Technology& Media& Rhetoric

multimedia project
The Basics
In your previous work, you’ve made a statement of purpose and analyzed several potential positions or perspectives you
might take on. At this point you should have a pretty good idea of what you’re trying to say, why you’re trying to say it,
and whom you’re trying to say it to. You’ve also done some research (more to come), so you ought to have something of
an idea of the available arguments and evidence in favor of your proposed idea. For this assignment, you’re going to be
doing live rhetorical work. In this case, you’ll be creating a short media composition whose purpose is to persuade your
audience that a) you have an issue; b) it’s worth paying attention to; c) you have a potential answer or idea to address this
issue.

Project Parts
1. A two minute composition (or equivalent). The base assignment is a video or a podcast, but you should feel free
work within another media that better suits your purpose, audience and context. You might compose a
infographic or design an application. You could also imagine an analogue rather than a born digital composition.
In any case, you will be asked to articulate why you made the choices you made. (See #2 below.)
2. A process paper that describes and demonstrates the value of the choices you made compositing your project.

multimedia Assignment
Your goal here is to persuade your audience that they should care about the issue and consider your position
worth taking up. That first thing is the big thing: get your audience to at least agree that there is an issue that needs to
be addressed. Here is how you might think about the rhetorical ecology of your composition:

• Purpose: Persuade your audience that your position on the problem is valid, and attempt to make your audience
your stakeholders. That is, you’re trying to communicate that there is an issue that needs to be addressed. In
some ways, you might say that you’re trying to create an audience for your issue. That’s even more important
than presenting your proposed idea at this point.
• Audience: As you can see by what we’ve said about the purpose, part of your job here is to create an audience—
that is, you should be trying to get people interested in your issue and involved in your problem. Here, your job
is, in large part, to persuade the audience that there is a problem that should concern them.
• Context: The context is that which you have determined in the previous stage. The context is the problem as you
have developed an understanding of it, including recent developments in the ongoing conversation. Now you
are affecting the context, because you, the rhetor, are intervening.
Obviously, one of the challenges of doing this project is composing a high quality media production. Don’t worry; it’s a
lot easier than it first may seem. We will work through any composing challenges and explore the equipment and
resources offered through the CAI Lab (in DPH 216). You can also use your own equipment, of course. Or your
smartphones or iPads (made available by the CAI Lab). There is also studio work space in DPH 216 that you are
encouraged to take advantage of. As we work in class, you will probably need two other things: 1) headphones, so that
you can work in class w/o disturbing your classmates; 2) a flash drive, which can be purchased at the library or bookstore
for a few dollars. You can save things in your Drive folder, too.

When you upload this stuff, your project should be titled, unsurprisingly, “lastname_multimedia_project.”

Nathaniel A. Rivers | English1900 | Technology, Media and Rhetoric | Fall 2019 | 1

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Process Logs
While you are creating your composition, you will record your rhetorical decisions, which will in turn comprise the process
logs. The process log’s purpose is to explain why you made the rhetorical decisions that you made. Each weekly log,
which should run at least 400 words, should more or less describe how you made rhetorical decisions as you composed
your project. I want to see not just what you think now, but you thought then, in that moment. You should answer
questions like these:

• What, specifically, was the composition trying to accomplish—above and beyond satisfying the basic
requirements outlined in the task description? In other words, what work does, or might, this piece do? For
whom? In what contexts?
• What specific rhetorical, material, methodological, and technological choices did you make in service of
accomplishing the goal(s) articulated above? Catalog, as well, choices that you might not have consciously
made, those that were made for you when you opted to work with certain genres, materials, and
technologies.
• Why did you end up pursuing this plan as opposed to the others you came up with? How did the various
choices listed above allow you to accomplish things that other sets or combinations of choices would not
have?
• Who and what played a role in accomplishing these goals?
• More specifically, how did the technology your advocating on behalf of shape the composing process?

You are not limited to discussing these, but they should give you a start. The purpose of the process log is to explain to
me (your instructor) your rhetorical process. Since the audience for this assignment is your instructor, it is a more
professional document. However, it’s not an academic paper per se; this means you can write in a more informal tone.
You can and should use “I,” for example, as in “I decided to start the music here because I wanted to create the effect of
having...” or “I thought it would make sense not to have text in the beginning of the film so that the images might do
the talking for me….” But you should also use “it” when cataloging how your project was configured by the tools and
platforms that you used.

Here is how you might think about the rhetorical situation for the process log: 1) purpose: persuade your audience (your
instructor) that you understand the rhetorical terminology of the readings and course and that you can apply that
terminology to analyzing and defending your own work; 2) audience: as I say, the audience is me. What I’m looking for is
a sense that you’ve assimilated the rhetorical terminology we’ve been using all semester long and that you can actually
apply that terminology. I want to see sentences like, “I wanted to use the interruption as a strategy for intervention and
so I juxtapose aggressive music over otherwise peaceful images”; 3) context: the context is really our course. Ultimately,
the best process logs will make a) a lot of direct reference to the project you’ve produced and b) a lot of explicit use of
the rhetorical terminology of the course.

Process logs should be emailed to the instructor each Friday during the course of the Multimedia Project.

Nathaniel A. Rivers | English1900 | Technology, Media and Rhetoric | Fall 2019 | 2

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