confidence
that
partner
has
placed
in
me
to
a
group
of
students.
Tactically
and
kairotically
throughout
the
class,
then,
I
decode
what
I
understand
about
community
partners
for
students
and
visa
versa,
while
at
the
same
time
urging
both
parties
to
seek
each
other
for
explanations
and
consultations.
Ultimately,
the
above-‐cited
community
literacy
scholars
are
correct,
then:
we
do
need
to
pay
attention
to
local
knowledge.
I
think
that
this
paying
attention
can
lead
us
all
the
way
to
the
institutional
level,
however,
and
even
to
a
transgressive
(re)shaping
of
institutional
practices
founded
in
domination.
Institutions,
like
infrastructures,
like
emergent
media,
are
mutable:
they
can
be
changed
through
motivated
and
kairotic
knowledge
work.
Dwelling
and
paying
attention
means
committing
to
doing
just
this:
to
looking
for
ruptures,
points
of
contention,
and
gaps
in
the
systems
of
people,
knowledges,
and
resources
that
surround
us,
gaps
which
we
can
build
into
by
leveraging
knowledge
and
other
resources.
Heuristic
3:
Getting
New
Media
Writing
to
‘Stick’
This
heuristic
responds
to
an
area
of
inquiry
that
is
almost
non-‐existent
in
new
media
studies
and
community
media
studies,
but
that
has
a
firm
presence
in
community
literacy
studies:
how
can
community-based
projects
become
sustainable?
One
of
the
best
articulations
of
considerations
important
to
answering
this
question
has
been
made
by
Cushman:
Service
learning
programs
that
have
sustained
themselves
have
incorporated
reciprocity
and
risk
taking
that
can
best
be
achieved
when
the
researcher
views
the
[community]
site
as
a
place
for
teaching,
research,
and
service—as
135
a
place
for
collaborative
inquiry—with
the
students
and
community
partners…
The
role
of
the
professor
as
researcher
must
be
firmly
identified
and
carefully
articulated
when
entering
into
service
learning.
When
the
professor
enters
into
service
learning
as
researcher
and
teacher,
the
program
can
have
an
increased
likelihood
of
succeeding
in
meeting
students'
needs
and
in
legitimizing
itself
as
a
serious,
rigorous
line
of
inquiry.
(43,
“Sustainable,”
emphasis
hers)
What
I
hear
Cushman
saying
here
has
been
my
experience
as
well:
helping
to
sustain
a
service-‐learning
infrastructure
based
around
doing
new
media
writing
with
communities
at
MSU
has
been
about
introducing
students
to
networks
within
an
infrastructure
already
in
place,
an
infrastructure
facilitated
by
my
own
research
and
service
interests.
Within
new
media
studies,
we
have
calls
like
Wysocki’s
and
Selber’s
to
open
new
media
to
writing
and
to
critically
introduce
technology
into
the
writing
classroom,
calls
I
whole-‐heartedly
agree
with,
but
calls
which
I
fear
may
end
up
reinscribing
technology
and
new
media
as
goods
in
and
of
themselves,
rather
than
as
tools
and
heuristics
that
can
be
used
to
do
work
for/with
local
communities.
This
is
particularly
evident
to
me
in
a
recent
argument
by
Jody
Shikpa
that
advocates
a
“multimodal
task-‐based
framework
for
composing,”
which
requires
students
to
“determine
the
purposes
and
contexts
of
the
work
they
produce”
by
generating
“complex
action
sequences”
to
solve
problems
provided
by
the
instructor,
such
as
the
need
to
create
a
researched
argument
(285-‐6,
emphasis
removed).
Though
at
first
glance
such
a
framework
may
seem
very
similar
to
the
heuristics
I’m
arguing
for,
there
is
no
mandate
in
Shipka’s
framework
that
these
“complex
action
sequences”
lead
to
any
recognizable
genre
that
has
the
potential
to
do
real
work
beyond
136
the
classroom:
the
projects
generated
from
such
a
framework
are
considered
goods
in-‐and-‐
of
themselves,
the
message
being
that
if
students
are
allowed
to
be
creative
with
the
media
they
use
that
this
will
somehow
affect
their
entire
relationship
to
media
beyond
the
classroom.
Facilitating
the
creation
of
new
media
writing
projects
by
students
that
become
part
of
community
infrastructures
beyond
the
university
has
not
been
studied
at
all,
to
my
knowledge,
and
I
myself
have
only
anecdotal
evidence
to
report
on
this
front.
If
experts
in
writing
and
communication
heed
my
call
to
use
community
media
as
a
form
of
practice
for
connecting
their
interests
in
new
media
and
community-‐based
pedagogies,
if
they
want
to
help
build
new
media
writing
infrastructures
with
communities,
in
other
words,
then
this
is
something
we
all
need
to
attend
to
as
an
area
of
further
study.
My
own
experiences
with
trying
to
get
student
projects
to
‘stick’
in
the
infrastructures
for
which
they
are
intended
has
not
been
as
successful
as
I
would’ve
hoped,
but
elucidating
some
successes
and
failures
might
be
productive
for
everyone,
so
here
goes.
