After reading what Doug Eyman had to say on the topic of “text” in “Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice,” it got me thinking about what “text” means. In my mind, I automatically think of a book or a piece of literature that has text to read. Moving into the idea of new media, Eyman wants us to expand what we think about the word text. With digital text, a new world of viewing news and outputting information can change. We can also implicate it through rhetoric, using the new text to our advantage.
Beyond words
In our contemporary digital landscape, the term “text” transcends traditional boundaries, manifesting in diverse forms such as text messages, images, videos, and even gifs. When seeking news, we navigate through various platforms-online, television, or print-encountering not just words, but a rich tapestry of textual forms. This multifaceted nature of digital text necessitates the reader’s awareness of the underlying subtext.
Subtext example
It is bright and early in the morning. You either pull out the newspaper or turn on the TV. They are talking about a crime that happened that day. They show a picture; the viewer needs to read through the lines of that text to get more background information without the news outlet directly saying it. The picture is the crime scene, we can see now that it happened in a house, during the day, and there were kids around. This information can be found using subtext. We use the digital format of text and subtext every day in our lives without realizing it.
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