In “Intertextuality” § from Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric, Eyman references Warnick’s intricate realm of intertextuality, specifically exploring its role in online versus offline environments and how web users interpret and are influenced by the texts they encounter in the digital world. In the intertextuality excerpt, Eyman emphasizes that there isn’t reliable evidence that there is any difference between intertextuality online and offline. However, I may have to disagree. I believe that is so much easier to reference intertextuality online than offline. The use of hyperlinks alone simplifies and expands the process of revising the author’s references all one click away. It increases the possibility of readers taking a break from the first text to research the references and gain context.
Writing Online
Almost every website, if not all of them, offers resources to expand the knowledge provided on a particular page. This tool and digital opportunities improve several aspects of being an online reader. Accessibility, availability, reachability, comfort, and speed, all right at one’s fingertips! These factors can not be ignored when comparing intertextuality’s efficacy online or offline. From my own experience, I find online linkage significantly more beneficial. Considering restraints like not having a research library open 24/7, difficulty finding a particular article or extract, and time spent looking for references on outside sources. I know my research techniques improve as technology advances. Nonetheless, evaluating the advantages of online intertextuality, according to Eyman, it is not enough to establish digital rhetoric as a field. On that account, he offers a few suggestions.
How to Improve Digital Intertextuality?
For this reason, Eyman proposes that scholars, members of discourse communities involving digital rhetoric, and literary individuals in the field of digital communication need to “align theories and methods of classical and contemporary rhetoric to networked texts and new media as objects of study, but [they] also need to develop new theories and methods to account for gaps in these more traditional approaches.” Eyman also suggests that in order for experts to come about the blossoming of digital rhetoric as a field, connoisseurs of the history behind web development would need to contribute to the evolution and growth of digital rhetoric as a field. Digital rhetoric will reach its full potential if scholars follow Eyman’s well-rounded critical thinking.
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