Starting
with
the
two
projects
my
research
participants
created,
a
simple,
interactive
website
for
a
mentorship
initiative
and
a
digital
video
documenting
the
work
of
several
grades
of
art
students:
one
of
them
stuck
and
the
other
didn’t.
Eric’s
video
got
plugged
immediately
into
his
iMovie
projects
list
where
he
remixes
work
to
produce
Youtube
videos,
mini-‐documentaries,
and
other
new
media
works.
Dave
ended
up
leaving
the
4-‐H
mentorship
initiative
shortly
after
my
students
worked
with
him,
and
his
replacement
wasn’t
able
to
incorporate
the
website
into
the
initiative’s
web
presence
because
of
institutional
definitions
of
who
controls
that
web
presence
(namely,
the
web
development
team
at
MSU).
This
exchange
of
information,
however,
sparked
a
new
service-‐
137
learning
relationship
between
a
first-‐time
service-‐learning
instructor
in
my
department
and
the
new
facilitator
of
the
4-‐H
mentorship
initiative.
The
product
didn’t
stick,
then,
but
a
new
network
connection
was
made,
one
that
might
help
the
curriculum
that
is
Rhetoric/Writing:
Citizenship,
Service-Learning,
and
Community
Media
survive
at
MSU
now
that
I
am
finishing
my
time
here
as
a
graduate
student.
In
some
ways,
then:
I
feel
the
most
hesitant
to
discuss
the
‘stickiness’
of
student
projects,
because
I
feel
that
the
biggest
determinant
of
said
stickiness
is,
as
Cushman
would
have
it,
my
presence
in
the
MSU
infrastructure.
There
are
still
projects
that
I
think
might
be
better
incorporated
into
partner
organizations,
some
that
are
probably
unsalvageable
for
whatever
reason,
and
some
that
I’m
just
not
sure
about.
The
next
stage
of
my
research,
were
I
a
faculty
member
at
MSU,
would
be
to
trace
the
connections
of
all
these
projects
(around
a
dozen
were
produced
during
my
time
at
MSU).
What
did
they
produce?
What
new
connections
between
people
and
resources?
What
new
forms
of
knowledge
or
practice?
Did
they
cause
any
negative
repercussions
on
the
MSU
writing
infrastructure?
These
are
questions
I
don’t
have
satisfactory
answers
to,
and
so
are
the
questions
I
must
leave
for
further
inquiry.
My
sense,
though,
thinking
back
to
projects
that
definitely
‘succeeded,’
like
some
booklets
on
peacemakers
students
made
for
a
local
peace
organization,
and
some
projects
that
definitely
‘failed,’
like
a
video
made
for
a
local
food
co-‐op,
these
‘successes’
and
‘failures’
had
little
to
do
with
student
successes
and
failures,
and
more
to
do
with
the
infrastructural
capacities
of
their
partner
organizations.
You
may
have
guessed,
for
example,
that
the
peace
organization
I
just
mentioned
had
made
booklets
like
this
before.
They
had,
and
in
fact
have
a
relationship
with
a
publishing
house
to
produce
them,
and,
138
perhaps
because
of
this,
have
welcomed
students
to
invent
new
ideas
and
images
within
this
already-‐existing
genre
while
giving
students
the
structure
that
they
craved
while
producing
these
products.
This
has
been
my
experience
with
what
we
might
call
the
infrastructural
stickiness
of
student
new
media
writing:
the
more
prepared
community
partners
are
to
recognize
and
incorporate
student
writing
into
their
midst,
the
more
they
have
some
experience
with
a
similar
genre,
in
other
words,
and
the
capacity
to
produce
that
genre
themselves,
the
more
likely
a
student
project
is
to
become
a
more-‐or-‐less
permanent
resource
within
that
infrastructure.
That
being
said,
a
study
that
traced
student
writing
projects
in
this
way
would
also
need
to
be
a
study
into
networked
connections
that
these
projects
facilitate.
Were
I
to
remain
at
MSU,
for
example,
I
would
probably
leverage
longstanding
partnerships
in
order
to
produce
more
stickiness
of
student
projects.
If
a
partner
wanted
to
continue
to
work
with
me,
for
example,
and
had
already
rejected
one
student
project,
I
would
have
a
very
collaborative
and
welcoming,
but
serious
discussion
with
them
regarding
what
had
happened.
Such
a
discussion
might
lead
me
to
express
to
the
partner
that
I
thought
their
needs
might
be
better
met
in
the
future
by
a
professional
writing
intern
or
other
member
of
the
MSU
infrastructure,
or
perhaps
by
a
professional
new
media
composer,
were
they
inclined
to
pay
for
the
service.
Or
such
a
discussion
might
lead
to
a
re-‐envisioning
of
their
workflow
with
students
in
order
to
create
more
usable
deliverables
in
the
future.
