Slipping into the world: Platforms, scale, and branding in alumni's social media writing

Computers and Composition Mar 2023 Open Access

Slipping into the world: Platforms, scale, and branding in alumni's social media writing

Carl Whithaus University of California, Davis ; Karen Lunsford ; Jonathan Alexander

Abstract

In this article, we draw on focus group interviews collected for the Wayfinding Project to explore how university alumni orient themselves as writers while participating in social media after graduation. By looking at alumni's self descriptions of their writing processes across public networks, we are able to trace pathways that recognize the rhetorical and communicative intentions of users, while also acknowledging the roles that serendipity, creativity, and the unexpected play in shaping these literate practices. Specifically, we point to how these alumni describe their experiences as they adapt to addressing audiences across different platforms and confront the “reach” of those platforms for engaging unexpected audiences. Several focus group participants use the term “branding” as a way to describe how they conceive of their writing across multiple social networks. These participants describe their public, networked writing as a form of managing their identities at the same time that they are “branding” themselves to manage the expectations of multiple audiences. In sum, our research shows us how the unexpected audiences generated through social media participation operate in tension with writers’ deliberate shaping of their messages and their self-presentation.

Journal: Computers and Composition
Published: 2023-03-01
DOI: 10.1016/j.compcom.2023.102759
Open Access: OA PDF Hybrid
Topics: social media

Citation Context

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Also cites 2 works outside this index ↓

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You are a brand: Social media managers’ personal branding and ‘the future audience’

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When Things Collide: Wayfinding in Writers’ Early Career Development

LiCS: Literacy in Composition Studies ↗

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