Project 3: Creating a Network of Texts

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 printbased project that explicated one of those
keywords for the audience of firstyear EWM students. Next, we turned our attention to the media and
texttechnologies we use to communicate and the way said media and texttechnologies are remediations of what
came before. Through the assigned readings/videos and inclass 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 texttechnologies.
For this project, you can either elect to work alone or with a group of 3to4 people 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.
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, 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.
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:

Project 3: Creating a Network of Texts

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 sidewalkchalk 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).
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.
Due date: Wednesday, April 20th (however, your texts should start circulating by Wednesday, April 13th so they have some
time to circulate and foster the action/participation you desire).