ENC4416 has been an interesting experience. The course managed to cover a wide arrange of topics which were surprisingly relevant in today’s era of evolving online rhetoric. The course touched on topics such as scope and effect of online media, brought attention to both the developer end and user end of technology, and the various etiquettes of online interactions. The course not only touched on these topics, but also explained the implications thereof and provided relevant examples of the topics. The course also managed to incorporate current events into the course, which only reinforced the releventness of the topics being discussed and taught. For example, one day we discussed the Johnny Cash Project, in where country artist Johnny Cash gave fans the ability to submit their own art to replace frames of his music video for the song “Ain’t No Grave”. The project gave the user the ability to ‘contribute’ to something larger than them, which is a reoccurring theme that came up in the course. For me personally, seeing a project like this was especially interesting. While I was aware of large projects or movements that were brought about by communities of people on the internet, they were always somewhat dehumanizing: regardless of how big the group is and what they set out to accomplish, the group itself is normally represented by the number of people within the group, and a list of the accomplishments or goals they set out to achieve. However, this project in particular was different for me. While viewing the video, it graphical interface gave the user the ability to view the artwork that was submitted for the project. More specifically, the artwork submitted for each individual frame. Given that the music video is about 1300 frame long, and there are 10+ pieces of artwork per frame (with other frames having a significantly higher amount), that gives us a minimum of 13000 different pieces of artwork that were submitted to this project. UPDATE: A quick google search revealed that the project had over 250,000 unique pieces of artwork as of 2011, 5 years ago, meaning the number is higher now. The project not only bolsters impressive numbers, but also managed to not make the individual member a statistic by showcasing the work that they had contributed to the project. The combination of sense of scale, impact, and the overarching product made this particular example stand out to me, as not many other projects or organizations that I knew of at the time were able to create such an balanced impact. It is for this reason that this project in particular really made an impression on me. Likewise, toward the end of the course we covered web auditing. I found this also to be particularly interesting. I like to liken this sort of topic to that of the relationship between an average person and a musician, in that while the musician has a background in what makes things sound ‘good’ ultimately the average person has the final verdict on what ‘is’ good regardless of what background they hail from. In other words, they have the ability to say whether something is bad or not regardless of if they actually know anything on the subject. This leads to a bit of a gridlock between creator and consumer, as the consumer doesn’t like it (and doesn’t know why), and thus cannot tell the creator what to fix. This is when a third party can be called in, a person who is neither a clueless consumer, nor the creator of this particular piece of content. It is these people who can provide constructive criticism for the creator in order to improve the product. Prior to this course, I was a simple ‘clueless’ consumer, that could only tell what was good or not, but not necessarily state the reason as to why it was good or not. The section of this course that involved web auditing allowed me to attain a deeper understanding of what makes or breaks a website, which is was something that I found particularly interesting in this course.

How is YouTube a digital writing environment, and how does the medium (videos) influence the content of the digital writing and the "many different ways the site can be understood?" (94). 

YouTube is a digital media environment with a heavy focus on online video consumption and distribution. However, even though YouTube's primary purpose is a video consumption website, it also serves as a digital writing environment.  YouTubers (with a heavy emphasis on bloggers and vloggers) will often encourage  some type of dialogue with the viewers. This dialogue may ask the viewers something directly, stir up some sort of controversy for the viewers to debate over themselves, or encourage interaction between users via the comments section (93). So even though YouTube's purpose is to provide videos for consumption, it still counts as a digital writing environment. As stated before, the YouTubers themselves have the ability to incite dialogues between them and the users, or users to other users. In other words YouTubers have the ability to directly influence the content of the digital writing environments that YouTube offers. This interesting balance of video and writing environment as well as its sheer size allows YouTube to have a layer of complexity that was not offered on many sites prior to its existence. Thus, it can be understood in many different ways (94).

How can audience labor "generate alternative forms of value?" (116). Provide an example.

