Digital rhetoric is more complex than digital literacy. How can one understand how term works and how it can be applied today? There isn’t one answer that fits all solutions. Over the years many theorists have put their own spin on the concept.
Theorists Approach To Rhetoric
Richard Lanham was one scholar who chose to begin making connections between computer mediated communication and rhetoric. He focuses a lot on literary studies. Lanham’s theory implied that digital rhetoric comes from a subset of rhetorical studies.
Other theorists before Lanhams time studied the idea of hypertexts Which is linking electronic documents within another network. Hypertexts are limited in the ways of how it could be narrowed into a specific form. Hypertexts is an important precursor of digital rhetoric.
Doug Brent begins to shift the focus of hypertext theory to digital rhetoric. Brent connected the affordances of the digital networks to the current theories of rhetorical ones. Rhetoric as a term itself has expanded pass its original meaning.Brent created ‘New Rhetoric” which combines interaction, conversation, and joint construction of knowledge.
As all this happens the digital media world is growing at a quick pace. The new digital media has constraints against us but also can help us. This then can help to support an enable the change of the old rhetoric of persuasion into new digital rhetoric. Which will then encourage self-expression, creative collaboration, and participation.
My Opinion On Digital Rhetoric
Even though I am still having a hard time processing this information. I still don’t quiet understand it based on what I read. The idea and theories and digital rhetoric slowly starts to make sense. While it is filled with a bunch of context that does happen on the background as any people continue to inquire about how it works and what it means for the texts in digital media. I thought that for the most part that hypertexts are the same as hyper links.
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