Topic

I am still in the process of solidifying my dissertation topic; however, it is getting close. Currently, I am researching Digital Orality, a term I apply to the way that we communicate online through largely audio video (non-textual) means. I have much research to do and the topic could take a number of slight turns. However, my interests remain in this aspect of new media and communication, including the related effects of push vs. pull technologies, establishing identity and ethos, building and exchanging social capital, and generally how such media forms change the way we communicate.

My overall topic remains pretty constant as that of digital orality, new media, and rhetoric. Specifically, I am interested in:

• How new media has placed us, in certain ways and not others, in a position not unlike an oral culture, albeit not primarily oral.
• The effect new media has on our oral communications.
• Our overall position in terms of Walter J.Ong's electonic orality, since we have actually moved into what I deem "Digital Orality."
  • The details of the most recent shift, assuming one has occurred, from oral to chirographic to literate to electonic to n (where we are now).
• How new media removes some of the necessity for print and what aspects of that we will embrace and accept vs. those that we will reject in favor of textual applications and communications.
• How this this oral aspect of new media might be used to educate individuals with various sensory disabilities and and motivate toward education those essentially illiterate individuals with apathetic emotion regarding reading and educationa in general.
• The egalitarian and immediate nature of pod/vodcasting
  • Establishing identity, credibility, ethos, gravitas (when needed)
  • Tie this to the isegoria/agoria, power of speech, etc.
  • User-system-centered
• The canons (and other classical concepts) as a model to build effective pod/vodcasts

Committee

Committee Chair: Dr. Rich Rice
Committee Member: Craig Baehr
Committee Member: Dr. Fred Kemp

Tentative Timeline

Goal	Due	Status
Decide on general dissertation topic/direction	11.15.07	Done
Solidify Committee	04.06.08	Done
Complete Coursework	Sum. Sem. 08	Done
Establish Research Question	08.08.08
Build Reading List	01.01.09	Close
Preliminary Dissertation Proposal	10.09.08
Take Qualifying Exams	06.26.09 06.29.09
Create Formal Dissertation Proposal.