Temptation and Its Discontents: Digital Rhetoric, Flow, and the Possible

Joshua Reeves North Carolina State University

Abstract

This essay explores the role of rhetoric in everyday online activities, arguing that scholarship in digital rhetoric can be informed by Raymond Williams's theory of media flow. Turning to Martin Heidegger and John Poulakos, I argue that the Web's rhetoric of the possible encourages a momentum of text consumption by which users are tempted to further immerse themselves in a “flowing” media experience. As digital technologies provide new opportunities for the surveillance and personalization of our Web practices, this article concludes by encouraging scholars to be critical of the tempting possibilities—and possible selves—crafted by this rhetoric.

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
2013-07-01
DOI
10.1080/07350198.2013.797878
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

  1. Philosophy & Rhetoric
  2. Computers and Composition

References (51) · 3 in this index

  1. Language, Autonomy, and the New Learning Environments
  2. JISC: Technology and Standards Watch.
  3. iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era
  4. 10.1080/09502386.2011.600551
  5. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse
Show all 51 →
  1. 10.1353/par.2000.0010
  2. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Video Games
  3. Remediation: Understanding New Media
  4. Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media
  5. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage
  6. 10.1177/1461444805054107
  7. 10.1177/1474022206063652
  8. “Pope Rallies Christians Not to Despair in Face of Attacks.”
  9. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  10. 2011. “Cuban Revolution.Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia., Mar ”Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Web. 18
  11. 10.1016/0304-422X(92)90013-S
  12. Television Culture
  13. GoogleAds.com.
  14. 10.1177/0002764208321341
  15. Being and Time
  16. Heidegger, Martin. 1988.The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Edited by: Hofstadter, Albert. 227–324. Blooming…
  17. The Ethics of Emerging Media: Information Social Norms, and New Media
  18. User-Centered Technology: A Rhetorical Theory for Computers and Other Mundane Artifacts
  19. Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate
  20. Understanding Digital Literacies: A Practical Introduction
  21. The Cult of the Amateur: How Blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the Rest of Today's User-Genera…
  22. 10.1002/asi.21362
    Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology  
  23. Multimodality: Exploring Contemporary Methods of Communication
  24. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization
  25. The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information
  26. The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts
  27. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy
  28. Virtualpolitik: An History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster…
  29. Language of New Media
  30. Genres in the Internet: Issues in the Theory of Genre
  31. Literary Machines 90.1
  32. Communications & Strategies
  33. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You
  34. 10.1177/1354856507072859
    Convergence  
  35. 10.1080/03637758409390196
  36. Philosophy and Rhetoric
  37. College Composition and Communication
  38. The Electronic Journal of Communication
  39. Bits of Life: Feminism at the Intersections of Media, Bioscience, and Technology
  40. Republic 2.0: The Revenge of the Blogs
  41. The Googlization of Everything (and Why We Should Worry)
  42. Rhetoric Online: Persuasion and Politics on the Worldwide Web
  43. Rhetoric Online: The Politics of New Media
  44. 10.4324/9780203426647
  45. Online Communication: Linking Technology, Identity, and Culture
  46. Technical Communication Quarterly