Joachim Vlieghe

" I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. " JDS

“Tastes, ties, and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook.com” – Kevin Lewis, Jason Kaufman, Marco Gonzalez, Andreas Wimmer, Nicholas Christakis

Central issue: “Scholars have long recognized the potential of Internet-based communication technologies for improving network research (…). In the first half of this paper, we introduce a new public dataset based on manipulations and embellishments of a popular social network site, Facebook.com. (…) In the second half of this paper, we present descriptive findings from our first wave of data.” (LKGWC, p.330)
                > “In line with the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1984), previous research suggests that cultural proclivities play an important role in shaping social boundaries (…) and that ‘culture and social relations empirically interpenetrate with and mutually condition one another so thoroughly that it is well-nigh impossible to conceive of the one without the other’ (Emirbayer and Goodwin, 1994, p.1438).” (LKGWC, pp.333-334)
                                > “(…) we analyze how students conceptualize their tastes when unrestrained by closed-ended survey questions (…) [and] we explore the intersection of tastes and ties by calculating the extent of taste similarity between two students sharing various kinds of social relationship.” (LKGWC, p.334)
                                                > Potential question: “Do individuals form ties with one another on the basis of shared preferences (selection)? Or are tastes instead transmitted through ties (socialization)?” (LKGWC, p.338)
                                                                > Remark: “The two possibilities are not mutually exclusive (see Kandel, 1978) (…).” (Ibid.)

Focus on sns and Facebook because: “Individuals can enter information on their background (e.g. high school, hometown), demographics (e.g. birthday, gender), ‘interests,’ political views, and group affiliations, as well as on their cultural tastes (e.g. ‘favorite’ books, movies, and music). Additionally, users can enter ‘friendship’ [1] relationships with other registered users and share photo albums that can be linked to the profiles of those present in a picture[2].” (LKGWC, p.331)
    > Features of the dataset (LKGWC, pp.331-332):
                - Natural research instrument
                - Sociocentric nature of the environment: complete network data
                                » “(…) it is possible to accurately locate individuals within the network – determining their role or position vis-à-vis peers and the interconnectedness of actors beyond first-degree ties or ‘direct contacts’.” (LKGWC, p.332)
                                                »> Note: “The disadvantage of using complete network data is that they are not representative of some larger population.” (Ibid.)
                                                                > Perhaps the current saturation rate of Facebook would make this less of a problem if the study were to be repeated today.
                - Longitudinal data
                                » “(…) allowing researchers to observe how students’ networks, tastes, and group activities evolve over time.” (Ibid.)
                - Multiplex data: multiple social relationships
                - Data include: demographic, relational and cultural information
                                » Note: “Naturally, not all students provide information on all available variables; but even the response rate for cultural tastes is reasonably high (66.2% for movies, 67.5% for music, 65.6% for books) …” (LKGWC, p.331)
                                                »> Remark: “Taste responses, (…), are undoubtedly not only a product of respondents’ ‘true’ preferences but also involve strategic presentation of self.” (LKGWC, pp.331-332)

Focus on social relations involves:
                - Network size
                - Network density = “(…) an indicator of the extent to which individuals identify with those around them [or] the potential strength of normative pressures toward conformity.” (LKGWC, p.334)
                - Heterogeneity of personal networks
                                > Note: “Network heterogeneity (…) has been found to be positively associated with such outcomes as cultural awareness (Antonio, 2001), reduced ingroup bias and intergroup anxiety (Levin et al., 2003), and continued [heterogeneous] contact in the future (Emerson et al., 2002).” (Ibid.)
                - Betweenness centrality = “(…) an index measuring one’s potential to control communication in a given network (…)” (Freeman, 1979; in: LKGWC, p.334)

