More than Just Remixing: Uptake and New Media Composition

This article turns to genre theory's recent explorations of uptake, broadly defined as the ways genres interact, as a resource for sketching a pedagogy of shuttling between genres. Using uptake, I intend to reconceptualize multimodal compositions as a means of participating in rhetorical ecologies that consist of transactions between genres instead of thinking of remixes as an end in themselves. In this article, I first define the concept of uptake in detail and discuss its use in rhetorical genre studies. After further illustrating uptake through an analysis of transactions between YouTube parodies and the 2005 German language film Downfall, I discuss existing scholarship in multimodal composition that draws on genre but not the idea of uptake in order to lay a foundation for a pedagogy that highlights the links, feedbacks, and rules that coordinate genres. My aim in the last section is to sketch possibilities for how teachers and students can deploy the concept of uptake as a rhetorical tool to strengthen their awareness of genre and multimodality. In doing this, I hope to reposition multimodal projects as beginnings or midpoints that lead to students’ emersion into public discourse rather than culminations or end goals in themselves. Integrating studies of uptake into writing curricula in this way will help students to make sophisticated rhetorical decisions in the age of media convergence.     

Iconographic Tracking: A Digital Research Method for Visual Rhetoric and Circulation Studies

Drawing on recent scholarship in the disciplines of rhetoric and composition/writing studies and communication, the author advocates for generating new methodologies and methods for studying rhetorical circulation. The author introduces iconographic tracking—a research method that employs traditional qualitative and inventive digital research strategies to investigate the circulation, transformation, and consequentiality of images across genres, mediums, and contexts. As evidence of what this method can afford, the author presents findings from a five-year long case study that employs iconographic tracking to trace Shepard Fairey's now iconic Obama Hope image. To help readers understand some of the theories and philosophies that undergird the method of iconographic tracking, the author also briefly introduces a new materialist approach to rhetorical study. As such, the author points in new directions for visual rhetorical study and circulation studies at large.     

Teaching with Wikis: Toward a Networked Pedagogy

Computers and writing scholarship is increasingly turning towards the network as a potential pedagogical model, one in which writing is intimately connected to its social contexts. The use of wikis in first-year composition classes can support this networked pedagogy. More specifically, due to unique features such as editability and detailed page histories, wikis can challenge a number of traditional pedagogical assumptions about the teaching of writing. This article shows how wikis can challenge assumptions in four categories of interest to composition studies: new media composition, collaborative writing, critical interaction, and online authority. The analysis demonstrates that wikis, while not automatically revolutionary to composition pedagogy, hold significant potential to help facilitate pedagogical changes.     

Mobile communication and political participation in South Korea: Examining the intersections between informational and relational uses

This study aims to extend the literature on mobile communication by demonstrating that multifaceted mobile practices work in coordination with one another to predict enhanced engagement in public life. Using a national survey of adults in South Korea, we show that informational mobile phone use to gather and discuss content about news and public affairs is positively associated with political participation while the corresponding link for relational mobile phone use to enhance strong personal tie relationships being also significant. More importantly, the findings indicate that the two mobile usage patterns interact with each other to explain increased involvement in political activities. However, analysis of the three-way interaction points to a noteworthy caveat, namely that those who are already engaged, by virtue of their perceived capacity to produce desired outcomes in politics (i.e., self-efficacy), are even more likely to obtain motivational benefits from the manifold uses of mobile telephony.     

From smartphones to iPad: Power users’ disposition toward mobile media devices

The spread of mobile media devices (MMDs), such as smartphones and tablet computers, has been markedly rapid around the world in recent years. The diffusion of mobile media technology has turned some early adopters into “power users,” using MMD more innovatively, efficiently and thoroughly than others. Going beyond the research of innovative users and heavy users, this study proposes the concept of power users by investigating the interactions between the power use of MMD and personality attributes, online activities as well as traditional media use. The findings showed that personality attributes were strong predictors for power use, which was also partially predicated by media multitasking and traditional media use. Research in this stream should assist in understanding the diffusion of mobile media technology and its impact on human interaction.     

Reclaiming Experience: The Aesthetic and Multimodal Composition

Recent scholarship points to the rhetorical role of the aesthetic in multimodal composition and new media contexts. In this article, I examine the aesthetic as a rhetorical concept in writing studies and imagine the ways in which this concept can be useful to teachers of multimodal composition. My treatment of the concept begins with a return to the ancient Greek aisthetikos (relating to perception by the senses) in order to discuss the aesthetic as a meaningful mode of experience. I then review European conceptions of the aesthetic and finally draw from John Dewey and Bruno Latour to help shape this concept into a pragmatic and useful approach that can complement multimodal teaching and learning. The empirical approach I construct adds to an understanding of aesthetic experience with media in order to render more transparent the ways in which an audience creates knowledge—or takes and makes meaning—via the senses. Significantly, this approach to meaning making supports learning in digital environments where students are increasingly asked to both produce and consume media convergent texts that combine multiple modalities including sound, image, and user interaction.     

