So, this is what I've been up to all semester.
Hi, guys. You might recall me talking about writing about LiveJournal for one of my MA classes.
Well, rhetoricpoet42 and sarahbear26 and I are sitting in the computer lab finishing writing our paper on ontd_startrek.
It's called "New Civilizations: Understanding the multimodality of writing on ontd_startrek" and, if you like, you can read the introduction to it behind the cut. I'm kind of proud of it.
On the profile page of the online community ontd_startrek, if you scroll past the recent v-gifts, community rules, and down almost to the end of the (temporarily) immortalized macros, you’ll arrive at a statement that sums up both the attitude and history of the site: “This is not your father’s Star Trek themed celebrity gossip livejournal community” (“ontd_startrek - Community Profile”).
Someone unfamiliar with the Star Trek fandom, online communities, celebrity tabloids, LiveJournal, and the current trends in online memes and graphics might stare in confusion at the blinking animated .gifs and inside jokes that populate the ontd_startrek community profile. A user hoping to understand all of the text and images that confront her on this page would have to undergo an extensive apprenticeship to the community, enculturating its many influences. Such a process would help our user to interpret the signs of communication on the site, such as the visual and verbal Star Trek references; the humor and tone valued by members; and the types of images available to posters, including screencaps, macros, animated .gifs, icons, embedded videos, and scans.
These multimodal methods of communication constitute the particular language used on ontd_startrek that our interested user would eventually adopt if she desired to join in the ongoing written conversation in this online space. In advancing past a newbie (or novice) status in the community, the user would acquire the community’s methods of writing, including not only typing in English and employing some light html code, but also animating, resizing, and manipulating images. (Recently, the verb “to shoop” has emerged in online forums to describe using Adobe Photoshop or other image manipulation software to change the content or appearance of an image.)
Although fandom communities have focused the majority of their energy on online writing since the popularization of the Internet, recent changes in bandwidth availability; the advent of easy-to-use image, video, and file-hosting sites; and the popularity of illegally shared image-manipulation software, especially Adobe Photoshop, have brought on another era of online writing. In this strange, new world, the fluent writer wields images as they would letters, employing them as a malleable component of the message that she wishes to convey. As an active community that allows users to incorporate their own coding in posts, ontd_startrek offers an ideal space for critics to explore the current fluid multimodality of online writing.
Thoughts?
Well, rhetoricpoet42 and sarahbear26 and I are sitting in the computer lab finishing writing our paper on ontd_startrek.
It's called "New Civilizations: Understanding the multimodality of writing on ontd_startrek" and, if you like, you can read the introduction to it behind the cut. I'm kind of proud of it.
On the profile page of the online community ontd_startrek, if you scroll past the recent v-gifts, community rules, and down almost to the end of the (temporarily) immortalized macros, you’ll arrive at a statement that sums up both the attitude and history of the site: “This is not your father’s Star Trek themed celebrity gossip livejournal community” (“ontd_startrek - Community Profile”).
Someone unfamiliar with the Star Trek fandom, online communities, celebrity tabloids, LiveJournal, and the current trends in online memes and graphics might stare in confusion at the blinking animated .gifs and inside jokes that populate the ontd_startrek community profile. A user hoping to understand all of the text and images that confront her on this page would have to undergo an extensive apprenticeship to the community, enculturating its many influences. Such a process would help our user to interpret the signs of communication on the site, such as the visual and verbal Star Trek references; the humor and tone valued by members; and the types of images available to posters, including screencaps, macros, animated .gifs, icons, embedded videos, and scans.
These multimodal methods of communication constitute the particular language used on ontd_startrek that our interested user would eventually adopt if she desired to join in the ongoing written conversation in this online space. In advancing past a newbie (or novice) status in the community, the user would acquire the community’s methods of writing, including not only typing in English and employing some light html code, but also animating, resizing, and manipulating images. (Recently, the verb “to shoop” has emerged in online forums to describe using Adobe Photoshop or other image manipulation software to change the content or appearance of an image.)
Although fandom communities have focused the majority of their energy on online writing since the popularization of the Internet, recent changes in bandwidth availability; the advent of easy-to-use image, video, and file-hosting sites; and the popularity of illegally shared image-manipulation software, especially Adobe Photoshop, have brought on another era of online writing. In this strange, new world, the fluent writer wields images as they would letters, employing them as a malleable component of the message that she wishes to convey. As an active community that allows users to incorporate their own coding in posts, ontd_startrek offers an ideal space for critics to explore the current fluid multimodality of online writing.
Thoughts?