Television is interesting because it has two primary schools of thought, the appointment model and the engagement model (116). While both involve the distribution of media content, they do it in two very different ways. The appointment based model involves an "engagement based paradigm (116)" in where viewers need to arrange their lives around a certain timeslot in order to consume the media distributed. Monetenization occurs via target audiences by target viewer demographic, which allowed companies to advertise to a select audience and networks to collect ad revenue from the select audiences. Alternatively, the engagement model involves a piece of content spread over many different consumption mediums (116). It differs from the appointment based model in that the viewer may consume the media at their leisure, but through a premium service, and with a variety of different mediums to do it through. These mediums include services like Hulu, Netfilx, a DVR, home media (such as DVD's, video cassettes, Bluray, etc), and many others. This method will more-often-than-not encourage the discussion, analysis, and spread of the media being consumed. The inherent audience will also be more likely to partake in said actions, as they are going out of the way to pay for a non-standard service (as opposed to the more standard cable subscription). In other words, the content creators will target some of the 'hard core' fans of a series to help perpetuate the fandom through encouraged actions, essentially creating a type of 'audience labor (116)'. This 'audience labor' generates additional value, as the viewers will get to share additional experiences beyond the media that they consumed. For example, popular TV show  'Game of Thrones' is only accessible legally through premium services, but still has a very dedicated fan base to the point of mass merchandising.

Text Referenced:

"When online, how often do you control your own focus--and how frequently do you allow it to be captured by peripheral stimuli?" (42). And what is that stimuli?

As for me personally, when I go online I typically go with some sort of goal. While this goal covers everything from researching targeted information to traversing the "digital treadmill" (13), I will very rarely not accomplish said goal. Peripheral stimuli such as social media and the "always on mentality" (50) do not affect me in the way that Rheingold describes. I will typically indulge in entertainment or social media when I reach a block in writing, or something else urgently needs my attention. Even as I write this, small notifications are popping up intermittently. These will and have however been ignored until the point in time where I reached a satisfactory answer to this question, or the point in time where I reach a mental block in about how I go answering this question. I feel like Rheingold's usage of the "cocktail party effect" (42) is quite accurate, as while I do have Facebook open on my second screen and even a podcast running, I still feel that I am quite focused on the task at hand (i.e. this assignment). So in review, while there are many online peripheral stimuli that exist e.g. social media sites, regular media sites, and the fact that a literal stockpile of knowledge is at my fingertips (as well as numerous cat photos), I myself can remain focused on my current task. This is of course with the exception of when my goal is to log on to traverse the "digital treadmill" or to kill time.

What is "infotention," and why is it important to Rheingold?

Infotention is a word that Rheingold came up with to describe the various factors that one needs to navigate the web, more specifically the ability to use both mental attention skills and search engine usage in tandem to better stay focused while researching information. The word itself is most likely a combination of the words 'information' and 'attention'. The internet contains a vast wealth of information, so much in fact that even when looking up information on a relevant topic the information found may be rendered moot as it may be too specific, information found may chain to similar information which chains to other information (becoming a misconstrued game of telephone), or the information that one finds may be sufficient enough to answer the question at hand but the person still chooses to research more information. Rheingold himself had experience with all of the scenarios himself when researching information about how Nikola Tesla's push for AC current lost out against Thomas Edison's push for DC power (90). While researching he was quickly able to gather information that was more than enough to answer his question, but chose to keep reading and clicking on links long after passing this point. However at some point he remembered that he had blog post to write that he stopped researching. If it weren't for his "infotention" he may have forgotten that he had something to do, albeit in this specific case it may or may not have mattered too much.