Observations:
Taste and genres…
“In fact, students in our dataset rarely indicated a preference for a genre; and when they did, they often qualified this preference by giving examples of the particular subtype they preferred. Instead, students tended to list particular titles for ‘favorite movies’; particular artists for ‘favorite music’; and either authors or titles for ‘favorite books’.” (LKGWC, p.339)
   > Signifies the advantage of the format of sns-research:
     “The template provided by Facebook is completely open-ended such that no a priori assumptions are made regarding the form (or even the quantity) of tastes. (…) This allows us the rare opportunity to see what cultural preferences actually look like.” (LKGWC, p.338)

Taste and ties
“Two students involved in any of the friendship relations we examined share significantly more tastes in every category of tastes than we would expect from chance alone.” (LKGWC, p.339)
   > In addition:
      “(…) proximity is unimportant for taste similarity, controlling for friendship (…). In other words, co-residence may be an important predicator of friendship; but it is this emergent social affinity, not mere proximity, that is associated with cultural likeness – in the absence of which students may actually distance themselves from one another by adopting (or at least professing) discrepant tastes.” (LKGWC, p.340)

General insights:
“As the Internet in general and contemporary SNSs in particular play ever-greater roles in everyday life, virtual and ‘actual’ communications, relationships, and identities become virtually indistinguishable.” (LKGWC, p.341)
    “(…) students differ tremendously in the extent to which they ‘act out their social lives’ on Facebook: both the level of SNS participation and the meaning of this activity undoubtedly vary across individuals and settings.” (Ibid.)

[1] Remark: “Mayer and Puller (2008) report (…) that only 0.4% of the Facebook friendships they studied appeared to reflect ‘merely online interactions’. This finding is supported by other research indicating that Facebook is used primarily to maintain or reinforce existing offline relationships rather than to meet new people (Ellison et al., 2007).” (LKGWC, p.332)

[2] Why the focus on posting photos?
“The act of publicly posting a photo of someone suggests that ego wishes her relationship with alter to be socially recognized, rather than simply enumerating her ‘friends’ or ‘close confidants’ to an interviewer in a private setting.” (LKGWC, p.333)

“Reconceptualizing Literacy in the Media Age” – Ann Watts Pailliotet & Peter B. Mosenthal

INTRODUCTION (Watts Pailliotet)

Focus of media literacy studies: identity, intermediality, issues[1], and innovations. (AWPPM, p.xxv)

Observation: (Eisner) “(…) multiple forms of representation inherent in mass media texts profoundly impact thinking processes, educational products, and the ways we represent and perceive the world.” (AWPPM, p. xxi)
   > Intermediality: “(…) texts are laden with shifting meanings and reflect cultural ideologies. (…) all texts [are] constructions involving active, varied transactions of meaning making.” (AWPPM, p.xxvii)
                > “(…)embraces the connectedness among texts, processes, and contexts, (…).” (Ibid.)
                                » media literacy (Semali & Watts Pailliotet):
                                     “the linchpin … that connects learning contexts and curricula” (Ibid.)
                                    + “the ability to critically read and write with and across multiple symbol systems” (Ibid.)

GIRLFRIEND IN A COMA: RESPONDING TO LITERATURE THROUGH HYPERMEDIA (Hammett)

Presumption:
“Literature, when reader response is allowed and encouraged (…) helps us not only expand our view of the world, but to rethink our own place in it and our relationship to it and others as well.” (Stover in AWPPM, p.107)
   > “Texts, reading practices, and pedagogical contexts all position readers, encouraging them to assume and construct particular viewpoints, sympathies, interpretations, and readings (…). This positioning is accomplished through a variety of discourses, experiences, and textual practices.” (AWPPM, p.109)
                > personal literacy = “(…) exploring the self, connecting the self, and exposing the self [2]during practices of both reading and writing.” (AWPPM, p.107)
                                »> “In these social acts, identities are constructed and reconstructed (…). Identities, like the readings of texts, are context-dependent, multiple, and shifting(…).” (Ibid.)
                                                > Implications for literacy education:
                                                  “Providing a set of thematically connected texts as well as the opportunity and encouragement to identify, share, discuss, and produce personally connected texts ensures a rich environment for textual (and self) exploration.” (AWPPM, p.108)

