One move that Eyman declares as the most important in framing new media is ecology. This means that media is not bound to a specific format. Unlike print or film, it thrives on interconnection. New media has networks of text, images, sound, and more. This interaction flows between users and systems; it is networked. This framing of new media is fascinating to me because it shows how rhetoric is dynamic. It occurs across interfaces and is not linear or isolated. New media also shows depth and provides meaning. It is linked to an ecology because this rhetoric is constructing an ecosystem of experience.
Multimodality
Eyman loves to showcase multimodality as a central theme in new media; as he should because of how it operates. Traditional rhetoric is beneficial for written and spoken word, but not exclusionary. Digital spaces though involve more–movement, sound, images, and interactivity. It involves composition. Again this is interesting because it blurs the line of what “writing” entails. In a sense, to Eyman, writing, in any form, equals skill. Why? Because “writing” in digital spaces can mean being fluent in visual rhetoric and the affordances of technology itself. Designers communicate through their digital portfolios and they skillfully design in a way to ensure that users will engage.
Interfaces Shape Text
Eyman encourages his readers to think about the implications of interfaces within new media. He wants us to remember that new media is not neutral. These interfaces (software, algorithms, code) shape digital text. We interact with them based on constraint participation. This is based on how we’ve interacted with them before. This is the amount of power we are given. Eyman emphasized the need to remember that reciprocity is the foundation of digital rhetoric. The ecology of which new media has built is multimodal, networked, and power-laden. How we learn to navigate these conditions shows the awareness we have.
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