New Media Essay | |
The new media essay begins to incorporate images (photos or video) and audio into an essay. These media often enter as evidence for a set of claims the author makes and take the form of illustrations or examples. Geronimo's essay incorporates screen captures of websites he found relevant for his argument on Dominican identity. These images begin to show the user that Dominican identity is being transformed through the rise of the internet. This model of the hypertext essay might also be considered a "hypermedia" essay because it attempts to bring text and other media together into a hypertext argument (Horton). Hypermedia "extends the principles of electronic writing into the domain of sound and image. The computer's control of structure promises to create a synaesthesia in which anything that can be seen or heard may contribute to the texture of the text" (Bolter 27). The new media essay is an important opportunity for the writer who wants to combine multiple media into an experience that enhances the persuasiveness of an argument. Geronimo's essay remains several steps away from realizing this possibility because it does little more than include screen captures of web pages of some of his sources. While the approach presents the images, they remain unnecessary for the argument of the essay. Reinhardt's "The Obscene Interface" is a significant development beyond Geronimo's use of media in a hypertext essay. Reinhardt brings together images of relevance to his central argument about sex and violence in contemporary culture, and packages them in a way that begins to integrate new media and textual arguments into one. | |
Michael J. Cripps | |
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