Author: Sara West

Call for Blog Carnival Contributions: Teaching Digital Rhetoric after the Election   Compositionists, communication scholars, and digital rhetoricians are already reflecting on and discussing post-election teaching strategies in their own departments. This conversation continues publicly on Twitter, in sponsored webinars, and in collaborative syllabus documents. We invite scholars to expand these ongoing conversations to make them practical and usable for instructors in our disciplines. This blog carnival will explore how digital rhetoricians respond in their teaching and research to this post-election moment. We are seeking submissions in a wide variety of forms, including brief case studies, lesson plans, interviews, tool reviews,…

Title: Pokémon Go Publication/Creator: Niantic Publication date: Released July 6, 2016 Experience here/Website: http://www.pokemongo.com/ Pokémon has been a cultural icon for many years now. Originated as a Gameboy game, this Japanese media franchise that includes several games and films, an animated TV show, and a trading card game. Most recently is the mobile augmented reality game Pokémon Go that was released in July of this year. Part of the glory of Pokémon is that it draws an audience from a variety of backgrounds and interests because of how large the franchise is, but the recent mobile game also finds itself…

I’m a fangirl. It’s important to know in this context because that can pretty much explain my interest in social media and community. I sort of grew up in Internet fandom. Yes, I did fanart, fanfiction, fandom competition “lands,” Livejournal, tumblr, all that. It’s interesting to see how much Internet fandom actually shaped my interests: fanfiction got me interested in creative writing, which I pursued as a focus of my undergraduate degree; fanart taught me to use Photoshop; Livejournal (and then MySpace) taught me the basics of HTML and CSS; and the communities in these spaces introduced me to people…