Interesting remark or warning:
“Media studies scholars have noted that the relocation of children’s and adolescents’ ‘leisure/pleasure’ texts into the classroom for formal intellectual scrutiny potentially subverts and belittles whatever pleasure kids derive from such texts and the social relations within which such texts are consumed.” (Luke in AWPPM, p.124)

Reader response theories (Rosenblatt):
   - evocation = “(…) the experience of reading and imagining the text in a personal way. (…) consciously or unconsciously making connections and meaning of the words on the page, and drawing on memories and personal and pervious literary experiences.” (AWPPM, p.105)
   - response = “(…) a conversation with or about the text, with self or with others (…).” (AWPPM, p.105-106)
   - efferent reading = “(…) when [one] explores textual significance, interprets the text, ‘concentrates on what the symbols designate’, decides what to ‘carry away’ from it, and creates texts about.” (AWPPM, p.106)
                » focus on interpretive community: “(…) attempts to place the work in larger contexts.” [3] (Ibid.)

Hypermedia = “(…) the combining in one window or space, potentially, of a variety of texts and links to other windows.” (Ibid.)
   > non-linear organization: “(…) the reader moves from one space to the next in a random pattern, (…).” (Ibid.)

Intertextuality:
“Intertextuality expresses the rather dizzying concept of a text as a bundle of points of intersections of other texts.” (Talbot in AWPPM, p.108)

»> “Hypermedia technology provides the means to demonstrate connections between words and ideas in texts by: allowing the display of several different texts in the same space and in spaces side by side on the screen, showing linked words through highlighting and contrasting font colors, and facilitating links between texts.” (AWPPM, p.124)
                > “It encourages alternative reading and writing practices that challenge traditional texts’ constructedness. Various texts, set side by side or morphed together, provide space for reinterpretations and the construction of new meaning. Instead of talking about a connection one might make to another text, the electronic space of hypermedia provides firsthand concreteness, (…).” (Ibid.)

[1] Key issues in the debate among media theorists and educators: assessment and standards (e.g. Buckingham 1998) (cf. Gee),  interdisciplinary applications of media literacy (e.g. Hobbs 1998), social and institutional conditions of schools that foster or prevent change (e.g. Giroux & Simon 1989). (AWPPM, p.xxviii)

[2] “Students read texts and write explanations and introductions as they select and incorporate a wide variety of texts in their hypermedia. They choose quotations and images from their favorite songs and movies, thus representing their identities and engaging in personal literacy practices.” (AWPPM, p.124)

[3] This is: “(…) to define [the text’s] place in social discourse or the history of ideas, to evaluate its significance and meaning in relation to any number of established or newly proposed criteria, to test the worldview it embodies, to use it as the focal point for questioning one’s assumptions about human experience or the sense of values prevalent in one’s society, and to analyze the adequacy of its language and literacy devices to achieve effects deemed appropriate for its genre or theme.” (AWPPM, p.106)
                > Presumption: (Bruner) culture = “(…) a forum for negotiating and renegotiating meaning (…).”

“Making New Media: creative production and digital literacies” - Andrew Burn

Central issue: relation between media production and literacy (AB, p.1)

Presumptions:

“Making is primarily about representation: the combination of ideas that represent the world in some way and the material substances – of language, image, music, dramatic gesture – which make it possible.” (AB, p.1)
   > Aristotelian approach to culture:
                - culture as imitations of nature made by humans
                - culture as a space for imitation
                - culture as the use of physical instruments (e.g. language etc.) (Ibid.)
    » For modern theorists of literacy, representation and rhetoric belong together. (Ibid.)
                > embracing the idea of textuality
                                > adopting an approach based on sociolinguistics (Halliday) and social semiotics (Kress &  van Leeuwen)
                                                > Connecting “(…) texts with the social interests of their related signmakers: those who make them, and those who use, read, view or play them.” (AB, p.2)

