Kairos 17.1: Lauer, What's in a Name?

Multiple

Introduction
"Different definitions"

Jonathan Alexander (:48)

Different definitions (2007)

The idea [for the Computers and Writing CFP on Media Convergence] was to get... to use a number of different phrases that people are going to recognize as terms that they use, because as your research is probably going to point out, there are many different ways these terms are used, and probably used very specifically by different people so I wanted to use as many different kinds of terms as possible.

I use the term communications technologies; media communications technologies; multimodal, multimedia texts; and then a little bit later, multimodal, new media texts; and obviously the, kind of, use of the phrase “multimodal, multimedia” is, kind of, harkening back to what I was saying earlier: “multimodal” being the larger term; multimedia being a somewhat more specific term.

Obviously if I look at it, media is clearly the key word. And it’s interesting to note that the word media seems like it needs qualification somehow. Is it new? Is it multi? Is it digital? And so, I think that may be—just as I look back at this—the thing which is most interesting from a compositional standpoint. That we’re trying to figure out: how do we qualify the term, the very old word media, so that we can get at the production of particular kinds of texts, which themselves are very multiple and multifarious.
"Drawing together the differences"

Cheryl Ball (:38)

Drawing together the differences (2007)

You can go to almost any... almost any field in the arts or humanities or social sciences or business colleges and education colleges and get a different definition of what new media is. And that’s all well and good and fascinating. I don’t want to study all those areas but what I want to do is draw together what I see as the connecting areas between those fields and writing studies and what those areas have to offer, together, so that English studies can be that site of interdisciplinarity for New Media studies.
"To define or not"

Cheryl Ball (1:07)

To define or not (2007)

Jim and I went into [the Reading and Writing New Media] collection thinking that we were going to gather a set of interpretations on... starting with literary hypertext kinds of things and working through there and out from there.

What we got was this incredible range of people defining new media all over the place. We got people talking about databases, or talking about sculpture... talking about the processes of administering new media programs, curricula, labs.

So what we ended up doing was... we had to define new media and what we meant by that, and yet we couldn’t because the authors were all over the place, in a good way, in a rich way, and so in the introduction of the book we make an argument for not defining new media and just using it as a locative... here’s a snapshot of what the field thinks new media is right now. Readers can see it’s all over the place.
"Technologies and texts"

Cheryl Ball (:41)

Technologies and texts (2007)

And I think to that goes back to the problems with defining what new media is within writing studies because if we want to make it a thing, it can be two totally different things. It can be the technologies, the new media technologies that support the composition process in new ways, like Web 2.0 stuff, or it can be the new media texts, the products that those technologies create.
"Defining the field in our work"

Cheryl Ball (:55)

Defining the field in our work (2007)

So we're seeing, even just in three or four years, a huge shift in how the field is using new media, and multimedia, and multimodal, even though they really don't know what it means.

The hiring committees are like: well you tell us what you mean by new media, and we’ll see if it fits with what we want to do. Which is cool. It’s powerful because the people who are on the market now who do multimodal or new media or whatever you want to call it, digital rhetoric stuff, are defining the field through their work, through their research, through their teaching, and you’re getting a huge range of what that means and I think that’s wonderful.

I mean, maybe it will become some other term and that’s totally fine, but that’s why I go back to my morphed definition of new media is this moment in time where things are all coming together, the convergence of media.
"No need for consistency"

Cheryl Ball (:38)

No need for consistency (2007)

I don’t think we need to come to a consistency on new media yet, because I like the fact that most people in this world don’t agree with my definition (laughs) because that makes me see other things, you know. Makes me think about “oh, well, how is so and so is defining it” or “what examples are they using when they’re talking about new media and how can that inform what I’m doing.” And eventually somebody 20 or 30 years from now will look back a write a dissertation about the new media movement in writing studies and we’ll be like “oh!” and they’ll come up with some new argument and that’s cool.

Introduction

From the beginning of a term’s use, members of different discourse communities may appropriate or define the term in ways that meet the particular needs or reflect the values of that community. Additionally, within a discourse community, a term’s definition can undergo multiple iterations as its use evolves over time and in response to changing contextual landscapes. Terms that are developed in response to an emerging technology or practice often start out ambiguously defined, and are thus open to multiple interpretations, because such terms describe technologies and practices whose trajectories have not yet occurred.

The term new media in particular is one example of a term that has been used to describe the work being done in multiple academic disciplines, the fine arts, popular culture and the public realm. It has come to embody a variety of interpretations and uses. Within the rhetoric and composition community, new media has also been interpreted a number of ways among different scholars as well as among individual scholars who have pursued their scholarship of the term over a longer period of time.

Embracing the potential for multiple interpretations of a term to exist simultaneously or over time is advantageous for our scholarly work because it allows us to recognize the limitations of our disciplinary perspectives and encourages us to remain open to modifications to those perspectives as circumstances and knowledge change.

In the first audio segment, Jonathan Alexander comments on his decision to use multiple terms and phrases when developing a Call for Papers for a special issue of Computers and Composition on "Media Convergence," for which he served as guest editor.

In the last five audio segments, Cheryl Ball comments on the role that multiple understandings of the term new media have had on the evolution of that term for her and for the field. Ball has worked with the term "new media" extensively in her dissertation, in her edited collection (with Jim Kalmbach) Reading and Writing New Media, and in her experiences on the job market.

References