Of
course:
I
consider
the
three
heuristics
just
discussed
to
work
in
tandem
with
one
another.
In
fact
I
could,
if
I
were
so
inclined,
describe
a
(obviously
fictional)
ratio
between
sense
of
being
of
use,
degree
of
dwelling/paying
attention,
and
relative
stickiness
of
produced
projects.
There
were
a
few
partnerships,
both
connected
to
service-‐learning
and
139
completely
outside
of
it,
for
example,
that
I
walked
away
from,
and
not
because
I
had
an
ideological
quandary
with
the
position
the
partner
was
putting
the
would-‐be
writer
in.
I
walked
away
from
some
partnerships
because
the
more
I
dwelt
and
paid
attention,
the
more
I
discovered
that
I
could
be
of
no
use
to
that
network,
outside
of
maintaining
a
status
quo
that
I
thought
ineffective
at
best.
Such
was
the
case
with
one
of
the
longer-‐standing
partnerships
I
have
had
at
MSU
with
an
organization
that
I
will
keep
anonymous:
after
twenty-‐one
months
of
dwelling
and
paying
attention,
I
learned
that
my
suspicions
that
I
could
not
be
of
use
had
been
right
from
the
start.
Further
research
into
sustainability
might
also
ask
the
question,
then:
are
there
projects
that
can’t
be
sustained?
Or
shouldn’t
be?
When
does
‘sustainability’
become
the
maintenance
of
knowledges,
practices,
and
material
structures
that
aren’t
working
for
their
stakeholders,
worse,
are
dominating
or
oppressing
them?37
What
is
the
obligation
of
a
teacher,
researcher,
or
activist
to
sustain
an
infrastructure?
Until
we
have
better
answers
to
these
questions,
we
can
only
do
our
best
to
be
of
use
by
dwelling
and
paying
attention
to
infrastructures,
and
hope
that
the
projects
that
matter
will
stick.
My
sense
is
that
there
is
a
whole
‘underlife’
to
student
projects
as
they
leave
the
classroom
that
is
rich
terrain
to
explore,
a
project
that
is
beyond
the
scope
of
this
dissertation,
but
desperately
needed
as
we
consider
the
sustainability
of
new
media
writing
and
the
infrastructures
that
make
this
sustainability
possible.
37
I
distinguish
between
these
two
terms
in
the
way
that
Young
does
in
her
work
cited
below.
140
Learning
Infrastructures
Better:
More
How
and
Where,
Less
Why,
Please
As
I
close
this
dissertation,
a
voice
inside
my
head
is
saying:
but
I
like
thinking
about
cultural
transformation.
I
know,
little
voice.
It’s
exciting,
and
it’s
what
we’re
trained,
as
people
that
come
to
this
document
by
way
the
humanities,
to
think
about.
That
and
the
affordances
of
various
writing/communication
media,
of
course.
As
I
close
this
dissertation
I
find
my
thoughts
echoed
by
Bump
Halbritter’s
attempt
at
“exploring
and
establishing
means
for
realizing
common
writing
goals”
(5).
As
he
explains
in
the
introduction
to
his
forthcoming
book,
Mics,
Cameras,
Symbolic
Action:
Audio-Visual
Rhetoric
for
Writing
Teachers:
This
is
a
pedagogy
for
developing
writers,
not
for
perfecting
forms
of
writing.
It
acknowledges
openly
that
definitions
for
what
writing
is
are
in
rapid
flux.
And
it
also
acknowledges
that
writing
may
be
understood
as
the
various
actions
and
products
of
writers.
By
looking
and
listening
to
what
writers
do,
we
may
be
able
to
‘hit
upon’
a
definition
of
writing,
eventually,
that
‘so
sums
things
up
that
all
the
properties
attributed
to
the
thing
defined
[writing]
can
be
as
though
‘derived’
from
the
definition’
(Burke,
LSA
3).
(5-‐6)
Besides
thinking
about
redefining
writing
as
new
media
writing
with
communities,
this
dissertation
has
been
about
actions
and
products
I
have
encountered
in
various
writing
situations
over
the
past
several
years.
And
it
has
been
about
trying
to
articulate
common
writing
goals,
and
about
the
development
of
those
goals,
a
process
that
will
continue
long
into
the
future.
The
technologies,
modes,
and
genres
of
writing
are
changing
rapidly,
as
are
the
contexts,
networks,
and
people
that
sustain
these
resources.
What
brings
all
these
141
components
together
in
various
networks,
communities,
organizations,
and
institutions,
what
builds
infrastructures,
in
other
words,
is
what
has
driven
the
impetus
behind
this
dissertation
from
the
start:
writing
and
writers.
Writers
are
writing
infrastructures,
and
infrastructures
sustain
writing.
Writing
is
both
verb
and
noun,
action
and
product,
but
so
is
‘infrastructure’
(though
it
makes
a
crappy
verb).
Writing
infrastructures
both
contain
the
action
of
writing
and
enable
it,
both
contain
resources
for
remixing
into
products,
and
sustain
(or
fail
to
sustain)
those
products.
