The transition from literacy to electracy provides possible innovations for digital composition and network rhetoric. The future of digital composition focuses on participatory practices in the online video culture, which is also known as “tubing.” Participatory pedagogy and electracy interact with digital culture in ways that aren’t possible for print literacy. For example, youtube videos attract viewers based on the content; but more importantly, they attract attention based on the number of pervious views and viewers’ participation through comments. These factors result in participatory collaboration and social interaction among viewers. The interactions go beyond simple dialogue, and instead result in remixes and re-compositions of the ‘original’ content. As a result, writers and online communities build common values and learn more about the remixed form of expression.
Electracy is part of a larger shift called “the apparatus,” which produces identities, communities, and relationships in a given era. Each apparatus include respective-related components, such as institutions, social practice and culture forms, and identity. Schools are formal institutions using the logic of writing and methodology when producing knowledge. These formal institutions need to update their methods by updating composition in school. Academia is too slow and needs to get up to speed with popular culture and digital media. On the other hand, the web is an informal institution where creativity is achieved through the use of all knowledge and material. Emerging from social practice and culture forms, videos are used to express style of thought and can be easily accessible anytime.
Media identity compares the outside and inside. More specifically, personal identity experience is personal archiving, such as Facebook. It allows you to know the time and location of posts without having to remember everything. Mediated experience compares talking (outside) to sense of group exchange (inside).
However, there is not one set institution; instead, there is social networking that allows for social relations between institutions. Even though you can do more on the web, orality, literacy and electracy should all be occurring together to achieve the best outcome. For example, Pope Francis advocates for the coexistence of orality and electracy, where ‘the digital world can be a network not of wires but of people.’ He understands the role of social media is one of engagement and progress allowing for a culture of ‘encounter.’ With his twitter and instagram accounts, the Pope is part of this transition into the digital literacy era.
Through the formation of hybrid literacy, a balance between science and entertainment is established combining formal institutions (school) with informal institutions (web). An example application of multimodal composition is the YouTube series called The Lizzie Diaries. It is a multiplatform adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” This remake redefines the concept of transmedia storytelling by breaking communication barriers and starting a new era of story telling.
Maria Grbavac 