This week's readings in 691 are really useful. I'm glad we are ending our spate of reading for 91 with the collection _Digital Writing Research_. I think the framing of this project by McKee and DeVoss is really important. Their introduction is extremely useful, and I found Porter's preface helpful as well. I like that Porter does not let readers off the hook--he demands that the digital be given its due inside the field and outside as well. I will do some hopping and skipping around to try to touch on some key points.
I also want to point out that as we search for an Asst Professor in composition that Porter's preface to the book reminded me of all that the terms and expectations that composition carries with it and also how that is shifting:
"The term 'composition' signifies our particular interest in composing processes and also our affiliation with composition studies; it identifies what has long been a primary research locale for the field--the first-year college composition course. But the shift to he word 'writing' (which has been happening for some time now) reflects more accurately what our field has actually been doing: examining writing practices across numerous academic, public, and professional spaces, not just college classrooms. The ambiguity of the term 'writing' is also an advantage: it could refer to the text itself, or tot he process of creating the text" (xviii).
He goes on to point out that writing is an "action." We write to" do something." So the field's research explores all of these dimensions. Then he goes on to discuss the shift that "digital" brings, a "dramatic shift from the analog and print world to a new kind of writing space altogether" (xviii).
What is included in the digital:
"computer mediated technology" but also "technology--as cultural space" and as "technology-as production-space" (xviii). Porter wants readers to think beyond technology as a "tool," which is the language that is deployed far too often when describing digital work.
McKee and DeVoss in their introduction lay out a definition of digital writing research that demonstrates the array of spaces and actions that are being referred to:
1) "computer-generated, computer-based, and/or computer-delivered documents;
2) computer-based text production practices" (text is referred to broadly and includes a variety of artifacts;
3) "the interactions of people using digital technologies (communities and spaces)" (3).
These venues incite us to think through the methodological challenges and ethical dilemmas (Kirsch) that we might face Their list of eight bulleted sets of questions on p. 4 are particularly insightful. I find myself trying to answer each question in light of the rest of the book.
I'll have more to say, but this is a start for now to get me into the swim of laying out some of the conceptual shifts and methodological challenges this book is posing.
What strikes me as I reread the essays for this week is how much our field has made some of these questions invisible as well as visible. What have we taken for granted as we "move around" in digital spaces and yet don't always account for those spaces as spaces?
We've spent a lot of time talking about communities and concerns about research ethics? But how do digital communities pose similar and different challenges?
2 comments:
I'm struck by your attention to the fact that Porter "doesn't let readers off the hook." It prompted me to consider if that's not the job of the Comp/Rhet scholar? As I read through the preface and intro of Digital Writing Research I wondered if Comp/Rhet scholars aren’t in love with rooting for the underdog (and calling to task the perpetrators of the underdog). I see this recurring theme of “digging” up and looking to add more representation in mainstream practices. I certainly think this could be influenced by own call for more Chicana representation in the academy but I also think that I hear that tenor being echoed in several areas of inquiry. Perhaps this is part of always looking for gaps to fill so that we have a place in the field…
I thought this weeks readings really answered some questions that I have for my own research. Though i can't remember if it's from a piece in the McKey and De Voss collection or an article by McKey and Porter (2008), the distinction of the internet as a space or as a text is a newbie for me. Obviously, disconnecting the human subjects from the production of texts would be an convenient move. . . but thinking about the internet as "space of cultural production" or, as in your post a "technology - as production-space" creates some really confusing/confounding/discouraging realities for researchers in digital realms. For me, this is even more complicated when considering not only human subjects in digital spaces, but human subjects participating in illegal activities in digital spaces. If I were interested in taking up issues of piracy in digital spaces, how would IRBs respond? How would I garner consent? What role would pseudo/anonymity play in my ethics of representation? Do humanist desires to represent the human subject as solitary self even matter in the hybridized digital realm? How else might I talk about these research subjects without falling back on a New Critical internet-as-text position? Anyhow, great read and even more useful introduction to the field I've been wondering about since early on this semester.
Post a Comment