Hi everybody!
For this assignment I decided to go with question #7, as it was the one that I felt had the most relation to my life. Here’s the question:
At the beginning of this lesson I pointed to the idea that technological advances in communication tools have been part of the impetus to rethink the divisive and hierarchical categorizing of literature and orality, and suggested that this is happening for a number of reasons.
I’d like you to consider two aspects of digital literature:
1) Social media tools that enable widespread publication, without publishers.
2) Hypertext, which is the name for the text that lies beyond the text you are reading, until you click. How do you think these capabilities might be impacting literature and story?
Digital literature has made its way to the foreground of society in many contexts, from advertisements to pedagogical literature and reading for pleasure. All kinds of digital literature contribute to framing schools of thought among societies, ultimately helping people decide what to think of their reality by feeding them non-stop information about it through the media. Though concrete, digital media can often be just as reliable as oral storytelling in its factual limitations. Due to the nature of digital publication through popular sites such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr, anyone is able to self publish their opinions and tell their own stories. There has also been an increase in reliance on digital literature to guide studies in academic settings.
I believe that humanity clings to meaning, as a way to feel less alone through creating modes of communication to understand each other. These modes of communication are vast, some verbal, others nonverbal in nature. Many modes of communication are similar, but language expands beyond a set template of grammar rules and syntax guidelines. In his book If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories, Chamberlain expresses how “building shape and meaning” (18) is integral to communication as long as we “believe in them” (18). Chamberlain then attaches these beliefs of meaning in communication to “ceremonies” (18) such as having table manners. This makes me think of our modern ceremonies in connection to digital literature. So many people, myself included, check their social media on their phone as soon as they wake up. One of my favourite ways to communicate is through the use of memes, such as this one:
Now that I think about it, that very much is a ceremony. Routine. We believe that these social media sites give us presence and power. Which is true, to an extent. Knowing how to be fluent in digital literature allows you access to news around the world with updates flooding in every second of every day. It’s the prime way to engage with the world around us. Anyone can gather this information and post it on their social media, expressing their viewpoints on current political and social climates with their voice being broadcast across a global stage.
By using the tools of Hypertext, we are able to expand the knowledge of the reader should they choose to take that path themselves. Whatever the information is that’s encompassed in the Hypertext is optional information and it’s up to the reader whether they choose to engage with it or not. It offers additional information for further study, a suggestion at the writer’s credibility based off of what is in the Hypertext. When writing a story and including Hypertext, the writer should be conscious that not all readers will choose to engage with this information as it isn’t included directly as part of the text they’re reading.
Works Cited:
Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. AA. Knopf. Toronto. 2003. Print.
Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis, and Kim Christian Schrøder. “The Relative Importance of Social Media for Accessing, Finding, and Engaging with News.” Digital Journalism, vol. 2, no. 4, Mar. 2014, pp. 472–489., doi:10.1080/21670811.2013.872420.
Hi Ari!
I think that it’s interesting in which the way we have grown to gather information has evolved from the early days of the church to the industrial revolution of newspaper, and now the ever-expanding worldwide web; information has become more and more wide-spread. First and foremost, I would like to commend you on the hilarious meme, and I would like to comment on the fact that I also find myself in the habit of checking my phone in the morning and periodically throughout the day. It becomes more and more apparent how reliant we are on the internet when we lose it, and it’s scary to think that it hadn’t existed just a couple of decades ago. It has become such an integral bank of information, communication, and storytelling that I find myself unable to think of a world without it. And this reliance is only bolstered by the fact that hypertexts exist. If we think about it, hypertext is not only the citations we see in articles or journals or blog posts, and they are the pathways we follow when we use google. If not for that, we would have to memorize every single link individually we would ever wish to visit, and that’s mind-boggling as well. However, I have to note that hypertexts, as a result of their unique design, has led to a shared tragedy among internet users: clickbait. What is your stance on clickbait, and how do you think it affects the way we read, interpret, or consume media and literature? I hope to read your response soon; have a nice day!
Cheers,
Aran Chang
Hi Aran!
I think that clickbait is indeed a shared tragedy, but it is also a matter of perception in my opinion. Someone could be hyperlinking something that they may be serious about, but someone else perceives it as clickbait for whatever reason. The worst for me is when it’s a link I’m excited about but then when I click it, the page no longer exists. That could be an unintentional clickbait, as when it was hyperlinked the webpage existed and now it has ceased to exist. As far as it goes for those who intentionally clickbait, shame on them for wasting our time!
Cheers,
Arianne