(Williams) Triple definition of culture:
   > Social definition
                (Lived) culture = “a description of a particular way of life, which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour.’ (Williams 1961, p.41).” (AB, p.3)
   > Ideal definition
                Culture = a selective tradition (Ibid.)
                                - “(…)it offers a way out of the binary opposition of élite-popular by proposing a historical process of cultural distinction.” (AB, p.4)
                                - “(…) as a process suggests the contestation and negotiation of cultural value, which is surely exactly the kind of process we want students to uncover, critically observe, and learn how to participate in.” (Ibid.)                
   > Documentary definition
                Culture = a documentary record (AB, p.3)

» Related observations:
“One of the probable benefits of postmodernist theory, however, is the hypothesis of a collapse of the formerly well-policed boundary between popular and élite cultures, suggesting that those media texts which exist in borderline spaces may be the most productive ones to use with young people, to unsettle and explore questions of taste and cultural value.” (Ibid.)
+ “Rather than simply relativising cultural value, or reducing it purely to contemporary tastes, it offers a way to consider how cultural value accretes over time, making visible the operations of social power at work in this process.” (AB, p.4)
   > “(…) the sociology of youth culture has increasingly recognized the fragmentation of young people’s and children’s cultural affiliations into myriad forms and lifestyles, shaping and shaped by forces both global and local.” (AB, p.3)

World can be approached as:
   - text: “(…) shaped by the motivations of social agents (…)” (AB, p.5)
   - audience: “(…) the texts they engage with are backgrounded and reified.” (Ibid.)
                > these approaches are mutually dependent (Ibid.)
                                > come together in a social semiotic approach:
                                                - discursive context and origins: Who? Why? How? What? (AB, p.7)
                                                - interpretation and meaning making: “(…) how are the semiotic resources provided by media texts understood, employed in the service of identity and social action, and reshaped into new texts by players, readers, spectators?” (Ibid.)
 » Related observation:
“(…) the general tendency has been for media texts to be treated as factual and untruthful, requiring a reading mode of suspicion, as distinct from literary texts which are treated as fictional and truthful, requiring a reading mode of appreciation.” (AB, p.8)
   > Suggestion: rhetorical approach [1]
                “It allows us to recognize duplicity, exploitation, and misrepresentation, to be sure (both in media and literary texts[2]) but also the stylistic properties (…)” (Ibid.)

On Media Education:
   Question: “(…) how we identify what is distinctly new about digital media (…)” (AB, p.15)

Observations:
“While the cultures, narratives, communities of the new media age are qualitatively different in many respects from their immediate predecessors, these differences are evolutions from older forms.” (AB, p.16)
+ “Moreover, in a general sense, digital media are another technology which succeeds older technologies of representation and information.” (AB, p.17)
   > Media education as discovering historical continuity:
                -  “(…) to challenge arts and literature educators to rediscover ancient, powerful narrative forms through an engagement with the new media cultures familiar to (…) students.” (Ibid.)
                - “ (…) to help us understand that representations of the world made from numerical structures, quantified resources and formulaic patterns are not aesthetically suspect or debased but related to an older aesthetic whose formulae were creative resources for a culture of performance and improvisation.” (Ibid.)
                - “(…) to challenge once again the technological determinism rife in popular, even academic, discourses of the place of new technologies in education (see Buckingham, 2007; Selwyn, 2008).” (Ibid.)
                                » attention for:
                                                - relation between practice and technology
                                                                (Selwyn) “(…) and for an understanding of the affordances and constraints of new technologies on they way they are used.” (Ibid.)
                                                                (Selwyn) “attention to how social uses shape the development of the technology (…)” (AB, p.13)
                                                - relation between practice and (textual) interrelations
                                                                appropriation [3]
                                                                intertextuality
   > Media education as serious play:
                (Vygotsky 1931) “In playful activity, children learn the meaning of symbolic substitution through the manipulation of physical objects (…). These symbolic understandings become internalised and develop into the mental processes which generate creative work. In these processes, importantly, imaginative play becomes full creativity, for Vygotsky, only when allied with rational thought, thinking in concepts.” (AB, p.12) 

