"What Do Technical Communicators Need to Know about New Media?"-- Anne Wysocki

1) the problem: simply, communicating with new media isn’t as simple as learning to use the most up-to-date software. It requires that we understand and think about how new media affects the audience, (and vice versa) and how it is located within specific contexts.
1a) to set up this problem, she goes through a lit review where she does two things: define “new media” and explain how new media affects TC‘s.
--Wysocki assigns a set of 6 traits to define new media: they result from digitization (so…it can be copied and modified--> remix culture --> arguments over intellectual property and copyright laws), they use code to control presentation and distribution, they depend on digital networks (which allows for interoperability), theyre faster than print media (in terms of distributing information), they enable different interactivity types (because it can change in response to our actions [think revised GRE]), and they are steadily becoming ubiquitous (because people are finding a wider range of technologies to work with.)
--She then explains a set of ways new media changes the designing/planning/publishing processes of TC’s: multimodality (she is quick to differentiate multimodality from new media-- its simply easier with new media-- and gives 3 aspects of digital multimodality that need more attention: 1) audiences expect it, so we need to be engaging for them 2) we have a wider range of modes now and need to consider which will be most effective and 3) design processes often will require more creativity), single-sourcing and content mangagement (single sourcing is the ability to use the same info in different documents-- made much easier with digitization. Managing the information is called content management. We have to decide how small the chunks of stored info are for content management and what tone or complexity levels should be at for different audiences and genres.), web 2.0 (this is essentially collaborative, interactive information sharing online. This requires a lot of thought about audience-- normally, they collaborate with each other but now they also collaborate with their audiences.) and gaming and immersive environments (provides a variety of learning environments and explains that TC should be more like good games for encouraging learning and emotional connections; gives example of the protein folding game where players found AIDS virus in ten days and scientists had been trying for 15 years and also explains how games also have inherent procedural rhetorics-- what we can and cannot do in a game lead us toward a particular view of the world-- room for teaching.)
2) the solution: use her heuristic.
2a) defines rhetoric: “rhetoric is also a method for helping those who compose texts consider the audiences for whom a text is made, the contexts in which the text and audiences circulate, and the purposes for which the text is designed; with such understandings, technical communicators can decide what strategies to use in shaping any text” (441). She provides a series of questions on working with new media overall (like, is a team needed? What style sheets will be used? What support do you need to stay knowledgeable about new media?) and specifically for considering audience, purpose, context, and the text itself. (My favorites included: can you justify producing digital rather than print documents in terms of time, cost, and environmental impact? How might your documents empower users rather than placing them in a passive relation with the technology being used or taught? How will you describe your purpose? Although many communicators conceive their purpose as the audience will learn software package x, a more useful statement of purpose is our audience, completely new to software x and shaky about using computers, will gain a comfortable and friendly initial competence with using features A, B, and C through a gentle and playful approach that will put them at ease and help them understand they cannot make any mistakes.) She also included questions for engaging the audience in project development to make it user-centered. (ex. What can you learn from your audience to help you in designing?)
3) Connections:
--The essay on collaboration acknowledges the importance of multimodality, something that this essay elaborates on more. The section in the collaboration essay on social loafers also made me think about collaboration in new media more too. It said that social loafing is most common in distance/virtual groups. I wonder about things like wikipedia…is there a certain duty of the audience as a technical communicator to engage? Food for thought.
--The most obvious connection with this week’s readings was the essay on genre. Much of the questions posed in that essay aligned with the ones in my essay. And of course it makes sense-- much of the study in new media focuses on the many genres it creates and the implications of these for audiences and writers.
--I feel like this essay worked well with the user-centered design book at the start of the semester, because it really focused on the rhetorical choices involved in new media in relation to catering to effectiveness for specific audiences.
4) questions
--You (Arola) might not like this question, but whatevs. So I was thinking about the PDC session in regards to this chapter…she said that as a sort of cover letter thingy for eportfolios, she thought students should give an explicit map to how to read their portfolios, given that eportfolios are a new media genre. She likened this to older texts that opened with a “Dear reader” and explicitly gave the moral of the story as a sort of instruction set for how to read the piece. It would also potentially be a better indicator of their rhetorical awareness because they would have to explain their intentions behind their decisions. This seems to count as technical communication in my opinion, so…two questions result: 1) to what extent do we need to include instructions how to read our instructions? (and does this mean that the new media is unsuccessful, considering it would seem to complicate something that the reader is already confused on?) 2) What other kinds of ways do we see technical writing in English 101 that can possibly be adapted for 402?
--Would using a sci-fi example like the one presented in this essay help or hinder students trying to understand the necessities and implications of using technical communication (especially new media) in a 402 class? How could this be useful for a smaller homework assignment?
--how can we make our 402 classes more like “good games”? (perhaps looking at some of the traits of good games given in the article, like identity, self-knowledge, psychosocial moratorium, and discovery. Pg. 438) On this note, what are the implications of replacing “author” with “experience