Graham and Whalen: A smattering of stuff I want to know

1. Reciprocity
I'm always interested to see how issues of reciprocity play out in research. Ellen Cushman has suggested, “The terms governing the give-and-take (reciprocity) of involvement in the community need to be openly and consciously negotiated by everyone participating in activist research.” Pam’s “Ethics of Reciprocity” article also came to mind. While Graham does not label his work as ‘activist’ research, he does make explicit that he considers co-authoring/reciprocal research with his participant, Whalen, the “ideal” and most ethical approach to qualitative investigation, following from Williams (1996).

While I agree that ethical reciprocity does seem a distinct improvement over the disciplining gaze approach long used in research, “ideal” still seems too committal to me. What does Whalen get out of this study? I’m curious. While they do give us a couple of hints as to what each author contributed, i.e. Whalen doesn’t use rhetorical terms in the part he’s written, I’d be curious to know if Whalen found talking about his design process enlightening at all. How did theorize his work previously (if he did theorize it)? Did he gain more knowledge about his own process, or new ways of speaking about it? I think all I am really asking for here is a footnote obviously from him – something that gives him a moment to overtly assume ownership of the article. I know he’s the second author and Graham is the academic, but if it’s going to be truly reciprocal, this might be a way of helping make that move even clearer.

2. Methods
I liked the description of the data collection; it was coherent and seemed well-justified overall. The terms 'post-mortem' and 'situational' also provided some food for thought. It was a smooth rhetorical move on Graham & Whalen's part, I think, to identify this dichotomy and then promptly note that their identification created a gap between the two poles, which they then proceeded to fill.

I did find one aspect of their methods troubling. They clearly detailed data collection, but then what happened? There was a direct jump to the writing process. I wanted to see more information about what they did with that data they collected. Did they code it? If so, how? I acknowledge this problem might be due to my unfamiliarity with the genre theory literature; perhaps there is a sort of tacit understanding of how that approach goes from data to write-up.

3. Rhetorical Canon Shift
This is not new news, but in terms of actual practice, this reading and the piece by Houle, Kimball, and McKee further emphasized the ways that the rhetorical emphases are changing. Arrangement and delivery matter again. I'm not sure yet if memory has made a comeback, but it's interesting to see how arrangement and delivery have ascended to new levels of importance within digital modes and digital processes. A lot of the design issues Whalen dealt with stemmed from issues of arrangement. Graham and Whalen emphasized the shifting nature of the audience (which I would locate within Invention) but arrangement has become a priority for the audience, so it needs to be considered within invention.