And
to
extend
this
line
of
thinking
one
further
remove:
don’t
cultures
sustain,
and
aren’t
they
sustained
by,
infrastructures?
How
do
we
learn
to
write
but
in
networks
of
other
writers
and
among
resources
available
to
us
for
writing?
How
do
we
grow,
shape,
and
transform
the
communities
and
cultures
we
define
as
ours
but
to
contribute
our
knowledges,
practices,
and
material
resources
in
tacit,
mundane,
and
innovative
ways?
How
do
we
travel
from
one
writing
network
to
the
next,
one
writing
infrastructure
to
the
next,
but
by
tactically
mobilizing
the
knowledges,
practices,
and
material
resources
from
one
writing
situation
to
the
next?
Such
a
view
of
‘culture’
would
be,
as
Lindquist
would
have
it,
“concerned
with
examining
how
the
meanings
attached
to
resources
are
produced
locally,
through
the
emics
of
cultural
practice”
(7,
emphasis
hers).
Perhaps,
like
new
media
writing
infrastructures,
the
cultures
of
new
media
writing
are
produced
from
the
ground
up,
through
emics,
or
meaning-‐making
practices.
Right
now
we
have
a
great
idea
of
the
etic
or
most
expansive
view
of
new
media
writing,
of
its
technologies
and
modes,
but
do
we
understand
how
new
media
writers
make
meaning
through
situated
practice
by
mobilizing
these
resources?
I
believe
this
is
where
our
real
power
lies
as
experts
in
new
forms
of
communication
and
writing:
in
the
situated
space
of
142
writing
infrastructures,
in
the
places
where
knowledge
is
mobilized
as
a
rhetorical
action
and
can
thus
affect
such
important
layers
of
cultural
transformation
as
who
gets
represented,
who
doesn’t,
and
who
our
messages
reach.
I
believe
our
real
cultural
power
is
infrastructural
power,
in
other
words,
and
it’s
high
time
we
made
the
most
of
it.
143
APPENDICES
144
APPENDIX
A
INTERVIEW
SCRIPTS
Interview
Script
for
Student
Interview:
Instructions
Prior
to
Interview:
I’d
like
you
to
bring
with
you
to
our
first
interview
two
pieces
of
media—documents,
bulletins,
posters,
brochures,
photographs,
videos,
tapes,
CDs,
computer
files,
website
addresses,
etc.—that
you
think
represent
the
kinds
of
media
you
create
or
use
most
often.
One
should
be
more
from
your
personal
life
and
one
more
from
your
professional
life
(or
this
can
be
different
aspects
of
the
same
media).
When
I
meet
with
you
to
conduct
and
record
the
interview,
I
will
ask
you
about
the
things
you
brought.
Interview
Script:
Phase
One:
Introduction
to
be
read
to
participants
As
was
mentioned
during
the
informed
consent
process,
this
study
will
investigate
1)
multimodal
composing
processes,
2)
how
students
discuss
and
collaborate
on
their
projects
during
composing,
and
3)
what
infrastructures
(such
as
MSU,
local
community
organizations,
the
class
itself)
are
involved
with
these
processes38.
In
order
to
begin
to
understand
some
of
the
norms
you’re
coming
into
the
class
with,
I’d
like
to
ask
you
some
questions
about
the
way
you
have
used/made
media
in
the
past.
Phase
Two:
Questions
•
What
are
the
purposes
of
each
of
these
pieces
of
media?
•
Why/how
did
you
initially
acquire/make
these
media?
Can
you
tell
me
the
38
Notice
that
at
the
time
I
conducted
these
interviews
I
was
using
the
term
multimodal
and
multimedia.
My
results
indicated
that
these
terms
were
imprecise,
given
the
phenomenon
I
was
observing,
and
that
‘new
media’
was
a
better
term.
The
most
full
discussion
of
why
I
feel
this
term
is
better
can
be
found
in
Chapter
5.
145
story
of
how
you
got
them/made
them
starting
with
how
you
first
thought
about
wanting
them/wanting
to
make
them?
What
caused
you
to
think
that
these
kinds
of
things
might
be
good
for
you
to
have/make?
•
At
what
moment
did
you
feel
that
these
media
had
become
useful?
Can
you
describe
the
first
time
you
remember
them
being
useful?
What
are
they
supposed
to
do
for
the
people
that
use
them/interact
with
them?
How
does
this
relate
to
how
you
use
them/interact
with
them?
•
Are
there
other
pieces
of
media
you
thought
of
bringing,
but
didn’t?
What
do
they
do
for
you?
What
are
their
purposes?
Why
did
you
first
think
of
getting
them/making
them?
At
what
point
did
they
become
useful?
•
Where
do
you
lie
on
the
spectrum
from
media
user
to
maker?
What
about
the
spectrum
from
personal
to
professional?
Do
you
use
media
more
for
personal
or
professional
purposes
or
some
combination,
would
you
say?
