draft

Groups will look at a selection of rhetorical axes in weblogs. These may include

• genres of postings
• invention techniques for writing on the fly
• use of extra-textual affordances (sidebars, blogrolls, pics)
• construction of online persona
• ...

After an overview of weblogs, each group will focus on one affordance for a week and present the results of their findings in class.

Project: Define - or further refine - a rhetorical axis you see in weblogs (examples: the extent which the present a mediated / unmediated consideration of events; construction of an online persona; use as confessionals, meditative space, commonplace book; use of invention techniques such as lists;...) Collect examples / data on this axis for a week. Then, generate a few tentative plans for how you want to represent the data you have collected. We'll hold a workshop in which we discuss theses plans and how to go about realizing them. Productions might include brochures, foldouts, skits, blog pages, ... (ref Shipka, "Multimodal Task-Based Framework," CCC 57.2 Dec 2005.)

Categories: Project