The students in my composition classes contribute to our class blog. The goal is to allow them to publish various writings to an audience that includes classmates but reaches far beyond the traditional audience of college writing. I am the chief moderator of the blog while the students operate as contributors. They have authorship privileges and can log on and post without my permission. Of course, I have the ability to remove any inappropriate posts or to block student access. One thing I did not expect was that my first act of censorship would happen in the initial week of blogging, or that the censored post would be removed, not by me, but by a student.
One thing that became apparent as students began to sign in and use the blog is that they had a very different sense of how to use the space than I did. For example, students left such introductory comments such as “Woot let’s blog!” or “Let’s do some blogging WOOO!” The apparent enthusiasm pleased me and I chalked up the students’ informal approach to the similarities between blogging and social media. After all, I had requested that all users use a head shot photo as their profile image so that the site would indeed be more social.
As a teacher, I intended the blog to be an active class text, a place of collaboration, and, I thought, a slightly more relaxed rhetorical environment. What I did not realize was how traditional expectations for college writing were so ingrained in my understanding of this rhetorical situation. The big moment came as I prepared for class one evening. The class reading was a challenging article about, of all things, rhetorical situations. In the article, Keith Grant-Davie proposes that the rhetor is a constituent of the rhetorical situation. Many traditional descriptions of rhetorical situations conceive of the rhetor (writer or speaker) as approaching a situation constituted by exigence, audience, and constraints. Grant-Davie’s model shows an active relationship in which the audience is one of the rhetors and a rhetor is at times her own audience. Therefore, the rhetor must be a constituent of the situation. I read it. I agreed with it. I did not, however, recognize it when I read the class blog comments.
My misunderstanding emerged as I read the following comment left by a female student: “I play world of warcraft and read comic books in my free time . . . jus’ sayin.” I felt sure the students were taking over the site with their own digital obsessions and rhetoric. Then two more comments came in, the first a male student congratulating the female on playing video games, and then the female responding that she was indeed “blood elf warlock level 8” in the game World of Warcraft. I immediately posted the following comment:
“Just a word about the rhetorical situation of this blog. We want to be social, but as a research community. There have been some comments here that are more appropriate for the rhetorical situation of an email or Facebook. I absolutely want the class to find common bonds and foster friendships. Let’s use this space, however, to discuss literacy. No worries!”
No sooner had I posted my comment than I found myself rereading the questionable comments. To my horror I saw two things I had not previously realized. First, the video game comments, even though they discussed media that was alien to me, were absolutely about literacy. The female student expressed her intense literacy in gaming media. Next, I failed to recognize a student’s digital literacy because of my misunderstanding of the rhetorical situation. As Grant-Davie proposes, the rhetor and audience are so intertwined that at many times they are the same person. In a blog, the comment writer is also a rhetor. The blog is, after all, a circular rhetorical space. As the moderator, I was as more of an audience member than an author. Clearly, I would have to allow more freedom than my comment suggested.
In a few minutes my actions saw the consequences: the student removed her post. In the space where her vibrant claim to digital literacy had once rested, stood words of a much different voice: “This post has been removed by the author.” Yes, the student initiated the removal, but the writing was a default statement generated by the computer as she clicked the delete icon. Essentially, my misunderstanding of the rhetorical situation had taken away her voice.
It all worked out in the end. The incident provided a fascinating and moving introduction to the article, one that I shared with all three sections of the composition course. The student held no hard feelings, and all students appeared intrigued that I would own such a mistake. We all learned from this. I, however, still feel the pain of my actions. It opened my eyes to the vast difference of the rhetorical spaces encountered in the digital world. If I insist on approaching composition studies from a digital perspective, then I must ask myself the very questions I encourage my students to pose. What does digital literacy mean? What does it look like? Why do we want to move beyond traditional modes of writing? How does it change the rhetorical situation?
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