Henry Jenkins Interview Transcript

Stephanie Stickney: how do you think new media has changed the nature of argument?

HJ: Well, that depends on what form “new media” we’re talking about. One, it seems to me, is that new media makes argument more dialogic in that, rather than writing an essay which stays in a published place and then someone reads it and then months later writes a response, rhetoric now is a back and forth, right? We’re in a time where an on-line forum or e-mail or even Twitter, blogs… we’re seeing writing that’s meant to be responded to.  And this is the sort of thing Jenna’s been talking about – reading with your mouse in your hand.  When you read someone’s argument, you anticipate an expectation of response.  And so, it’s much closer to classical debate than it is to the classical five-paragraph writing.  Because in a debate forum, you anticipate that back and forth.  That means it’s a rhetoric that anticipates counter-arguments and heads them off, but also has to rebut, respond, and push back at arguments that come at you.  And so on that level, I’d say that just the speed back and forth of contemporary writing changes rhetoric in a fundamental way.  Secondly, I’d say what you can mobilize is evidence shifts in a world where… I love that scene in Annie Hall when Woody Allen says, I happen to have Marshal McLuhan right here, and pulls him out to rebut someone who he’s disagreeing with… Well, on the web, I happen to have everything I need right there.  I can link to, pull in, embed, mobilize other people’s rhetoric. I can move in visual evidence, sound files, multimedia files… and so rhetoric doesn’t rest purely on words as a channel, but there’s a rhetorical dimension to how I mobilize all of those things. Even something as simple as, “where do I put the link in a sentence” has rhetorical implications.  Which words are hot-lined for the link.  Even if someone never clicks on the link, the hot-line of those words means that they stand out in a different way, and the result of that is the rhetorical implication, just as punctuation has a rhetorical implication.  Just as italicizing or emboldening has a rhetorical implication.  So it’s not just the words; it’s how they’re presented that have that level of argumentation. 

Transcript by Cate Blouke.