An Essential Rhetorical Code

Most authors, in an effort to affirm digital literacy, tend to dwell on how the goal of digital literacy is to help students communicate the information they have through the various forms of multimedia. To the extent that this is true, the student is required to learn how to coherently communicate in the digital mode. This is because digital literacy has its own language; and language or symbols aid communication. To communicate requires recognizable and synchronized symbols, and in the new media, this is considered as “codes.”

The concept of digital code refers to “the underlying structure that has to function properly in order for a digital text to achieve its design goals and support the rhetorical functions of usability and accessibility” (Eyman and Ball 116). Codes allow for a formal description of the image or data. The elements (flash, sound, still images) assembled to create a specific computerized media are put together through some established conventions of the computer’s organization of data. Creatively assembled codes make the logic of new media correspond with the needs of the moment. In this regard, code is analogous to syntax in written composition: codes are the infrastructures that drive the interactivity of the various media elements. This is how it achieves its rhetoric.

However, two important things are needed to be kept in view in relation to the digital codes. First, the designers ought to make appropriate choices of the images and sounds and written texts that will effectively help them to express the intended ideas and arguments. Understanding digital codes is essential to understanding the technologies that produced the various elements that make up the webtext.

Second, and equally important, is this: the designers should consider finding out how familiar and recognizable are the media code to the intended audience. This is because, for many people outside of the field, learning the media codes are often viewed as acquiring specialized skills rather than engaging in another form of literacy. To put it differently, while the technological rhetoric is necessary, an essential rhetorical code is to adapt webtext (media text) more to embody a diverse community of potential users; to consider the users’ web usage and the difficulties they encounter. Such a careful attention to users’ experiences, in the process of production, would no doubt enhance the comprehensibility of the rhetorical codes contained in such new media.