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Topic Overview draft

Web 2.0 is about smart mobs and social software, which re-enlivens the pubic rhetoric of the social commons. Being on the web now means being a social animal, sharing and commenting on stuff: bookmarks, reviews, pictures, friends... With social software, users collectively negotiate knowledge and issues.

This interaction opens up some interesting questions for rhetoric.

What do people share when they share bookmarks or rate their professors? What else do they say?
How is consensus created in user reviews?
When does and how does folksonomy work?
How do we read flickr slideshows? Why do we read flickr slideshows?
Facebook presents ethos as fieldmarks.

So we have this constellation of tools—these new methods of creating, sharing, categorizing, accessing and critiquing content. And in all of the cases, these tools, these resources, lack a central authority or a hierarchy of editorial control. In all of these cases the content and the conclusions and the references are communally negotiated and collaboratively assembled. Three Stars and a Chili Pepper: Social Software, Folksonomy, and User Reviews in the College Context, Joseph Ugoretz.

For our study, we'll place software into four broad areas

Social bookmarking and folksonomy: delicious and BlogLines ?
Social rating and reviews: RateMyProfessor ? and Amazon
Social networking and identity: FaceBook ?, MySpace ?, and dandelife, flickr
Social content creation: blogs, collective blogs, wikis, as typified by Wikipedia

For this class (2006), we'll focus on one or two of these:

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