Who
do
you
usually
use
media
with,
or
do
you
use
them
by
yourself
more?
•
In
general,
what
kind
of
media-‐user/maker
would
you
say
that
you
are?
Why
would
you
say
you
use/make
media
like
these?
•
How
will
the
media
project
you’re
going
to
be
working
on
in
this
class
relate
to
what
kind
of
media
user/maker
you
already
are,
do
you
think?
What
do
you
hope
to
add
to
the
organization
you’ll
be
working
with
this
semester
given
what
we’ve
talked
about
concerning
the
reasons
you
use/make
media
like
these?
Group
Interview
Script:
Phase
One:
Introduction
to
be
read
to
participants
As
has
been
mentioned
before,
this
study
is
investigating
the
ways
students
express
norms
for
making
multimodal
writing
projects
with
community
partners
as
part
of
a
service-‐
learning
class.
In
order
to
begin
to
make
sure
that
I’m
correctly
identifying
the
norms
you’ve
expressed
during
your
composing
sessions
and
during
meetings
with
your
community
partner,
I’d
like
to
show
you
some
of
the
footage
I
captured
of
you
this
semester,
and
then
ask
you
some
questions
about
it.
Phase
Two:
Questions
•
Can
we
start
by
all
of
you
telling
the
story
of
how
the
creation
of
your
multimedia
project
went
this
semester?
What
was
the
initial
idea
for
the
project?
How
did
it
turn
out?
Feel
free
to
point
to
aspects
of
the
project
or
the
video
footage
I
showed
you
to
highlight
your
story.
146
•
Overall:
do
you
feel
that
the
video
footage
I
showed
you
was
representative
of
your
composing
processes
while
working
on
this
project?
What,
if
anything,
did
I
not
represent
that
you
felt
was
important?
Why
was
that
thing
important
for
your
process?
•
How
do
you
feel
your
experiences
in
this
class
compare
to
your
experiences
using/making
media
in
the
past?
Was
there
anything
that
you
did
that
was
highly
related
to
some
experience
you
had
in
the
past
with
media?
Was
there
anything
you
did
in
this
class
that
was
completely
new?
•
In
general:
how
has
your
work
this
semester
with
each
other
affected
the
way
you
think
about
media
and
how
it’s
used
by
people
like
yourselves,
if
at
all?
•
How
do
you
think
your
media
project
might
be
used
in
the
future?
How
would
you
like
it
to
be
used,
if
you
could
imagine
any
possibility
for
it,
and
what
might
get
in
the
way
of
this
possibility?
Do
you
have
any
ideas
about
what
it
might
take
to
continue
the
project
in
the
future?
147
APPENDIX
B
CODING
SCHEME
Bin
Indicator
Tags
Types
of
Data
Expected
Modes
used
while
Participants
mention
Prod:
MentM
Footage
from
working
with
a
specific
mode
in
individual
student
production
the
context
of
the
interviews
technologies
production
of
their
project
Participants
mention
Prod:
MenT
Footage
from
a
specific
technology
community
partner
in
the
context
of
the
meetings
production
of
their
project
Participants
use
a
Prod:
UseM
specific
mode
to
Footage
from
composing
sessions
produce
their
project
Participants
use
a
Prod:
UseT
specific
technology
148
Footage
from
group
interview
to
produce
their
project
Student
artifacts:
e-‐
mails;
in-‐class
writings;
major
projects
2,
3,
and
5;
cover
letters
for
major
projects;
Research
journal
reflections
about
things
that
happened
in
class
or
were
otherwise
unrecorded
Moments
of
Participants
make
an
collaboration
Col:
Sugg
[SAME]
explicit
suggestion
Col:
Quest
regarding
their
project
Participants
ask
a
question
regarding
their
project
that
functions
as
an
149
implicit
suggestion
Participants
Col:
Delib
Col:
Util
Del:
MentM
[SAME]
Del:
MentT
deliberate
suggestions
regarding
their
project
(more
than
simple
yes/no)
Participants
utilize
each
others’
suggestions
regarding
their
project
Modes
circulated
via
Participants
mention
a
delivery
a
specific
mode
in
technology
the
context
of
the
delivery
of
their
project
Participants
mention
a
specific
technology
in
the
context
of
the
delivery
of
their
project
150
Participants
use
Del:
UseM
Del:
UseT
specific
modes
to
deliver
their
project
Participants
use
specific
technologies
to
deliver
their
project
151
APPENDIX
C
CODING
TALLY
Eric
1
Tally
Name
#
%
of
of
tag
counted
total
in
all
tags
for
video
this
data
group
120
21
Prod:
MentM
Prod:
46
8
%
Tag
#
%
Col:
115
20
Del:
3
Less
Col:
MentM
43
7
Quest
17
3
UseM
Prod:
#
Sugg
MentT
Prod:
Tag
Col:
7
Col:
Util
13
2
0
0
0
0
MentT
138
24
Delib
42
Del:
than
1
Del:
UseM
41
7
UseT
Del:
UseT
Total
225
39
337
58
16
3
Grand
578
%
Of
60
total
Total
tags
for
Tags
152
group
for
Both
Groups
4-H
Tally
Name
#
%
of
of
tag
counted
total
in
all
tags
for
video
this
data
group
64
17
Prod:
MentM
Prod:
70
18
%
Tag
#
%
Col:
84
22
Del:
11
3
7
2
0
0
Col:
MentM
35
9
Quest
6
1.5
UseM
Prod:
#
Sugg
MentT
Prod:
Tag
Col:
MentT
87
23
Delib
6
1.5
Col:
Util
Del:
Del:
UseM
11
3
UseT
Del:
UseT
Total
146
38
217
57
18
5
Grand
381
%
Of
30
total
for
Total
Tags
153
group
for
Both
Groups
All
Tags
Tally
Name
#
%
of
of
tag
counted
total
in
all
Tag
#
%
Tag
#
%
tags
Col:
199
21
Del:
1
14
2
20
video
data
Prod:
184
19
MentM
Prod:
Sugg
116
12
MentT
Prod:
78
8
Quest
23
2
UseM
Prod:
Col:
MentM
Col:
MentT
225
23
Delib