Text Used:

Twitter: Reflections and What I Learned

Prior to this class I had a vague idea of what Twitter was and how it worked, however I had no intentions of ever creating an account. My understanding of Twitter was a follows, the 250 character limit forced people to cut down on what they had to say, so users started to use Twitter more for short blurbs rather than longer thought out sentences. Moreover this would cause people to create shorter ‘thoughts’ typically about things that were happening to them at the time of the tweet. These ‘thoughts’ included people declaring to the world what they had for lunch, complaining, and other menial things that I had no interest in (although I did realize that some people were interested in that type of thing). That being said, I did see the novelty in reading about what some of the more famous people were doing in real time, but that alone was not enough for me to warrant creating and maintaining a Twitter account. After creating and using a Twitter account over the course of this semester, my original thoughts on Twitter and people’s everyday use of it were confirmed. However, this is not say that my view on Twitter and its use was not broadened. As stated above, regular people are not the only users of Twitter; celebrities, content creators, and large companies also use Twitter on a daily basis. Over the course of the semester, I have seen personal statements made from content creators on their own content, supermarket corporations banter over who had the better tomato paste, an AI social experiment spiral out of control, and Kanye West and other ‘celebrities’ overreacting about things. Not to mention countless bits of popular culture that I may or may not have been better without knowing. In other words, I witnessed a great deal of very large scale discourse happening. Simultaneously, Twitter also offers the ability to have variable sized conversations using their ‘hashtag’ feature. Over the past three months, our class’s hashtag provided a way for members of our class to be able to share and distribute information using something that could easily be acquired, while at the same time, so oddly specific that an ‘outsider’ would not be able to get hold of it. Or in other words, we created our own small scale discourse by simply using an eight character long set that could easily grow if we as group so chose to do so. The duality between large scale conversation and a small scale ‘ease of access’ conversation is something that I find interesting. While Facebook can accomplish something similar utilizing its groups and chat system, it is not the same: as groups take time to setup and maintain (which may not be worth it in the case of a very small group) and a chats can get quickly out of hand with a larger group of people. Twitters use of the hashtag fills a very specific niche interest of fulfilling the founder’s requirement of ease of access to a variably sized group, which resonates surprisingly very well with the user end as it also gives him/her the liberty to drop the conversation at his/her pleasure. After a semester of using Twitter I understand why so many people use it as it offers a unique environment in where almost all information and all discourses are readily at the disposal, use, and benefit of a user but are at the same time are secured (almost paradoxally) by nothing but obscurity. 

How can "media material act as a Trojan horse," or turn people into "hosts"? (17).  Provide some original examples to explain this idea.

As stated by the authors of Spreadable Media, media material [may] act as a Trojan horse (17). By this they mean that the spreading of media will often, and even may be designed, akin to a virus (18). This viral spread of media, whether intentional or not, is done through people. In the era prior to the internet being so accessible, this would have been done through printable media and then spread through word-of-mouth. However, in today's day and age the internet is the main distribution system for the vast majority of media. While the concept of viral media was definitely present in the era before the internet, it became much more prevalent and true to name with the gap closer that is the internet. The internet allowed users to literally 'share' links to the source, which inherently uses them as a conduit in where the media can travel. In other words, the act of sharing a piece of media turned the user into host over which said media may spread. Likewise, the user may or may not even be aware of what is happening or what they have done, reinforcing the 'Trojan Horse' angle of view. An example of this would be if the Coca-Cola company decided to spread a new upcoming promotion, but only though social media. While only some people will actually 'share', 'retweet', 'reblog', etc, it is inherently going to be shown in some way or form to their friends, followers, etc.

What social structures best support the spread of media texts?