Answer to the question:
(Burn & Durran, 2007)
   - iteration = “the ability to endlessly revise”
   - feedback = “the realtime display of the developing work”
   - convergence= “the integration of different authoring modes in the same software”
   - exhibition= “the ability to display work in different formats, on different platforms” (AB, p.15)

                » In this light Media Education aims at ‘collective knowledge’
                                = (Jenkins) “(…) it will bring a deterritorialization of knowledge, a horizontal network of participants held in relations of temporary affiliation, a creative process more geared towards the production of a dynamic environment than the production and regulation of texts.” (AB, p.19)

 [1] Reference is made to an Aristotelian approach of rhetoric, which focuses on:
                Ethos = credibility of the speaker
                Logos = logical consistency of the message
                Pathos = emotional appeal to the listeners (AB, pp.7-8)

[2] Reference is made to ‘modality’
                = “(…) how a text makes a truth claim, and what a reader makes of this.” (AB, p.8)

[3] An interesting approach to appropriation is the idea of ‘repurposing’ (AB, p. 16)

“The Rhetoric of Video Games” – Ian Bogost

“Studies of digital rhetoric (…) help to explain how traditional rhetorical strategies of persuasion function and are being reconfigured in digital spaces.” (Zappen in IB, p.125)

Central issue: “(…) video games are not just stages that facilitate cultural, social or political practices; they are also media where cultural values themselves can be represented. (…) In other words, video games make claims about the world, which players can understand, evaluate, and deliberate.” (IB, p.119)
+ “Video games are models of real and imagined systems. (…) when we play, we explore the possibility space of a set of rules – we learn to understand and evaluate a game’s meaning. Video games make arguments about how social and cultural systems work in the world – or how they could work, or don’t work.” (IB, p.136)
                »> Persuasive use of processes in order “to expose and explain the hidden ways of thinking [ie. ideologies] that often drive social, political, or cultural behavior.” (IB, p.128)
                or else: “When we learn to play games with an eye toward uncovering their procedural rhetorics, we learn to ask questions about the models such games represent.” (IB, p.136)

Presumption: (Lave & Wenger) “Video game play could be understood as a ‘community of practice’ (…)”
   = “(…) a common situation around which people collaborate to develop ideas.” (IB, p.119)
                > “Video game players often self-identify as ‘gamers’(…).” (Ibid.)
   + Development of cultural values (which evolve over time).
                > “(…) the values of a video game community (…) exists outside the game.” (Ibid.)
                                > Focus on social practice of playing the game, rather than the one represented in it.

Play
   > “(…) is often considered (…) a trifle that occupies and distracts kids.” (IB, p.120)
                > Result: segregation of play and learning in contemporary schooling.
                   ie. games as interruption of learning and social life
  <> (Salen & Zimmerman) = “(…) the free space of movement within a more rigid structure.” (Ibid.)
                > “The possibility space of play includes all the gestures made possible by a set of rules.” (Ibid.)
                                »> “(…) imposing rules does not suffocate play, but makes it possible (…).” (Ibid.)
                                        ie. creation of space
                > Possibility space is filled with meaning by exploring[1] free movement within its structure.
                                »> “(…) the rules (…) adopt[ed] (…) alter the experience and meaning of play.” (IB, p.121)
                                       ie. constant renegotiation of relationship with (possibility) space[2]
 
 Procedures
   > as sets of constraints: “(…) algorithms that model the way things behave.” (IB, p.122)
                > (Murray) procedurality as an essential property of digital artifacts.
                                > Video games as procedural models[3] of real (or imagined) systems.
                                   ie. creating possibility space for play.  
                                                »  Rhetoric[4]: “(…) games use procedurality to make claims about the cultural, social or material aspects of human experience.” (IB, p.123)
                                                                > Procedural rhetoric = using processes persuasively[5].
                                                                    (either to change opinion/action (trad.) or to convey ideas (cont.))
                                                                                »> Authorship = construction of dynamic models through the practice of programming code. (IB, p.125)
                                                                                      ie. “(…) assembling particular rules that suggest a particular function of a particular system (…)” (Ibid.)

