It’s easy to consider digital rhetoric and writing in terms of always-advancing computer technologies. This isn’t inaccurate, and keeping our fingers on the pulse regarding the rhetorical affordances of new software makes for innovative digital writing, research, and pedagogy. At the same time, however, it’s helpful to remember that digital...
Lesson Plan: Visualizing Difference with Tableau Public
In his much referenced TED Talk, David McCandless says that “if you start working with [data] and playing with it in a certain way, interesting things can appear and different patterns can be revealed” (5:57-6:14). And Virginia Kuhn argues that there are “two main uses for information visualization: discovery and...
Lesson Plan: Transforming Data Visualizations
[cs_content][cs_section bg_color="hsl(0, 0%, 100%)" parallax="false" class="cs-ta-left" style="margin: 0px;padding: 45px 0px;"][cs_row inner_container="true" marginless_columns="false" style="margin: 0px auto;padding: 0px;"][cs_column fade="false" fade_animation="in" fade_animation_offset="45px" fade_duration="750" type="2/3" style="padding: 0px;"][cs_text]Contemporary rhetorical theory privileges a view of rhetoric as dynamic, where texts circulate both spatially and temporally to myriad effects. For instance, in her influential article "Unframing Models...
Workshop Recap: Visualizing Rhetoric with Emojis and GIFs
[cs_content][cs_section parallax="false" style="margin: 0px;padding: 45px 0px;"][cs_row inner_container="true" marginless_columns="false" style="margin: 0px auto;padding: 0px;"][cs_column fade="false" fade_animation="in" fade_animation_offset="45px" fade_duration="750" type="1/1" style="padding: 0px;"][cs_text]In the DWRL’s most recent workshop, staff members looked at two of the most apparent--but perhaps most easily dismissed--exemplifications of visual rhetoric: emojis and GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format). Although we’ve all likely...
Remixing the News
In the last couple weeks, we’ve heard a lot about fake news, and “post-truth” was recently named by Oxford Dictionaries as its word of the year. One of the things this has had me thinking about is not only how news stories proliferate online, but how information transforms as it...
Lesson Plan: Peer Recordings, or Revising Peer Review
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Affectively Interactive
One of my favorite data visualizations concerns the Beatles. Created by Adam McCann from Dueling Data, the graphic, amongst other things, lets the user hover their computer cursor over illustrations of band members to see how many hit songs those members have written and when. I find the visualization memorable,...
Lesson Plan: Visual Literacy and Infographic (Re)Composition
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Workshopping Our Web Presence
If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you’ve already heard about the importance of managing your web presence. Often, the issue is presented as a warning about the damage “inappropriate” photos or posts on social media can do as you seek to enter (or remain in) a profession. In this...
Learning to Learn, Digitally
A couple years ago, I enrolled in my first digital rhetorics course. I was excited, but also insecure, certain that I was out of my league compared to my classmates, all of whom I assumed were naturals when it came to all things digital. Even though I knew this way of...