Author: Matthew V. Jacobson

As their time with the DRC draws to a close, the 2019-2020 DRC Fellows offer reflections on their experiences, what they’ve learned, and where they go from here. This year has presented numerous crises and challenges, and it has also highlighted the many ways that digital rhetoric can respond with an eye toward a more just society. We are grateful to the 2019-2020 Fellows for their presence, dedication, and insight. Nupoor Ranade A big thanks to the DRC team Jathan, Naomi, Anne, Simone, and to the wonderful fellows in my cohort for not just enriching my academic community experience through…

Dear DRC Community, These painful past few weeks have called on those of us at the DRC to reaffirm: Black Lives Matter. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, David McAtee, Nina Pop, and countless others are symptoms of deeply entrenched white supremacy in the United States. Our country and its institutions—including academia—are founded on and sustained by white supremacy. We recognize that these murders are not isolated incidents, but articulations of an ongoing epidemic of violence sustained by anti-Black racism. When we say Black Lives Matter, we condemn not only individual murders, but also the…

Editors: Dana Comi and McKinley Green Introduction We are two of many scholars who recognize that networked digital technologies offer vibrant opportunities for community-building, identity formation, and coalitional activism. In this Blog Carnival, we encourage a conversation that frames community-building itself as a social justice praxis in digital spheres, inspired, in particular, by networked activism efforts around decolonial justice, intersectional feminism, queer and trans-liberation, anti-racism, and the spaces where these movements overlap and mutually inform. Duthely’s (2017) work offers a potent rhetorical approach for understanding these movements; using Black digital feminism as framework, she asserts, “as Black women work to…

Wait, people build their own Internet? This realization and research interest (now, obsession) pulled me into the world of digital rhetoric, as well as the multidisciplinary and complex areas of infrastructure studies and critical media studies. Figuring out what “digital” meant, as well as “rhetoric,” has come along with this research project. While I still can’t give clean, bounded definition to either term, I’ve found that the world of digital rhetoric has provided exciting routes for my research, teaching, and service because of its multiplicity and multivocality. I’ve also found that my interests in Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) and technical…