Bogost’s idea’s on games and education:
“Video games represent processes in the material world (…) and create new possibility spaces for exploring those topics. That representation is composed of the rules themselves. We encounter the meaning of games by exploring their possibility spaces. And we explore their possibility spaces through play.” (IB, p.121)
   > “Teachers can learn to help students address real-world issues by playing and critiquing the video games they play. And educators can also help students imagine and design games based on their own opinions of the world.” (IB, p.120)
                > Focus for learning:
                                - subject-centered literacy related to human practices
                                - procedurality related to (increasingly important) computer practices (IB, p.123)
»» In short:
“Educators should consider adopting video games as artifacts to be discussed alongside traditional media (…) teaching game playing as an argumentative and expressive practice alongside reading, writing, and debating.” (IB, p.136)
+ Learning kids how to write computer programs (procedural literacy) and computer arguments (procedural rhetoric): “(…) they can learn to make their own claims about the world in the form of processes.” (IB, p.137)

         ** Extra: An interesting project in this respect is ‘The Escapist’.

[1] Exploration is done by manipulating the symbolic system which constitutes the space. (IB, p.121)

[2] Video games as representational models of systems/spaces which can be ‘inhabited’. (IB, p.122)
Note: This can be related to the idea of the ‘Digital Resident’ when thinking about digital media and the concept of Space. Yet it conflicts with the idea of Affinity Spaces, which are essentially temporary spaces where no long-term residency is established.

[3] Bogost defines models as: “(…) devices that attempt to persuade their creators or users that a machine works in a certain way.” (IB, p.125)
Note: based on the earlier statements of Bogost and his referral to James Paul Gee preceding this definition, it is safe to assume that the word ‘machine’ can be replace by any other word referring to a (complex) system. For instance: (Shaffer, epistemic games) “games can model how professions work, offering an incomplete, yet embodied experience of real-world jobs.” (IB, p.130)

[4] Bogost defines this as: “(…) the field of communication that deals with persuasive speech.” (IB, p.123)
                > Refering to its roots in ancient Greece, Bogost further refines this definition as follows:
                   It is “(…) public speaking for civic purposes”; “(…) ‘the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion’.” (Aristotle in IB, p.123-124)
                                » Contemporary rhetoric: focus on effective expression (less or not effect influence)
                                                »> (Burke) Identification (with others) as central to rhetoric. (IB, p.124)

[5] For instance through the use of incentives (points, levels, and honorary signs which “(…) telegraph commitment and expertise (…)” (IB, p.130)) which instruct towards a certain behavior and act as disincentives for opposed behavior (ie. frustration of having to restart entirely whereby the achieved status of ‘committed expert’ is lost and needs to be rebuild).

Remark: Neither Bogost nor Gee mention the concept ‘Affinity Space’ in their respective chapters in ‘The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning’. This can easily be attributed to the fact that Gee (and others) did not start to use the concept ‘Affinity Space’ as an alternative for ‘Communities of Practice’ until about a year after the publication of this volume.