The authors of "Spreadable Media" bring up the interesting concept of 'influencers' (79), and how they are the supposed keystones to understanding how the spread of social media works. In the chapter, the authors cite how Malcolm Gladwell emphasizes the usage of 'influencers', or key people that are well embedded in the community, are the more valuable people when trying to get something spread around. This conclusion comes of course from the 'Small World Experiment' (80) conducted in the 1960's, or in other words from a time period before the internet. In the modern age, these 'influencers' aren't necessarily people any more, but rather social media websites. While it may be argued that the people on the websites are the 'influencers' that serve as the catalyst for the spreading of media texts, the website itself is the only reason said person could have so many connections and be able to 'influence' so many people. These websites not only include social media sites, but also forum style sites, bulletin board style sites, etc. Consider the following, say a person had just recently been introduced to a wiki style site, and the person was adequately knowledgeable of the subject and actively visited and contributed to the website. Said person produces good work and works their way up the hierarchy and eventually becomes the administrator of the website. The person then chooses what ads are displayed on the website, influencing the type of media displayed on the site. While yes, he himself is 'influencing' the visible media on the site, it is the site itself that is the actual vehicle of the spread of media text throughout the user base.

Text Used

Rhetorical Analysis of a Digital Writing Environment

Preston Badgley     

12 February 2016

ENC 4416

Professor Dan Martin

Rhetorical Analysis:

How TV Tropes Effectively Caters to its Userbase

"A story's ending may come as a surprise to the reader, suspense may have the reader on the edge of the seat, and conflict may lead to unbearable excitement. It is the job of the writer to create these effects..." (Bulman Abstract)

Introduction

TV Tropes is a wiki style website entirely dedicated to the categorization and classification of tropes in popular culture. Merriam Webster defines tropes as "figures of speech" (Merriam-Webster). However to the creative writer a trope is more than that, tropes "are more about conveying a concept to the audience without needing to spell out all of the details (TV Tropes)". In other words, tropes are devices or writing conventions that exist in a person's mind due to some sort of pre existing knowledge implanted by previously consumed media or as set by society or a community. Examples of tropes would include the action of outrunning a fireball in a movie, elemental weapons in an RPG, the concept of star crossed lovers in a novel, or how the villain always seems to give long winded monologues that give the protagonist just enough time to think of an escape plan. This is where the problem lies, as while these concepts undoubtedly exist, their inherent abstract nature may make it hard to categorize them. As such, a community is required for the categorization and cataloging of tropes. This is where the website TV Tropes comes in, as it serves as a hub for all those interested in the concept of tropes and their usage. As stated before, TV Tropes is a wiki style website. This means that it is easy to contribute to the site. However TVTropes manages to keep such a abstract concept straightforward, goes to great lengths developer side to streamline the end user experience, and provides a way for users to be active continued contributors to the website in some way or form.

Landing Page

The first thing that catches the eye when first accessing TVTropes is a large picture of a cracked television test card in the center of the screen with a text box that reads "The All Devouring Pop Culture Wiki", along with a centered block of text titles "Welcome to TVTropes". The intro blurb has the previously stated quote from the introduction, but then goes on to read "The wiki is called "TVTropes" because TV is where we started. Over the course of a few years, our scope has crept out to include other media. Tropes transcend television. They reflect life. Since a lot of art, especially the popular arts, does its best to reflect life, tropes are likely to show up everywhere". It is from here, that a new user to the site can get a very good idea on both what this site has to offer as well as what applications one may do with the knowledge obtained by the site. Moving on the next most noticeable thing on the landing page is the TVTropes' logo. The logo is somewhat minimalistic, in where the lowercase letters 'tv' are off centered with the 't' having a lampshade [lampshade hanging] on it. The logo is in an outlined box, with the text " Learn about the Lampshade Hanging in TVTropes' Logo". The logo itself serves a ternary purpose, it demonstrates the casualness of the website via a visual gag, provides an opportunity for a novice to learn about the logo, and simultaneously provides a sample of the structure of the website (which will be expanded on later). The ladder two examples also provide an opportunity of mentorship, which contributes to a successful participatory culture which is an essential for a successful digital culture (Rheingold 113). The landing page also provides various links with somewhat quirky names such as SugarWiki (which takes you to a page with links to upbeat and 'cheerful' trope article links), DarthWiki (which in contrast takes you to a page with 'darker' and 'edgier' trope articles), a button at the top of the page that will take you to a random trope article,  and various other tabs of this nature.  All of these features are located on the homepage, and as such are the first things that users both new and old will see. Regardless of the fact that the website is still a wiki, it immediately manages to distinguish itself from others through the use of a non standard format for wikis. First impressions, while possible to change, are very hard to change without active participation from the subject (Mann et al. 845). The homepage of TVTropes sets the precedent, gives an introduction to what the main idea of the website is, as well as some exploratory tools for new users to get started. However, it should be noted that the website recently received a new update and used to have an introduction that also accurately represented the non-formal borderline sarcastic vernacular used on the site and by its various articles.

