Blog entries written throughout the spring 2014 semester to fulfill requirements for ENGL 894 Theories of Networks at ODU.
I read and responded to Amy’s ENGL894 Locklear Case Study 2 Outline and to Jenny’s Exploring the Flow of Information in LLL via Rhetorical Situation and Genre Theory. Each took a different approach to the application of theories to object of study from each other and from the one I took in my outline, and…
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I believe I follow the broad strokes of Latour’s (2005) argument in Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory pretty clearly, but I find the detail he provides in places extraneous and, to be honest, a bit pompous and flippant. Latour recognizes this about himself, and suggests it’s intentional: “I have completed what I promised…
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In this week’s mindmap, I added nodes for hypertext theory and Bruno Latour’s introduction to Active-Network Theory (ANT), and I connected hypertext as a potential operationalized representation of ANT. Given the ubiquity of hypertext (or, more accurately, hypermedia) in today’s lived experience, I connected hypertext theory to an operationalized theory and a theorization. I don’t…
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Finding common ground in this week’s disparate readings was difficult. More precisely, Latour’s introduction to actor-network-theory (ANT) had almost nothing to do with reading from Joyce and Johnson-Eilola, other than the fact that hypertext as object might be an instantiated mediator within a collective. More precisely, the hypertext itself may function as a trace of…
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This rubric really is a social construct: class members collaborated (with a great deal of momentum generated by Maury’s contributions) on the beginnings of our rubric. While each of us likely added or removed bits of the collaborative work to personalize the rubric, I’m proud to be part of this socially constructed, class-sourced rubric development…
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In this week’s mindmap I found myself struggling to remember where things were to which I wanted to connect CHAT. I added a node for Prior et al. (representing the core text and the various operational representations included in the Kairos Remediating the Canons topic) and for CHAT, with its three basic areas of focus: literate activity…
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Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) opens wide the theory of composition to the laminated materiality, space, and time of rhetoric, elements missing from the classical rhetorical canon that focuses primarily on the rhetor. “CHAT offers a richer map of activity. Where the classical canons mapped the situational, productive acts of a rhetor, this CHAT map points…
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In this week’s mindmap, I started thinking about big-picture issues, like operationalization and agency. Theorized vs. Operationalized In terms of operationalization, I added nodes for Theorized and Operationalized, relating to each of the theories we’ve discussed to date. I found Hardware/Network descriptions matched Genre Tracing as operationalized, while the other theories were, as the name…
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I had the opportunity to respond to Chvonne and Leslie’s case studies. Chvonne applied rhetorical situation to Snapchat, and Leslie applied hardware theory to the Noel Studio. Each application made accessible their object of study in useful, helpful, even utilitarian ways: from Chvonne’s analysis I am convinced that I should download Snapchat as a different,…
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Introduction: A Brief Overview of Google Analytics Google Analytics consists of two main components: Google-programmed Javascript code embedded on each page within a website “which collects and sends visitor activity to your Google Analytics account” (“How Analytics Impacts,” 2014) and the reporting mechanism connected to the Javascript code where visitor activity is collected and displayed…
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