Written Communication Oct 2015

Five Strategies Internet Writers Use to “Continue the Conversation”

John R. Gallagher

Abstract

This article investigates the strategies web-writers develop when their audiences respond to them via textual participation. Focusing on three web-writers who want to “continue the conversation,” this article identifies five major strategies to accomplish this aim: (a) editing after production, (b) quotation, (c) question posing, (d) naming secondary writers, and (e) textual listening. Using the lens of writer-audience tension, I find that due to these web-writers’ perceptions of audience, one that is partially externalized via the website’s template, the term audience itself may not be a discrete concept, but a fluid, evolving, and recursive one, in other words, ongoing. These perceptions of audience reflect the unending nature of online texts and are exemplified by these five strategies.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
2015-10-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088315601006
Open Access
Closed
Topics
multilingual writers

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (11)

  1. Qin et al. (2024)
    Pragmatic Competence in an Email Writing Task: Influences of Situation, L1 Back…
    Written Communication
  2. Gallagher et al. (2022)
    Project-Oriented Web Scraping in Technical Communication Research
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  3. Richter (2021)
    Writing With Reddiquette: Networked Agonism and Structured Deliberation in Netw…
    Computers and Composition
  4. Gold et al. (2020)
    Who’s Afraid of Facebook? A Survey of Students’ Online Writing Practices
    College Composition and Communication
  5. Shepherd (2020)
    Gaming Reddit’s Algorithm: r/the_donald, Amplification, and the Rhetoric of Sorting
    Computers and Composition
Show all 11 →
  1. Gallagher et al. (2020)
    Peering into the Internet Abyss: Using Big Data Audience Analysis to Understand…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  2. Gallagher et al. (2019)
    Empty Templates: The Ethical Habits of Empty State Pages
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  3. Clinnin et al. (2019)
    How Not to be a Troll: Practicing Rhetorical Technofeminism in Online Comments
    Computers and Composition
  4. Christiansen (2017)
    Creating a Unique Transnational Place: Deterritorialized Discourse and the Blen…
    Written Communication
  5. Pflugfelder (2017)
    Reddit’s “Explain Like I’m Five”: Technical Descriptions in the Wild
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  6. Breuch et al. (2016)
    Toward Audience Involvement
    Written Communication

Cites in this index (10)

  1. Gallagher (2015)
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    Computers and Composition
  2. Wolff (2013)
    Interactivity and the Invisible: What Counts as Writing in the Age of Web 2.0
    Computers and Composition
  3. Duncan (2011)
    Polemical Ambiguity and the Composite Audience: Bush's 20 September 2001 Speech…
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  4. Laquintano (2010)
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    Written Communication
  5. Arola (2010)
    The Design of Web 2.0: The Rise of the Template, The Fall of Design
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Show all 10 →
  1. Porter (2009)
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  2. Smagorinsky (2008)
    The Method Section as Conceptual Epicenter in Constructing Social Science Resea…
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