our very first post. Click the Edit link to modify o

ral-a large following may end up being needlessly frustrating and hard to control. It would be fascinating to see if any studies have been done on what number of followers is most manageable.

claiming “conversation works best when it’s smaller” and “conversation doesn’t scale” (80). He specifically cites YouTube and Newspapers as having so many people contributing to their comments sections that they easily

Thompson states, but writing digitally puts our thinking in order even more successfully due to the “audience effect” (5

f Thompson had explained how exactly he had come to that 36 million book estimate, however, his ethos would be strengthened and his claim more persuasive. H

Lunsford is a professor at a well-respected college a

more “writing” and “production” instead of just “reading” and “consumption”

This response will include a summary and evaluation of and some reflection on Thompson’s main claims and rebuttals in his “Public Thinking” piece. It will also contain a brief discussion of certain intriguing parts of Herrick’s “An Overview of Rhetoric.”

by taking a stand against the fragmentation of Americans, there’s an assumption that there is one, true ur-American to be fragmented

I can’t help but think that some things may slip through the cracks if New Media Studies were to simply be a part of rhetoric

here contributors discussed their inputs. From here he discussed digital marginalia (82), which is something that already exists, to a point, for readers on a Kindle who use the X-Ray function. It will be fascinating to see how marginalia will be remediated into a digital culture.

eate audiences, make connections” (78). Ultimately, access to the internet has provided users with a platform to express themselves in a thoughtful manner (whether or not they actually do so) and way for like minds to achieve goals.

Thompson further claimed that the increase in society’s reading and writing is changing our behavior. He wrote that, historically, North American literacy focused on the ability to read, not write (50). Pre-internet, not a lot of people “wrote anything at all for pleasure or intellectual satisfaction after graduation from high school or college”

Smarter Than You Think (2013), in which Thompson argues the internet is “changing our minds for the better” – the book’s tagline. In this chapter, Thompson laid forth the claim that the internet has exponentially increased the amount of writing done regularly, and that the increase in both reading and writing facilitated by the internet is changing our behavior. To strengthen his claims, he used studies published by university professors, anecdotal evidence, and historical evidence.

Overall, I really enjoyed both of these texts since they both brought a lot of information to light.

rely risen at all. More astonishly, that today’s freshman-comp essays are over six times longer than they were back then, and generally more complex.” (67) This is an important claim because it is coming from someone who has actually digested and studied student’s writing over the years, which includes before and during the rise of social media platforms. This type of research specifically, is something I would be interested in looking into.

rebuttles

or she may be one of many. I would’ve liked to see him provide more evidence behind that claim.

Thompson emphasizes the idea that “Literacy in North America has historically been focused mainly on reading, not writing; consumption, not production.” (50)

Because teens grew up in a world in which the internet has always existed, many adults assume that youth automatically understand new technologies.

"Michael — the police called pizza gate a fictitious conspiracy theory tonight," Tapper wrote. "Does someone have to die before you take this s--- seriously. Spreading this nonsense is dangerous." "I want it to be false," Flynn Jr. responded. "It is not the site of a satanic pedophilia cult," Tapper shot back. "It is a f------ pizzeria. Show me what you're talking about that proves a satanic pedophilia cult. Your tweet is wildly irresponsible. Listen to me. You are going to get someone killed. Maybe an innocent child. For what??????"

The barriers to entry for media outlets, including the bogus ones that spread the Pizzagate story, are extremely low, while traditional outlets can no longer maintain any sort of oligopoly on distributing news, so that the emergence of fake news stories is unstoppable. The press can debunk them, of course, and in fact it has done an admirable job—as Silverman’s piece and another in the Times did. But this makes little difference. The audiences that are receptive to those debunkers are the ones who would have missed the original fake story anyway, and the ones who believe the fake story are inclined to dismiss mainstream reports out of hand, so the debunkers won’t influence them either.

It’s time for us to join the future and support all forms of 21st century litera-cies, inside school and outside school.

This is a call to action, a call to re-search and articulate new composition, a call to help our students com-pose often, compose well, and through these composings, become the citizen writers of our country, the citizen writers of our world, and the writers of our future.

A Call to Support 21st Century Writing

e people may think, a lot of learning nowadays starts with our modern technology and the Internet. It is true; we are becoming smarter and more intelligent because of modern technology rather than becoming dumber. For example, an interview done for the Pew Internet in 2010, “The Future of the Internet IV,” involving 900 experts were asked for their views on how the

corruption, ran

HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman

contend that

there’s a story about how Twitter was more popular with black people than white people, years ahead of most mainstream coverage of the platform’s influential role in public discourse on race.

I became very disciplined," she tells me. "Knowing I had these people reading me, I was very self-conscious to build my arguments, back up what I wanted to say. It was very interesting; I got this sense of obligation.

In 2003, Kenyan-born Ory Okolloh was a young law stud~nt who was studying in the United States but still obsessed with Kenyan politics.