Wysocki

Pointing out the divide in new media studies between the study of how to design and compose individual texts (through graphic design maxims) and the study of the broad effects of media structures, Wysocki argues that composition studies can fill the gap between the two by focusing on the material and social conditions of the production and consumption of all texts, both textual, visual, and digital.

She has five major claims:

1. compositionists have the unique pedagogical expertise to teach students how to think critically about their design and composition choices when writing a text because we already highlight the situated nature of writing.
2. We need to think about the specific material circumstances and choices of the texts we produce, consume, and circulate because no technology is a neutral carrier; our texts contain, in their design and construction, our attitudes, beliefs, and values, both individually and as a society.
3. New media texts are any texts, digital or not, whose composer thought deliberately about the range of material design choices they had and who, in their design, highlight the materiality of the text.
4. We need, as teachers, to move beyond analysis of new media texts and ask our students to craft and produce them in our classrooms, thinking of new media texts not as objects but rather as material practices.
5. We also need to adopt a generous spirit in our reading, knowing that composing these new media texts requires experimentation, patience, and exploration, and in order to appreciate these efforts, we need to realize that texts need not look identical to what we’re accustomed to in order to be useful, that what we might deem mistakes should be thought of in terms of choices.

Significantly, Wysocki defines “New media” as “texts where we keep their materiality visible, both as we work to make them and as we hold them before us.”

 It seems ironic on first reading that Wysocki’s major move in securing the potential of this moment is to ask us to become more conscious of our materials when the zeitgeist behind all things digital seems to be Cartesian—seems, in fact, to be actively hostile toward a consciousness of materiality. This seeming irony, however, is exactly why Wysocki’s five openings are so important. By moving against the anti-historical philosophy of the new technology of writing—and yet embracing the technology itself—Wysocki discovers an opening for a pedagogy wherein students can gain productive access to a larger community [Wysocki explicitly passes on elaborating the well established boons of teaching digital communications technology] while still understanding the historical forces that have had a part in the production of their voices. To borrow from the reasoning of Wysocki’s fourth opening, this is why we as teachers of writing must be active in the production of new media texts: if we can participate in this technological shift in a way that offers radically growth in terms of what new media texts mean, then when the next revolution comes around, perhaps it will come not from an ahistorical Cartesianism, but rather from a place informed by our own materialities and not hostile toward a self-reflexive, self-critical expression of these materialities.