Articles: Tropes

The articles themselves contain the trope title, a description, and a generalized example of the trope. It should be noted that they do not necessarily always appear in that order. The vernacular used in the articles is somewhat different from the vernacular of a typical wiki. All articles are written on a very informal fashion, with heavy usage of other tropes used in context. It is not rare to find an article with a minimum of 5 article links with proper usage of the linked article. While the hyper linked articles are aliased in a way that makes the tropes usage very obvious, it may be somewhat overwhelming to a newcomer. I personally find this weird as the homepage is seemingly quite friendly to new users. The articles are also not afraid to hold an intellectual tone, even sometimes becoming philosophical in nature. For example, in the article page for 'Rule of Three', "Sometimes called trebling, the Rule of Three is a pattern used in stories and jokes, where part of the story is told three times, with minor variations. The first two instances build tension, and the third releases it by incorporating a twist... The Rule of Three may be a subtrope of a more general psychological phenomenon, as threes are well-noted in all forms of culture. Films, books and plays come in trilogies. They have a Three Act Structure, a Beginning, Middle and End. Counts of three elements are used widely in rhetoric, writing and myth: "Ready, aim, fire", "Veni, Vidi, Vici", "Lights, camera, action", "Reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic," "rhetoric, writing and myth". Just try and think about how many times you've heard the phrase "On the count of three... (TVTropes, 'The Rule of Three')". The excerpt demonstrates all of the previously discussed points. This is the style in which the articles on the site are in. To which I bring up the previous point, this website is in fact a wiki. In other words, all articles are a culmination of various contributor's work into a single cohesive article. Which makes the use of this encouraged vernacular even more unique, as anyone is permitted to edit any article. The use of what is called 'spoiler text', or the use of a removable censor bar, is also used. This is implemented due to the fact that topes are writing mechanisms, and the presence of a trope (or more commonly the stated reason for a tropes existence) may denote an important plot point for a narrative. From this we can assume that the general user base has some sort of respect for the community and what TVTropes wants to be.

Articles: Media

Tropes, by definition, can only exist with the context of some sort of narrative. Which is more often than not in the form of some sort of media. Hence, for the ease of the user and to keep a more sensical database, TVTropes also has a wide variety of media based articles ranging from internet topics to oral traditions and everything in between. The current article structure contains a title with the medium type (i.e. television, folktale, theatre, etc), the title of the media, a short description, and a list of known tropes that the media contains. Each article also contains a shortcut menu towards the top of the page that contains links to the more commonly used categories of tropes. This streamlines the media type articles, for if all of the tropes contained in a series was listed in on a single page without the use of any organization or file architecture (especially with some of the longer running pieces of media such as The Simpsons or Harry Potter), the article may be too large. As Rach puts it, "Too much content makes things harder to find (8)". This ring true for multiple reasons, for example it would prove to be intimidating to new users, too much information pain for avid users to retrieve information from, and problematic for editors and contributors to improve. As with the trope articles, spoiler text and the use of hyperlinks are also used for the same reasons. The media based articles purpose is to help pull the website together. Even though the website's purpose is to catalog tropes and their definitions, tropes by definition only exist in narrative. The logical progression of this would be the inclusion of the various media that tropes exist in, hence the creation and use of these media based articles. Moreover, the presence of these articles helps the overall experience of the end user.

