Anika Rahman
DARE Project: Communities of Rhetorical Invention: Studying the Live Work of Independent Creators
Program(s) of Study: Communications Studies
Project Supervisor: Rich Shivener
By sharing the challenges we faced throughout the summer and the recommendations we concluded the term with, my DARE research team and I aimed to bring more awareness to the practices and feelings that digital creators experience and how they end up molding their final creation.
Project Description:
Welcoming an undergraduate into remote, qualitative research, this DARE project is part two of studying digital content creators and feelings that imbue their production processes. Digital writing encompasses authors who experiment with digital media (sound, video, code) to produce interactive projects: multimedia-rich books, video games, infinite-scrolling comics, to name a few. Last summer, part one examined the processes of independent game developers through interviews and textual anaylsis. This summer picks up where we left off and addresses the affordances and constraints of remote production, focusing more on the work of independent creators who live-stream content and build communities on YouTube, Twitch, Discord, etc. in light of COVID-19. Of particular interest are creators whose work addresses mental health, anti-racism, and other topics overshadowed by mainstream studios. Approved by the university’s Research Ethics Board, this ongoing study is significant because it foregrounds practices and feelings often relegated to the background of an interactive project (i.e., such items aren’t discussed or reflected upon in the project itself). The visibility of such process work is significant in light of rising publications (The Atavist, Digital Humanities Quarterly) and activist movements (#BlackLivesMatter) that have leveraged digital media to distribute and circulate texts. We need more “practitioner stories” (Ridolfo) of how media-rich texts are composed and the feelings that authors work through from inception to final delivery of a text. By helping make visible the practices and feelings vital to interactive projects, the research assistant will contribute to rhetorical studies scholarship and build on their digital writing practices.The Dean’s Award for Research Excellence (DARE) – Undergraduate enables our students to meaningfully engage in research projects supervised by LA&PS faculty members. Find out more about DARE.