“Arts of the contact zone” - Mary Louise Pratt

Central issue: Schooling hands children tools with which to find and open a near infinite number of doors, but often lacks in immediate meaningfulness which constitutes involvement.
   > In the academic thinking about language, communication and culture “languages were seen as living in ‘speech communities’, and these tended to be theorized as discrete, self-defined, coherent entities, held together by a homogeneous competence or grammar shared identically and equally among all the members.” (MLP, p.4)
                > the imagined communities (cf. Benedict Anderson)
                                > “(…) human communities exist as imagined entities in which people ‘will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communion’.(BA, p.15)” (MLP, p.4)
                                > Writing and literacy as instrument/device for these projects of imagining community.
                                                » “In keeping with autonomous, fraternal models of community, analyses of language use commonly assume that principles of cooperation and shared understanding are normally in effect. Descriptions of interactions between people in conversation, classrooms, medical and bureaucratic settings, readily take it for granted that the situation is governed by a single set of rules or norms shared by all participants. The analysis focuses then on how those rules produce or fail to produce an orderly, coherent exchange.(…) Despite whatever conflicts or systematic social differences might be in play, it is assumed that all participants are engaged in the same game and that the game is the same for all players.” (MLP, p.5)
                                                                > “When linguistic (or literate) interaction is described in terms of orderliness, games, moves, or scripts, usually only legitimate moves are actually named as part of the system, where legitimacy is defined from the point of view of the party in authority (…). If a classroom is analyzed as a social world unified and homogenized with respect to the teacher, whatever students do other than what the teacher specifies is invisible or anomalous to the analysis. This can be true in practice as well.” (ibid.)

Reconsidering the model of communities:
Safe houses = “(…) social and intellectual spaces where groups can constitute themselves as horizontal, homogeneous, sovereign communities with high degrees of trust, shared understandings, temporary protection from legacies of oppression.” (MLP, p.6)
   > “(…) groups need (…) safe houses in which to construct shared understandings, knowledges, claims on the world that they can then bring into the contact zone.” (ibid.)
                > Contact zones = “(…) social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power (…).” (MLP, p.1)
                > No one is excluded, and no one is safe. (MLP, p.6)
                   Everyone is involved through a historical relationship and has stakes.
                                > putting ideas and identities on the line in the classroom:
                                “The lecturer’s traditional (imagined) task – unifying the world in the class’s eyes by means of monologue that rings equally coherent, revealing, and true for all, forging an ad hoc community, homogeneous with respect to ones own words – this task became not only impossible but anomalous and unimaginable. Instead one had to work in the knowledge that whatever one said was going to be systematically received in radically heterogeneous ways that we were neither able nor entitled to prescribe.” (MLP, p.5-6)

Pedagogical arts of the contact zone:
   - redemption of the oral
   - engaging with suppressed aspects of history – moving in and out of rhetorics of authenticity
   - ground rules for communication across lines of difference and hierarchy that go beyond politeness but maintain mutual respect
   - a systematic approach to the all-important concept of cultural mediation
   - exercises in storytelling and in identifying with the ideas, interests, histories and attitudes of others
                > autoethnographic text = text in which  people undertake to describe themselves in response to or in dialogue with representations that other have made of them (ethnographic texts) in ways that engage with these representations.
                                > selective collaboration with and appropriation of idoms of the metropolis, merged or infiltrated with indigenous idioms to create self-representation intended to intervene in metropolitan modes of understanding (systems of meaning meaking).
                                                > imaginary dialogue across (hierarchically) dividing lines:
                                                addressing both metropolitan audiences and the speakers own community
                                                “Such a text is heterogeneous on the reception end as well as the production end: it will read very differently to people in different positions in the contact zone.” (MLP, p.3)
   - experiments in transculturation, collaborative work, critique, parody and comparison
                > transculturation = “process whereby members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture.” (MLP, p.2)
                                > “In their dialogues with dominant institutions, many groups [assert] a rhetoric of belonging that [makes] demands beyond those of representation and basic rights granted from above.” (MLP, p.5)

Extra:
“Autoethnography, transculturation, critique, collaboration, bilingualism, mediation, parody, denunciation, imaginary dialogue, vernacular expression – these are some of the literate arts of the contact zone. Miscomprehension, incomprehension, dead letters, unread masterpieces, absolute heterogeneity of meaning – these are some of the perils of writing in the contact zone.” (MLP, p.4)

“(…) the meaning of expertise, of knowing about something well enough that you can start a conversation with a stranger and feel sure of holding your own.” (MLP, p.1)

“Reading Images - Multimodality, Representation and New Media” - Gunther Kress

Central issue: consequences of the shift from writing and the book as a medium to images and the screen as medium.
   > focus on: authority, form of reading, shapes of knowledge, forms of human engagement.

