Elsevier

Computers and Composition

Volume 34, December 2014, Pages 23-38
Computers and Composition

Programming in Network Exchanges

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2014.09.003Get rights and content

Abstract

This article asks whether or not Manuel Castells's (2009) programming, or the act of setting the goals and values of a network, influences the rhetorical and compositional potential of networked writing. The author argues that as networked writing becomes more prevalent, researchers must investigate not only the ways in which traditional rhetoric and writing present themselves within networks, but also the particular features of networks that uniquely determine the rhetorical impact of the form, or, as Ian Bogost (2007) put it, “how inscription works” within networks (p. 24). The case study for answering this question is a network exchange that occurred on Twitter in July 2008 after a sitting U.S. congressman stated that the leadership of the House of Representatives was attempting to censor the use of social media by House members. The author examines the over 1,700 messages in this exchange to determine both the nature of this network's program as well as if this program affected the rhetorical and compositional features of the exchange.

Section snippets

Data

The primary data for this study are the tweets sent by Culberson himself along with those that mention him during the sixteen-day period from July 5–21, 2008. I used search.twitter.com to collect messages containing “@johnculberson” and gathered Culberson's messages from his Twitter profile page. Culberson sent a total of 380 messages during this time, while 1,347 messages referenced him, for a total of 1,727 messages. I aggregated these two groups of messages by the date and time they were

The Capuano letter

On July 8, 2008, House Republican Leader John Boehner posted a memo on his congressional website with the subject line, “An Attack on Internet Free Speech” (Boehner, 2008). In this memo, Boehner claimed that the “Committee on House Administration is considering a new rule” that would bring the increasing use of social media by House members “to a screeching halt” (2008, para. 3). This rule was detailed in a letter from the Democratic chairman of the Franking Commission, Michael E. Capuano, that

Programming network exchanges

In his examination of network power, Castells (2009) argued that one form of this power is held by “programmers,” who have “the ability to constitute network(s),” programming or reprogramming them “in terms of the goals assigned to the network” (p. 45). Programmers, then, are defined by two key attributes: they can create or “constitute” networks and “program... the goals assigned to” those networks (2009, p. 45). While individual networks—defined by Castells as actor-networks consisting of

Conclusion

It seems clear from this analysis that programming had an influence on the compositional and rhetorical features of this network exchange. The network enacted by Culberson's initial tweet inherited the program that dominated Twitter's culture in 2008, and Culberson's enaction of that program in his response to the Capuano letter influenced the effectiveness of Culberson's arguments, benefiting those claims that supported the program and hindering those that did not. This result largely supports

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Catherine Gouge and the Computers & Composition reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article.

John Jones is an Assistant Professor of Professional Writing and Editing at West Virginia University.

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