48
5
Col:
Util
Del:
Del:
UseM
52
5
UseT
Del:
UseT
Total
371
39
554
58
3
34
Grand
959
total
154
APPENDIX
D
STUDENT
SKILLS
WORKSHEET
WRA 135: Student Skills Worksheet
Directions: The following set of questions asks you to account for and evaluate the skillsets you
already possess and will develop further develop over the course of the semester. You are expected to
advance individually and to make contributions to your team in three areas:
Technologies and Media
Writing and Research Processes
Social Skill Sets
At the beginning of the course, your instructors will assist you in answering those questions that
fall under each skill set areas. At the end of the course, you will be asked to review your initial answers
to these questions and assess your growth in these skill set areas.
You will receive credit for filling out this form. This form will not be used to evaluate you for a
major grade; your instructors will use it to place you with an appropriate community partner, based your
responses and their responses to the community partner assessment form. You and your instructors will
also use this form to reflect on your skill set development throughout the course.
Community Partner Preferences:
List your top three choices of community partners to work with this semester. For each one, be
sure to include a sentence or two explaining why you think you would be a good fit with that community
partner, given what you’ve written below (DO THIS LAST).
1.
2.
3.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Please give the following personal information so that we may contact you.
NAME AND RANK
Give your name and rank (i.e., freshman, sophomore, etc.).
MAJOR
Give your actual or prospective major.
EMAIL/ CONTACT INFO
Give your MSU email address, other relevant contact information, and indicate
the best way to reach you.
155
Technologies and Media
In the area of Technologies and Media, you should indicate what technologies and
types of media you have worked with before and what your level of mastery is which
each of these technologies and media. Technologies and media include but are not
limited to: desktop publishing software (brochures, newsletters, powerpoints, letters,
posters, etc.); web design programs (websites, links, videos, databases, etc.); visual
design software (video, photo, layout).
Assessment of Technology and Media Level of Mastery
Answer the following questions at the beginning of the course.
What technologies and types of media can you already produce (out of the ones listed in the above
paragraph)? How have you used these technologies and types of media in past projects (in school,
work, home, or community)?
Indicate your level of mastery with each of these technology and types of media listed in the above
paragraph (and explain what tasks you can do with these skills). Which of these technologies and types
of media do you want to develop a higher level of mastery with this semester and why?
WRITING AND RESEARCH PROCESS
In the area of Writing and Research Processes, you should indicate to what extent you
are able to plan, research, draft, and polish written products. You should also indicate to
what extent you are familiar and proficient with academic research techniques: this
includes (but is not limited to) searching for particular kinds of information at the MSU
library, online, or elsewhere, or interviewing, surveying, or conducting focus groups.
Assessment of Writing and Research Process Level of Mastery
Answer the following questions at the beginning of the course.
What kinds of written products have you written before (letters, essays, captions, text for online
documents like webpages, movie scripts or other text)?
What kinds of written products can you produce with a high level of mastery? A medium level of mastery?
A low level of mastery?
Indicate your level of mastery at completing each stage of the writing process (including inventing,
arranging, revising, and delivering written products). Which of these writing skills do you want to develop
a higher level of mastery with this semester and why?
What research skills do you already have (out of the ones listed in the above paragraph)? How have you
used these skills in past projects (in school, work, home, or community)?
156
Indicate your level of mastery with each of the research skills listed in the above paragraph (and explain
what tasks you can do with these skills). Which of these research skills do you want to develop a higher
level of mastery with this semester and why?
SOCIAL SKILL SETS
In the area of SSS, you should indicate your level of mastery using the following social
skills: collaboration, communication, interpersonal skills, etc.
Assessment of Social Skill Sets
Answer the following questions at the beginning of the course.
What social skills do you already have (out of the ones listed in the above paragraph)? How have you
used these skills in past projects (in school, work, home, or community)?