Some like it lots: The influence of interactivity and reliance on credibility

This study has four primary purposes: to investigate the level of interactivity with 15 sources of political information, determine the degree of reliance on each of the sources, assess perceptions of credibility, and compare the strength of interactivity to the strength of reliance on judgments of credibility. This study includes sources that have received little attention in the credibility literature such as social network sites, Twitter, and mobile device applications. Respondents interact with and rely on the sources moderately. Credibility ratings range from moderate to highly credible. Reliance predicts credibility of 14 of 15 sources as compared to interactivity that predicts credibility of just 9 of 15 sources. Interactivity with sources that are inherently collaborative (e.g. Twitter, social media, talk radio) more strongly predicts credibility than interactivity with sources that are more source-to-user based (e.g. CNN, political websites).     

新建高校大学生价值追求与思想政治教育工作策略

随着改革开放步伐成长起来的新建高校青年大学生,在享受着改革开放创造的巨大物质财富的同时,也经历着思想观念的冲突与嬗变,在价值取向、价值选择、价值表达以及价值实现等方面均表现出明显的时代特点和群体特征。针对新建高校青年大学生这些价值追求的新特点、新变化,新建高校思想政治教育工作应采取讲求多样多实的价值取向,体现开放包容的价值选择,强调客观理性的价值表达,注重自我体验的价值实现的工作策略,以理想信念教育为核心,增强新建高校思想政治教育工作的有效性和时效性,引导新建高校青年大学生正确、健康的价值追求。     

新考纲下计算机组成原理教学探索与实践研究

在计算机专业课中,计算机组成原理是一门核心课程,是硬件基础。2009年计算机专业硕士研究生考试同以往有所改变,计算机组成原理作为一门重要的专业课在考试中占有较高的地位。在新考纲下,计算机组成原理的教学与实践问题值得探讨。文章就新考纲下计算机组成原理的教学与实践进行探讨,重点从教学内容,教学方法,教学手段和实践教学等方面提出教学的措施。     

新考纲下计算机组成原理教学探索与实践研究

在计算机专业课中,计算机组成原理是一门核心课程,是硬件基础。2009年计算机专业硕士研究生考试同以往有所改变,计算机组成原理作为一门重要的专业课在考试中占有较高的地位。在新考纲下,计算机组成原理的教学与实践问题值得探讨。文章就新考纲下计算机组成原理的教学与实践进行探讨,重点从教学内容,教学方法,教学手段和实践教学等方面提出教学的措施。     

Networked Participatory Scholarship: Emergent techno-cultural pressures toward open and digital scholarship in online networks

We examine the relationship between scholarly practice and participatory technologies and explore how such technologies invite and reflect the emergence of a new form of scholarship that we call Networked Participatory Scholarship: scholars’ participation in online social networks to share, reflect upon, critique, improve, validate, and otherwise develop their scholarship. We discuss emergent techno-cultural pressures that may influence higher education scholars to reconsider some of the foundational principles upon which scholarship has been established due to the limitations of a pre-digital world, and delineate how scholarship itself is changing with the emergence of certain tools, social behaviors, and cultural expectations associated with participatory technologies.     

Sound matters: Notes toward the analysis and design of sound in multimodal webtexts

In this essay, I draw from approaches in voice, music, theater, and film studies to examine four elements of sound: vocal delivery, music, special effects, and silence. Within this four-part schema, I discuss a variety of frameworks that I hope may serve as resources for those seeking to engage in both the analysis and production of sound in multimodal webtexts. Throughout the essay, I analyze several poetic Flash texts, and I consider the relationship of part-to-whole and whole-to-part when seeking to analyze and compose with multiple modes.     

Networked Press Freedom and Social Media: Tracing Historical and Contemporary Forces in Press‐Public Relations

This paper analyzes how mainstream, online news organizations understand press autonomy in their relationships to audiences. I situate the press in terms of neo‐institutional sociology, seeing its autonomy as a distributed, field‐level phenomenon involving “boundary work” among distributed actors. I then trace press‐audience relations through two historical examples (letters to the editor and ombudsmen), showing how the press has historically both separated itself from and relied upon audiences. Examining eight news organizations' social media policies, I analyze the “inside‐out” and “outside‐in” forces through which the press distinguishes itself from audiences, concluding with a discussion of how such guidelines structure the types of control that news organizations have, or might have, as they use social network sites in their news work.     

