Using Facebook to Teach Rhetorical Analysis
From t he Classroom
Using Facebook to Teach Rhetorical Analysis
Jane Mathison Fife
The attraction of Facebook is a puzzle to many people over the age of thirtyfive, and that includes most college faculty. Yet students confess to spending significant amounts of time on Facebook, sometimes hours a day. If you teach in a computer classroom, you have probably observed students using Facebook when you walk in the room. Literacy practices that fall outside the realm of traditional academic writing, like Facebook, can easily be seen as a threat to print literacy by teachers, especially when they sneak into the classroom uninvited as students check their Facebook profiles instead of participating in class discussions and activities. This common reaction reflects James King and David O’Brien’s (2002: 42) characterization of the dichotomy teachers often perceive between school and nonschool literacy activities (although they are not referring to Facebook specifically): “From teachers’ perspectives, all of these presumably pleasurable experiences with multimedia detract from students’ engagement with their real work. Within the classroom economy technology work is time off task; it is classified as a sort of leisure recreational activity.” This dichotomy can be broken down, though; students’ enthusiasm for and immersion in these nonacademic literacies can be used to complement their learning of critical inquiry and traditional academic concepts like rhetorical analysis. Although they read these texts daily, they are often unaware of the sophisticated rhetorical analysis they employ while browsing others’ profiles (or as they decide what to add to or delete from their own page). Engaging students in a rhetorical analysis of Facebook can take advantage of this high-interest area — where most students are already rhetorically savvy but unaware of their critical processes — to teach the often challenging skill of rhetorical analysis.
Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to
Using Facebook to Teach Rhetorical Analysis
Jane Mathison Fife
The attraction of Facebook is a puzzle to many people over the age of thirtyfive, and that includes most college faculty. Yet students confess to spending significant amounts of time on Facebook, sometimes hours a day. If you teach in a computer classroom, you have probably observed students using Facebook when you walk in the room. Literacy practices that fall outside the realm of traditional academic writing, like Facebook, can easily be seen as a threat to print literacy by teachers, especially when they sneak into the classroom uninvited as students check their Facebook profiles instead of participating in class discussions and activities. This common reaction reflects James King and David O’Brien’s (2002: 42) characterization of the dichotomy teachers often perceive between school and nonschool literacy activities (although they are not referring to Facebook specifically): “From teachers’ perspectives, all of these presumably pleasurable experiences with multimedia detract from students’ engagement with their real work. Within the classroom economy technology work is time off task; it is classified as a sort of leisure recreational activity.” This dichotomy can be broken down, though; students’ enthusiasm for and immersion in these nonacademic literacies can be used to complement their learning of critical inquiry and traditional academic concepts like rhetorical analysis. Although they read these texts daily, they are often unaware of the sophisticated rhetorical analysis they employ while browsing others’ profiles (or as they decide what to add to or delete from their own page). Engaging students in a rhetorical analysis of Facebook can take advantage of this high-interest area — where most students are already rhetorically savvy but unaware of their critical processes — to teach the often challenging skill of rhetorical analysis.
Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to
Cited: Anderson, Daniel, Anthony Atkins, Cheryl Ball, Krista Homicz Millar, Cynthia Selfe, and Richard Selfe. 2006. “Integrating Multimodality into Composition Curricula: Survey Methodology and Results from a CCCC Research Grant.” Composition Studies 34.2: 59 – 84. DeVoss, Danielle Nicole, Ellen Cushman, and Jeffrey T. Grabill. 2005. “Infrastructure and Composing: The When of New-Media Writing.” College Composition and Communication 57: 14 – 44. Lenhart, Amanda, Kristen Purcell, Aaron Smith, and Kathryn Zickuhr. 2010. “Social Media and Young Adults.” 3 February. PEW Research Center. pewinternet.org/ Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx. Mathieu, Paula. 2005. Tactics of Hope: The Public Turn in English Composition. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. Meeks, Melissa, and Alex Ilyasova. 2003. “A Review of Digital Video Production in Postsecondary English Classrooms at Three Universities.” Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 8.2. english.ttu.edu/Kairos/8.2/binder.html?reviews/ meeksilyasova/index.htm. Miles, Libby, Michael Pennell, Kim Hensley Owens, Jeremiah Dyehouse, Helen O’Grady, Nedra Reynolds, Robert Schwegler, and Linda Shamoon. 2008. “Thinking Vertically.” College Composition and Communication 59: 503 – 11. Ranker, Jason. 2008. “Composing across Multiple Media: A Case Study of Digital Video Production in a Fifth Grade Classroom.” Written Communication 25: 196 – 234. Rice, Jenny Edbauer. 2008. “Rhetoric’s Mechanics: Retooling the Equipment of Writing Production.” College Composition and Communication 60: 366 – 87. Ross, Heather. 2003. “Digital Video and Writing Composition: Gauging the Promise of a Low-Maintenance High-Reward Relationship.” Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 8.1. english.ttu.edu/Kairos/8.1/index.html. Selfe, Cynthia L. 2004. “Students Who Teach Us: A Case Study of a New Media Text Designer.” In Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition, ed. Anne Frances Wysocki, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Cynthia L. Selfe, and Geoffrey Sirc, 43 – 66. Logan: Utah State University Press. Sheppard, Jennifer. 2009. “The Rhetorical Work of Multimedia Production Practices: It’s More Than Just Technical Skill.” Computers and Composition 26: 122 – 31. WIDE Research Center Collective. 2005. “Why Teach Digital Writing?” Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 10.1. english.ttu.edu/Kairos/10.1/binder2.html ?coverweb/wide/index.html. doi 10.1215/15314200-2010-009 Pennell New Media Composing in First-Year Composition 573