Indicate your level of mastery with each of the social skills listed in the above paragraph (and explain
what tasks you can do with these skills). Which of these social skills do you want to develop a higher
level of mastery with this semester and why?
157
APPENDIX
E
COMMUNITY
PARTNER
NEEDS
ASSESSMENT
WRA 135: Community Partner Needs Assessment
Directions:
The following set of questions asks you to assess the sets of skills that you and your
organization will most need students to develop. Students are expected to advance
individually and to make contributions to their team in three areas:
Technologies and Media
Writing and Research Processes
Social Skill Sets
At the beginning of the course, we will assist you in answering those questions labeled
“Assessment of Organizational Needs” for each of the above categories. At the end of the
course, you will be asked to review your initial answers to these questions and to
complete those questions located in the sequence labeled “Final Feedback for Individual
Students” for each of the individual students you worked with.
This form will not be used to evaluate students, but students will get credit for doing their
own self-assessments and for responding to your feedback for them at the end of the
semester. This form will also be used to place students with you at the beginning of the
semester.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Please give the following personal information so that we may contact you.
NAME AND TITLE
Give your name and title.
158
ORGANIZATION
Give the full name of your organization.
EMAIL/ CONTACT INFO
Give your email address, phone number, and the best way to reach you.
Technologies and Media
In the area of Technologies and Media, you should indicate what technologies and
types of media will be required to produce the project students will be making with your
organization. Technologies and media include but are not limited to: desktop publishing
software (brochures, newsletters, powerpoints, letters, posters, etc.); web design
programs (websites, links, videos, databases, etc.); visual design software (video,
photo, layout).
Assessment of Organizational Needs
Answer the following questions at the beginning of the course.
What projects will students be working on, and which of the above will be required for the project
students will be working on? Are you familiar with any of these? Do you, as an organization, have access
to any of these?
What level of mastery will students need at the beginning of the semester to begin work on this project,
and what level will they need to be at by the end of the semester?
WRITING PROCESS
In the area of Writing and Research Processes, you should indicate to what extent your
project will require students to plan, research, draft, and polish written products (what
kinds of written products does the project require and by what process would you like
these products produced?) You should also indicate what kind of feedback you plan to
give students on their projects in order to improve them, as well as what feedback you
expect from them. Research techniques you might want to let students know you need
from them may include searching for particular kinds of information at the MSU library,
online, or elsewhere, or interviewing, surveying, or conducting focus groups with
members of your organization.
159
Assessment of Organizational Needs
Answer the following questions at the beginning of the course.
What kinds of written products will your project require (letters, essays, captions, text for online
documents like webpages, movie scripts or other text)?
In general, what kinds of writing skills do you think these products will require students to begin the
semester with, and what kinds will they need to develop over the course of the semester?
What research techniques do you think will be required of students for this project?
What research skills should students begin the semester with and which ones should they develop over
the course of the semester?
How will you give students feedback on their project, and what kind of input would you like from them
about it?
SOCIAL SKILL SETS
In the area of SSS, you should indicate how you would like students to work with you
and with community members. This can include collaboration, communication,
interpersonal skills, etc.
Assessment of Organizational Needs
Answer the following questions at the beginning of the course.
How would you prefer students collaborate with you/community members, communicate with
you/community members, and in general interact with you/community members.
What should students be able to do at the beginning of the semester in these areas, and what should
they be able to do by the end?
160
APPENDIX
F
TEAM
4-‐H
NEW
MEDIA
PROJECT
FINAL
DRAFT
AND
COVER
LETTER
Figure
3:
Screenshot
of
4-H’s
Website
Note:
smaller
text
not
necessary
for
the
interpretation
of
this
figure.
5/3/2010
Hey
Dave,
We
know
you
possess
skills
to
update
the
website,
but
just
in
case
you
need
some
advice,
here
are
the
basics.
All
the
steps
described
below
can
be
done
with
any
web
editing
program,
even
notepad.
161
Index
• Changing
top
logo
◦ In
the
images
folder,
there
is
an
image
called
“image08”.
This
is
the
top
logo.
This
can
be
changed
to
fit
into
the
top
space
of
the
site.
For
example,
rename
the
image
you
want
to
use
as
“image08”
and
put
it
there.
Be
sure
that
it
is
a
.png
file.
◦ To
remove
the
4-‐H
text
that
is
already
there,
you
can
remove
it
by
going
into
index.html
and
contact.html
and
doing
it
through
there.
◦ If
you
want
to
place
an
image
of
a
different
file
type
or
name
in
that
spot,
go
into
style.css,
find
“image08.png”
and
replace
it
with
the
name
of
the
image
you'd
like
to
use
(and
file
type)
while
making
sure
that
it
is
located
in
the
images
folder.
• Twitter
Feed
◦ Go
to
http://twitter.com/widgets
where
you
can
customize
your
own
“widget”
for
the
site.
◦
Search
for
“)
and
delete
(or
paste
over
the
code
provided
by
Twitter
in
the
previous
step.)
