An Examination of the Rhetorics of Digital Scholarship and the Emerging Digital Monograph

A variety of rhetorics have been applied to digital
compositions: the "rhetoric of hypermedia" (e.g.
Landow), "rhetoric of multimedia" (e.g. Liestol), and "rhetoric
of new media" (e.g. Chun, Manovich) are all terms that have
been used. This work has often focused on the construction of
a digital work at the level of nodes and links, more than on its
narrative techniques. Landow's rhetoric of arrivals and
departures, for instance, looks at the relationships between
individual nodes, and their effect on one another via the rhetoric
of the link. Bernstein, in his discussion of structural patterns
in a hypertext also focuses on relatively smaller groups of
nodes; while Bernstein's patterns are clearly intended to be
composed into larger structures, or to provide components in
the analysis of a larger structure, he does not elaborate how this
composition or analysis works at the level of a whole work.
Liestol and Fagerjord are more concerned with the narrative
construction of digital publications. They are mainly studying
the digital documentary, an expository medium which is similar
in form and intent to scholarly hypertexts. Students of digital
fiction have analyzed larger structures and discussed how
meaning emerges from them (e.g. Walker), but there have not
been many discussions of overall rhetorical structuring in
scholarly web publications.
Projects or publications on the web with academic research
subjects tend to fall into several discrete types. A partial list
follows:
• Conventional linear monographs in digital form, differing
from print monographs only in their medium of publication.
These digital publications will not be discussed in this paper.
• A publication or dissemination of a primary source.
Text-bases or archives are the main representatives of this
class. They are intended for several levels of expertise, and
readers can search through them on their own terms.
• A collection of primary and secondary sources meant to be
explored by diverse audiences for more than one purpose.
These sites have an encyclopedic, expository nature, and
tend to surround primary source material with secondary
sources.
• A collection of primary or secondary sources that explicitly
represent a particular point of view, or publish a particular
phase of research. These sites, with their combination of
secondary and primary material are the prototypes of the
digital monograph.
• A collaborative, annotatable, space that may only be
accessible to a small group of authors. These sites are
composed of collections of texts or other sources. They
resemble laboratories, where research is on-going and
benefits the participants more than the external reader.
Collaborative, emergent projects are not meant to read by third
parties as much as by the participants. They are exploratory
and communicative spaces for their participants, and as such,
the rhetoric they exhibit is often one of annotation and
conversation. Wikis provide a mode of publication that
encourages organic growth and collaboration. The Ivanhoe
Game also shares this modality, although it isn't a means of
publication.
Although any collection or publication that has been consciously
selected inherently reflects a bias and represents a particular
point of view, some web-based projects are more explicit than
others about their motivation and their purpose. Scholarly
projects that have as their goal an edition or a collection of texts
generally identify the guiding principles for their selections.
Examples of such projects are text and image archives, like the
WWP ( <http://www.wwp.brown.edu> ) and The Empire
that Was Russia ( <http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/
empire> )
When a scholar embarks on a project whose goal is to elucidate
a particular topic through primary and secondary materials,
biases become harder to tease out. Often, a project that
originates as a research topic turns into a general expository
publication whose goals are to collect and disseminate primary
sources, and to contextualize them with secondary sources.
Such a publication is inherently user-centered. However,
because the intent of a researcher or student cannot be foreseen
in advance by the creator of the publication, the project is often
designed to allow multiple access and navigational modes, so
that it can accommodate a wide variety of uses. The digital
medium encourages this, and invites an author to attempt to
provide many things to many people: syllabus, guided tour and
resource collection, for example. Any authorial voice or point
of view is overwhelmed by the encyclopedic omniscience and
protean presentation of the publication.
Some publications avoid multi-linear, multi-access presentation
even as they follow this recipe of primary sources surrounded
by a matrix of contextualizing material. Instead, they impose
a very rigid form, as in some instructional materials, where it
is not possible to deviate from a prescribed path beyond a
limited set of carefully scripted choices, if any. This can serve to hide bias or point of view, by making it harder to question
or challenge the publication.
Finally, there are digital publications that resemble the print
monograph in that they prioritize a set of research results and
have an identifiable authorial voice. Primary source materials
coexist with authored text, but they are juxtaposed in support
of the argument that is being made. Like the publications
described above, these publications may also allow a reader
multiple navigational strategies, but they privilege a single
narrative thread. The interface and navigational structure are
designed to reflect the argument, and the principles used in
selecting primary source materials are clear. Readers familiar
with the site or its material may only want to consult some
primary sources, so it is possible to navigate directly to
identifiable nodes, but this kind of navigation is clearly
secondary. One of the best-known web based monographs is
Thomas and Ayers, 2003. One of the earliest is Kolb, 1994.
The authored, digital monograph allows a scholar to do things
that are difficult in a print publication. It is possible, for
example, to present a coherent argument while weaving several
different threads and approaches to a problem; it is also possible
to include supplementary material that would require a
distracting digression in a traditional publication. Conventional
articles are constrained by length limits and by the rhetoric of
the page to making one point. A digital monograph allows an
author with single argument to present multiple threads of
argumentation and discussion which will augment one another,
but which are not necessarily interdependent.
This paper will use examples from projects the author has
participated in, as well as others to discuss emerging features
of the digital monograph, and to compare them with other types
of scholarly, digital publication. It will look at interface and
interaction design, as well as at the information design
underlying the publication.
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