“The contemporary social world is marked by increasing fragmentation and individuation (Beck, 1986) (…) In periods of fragmentation and individuation communication is fraught: each environment of communication asks that social and ‘political’ relations, tastes, needs and desires be newly assessed. The question of rhetoric – how to make my communication most effective in relation to this audience, here and now – has moved newly, urgently in to the center.
Rhetoric has become a major issue for design.” (GK, p.7)

“Meanings are always disseminated through particular media (…).” (GK, p.2)
   > “Each mode [of representation] forces me into making certain kinds of commitments about meaning, intended or not. The choice of mode has profound effects on meaning (…).” (ibid.)
                > Media offer specific possibilities to:
                                - the designer
                                                > “The sign (…) reflects the interests of its designer as much as the designer’s imagined sense of those who will see and read the sign. The sign is based on a specific rhetorical purpose and intent to persuade with all means possible those who pass by and notice it.” (ibid.)

Speech & Writing <> Images & contemporary text
   > Speech & Writing:
                “(…) no word, no communication about it.” (GK, p.3)
                “Words are (relatively) vague), often nearly empty of meanings (…).” (ibid.)
                “The ‘logic’ of temporal sequence is the major principle of ordering of languages (…). Sequence implies causality: the sentence which comes first seems to be causally prior to that which comes after. But notice that that is so whether I want that meaning or not: I cannot but order them in some way.” (ibid.)
                                > mutual shaping of writing and the traditional book.
                                > shaping of reading:
                                   ordering of book = representation of ‘body of knowledge’/’shape of the world’
                                                “(…) the reader’s task was to attempt to follow the pre-given ordering of the written text, embodying the authority of the author, working assiduously to reproduce the meaning which the author had intended for the reader.” (GK, p.4)
                                                <> “Certain texts (…) encourage the reader to engage in the semiotic work of imagination, following the given order of words on the line but filling the relatively ‘empty’ words with the reader’s meaning.” (ibid.)
   > Images & contemporary text:
                “(…) the elements are there in certain spatial relations, but how the reader reconstitutes them is largely up to the reader.” (ibid.)
                “Contemporary texts (…) in their increasingly often image-like textual organization, ask the reader to preform different semiotic work, namely to design the order of the text for themselves.” (ibid.)
                                » Focus on: entry point of the ‘page’ + reading path. à interest driven
                                                > mutual shaping of writing and the image/contemp. text:
                                                   author becomes designer
                                                 or else: “(…) a provider of material arranged in relation to the assumed characteristics of the imagined audience.” (GK, p.5)
                                                                > Design questions [1] “(…) call for choices to be made, resting on my assessment of the environment in which communication takes place (…).” (Ibid.)
                                                                Additionally: “All these are social meanings, specific to a particular culture.” (GK, p.2)
                                                                                > Representations evoke cultural associations (ie. their contextualized history of use)
                                                                »  Designing = prospective enterprise.
                                                                                “The power of the designer [author] is to assemble materials which can become ‘information’ for the visitor, in arrangements which might correspond to the interests of the visitor.” (GK, p.5)
                                                > shaping of reading:
                                                   (Boeck) reading = selection, transformation (knowledge construction) and use of materials to solve problems.                              

[1] Design questions according to Kress (GK, p.5):
- Which mode is best, most apt, for the content/meaning I wish to communicate?
- Which mode most appeals to the audience whom I intend to address?
- Which mode most corresponds to my own interests at this point in shaping the message for communication?
- Which medium is preferred by my audience? Or by me?
 - How am I positioning myself if I choose, this medium or this mode rather than those others?

 » Summarized into one question: “What, in this environment, with this kind of audience, with these resources that are available for implementing my design, given these social, economic, ‘political’ constraints, and with my interests now at this moment, is the best way of shaping that which I wish to make, whether as ‘message’ or as any object (of design)?” (GK, p.6)