Integrating TTF and UTAUT to explain mobile banking user adoption

Due to its advantages such as ubiquity and immediacy, mobile banking has attracted traditional banks’ interests. However, a survey report showed that user adoption of mobile banking was much lower than that of other mobile services. The extant research focuses on explaining user adoption from technology perceptions such as perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, interactivity, and relative advantage. However, users’ adoption is determined not only by their perception of the technology but also by the task technology fit. In other words, even though a technology may be perceived as being advanced, if it does not fit users’ task requirements, they may not adopt it. By integrating the task technology fit (TTF) model and the unified theory of acceptance and usage of technology (UTAUT), this research proposes a mobile banking user adoption model. We found that performance expectancy, task technology fit, social influence, and facilitating conditions have significant effects on user adoption. In addition, we also found a significant effect of task technology fit on performance expectancy.     

Dynamics between the trust transfer process and intention to use mobile payment services: A cross-environment perspective

Many Internet-based services have already been ported to the mobile-based environment, embracing the new services is therefore critical to deriving revenue for services providers. Based on a valence framework and trust transfer theory, we developed a trust-based customer decision-making model of the non-independent, third-party mobile payment services context. We empirically investigated whether a customer's established trust in Internet payment services is likely to influence his or her initial trust in mobile payment services. We also examined how these trust beliefs might interact with both positive and negative valence factors and affect a customer's adoption of mobile payment services. Our SEM analysis indicated that trust indeed had a substantial impact on the cross-environment relationship and, further, that trust in combination with the positive and negative valence determinants directly and indirectly influenced behavioral intention. In addition, the magnitudes of these effects on workers and students were significantly different from each other.     

Comparing the task effectiveness of instant messaging and electronic mail for geographically dispersed teams in Taiwan

To improve task effectiveness of geographically dispersed teams, media selection approaches a complex issue involving media features and user characteristics. This study compares user perceptions about task effectiveness between instant messengers (IM) and e-mail (EM). Using a field experiment, the design contrasted teams using EM with teams using IM. Thirty-four teams of two graduate students were enrolled as participants from five universities in Taiwan. Two people were separated geographically and had to communicate accordingly. Results indicate that IM-supported teams generated more ideas and task success. However, no significant difference was found in task difficulty between the IM and EM users.     

Implementing Web 2.0 technologies in higher education: A collective case study

Web 2.0 technologies are becoming more popular in the everyday lives of students. As a result, teachers and designers have begun to explore their use in formal education. This paper presents evaluation findings from a collective case study of six Web 2.0 implementations in Australian higher education. The research was undertaken as part of a larger study that sought to understand how today’s students use information and communication technologies to support their learning. Conducted across three universities, the research included a range of disciplines, class sizes and year levels. A common evaluation strategy was used in order to collect comparable data from which commonalities and differences could be identified. This paper provides an overview of the study, describes the methodology used, summarises the implementation experiences of staff and students involved and presents the key findings. The results suggest that most students had little prior experience with relevant technologies and that many struggled to see the value of using Web 2.0 technologies for learning and teaching, both of which have important implications for the design of appropriate learning tasks. While the argument can be made for improving the design through better task-technology alignment, this study also highlights inherent tensions between Web 2.0 and educational practices.     

Web-based museum trails on PDAs for university-level design students: Design and evaluation

This paper describes the development and evaluation of web-based museum trails for university-level design students to access on handheld devices in the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. The trails offered students a range of ways of exploring the museum environment and collections, some encouraging students to interpret objects and museum spaces in lateral and imaginative ways, others more straightforwardly providing context and extra information. In a three-stage qualitative evaluation programme, student feedback showed that overall the trails enhanced students’ knowledge of, interest in, and closeness to the objects. However, the trails were only partially successful from a technological standpoint due to device and network problems. Broader findings suggest that technology has a key role to play in helping to maintain the museum as a learning space which complements that of universities as well as schools.     

Exploring Post-critical Composition: MEmorials for Afghanistan and the Lost Boys of Sudan*

This article seeks to extend the concept of “post-critical composition” through an analysis of two MEmorials, the post-critical genre Gregory Ulmer [Ulmer, Gregory L. (2005). Electronic monuments. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press] has been exploring for 15 years. I resist the tendency on the part of some post-critical theorists to reject the role of genres and models in favor of perpetual re-invention of genres and pedagogies with each composition. Through a combination of product analysis and process reflection, this article documents the necessary but flexible role the genre of MEmorial played in a student composition, “MEmorial for Afghanistan,” and in my own composition, “Strangers in Strange Lands: A MEmorial for the Lost Boys of Sudan*.” This essay is an extension of not only post-critical composition but also online memorialization, described by National Public Radio [National Public Radio. (2007, May 28). Online memorials to the war dead. Day to day. Retrieved June 5, 2007, from http://www.npr.org] as a “modern phenomenon” and identified by Joyce Walker [Walker, Joyce. (2007). Narratives in the database: Memorializing September 11th online. Computers and Composition 24(2), 121-153] as a potentially powerful means of encouraging “cyborg citizens.”