“Profiles in Digital Scholarship & Publishing: Douglas Eyman”

Interview by Elizabeth Barnett | Xchanges 14.1, Spring 2019

The Human in the Machine

[Note: The video content for this section is available in the downloadable PDF and the original interview recording.]

Xchanges: You have mentioned the importance of recognizing the “embodied” nature of users of digital technologies. There has been recent scholarship on the notion that digital technologies are changing the way we think. Does the study of digital rhetoric allow us to develop a critical distance from the persuasive power of digital technologies and media?

DE: There are a couple of different ways to look at this. There are scholars who say technology changes how you think, and there are scholars who say technology changes how you behave, which can be two different things. As a rhetorical scholar, I’m really interested in how technology changes the kinds of things that you do with language and with communication. So, yes, I think digital rhetoric can help you develop a critical distance from the persuasive power of technology. But it’s not easy because we are so embedded in these systems now. We are always already in these technological systems, and it’s hard to step outside of them.

The study of digital rhetoric, though, gives you tools for analyzing how those systems work and how they persuade us. When you understand that the Facebook newsfeed is designed to keep you on the page, that it’s using algorithms to decide what you see, that it’s creating filter bubbles — once you understand how that works, you have some critical distance. You can still be persuaded, but at least you know you’re being persuaded. That critical literacy is what I think digital rhetoric education can offer.