Project 3: Creating a Network of Texts

What are We Doing?

To start the semester, we familiarized ourselves with and worked to understand better many of the
keywords inherent in the field of rhetoric and composition, and you created a print-based project that
explicated one of those keywords for the audience of first-year EWM students. Next, we turned our
attention to the media and text-technologies we use to communicate and the way said media and
text-technologies are remediations of what came before. Through the assigned readings/videos and
in-class activities, we explored what it now means to compose in an online, connected, and easily
remediated/remixed world, and you worked to employ the practices of remediation and/or remix on a
textor set of textsof your choosing while paying special attention to the way legality (i.e., copyright
and fair use) affects those practices. On the whole, then, youve had a crash course in rhetoric and
composition in the digital age.
Now, were going to explore additional critical issues the digital age engenders, and were going to
investigate further the different ways in which we can compose using new media text-technologies.

For this project, you must work in a group. Your group must include a minimum of 2 people in it.
Your task will be to create your own rhetorically aware network of texts. In the upcoming weeks,
well look at networks of texts, how they can function in our culture, and how to consciously craft a
network of texts to successfully address an issue or concern. Well examine what really makes a network
of texts popular and how you can harness that power for your own project. Youll become even further
invested in your roles as media and textual producers, not just consumers and analyzers.

How are We Doing It?

In the briefest possible terms, you and/or your group needs to do the following:
 1. Identify a cause you can rally behind.
2. Identify an audience and purpose.
3. Identify a constellation of texts that will fit your purpose and cause, as well as appeal to your
audience.
4. Use elements of design and technology to your advantage to create a coherent network of texts in
very obvious ways (similar fonts/colors/logos as well as URLs/QR Codes/Websites etc.).

Of course, theres more to these steps than just that, but youll find that detail below.

How Should We Approach This?

First, you and/or your group will need to choose a cause. Since weve spent the past few weeks
discussing the digital, and since digital technologies allow for much faster circulation of texts and ideas, it
makes sense that your cause will in some way be connected to issues associated with the digital. To that
end, start with the following questions:

What are you and/or your group interested in?

What types of practices and/or issues are important to be aware of given the presence and
prevalence of digital media in our everyday lives?
What things/situations do you want to see change or improve?
What activities/practices would you want to stop or perhaps promote as soon as possible?
In short, first you need to identify an exigence.

In thinking about a potential exigence, you should probably think locally (i.e. on campus, and potentially
for an audience of your peers). You can, of course, tackle larger issues, ones that affect both the state
and/or nation, but you probably want to start small given the time constraints of the project and issues of
access. In other words, you want to think about who you can reach and how much change you can
reasonably enact given the circumstances. Which brings us to

Second, you and/or your group will need to choose a purpose and an audience.

What is it that youll want your audience members to do, think, act like, accept, reject, etc. when
they engage with your network of texts?
Who is your audience, specifically? Given the focus on digital issues and their relevance to your
peers, I encourage you to target the FSU student population. I am open to your group targeting
a different audience, but I will need to approve of that audience.

Third, you and/or your group will need to think rhetorically about your purpose and audience in order to
decide which genres and mediums of texts belong in your network of texts, and how those will
appeal to them. To that end, think about the following:

What genres are most effective considering your purpose and audience?
What kinds of rhetorical appeals can you make to your audience?
What kind of language and tone will persuade your audience?
What sort of action/participation can your texts foster?
 How will you circulate these texts to your audience and, just as important, how will your
audience contribute in the circulation of your texts; that is, how can your network of texts most
effective given your rhetorical aims?

Finally, you and/or your group will need to start creating the actual texts! Once you are all on the same
page about the cause, purpose, audience, and approach for your network of texts, each of you will then
need to create a text(s) for your network of texts. For instance: make a Facebook group, start up a
website, post up a video on YouTube, design a logo and make some merchandise, plan an event and
create the advertising for it, organize a protest and create the promotional materials, create an informative
pamphlet about the cause, conduct a presentation about the cause, take it to the streets and
sidewalk-chalk about your cause. Anything and everything is up for grabs with this project as long as it
is consistent with your groups cause, purpose, audience, rhetorical approach, and fits into your network
of texts logically and rhetorically.
To that end, you will want to make sure that your texts connect to one another, that there is some
cohesion across the texts. These texts should lead to and/or promote another (think: dates and times for
events, links to other sites, and QR codes); perhaps each text has a common element, such as a
logo/brand. In short, it should be clear that these texts are part of the same network. In addition, youll
want to think about creating a main hub: a central space or event that youre attempting to direct people
towards (though this will vary depending on the primary purpose of your network of texts).

Why Are We Doing This?

Across all of the projects youve completed this semester you demonstrated rhetorical and design savvy
in print contexts and digital contexts. You needed to make use of (in most cases) a single text technology,
genre, and/or medium and design a text that accomplishes a specific goal. In this final project, I want you
to create a network of texts that build on one another, showing the power and importance of how new
media texts function together and how they can be used rhetorically. Beyond this, Im asking you to:

Work collaboratively and equitably in groups (if you elect to) to accomplish a particular goal.
Develop a cohesive network of texts with a clear identity, focus, and goal.
Create a network of texts that attends to a specific exigence, targets a specific audience, and
functions as part of a larger whole.
Raise awareness for a cause your audience should care about.
Understand how to form and develop a network of texts.
Creatively deliver your text(s) in attempt(s) to make them successfully circulate and resonate with
your target audience.

When Is It Due?
Due date: Thursday, December 7th (however, your texts should start circulating by November
20th so they have some time to circulate and foster the action/participation you desire).

Your reflection is also due Thursday, December 7th.