Digital rhetoric and global literacies: Communication modes and digital practices in the networked world

Insofar as algorithms are digital problem-solving operations that follow a set of rules or processes to arrive at a result, they are constrained by the rules that determine their parameters for operating. While an algorithm can only operate according to its instructions, however, the potential rules that might govern an algorithm are inexhaustible. An algorithm’s design thus makes rhetorical choices that privilege the importance of some information or desired outcomes over others. This chapter argues for a way of thinking about algorithmic rhetoric as macro-, meso-, and micro-rhetorical. Along these lines, it would be beneficial to think more about algorithms as digital rhetorics with terrific power to sway what counts as knowledge, truth, and material reality in the everyday lives of people across an astonishing range of global communities in the twenty-first century. THE QUINTESSENTIAL DIGITAL RHETORIC Suppose that, as I was typing this sentence, I’d misspelled the word “misspelled.” It wouldn’t much have mattered. No sooner would the wrong letters have materialized on my laptop’s screen than they would have morphed at once into the accepted, proper spelling. This phenomenon is called auto-correction, and it’s a common feature now of most all word processing software, from text messaging on a cell phone to plonking keys on a computer. Auto-correction—which fixes common spelling or grammatical errors when you type—and auto-completion—a related function that predicts the word or phrase you’re typing so to spare you the Herculean labor of having to type the rest yourself—are now commonplace on virtually all digital interfaces, whether conducting a web search, writing an email, or editing source code. These technologies are powered by algorithms: those often hidden sets of instructions that intervene in organizing our world in astonishing ways. Chris Ingraham University of Colorado at Boulder, USA DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-4916-3.ch003