Representing a point of view overtly concerned with the utilization of digital technologies in the creation of pedagogical practices, I will examine the forces that triggered the movement in the Middle East and North Africa last year towards reframing identifications with democratic system and consequent disidentifications with the authoritarian rules/rulers. While accounting for the exigencies of the movement, I will discuss how rhetorically and tactically used digital media (especially the web 2.0 technologies Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube) contributed to the successful reframing of identification of millions of people in the region. I will invoke the Burkean notions of rhetoric, identification and consubstantiality to analyze this historical moment. Parallelling the ways rhetorics and rhetoricians function in Burkean discourse, different independent individuals and groups, including women, in the region spontaneously employed digital rhetorics to unify from different walks of life forming consubstantial groups and finding identifications in democratic ideals and values and interestingly disidentifications with their common enemies–the dictators.
In short, in this presentation, I will interrogate how the crossroads of global and digital rhetorics that occasioned the instant circulations of compositions (tweets, blogs/microblogs, updates, videos etc.) across people and regions underlay the success stories of the region. Against such an amazing confluence of global and digital rhetorics, speaker one will attempt to discuss the following questions in his presentation:
1. What future directions for the field of rhetoric and composition do the arrays of compositions and rhetorical practices as seen in these protests and movements point towards?
2. What rhetorical opportunities do global and digital exigencies open for students in rhetoric and composition classes?
3. As teachers of rhetoric and composition, how might we use our classrooms to help students effectively engage in these new rhetorical contexts?