Forums

TVTropes also has easy access to various forums. These forums provide standard support styled thread topics such as trope revision or trope questions, and also provide social styled topics such as threads involving the NFL, LGBT issues, and regional politics. Immediately, this website distinguishes itself from other sites by covering such a large array of topics. The forum setup is very similar to how a traditional forum is setup. There is a central 'hub' page that contains links to many different topics and there are threads within each topic for various issues or conversations for users to take part in. Elaborating on the 'support' styled threads, the support styled threads have a main focus on helping new users become acclimated to the site, competent users are free to ask questions about the usage of tropes, and avid users may edit or add content. These support forums encourage both new and old users to come together and interact with each other, which is imperative for the continuation of a social media website (Rheingold 206). Moreover, these support forums also offer an easy method of information seeking, which according to researchers is an important success factor in the perseverance of a social media site (Guo et al. 758). As mentioned before, there are also general topic threads as well. These threads don't necessarily have a centralized purpose, as that categorization belongs to the earlier explained support focused threads. No, these threads fall more under the category of 'all that is not centralized', with the previously mentioned thread topics serving as proof that these threads may have very little or nothing in common. While some may be able to argue that this may detract from the website, the wide variety of topics covered in these forums may actually heavily contribute to the retention of users. The wide variety provides a higher chance that the user will find something that he or she is familiar with, and familiarity is an important factor in encouraging active and continued participation in a network (Taha et al. 7). These forums provide a helpful place to newcomers, an civil place for discussion for older members, a place for the experienced members to share their knowledge, and a place for the casual user to hang out or discuss non-trope related issues. It successfully provides a level of user participation that the main site cannot provide on its own, but more importantly does it in a way that makes sense and does it effectively/

Conclusion

The website TVTropes is a smaller website, but despite its size still manages to demonstrate all of the hallmarks of a successful digital writing environment. It is very user friendly, provides a method of successfully conveying ideas while keeping opinions separate, goes to great lengths to improve the user end experience, and provides a way for participants to be both active and consistent in their participation. TVTropes goes to great lengths to ensure that anyone interested in the subject of tropes has the ability to learn more about them, and that the random passerby will stick around for at least a little while to explore the novelty that is this site. It should be noted that the website was updated in the process of the writing of this paper to a debatably better format. While the paper does reflect the changes, this paper does not necessarily reflect the changes made after the writing of this paper.

References

Bulman, Colin. Creative Writing : A Guide And Glossary To Fiction Writing. n.p.: Cambridge, [England] ; Malden, MA : Polity, 2007., 2007. UCF Libraries Catalog. Web. 16 Feb. 2016.

"Trope." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2016. Web. 2 February 2016.

Hardy, Gareth. Smashing Logo Design. Wiley, 2011. 17 February 2016

Rheingold, Howard. Net Smart: How to Thrive Online. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2012. Print.

Mann, Thomas C., and Melissa J. Ferguson. "Can We Undo Our First Impressions? The Role Of Reinterpretation In Reversing Implicit Evaluations." Journal Of Personality & Social Psychology 108.6 (2015): 823-849. Business Source Premier. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.

"The Rule of Three" TVTropes.org. TVTropes, 2016. Web. 2 March 2016.

Halvorson, Kristina, and Melissa Rach. Content Strategy for the Web. Berkeley, CA:           

New Riders, 2012. Print.

Guo, Junpeng, Zengguang Liu, and Yu Liu. "Full Length Article: Key Success Factors For The Launch Of Government Social Media Platform: Identifying The Formation Mechanism Of Continuance Intention." Computers In Human Behavior 55.Part B (2016): 750-763. ScienceDirect. Web. 4 Mar. 2016.

Taha, Diane E., Sally O. Hastings, and Elizabeth M. Minei. "Shaping Student Activists: Discursive Sensemaking Of Activism And Participation Research." Journal Of The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning 15.6 (2015): 1-15. ERIC. Web. 4 Mar. 2016.