A major part of the internet is their interactivity. From clickable links to playing videos, all parts of the web have this interactivity. It keeps the reader engaged and interested in the writing as a whole.
Where else does digital rhetoric apply?
With today’s society’s greater use and dependency on technology, there will be ways to use digital rhetoric in other studies. Doug Eyman’s “Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric” gives some such examples of this. These examples are focusing on human-computer interaction.
HCI comes from a very different discipline and perspective compared to digital rhetoric but are closely related. One key connection is the importance of an interface. For digital rhetoric, it serves as the nexus point where the virtual and the material come together.
As such HCI can serve as a jumping-off point to bring digital rhetoric into other studies. It already draws upon psychology, cognitive science, and sociology but is based on computer science. Bluntly, is the study of people, computer technology, and how these two influence each other. It serves as the framework and provides the tools and systems that support new media, networks, and other digital applications that digital rhetoric wants to study.
What can digital rhetoric help us understand?
Interactivity is a key point in this. Both systems are used in technological communications and a sense of interactivity. The interface mentioned above is a key point, serving as the base for the said model.
There’s also the parallel of user empowerment in both issues. Rhetoric is concerned with power, knowledge, and access while HCI uses user-centric empowerment.
So what can digital rhetoric help us understand? Well, it can focus on how people use technological systems to complete a range of tasks. They can also see how the desires of both the writer and user affect each other. Interactivity is a key part of this as the user can interact with the writing and change things to their liking, turning them into the writer.
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