The organization of this portfolio is also intertextual. The
home page presents the Table of Contents
first (with a short description of the project under each title), and then this
reflection on the portfolio and class as a whole. Each piece of work listed in
the TOC is a link to that piece, and many of the writing assignments in the
portfolio have intertextual links as well, to other assignments, to other
students’ course blogs, and to outside articles and sources referenced in the
assignments.
Writing for this class required utilizing many critical
texts used throughout the course to enable us to be mindful citizen critics and
develop new ideas based off of previously established public discourse issues. In “Plagiarism and Promiscuity”
Wiebe states that, “As Moore Howard suggested, in academic writing, at least,
there is no simple ‘originality,’ no such work that simply jumps from the
student’s mind to the page in some unmediated way” (Wiebe 33). Writing
assignments for this class required making new discoveries, but most of them
did build off and utilize other texts to aid in explaining these new
discoveries. Using these critical texts in our writing gave us the tools
to actually in engage in public discourse and publish our writing to public
forums, making me more mindful of each piece of work I wrote for this class.
Corbett and Eberly state in “Becoming a Citizen Critic: Where Rhetoric Meets
the Road” that, “In a
democracy, rhetoric as the actualizer of potential depends on citizens who are
able to imagine themselves as agents of action, rather than just spectators or
consumers” (Corbett and Eberly 131). For the first time, maintaining a blog and
writing for Wikipedia, I became an agent of action, engaging in and writing
public discourse rather than just reading about it and writing private papers
for school.
Organized into four sections, the portfolio showcases four
major units/concepts/topics that work intertextually with each other to further
the learning process throughout the course. Each section begins with a blog
post or response to another student’s blog post, a major assignment from a unit
of the course (Sci/Tech Blogging, Policy Argument, Higher Education, and
Collaborative Wikipedia Article), and a short writing assignment. To bring in
the editing component of the course, each assignment has been edited, the major
unit assignments especially, for clarity and precision. Below, I have broken
down these four sections, explaining how and why they are grouped together and
how all of these sections come together to provide the reader with a better
understanding of what being a mindful citizen critic/journalist means.
Technology’s Role in
Digital Discourse Concerns
This section contains a blog response about the ethics of
writing scientific texts for non-scientific consumers, a Sci/Tech blog post
about the effect of the digital age on note-taking technologies, and a short
assignment that attempts to provide a solution for the detriments of the ease
of reading that new technologies provide. All three of these assignments
revolve around technology and issues of discourse that have arisen from new
technologies. Because science and technology writing often require expertise or
specific information that a lay reader may not have prior knowledge of, it
makes Sci/Tech writing difficult. This becomes an issue of ethics because it is
not ethically sound to provide false information or less credible information
for the purpose of creating a more interesting story because the intended
audience of the text may not be aware of these discrepancies. Attempting to
stay away from these issues of discourse in writing for general audiences
requires Sci/Tech writers for the public sphere to maintain their mindful
citizen journalist roles and provide the best information for their audience in
understandable terms.
Providing Citizens
with Tools for Engaging in Issues of Public Discourse
In this section there is a blog post introducing how
citizens engage in public deliberation and even offer solutions not considered
by experts, a white paper about the public policy issue of mass incarceration
in the United States, and a short assignment addressing how mediated public
discourse could be an aid in eradicating issues of criminalizing homeless
populations. All of these assignments come together because they enable average
citizens to engage in public discourse. Many citizens may not be aware of their
abilities to engage in public issues, or may not feel that they are expert
enough to engage in these issues. However, as long as they remain mindful
citizen critics, anyone can engage in public discourse, and average citizens
can even be more helpful than experts because they are a part of these social
issues on a day-to-day basis and often provide new ways of looking at the
situation. This is why it is important to inform the public and enable them to
successfully engage in public deliberations.
Editing, Remediation,
and Appropriation
With a blog post about how to use rhetorical appeals in
remediated news stories, an essay about falsely appropriated statistics
regarding a decrease in humanities students leading to education stigmas, and a
short assignment about the Google Generation’s invention of “power browsing”
enabling consumers to more effectively take in the vast amount of information
provided on the Internet, these three assignments are a culmination of how and why
citizen critics must appropriately use strategies on editing, remediation, and
appropriation in public sphere discourse. All of these strategies, especially
remediation and appropriation, are often not used appropriately in public
sphere writing. It is necessary for citizen critics and citizen journalists to
use remediation and appropriation accurately and successfully, relying on
editing strategies to catch instances where these rhetorical strategies are not
used effectively.
Being a Mindful
Citizen Critic/Citizen Journalist
This final section revolves around three assignments to do
with Wikipedia editing and writing, tasks that require mindful citizen critics
to embody all of the concepts included in the first three sections. In this
section is a blog post about how Wikipedia’s guidelines remain successful, a
Wikipedia article collaboratively written by all of the students in this class,
and a short assignment discussing what being a citizen critic means
specifically in the context of Wikipedia. Writing and editing for Wikipedia was
the final project for this class and required myself and the rest of the class
to be mindful citizen critics, working together to write a successful Wikipedia
article informing the very public audiences of Wikipedia about “Public Sphere
Writing.” Participating in this project brought together all of the class
principles and spheres into one cohesive realization of what being a citizen
critic means and how we all operate as citizen critics in all realms of public
sphere discourse issues.
Works Cited
Corbett,
Edward P.J., and Rosa A. Eberly. “Becoming a Citizen Critic: Where Rhetoric
Meets
the Road.” The Elements of Reading. 121-138. Web.
D’Angelo,
Frank J. “The Rhetoric of Intertexuality.” Arizona
State University, 2009.
31-47. Web.
Wiebe,
Russell. “Plagiarism and Promiscuity, Authors and Plagiarism.” 29-47. Web.
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