• “Bottom”
logo
◦ Same
procedure
as
changing
the
top
logo,
except
the
image
is
called
“image04.jpg”.
However,
you
will
want
to
edit
the
preexisting
image
by
integrating
the
logo
you
want
into
it,
as
part
of
“image04.jpg”
contains
a
design
element
of
the
site.
• Content
◦ We
trust
that
you
know
how
to
edit
the
content.
Contact
• Image
◦ Just
make
sure
that
the
image
is
in
the
/images
folder
and
you
should
be
good.
The
current
image
is
called
“dave.jpg”,
and
the
location/name
of
the
file
can
be
changed
by
editing
contact.html
• Content
◦ Same
as
content
in
index.html
Additional
Pages
• The
easiest
way
to
do
this
is
open
one
of
the
existing
pages
(index,
contact)
then
choose
“save
as”
from
the
file
menu
and
name
it
something
different
while
saving
it
in
the
same
place.
• Then
in
all
of
the
current
pages,
find
the
list
that
contains
all
of
the
navigation
terms
in
it
(find
Home)
and
place
the
name
of
the
page
in
quotations
after
the
a
href
tag.
Most
of
them
have
“#”
in
place
of
a
url.
Other
Pertinent
Information
• We
found
the
template
at
http://www.freelayouts.com/templates/Efflorescence-‐
Green
• The
author
of
the
template
has
a
Creative
Commons
2.5
license
on
it,
which
means
you
are
free
to
change
the
site
and
distribute
it,
but
you
must
attribute
the
original
work
your
“remixing”
is
based
on
to
them.
You
can
find
the
copyright
information
162
on
the
bottom
of
each
page.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/
Feel
free
to
email
us
if
you
have
any
more
questions
(we're
more
useful
than
Guiseppe),
Alex
Xxxxxx
xxxxxxx@msu.edu
Emily
Xxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx@msu.edu
Kirk
Xxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx@yahoo.com
Shalin
Xxxx
xxxxxxx@msu.edu
163
APPENDIX
G
TEAM
ERIC
1
NEW
MEDIA
PROJECT
FINAL
DRAFT
AND
COVER
LETTER
The
final
video
can
be
found
at:
https://www.msu.edu/~gettogui/Eric1Project.mov
Ivory Xxxxx, Valerie Xxxx, Courtney Xxxxxx
Guiseppe Getto
WRA 135 sec. 1
3 May 2010
Group Cover Letter
Over the semester we have created this project and while doing so we have taken various
steps to produce the video that you will be receiving. We began by doing a project where we
worked as a group to develop a plan on what we wanted the video to entail based on the types of
things we discussed with you and how you wanted the final project to look. With this plan we
were able to research the types of media that members of our intended audience, being parents
and teachers, would prefer. Once we had all of the developmental ideas and data figured out we
were able to begin the process of creating our video. Collecting footage was a process that
gradually took place throughout the semester. Our intention was to focus on one big project from
beginning to end for each of our classes. The purpose of this was to show the creative
development of the students. With the footage collected, we imported it onto the macbook our
experiment with iMovie began.
The first step was we went through our couple hours of footage and edited out useless
footage like blank clips or accidental recording of the ground. With the workable clips, we
164
arranged them into sections and placed them in an order that continued the flow of the movie, yet
maintained the essence of collage. We then played around with all of the effects that make the
video worthwhile to watch. We experimented with transitions, speed of the clips, and certain
audio aspects. We had to find music that was free, yet without copyright. We found the royalty
free music website; http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-‐free/index.html?genre=Funk,
which
provided
us
with
a
simple
way
of
finding
music,
with
its
various
genres
and
songs.
Once
we
found
the
songs
that
fit
the
sections
of
the
video,
we
had
to
transition
the
songs
and
fade
out
the
background
audio.
After
hours
of
editing
the
video
finally
was
complete.
Knowing
that
creating
videos
was
something
you
enjoyed
we
have
given
you
our
project
along
with
all
of
the
footage
we
collected.
Some
future
project
ideas
could
be
to
make
a
chaotic
collage
of
all
your
classes
or
a
clip
talking
about
why
the
children
enjoy
art
class
using
the
interviews
that
Ivory
did
in
the
hallway
with
your
fourth
grade
class.
Those
are
just
some
ideas
that
we
felt
the
intended
audience
would
enjoy
based
on
the
research
that
we
did.
Some
ideas
we
have
for
project
we
did
would
be
to
put
it
on
YouTube.
You
could
also
put
it
on
the
channel
21
broadcasting
station
because
we
tried
our
best
to
ensure
that
it
was
not
copyrighted
in
anyway.
Something
the
parents
might
enjoy
is
a
distributed
DVD
that
they
could
take
for
memorabilia
of
their
children’s
elementary
school
art
process.
Overall
this
process
was
an
interesting
experience
and
we
hope
you
enjoy
the
final
product
as
much
as
we
enjoyed
creating
it.
165
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