Academic Cypher

This week’s MindMap update focused on Clay Spinuzzi’s Tracing Genres. I added three nodes and made about three connections. I can see more connections in the work; however, I wanted to think through the connection of Spinuzzi to Foucualt a bit more. The connection to Genre Theory was obvious because Spinuzzi built on the genre work already done by Miller and Bazerman.

I added a node for workarounds, victim, and one with the different levels used in Spinuzzi’s methodology. I was intrigued by the idea the communication and information design overlap. I was also interested in Spinuzzi’s statement: “Genres are not simply text types” (41). These areas interested me because I am trying to think of my Oos whenever I am reading. I hope that this will make the case study a bit less stressful. In regards to SnapChat and the idea of workarounds, I immediately thought of SnapChat’s leaked. This is a website focused on revealing SnapChats. There are also apps to block the notification that user receive if the recipient takes a screen shot of the snap sent. The leaking of snaps has created an new discourse around privacy and leaking. The owner of Snapchat leaked was prosecuted and had to abandon the website. The damage was already done as people began to create apps and plugins to get around the disappearing Snaps.

I created the node with the different levels of scope (microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic) because these will be helpful when making connections between Spinuzzi’s work and the other works we have read. I also think that these are important in examining the way that Snapchat can be traced from original text messaging via SMS to picture messaging via SMS to Instagram to Snapchat. This reminds me of the macrosopic level where, “genre is seen as shaping and being shaped by its sociocultural milieu” (44) and the mesoscopic level where genre is “taken to be instantiated in an artifact” (46).

I am still leaning towards rhetoric as the best way to approach Snapchat. However, the more I read the less committed I am to this approach and the more I’m open to exploring genre and possibly Foucault.