- There has been “an epistemological shift from a view of the solitarily writer who has available only limited material means of production and often no recourse to distribution or circulation of the word to a view of composition as a collaborative activity that engages multiple means of production and that occurs within digital networks that provide broad opportunities for publication and circulation” (64).
- We now see students “not as subordinate to the learning process, but as engaged participants in the technological system that is bounded by the institutions, departments, and physical spaces in which learning takes place” (67).
- “composing practices [have] change[d] from traditional print production activities to multimodal, multimedia productions hat can now be delivered, distributed, published, and circulated in and through digital networks” (68).
- “Digital writing research takes a cyborgian view and a networked view of human communications” (72).
Circulation
Eyman defines circulation as “a rhetorical activity that takes place within and across multiple ecologies and this is driven by economic functions” (4). Eyman argues that circulation is often subsumed under delivery; instead, he calls circulation a “rhetorical meta-canon” that is separate from but related to the other canons (6). “Circulation constitutes both the movement of a text through a network and its use by other actors once it has been delivered” (8-9). In other words, circulation happens after delivery.
He argues that “circulation analysis provides a richer view of how texts interact than rhetorical analysis alone can provide—but it is best used in conjunction with other methods of rhetorical analysis, otherwise it risks being interpreted as a purely quantitative approach…Unlike traditional rhetorical analyses, which can use textual analysis to provide an assessment of a text's argument, studies of texts-in-action…to see how texts perform in particular contexts, or studies of the impact of texts on a particular rhetorical situation, circulation analysis seeks to identify the larger contexts in which digital texts circulate and situate them within an ecological framework in order to better understand both intended and unintended effects of specific rhetorical objects' interrelationships with other texts” (153). These methods can be used to trace post production circulation and/or to discover emerging genres.
Circulation Ecologies
Eyman emphasizes that ecologies take into account relationships and actions on both living and nonliving actants. “Ecologies are internetworked and interacting systems made up of discrete ecosystems” (35). “Ecosystems represent specific, bounded locales where circulation takes place” (36). For Eyman, “‘ecology’ is the super-structure and the theoretical lens; ‘ecosystem’ is the specific system that a digital work originally belongs to when it is first distributed or published, but it also the interconnected composition and environment that can be mapped and articulated through its circulation” (35). Eyman, unlike many other scholars, emphasizes the boundaries of ecosystems and argues that most other scholars are actually discussing ecosystems even though they use the term “ecology” (44). Eyman states that “any method for examining or researching circulation must take into account not only the actors, networks, and interactions, but also the specific articulation of media and technology within those networks” (46). He also sets up a scale for digital ecologies; they “can be identified as micro-ecologies (as in the work/portfolio of a single individual), midrange ecologies (which contextualize the work of collaborators, departments, research groups), or macro-ecologies (institutions, fields, disciplines, nations)” (47).
Economies of Circulation
“Economies of circulation represent the mechanisms that motivate circulation, primarily through a process of production, distribution, and exchange” (11). Eyman discusses the economies of circulation in terms of use and exchange value. However, because “digital objects are not typically traded for material or monetary gain…the exchange value of the work comes from the accrual of cultural or social capital” (12). Cultural capital looks at the competence of an individual, while social capital “resid[es] in the relationships that develop in and around social networks…Social capital can take the form of group membership and identity” (52). “Economies of circulation, then, must account for both the use-value and exchange-value acquired by rhetorical objects as they circulate through digital networks as well as the social capital these works are exchange for by their authors and appropriators” (13).
He connects ecologies and economies: “while circulation ecologies represent places, spaces, movements, and complex interactions of digital texts as they are produced, reproduced, exchanged, or used, the exchanges and uses that take place within those specific ecological circumstances are governed by the economies of circulation (which in turn are subject to the constraints and affordances offered by the situated ecologies in which the texts circulate)” (33).
Appropriation
Eyman identifies “three distinct forms of appropriation: traditional plagiarism, which is not limited to just digital texts, although it is easier to perform with more transparent texts; copying the whole work for redistribution elsewhere, which is a form of ecological appropriation - poaching - that removes the work from its proper ecosystem for the gain of the poacher; and a form of economic appropriation called propagated linking [the links that point from external sources back to the initial texts]. I see this as a form of appropriation because the intellectual work of that author is being used to support monetary gain for someone else without the benefit of even recognition (i.e. academic capital); there is no return value for the author” (192).
Other Key Terms
- Delivery: “rhetorical activity that is embodied in the deliberate choices made by the composer of a given text” during production – or Porter’s understanding of delivery (7)
- Distribution: “the part or mechanism by which a text is delivered and circulated” (7)
- Publication” “the process of delivery which makes texts available to the public” (7)
- Usability: “a method of investigating actual use in specific contexts and cultures” (66)