Webtext
From DigitalRhetoricCollaborative
A webtext is most generally defined as a text "authored specifically for publication on the World Wide Web." [1] Most scholars go on to offer additional characteristics that a Web-based text must meet before being considered a webtext.
Jennifer L. Bowie makes distinct different types of World Wide Web publications, distinguishing between hypertext and webtext.[2] Bowie conceives of hypertext as possessing characteristics of multilinearity, possibly multimedia, and reader control. For Bowie, webtexts are characterized as being "on the Web or can be read in a browser," "linear or multilinear," and are associated with some reader control. With Bowie's distinctions, "[H]ypertext could be defined to include Webtext, but not all Webtext are hypertexts."[3] For Bowie, webtexts "information (words, visuals, and more) organized in interconnected/interlinked ways on the web. Webtexts can be a whole website, or part of a website, or a combination of websites." [4]
Describing Kairos webtexts, Cheryl E. Ball further notes that webtexts take advantage of the affordances of their medium: "Webtexts are not linear articles with a few multimedia elements, such as video trailers, TED-like presentations or video supplements; they are a specific (and ever-changing) genre of peer-reviewed scholarship that uses the affordances of the Web (browser-based presentation, multimedia, hyperlinks, etc.)" and "Webtexts often need to be experimentally multimodal, merging modes and genres together in ways that are often new to readers."[5]
The Digital Rhetoric Collaborative features webtexts of the month, for which webtexts must meet the following specifications:
- Published in an online journal or website or as an ebook
- Consist of a navigable, participatory space
- Involve multimodal components
- Require technology for the production and reading of the text
- Utilize design to develop arguments and make meaning[6]
The webtexts published by Kairos are "screen-based scholarly articles that use digital media to enact the authors’ argument."[7] In discussing the editing of Kairos webtexts, Ball calls attention to the importance of design for webtexts.
Kairos awards the Kairos Best Webtext annually.[8]
[edit] References
- ↑ http://www.technorhetoric.net/about.html
- ↑ Wendy Warren Austin and Jennifer L. Bowie. "Definition of Hypertext and Webtext Used in the Survey" Kairos 6.2 (2001). http://www.technorhetoric.net/6.2/coverweb/hypertext/jonesbowieaustin/definitions.html
- ↑ Wendy Warren Austin and Jennifer L. Bowie. "Definition of Hypertext and Webtext Used in the Survey" Kairos 6.2 (2001). http://www.technorhetoric.net/6.2/coverweb/hypertext/jonesbowieaustin/definitions.html
- ↑ Bowie, Jennifer Lynn. Exploring User/Webtext Interactions: An Examination of Gender and Sex Differences in Web Use. Diss. Texas Tech University, 2004. http://www.english.gsu.edu/~jbowie/diss.pdf
- ↑ Ball, Cheryl E. "Multimodal Revision Techniques in Webtexts." Multimodal revision techniques in webtexts. Classroom Discourse [special issue: Multimodality]. 2013. http://ceball.com/2013/07/11/multimodal-revision-techniques-in-webtexts/
- ↑ http://www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org/2013/12/03/celebrate-webtexts-with-us/
- ↑ Ball, Cheryl E. "Multimodal Revision Techniques in Webtexts." http://ceball.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ClassroomDiscource-Ball-mmRevision-draft2.pdf
- ↑ http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/awards/pastwinners.html#webtext
