Audience Stance, Transparency, and Hybridity in Digital Authoring

In 2003’s “Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments,” Mary Hocks argues that while visual rhetoric and literacy are nothing new, the advent of technologies that allow for the creation of “texts” that include, or perhaps even rely on, visual elements such as formatting, images, and interactive elements such as hypertexts make investigation into “visual strategies used for meaning and persuasion” all the more important (629). This is largely because readers may play the role of consumer and producer of such products. One of the challenges of incorporating the understanding and productions of such literacy into the writing classroom is that many writing teachers themselves learned print-based rhetoric both as they developed literacy and learned to teach. Hocks claims that hybridity can bridge the gap between visual and textual literacy for students and teachers alike. The hybridity of author and consumer as well as old and new definitions of literacy allows for students to produce as “activists,” or as Anderson put it, Prosumers.

A focus of this article is visual digital rhetoric and how it is informed by what preceded it, but I noticed that when producers bear in mind three terms, there is a reciprocity between creator and consumer that heightens the humanity of digital production. More on that humanity in a moment. For now, I will explain Hocks’ three terms and their significance to digital literacy.

Hocks notes that creators of digital literary products must factor audience stance, transparency, and hybridity into anything they produce (632). Audience stance allows the author to “[create] an ethos that requires, encourages, and even discourages different kinds of interactivity” (632), placing that author into the role of moderator. For example, the creator of a Prezi makes the choice of whether the presentation should travel a linear path or it should give the consumer freedom to click on different points on a more cyclical path, choosing what to read or see when and in which order. Similarly, in Hocks’ example of a student-created Web site exploring non-traditional casting in productions of Shakespeare’s plays, visitors to the site may leave comments in a virtual guestbook (646).

The transparency links the old and the new, allowing users to navigate Web-based documents comfortably. Hocks points to Wysocki’s “Monitoring Order,” published in the online journal Kairos. Hocks includes a screenshot of the digital article, and though the text is arranged in a way impossible for printed or written texts—the hyperlinks and scroll bar make elements of the text invisible, bringing other elements or pages to the fore—the title is framed by the image of a quill pen, which signifies to readers that this is an essay about writing by using an image historically and traditionally synonymous with writing (636). Similarly, e-readers often use icons that look like bookmarks to mark buttons that hold a page, and the button on the iPhone toolbar used to make a call has the silhouette of a late 20th-century land line telephone handset on it.

I struggle with Hocks’ definition of hybridity mainly because it seems very similar to transparency to me. It seems hybridity calls on a consumer’s knowledge of print-based literacy to inform their understanding of digital texts, much like readers can use their knowledge of, say, the quill pen or telephone handset to help them navigate digital arenas. Hocks adds that “[t]he hybridity of the Web medium refers to the interplay between the visual and the verbal in on constructed, heterogeneous semiotic space" (637), suggesting that, while transparency allows for usage, hybridity allows for heightened understanding beyond what text alone can communicate. Hocks’ example of the “visual representation of the Xenaverse” (641) explains the nuanced and detailed storyline spatially, allowing the reader to revisit details and see their relationships on their own without a narrator guiding them. I found a similar chart for time travel logic in different movies. If someone could make one of these for Dr. Who, I would be grateful.

But I think part of my confusion comes from wanting definite and clean lines between Hocks’ terms, and I don’t think those lines are clean at all. Much like transparency and hybridity work very similarly, transparency informs creators’ decisions about audience stance.  For example, below is a screenshot of my notes on a page of this PDF. I used an app for my iPad called iAnnotate, which let me highlight and draw on the image. The app also allows users to type notes and make handwritten notes on the page. On the right side of the image are the icons users touch to enable the different annotating functions. The notes on the page look similar to ones I would have made by hand, and the notes I make on PDFs when I use my laptop look very different. This could possible be because of the interface; I see a pencil or a highlighter, and I rely on my knowledge of how to use them.

How is it though, that these approached to creating Web based, or at least digital, literary products heightens the human aspect of composition? Hocks states that teachers using interactive, digital rhetorical approaches that have a hybridity of forms “can also teach [students] to design their own technological artifacts that use these strategies but are more speculative or activist in nature” (645). I take activist in this sense to mean anticipating action, but I think it could also mean to I inspire action. Diana George uses the example of a student to told the story of colonialism in Africa by superimposing maps of the sub-Saharan region from one stage of European occupation to another on top of one another, explaining the permanence of European occupation in a way that text cannot (211). Such a visual could (and did enough to inspire George to include this presentation in her article) raise awareness among consumers, impelling them to take action to fight global imperialism.

In a more abstract way, Hocks’ three terms involve careful consideration on behalf of the author. This author must think at every stage of the process about how their creations will be accepted, read, and understood. Of course, the writer of a purely written text must think of these things as well, but for college students, that audience is more than likely their instructor and maybe a handful of classmates. With digital projects, such as the Shakespeare website, the audience has the potential to grow well beyond that.

Also, the rules for digital “grammar” are not yet codified. When encountering digital texts, “readers experience a dissonance between text and other familiar forms (like linear fantasy narratives or academic arguments) that defamiliarizes their experiences with print narratives, argumentative forms, and even with other, simpler hypertexts” (Hocks 641). Since readers do not know exactly what to expect when encountering digital texts, the author must be careful to anticipate their needs. This is an act of good will that is not necessary in academic papers, print comics, or novels because the standards are already set.