Sights on Social Media Sites:
Applying Systems Organization Theory and Beyond
In this webtext, I have led viewers through an analysis of the design features inherent to one of the world’s most popular website in order to delineate the potential affordances it can yield to multimodal composition. I have drawn from an interdisciplinary sampling of scholarship ranging from computer science to the homestead of rhetoric and composition, while also alluding to personal pedagogical experiences teaching the genre of the “viral.” Additionally, this focus on the site’s organizational features aimed to re-shift the gaze on the rapid production of technologies and onto the design fundamentals of digital sites popularly used within the composition classroom. I hope this webtext provides a slight reprieve from the “catch up” narrative framing writing programs at large with its emphasis on "historical" design features cloaked in innovation.
The webtext provides a potentially helpful heuristic for composition instructors and students alike to leverage as they compose multimodally and as they interact with various digital organizing systems. As Glushko posits, analyzing design features abstractly can allow for “a generative, forward-looking framework for describing hybrid types that do not cleanly fit into the familiar categories” (2013). I have posed and responded to a set of design questions that can be lifted and applied to other popularly used sites for composition, such as blog sites or Facebook for example.
The webtext provides a potentially helpful heuristic for composition instructors and students alike to leverage as they compose multimodally and as they interact with various digital organizing systems. As Glushko posits, analyzing design features abstractly can allow for “a generative, forward-looking framework for describing hybrid types that do not cleanly fit into the familiar categories” (2013). I have posed and responded to a set of design questions that can be lifted and applied to other popularly used sites for composition, such as blog sites or Facebook for example.