Theory of Techne

1. Body/Identity

• 1a. Online Self-Representation: This refers to how an individual would go about expressing themselves online through images, text, video, audio, etc. This ranges from gestures, how they dress, how they speak, to their overall self-expression.
• 1b. Social Self-Representation: This is where it gets more personal, as now it stems beyond the basics and includes gender, race, sexual orientation and ethnicity. This helps strengthen one's self-representation through the spread of more sensitive information.

Importance and Relevance:

• This is crucial to anyone who even interacts with an online platform as its essentially who you are online. How you represent yourself online dictates how others view and perceive you, especially since online a lot of the social cues given off by body language are completely lost when expressing yourself via text or voice.
• Who it matters to: This matters to everyone, as like previously stated it dictates how you are perceived online. It certainly matters more for people who make a living posting content online, be it via content creation, advertising, or content publication. How you are viewed online will inevitably impact how others view any work you may be related to, even if it doesn't directly relate to your field of expertise.

Connections:

• Body/Identity has many connections to other aspects of Porter's framework, but one connection that's becoming more apparent as of late is Interaction. More and more people online are being open about their identity, which in and of itself causes more people to interact with one another. It may be good spirited, or not, but the act of simply expressing one's self online is now more than ever capable of driving up interaction. Another aspect of Porter's framework that sees some connection to Body/Identity is Access/Accessibility. This one mainly works through the the literal accessibility features available for someone who is blind, or missing an arm, or hard of hearing, can access and express themselves online.

Coursework:

• Readings: Reading of Relationships in the Digital Age: Self-disclosure and Communication in Social Networking Sites
  This reading is a study that went out to determine how gender and age impacts the rate of self-disclosure online. While it certainly focuses more on the Interaction aspect of Porter's framework, by being able to link the two aspects together helped me better understand the two as without Body/Identity the researchers wouldn't even have their research question, as it is rooted in online self-expression, which just so happens to be a part of the definition for Body/Identity. You can see more of the Interaction aspect on the My Works page.
• Coursework: Project 1 is a Prezi presentation designed to be a circulation map of the viral meme "Just created a new character. What should I call it?". Due to the nature of memes in our current culture, they are usually a form of self-expression, in this case it's a joke created by a community as they grieved the loss of a videogame franchise they held near and dear to their hearts. This helped me understand that sometimes expression can come in unorthodox ways. It's not always going to be someone saying something like "I like puppies" in their Twitter bio, it could be them posting a meme of Batman without his ears and jokingly naming him Man to have a laugh with others after Harley Quinn puts a bullet in the head of one of the most powerful iterations of the Batman.

2. Distribution/Circulation

• 2a. Technological Publishing: This is specifically for the publishing platforms and tools available. This can be social media, blogs, websites, digital libraries or even web hosting services like the one I'm currently using, Neocities.
• 2b. Digital Circulation: This is meant to encompass how information spreads online, how fast it spreads, and how it impacts those it reaches.

Importance and Relevance:

• Easy access to distribution can help more people access crucial information, but as we've seen like platforms like Twitter, it can also have the inverse effect of amplifying misinformation and hate speech.
• Who it matters to: Content creators, publishers, scientists, advertisers, educators, essentially anyone who wishes to publish information on the internet, as well as anyone who consumes content from the internet.

Connections:

• Distribution/Circulation most directly impacts Interaction as it directly incentivizes anyone with access to the internet to interact with the content being distributed. Economics can in turn impact the circulation of Distribution/Circulation by having content locked behind a paywall.

3. Access/Accessibility

• 3a. Technological Access: This relates to the ability to be able to physically access the hardware to access the internet. This ranges from the computing device of your choice, to the network you use to access the internet.
• 3b. Inclusion: This refers specifically to a user who is disabled being included in the use of the internet through accessibility devices. For some this is as simple as a virtual screen reader, for others it's specialized hardware for them to even access the internet. And even then, the software developers of the platforms they access must also support those devices/services.

Importance and Relevance:

• Providing access to the tools required to interact in digital spaces is crucial to interacting with digital environments, as it is the gateway to said environment. Without it you physically cannot access the digital world.
• Who it matters to: Web/software developers and individuals with disabilities. In the United States if a website isn't accessible, it can cause problems for those involved, so I'd also say that in situations where you work for a major corporation like Alphabet or Meta, it's also relevant for the shareholders and executives.

Connections:

• Interaction, Economics, and Body/Identity all play a role in Access/Accessibility. Interaction is simple, by making interaction more accessible, you have more people interacting with digital content. Body/Identity is also from a similar cloth in the sense that by making those devices more accessible, more people can express themselves with ease. Economics comes into play when you take into account assistance devices like screen readers. A webpage with an abundance of ads can cause issues for screen readers, and may even render them unusable unless you use a web browser that supports an ad blocker, something that's been slowly being attacked by advertisers like Alphabet.

Coursework:

• Coursework: Project 2 is a video recording of Project 1 designed to make it more accessible to those who may not be able to read the presentation, which is more relevant given Prezi's lack of support for alt text. It also has closed captioning which itself paired with the appropriate hardware could be used for people who are hard of hearing, which again is not possible with the original presentation due to Prezi's limitations.
• Coursework: Accessibility Assignmnet 9/18 This one is pretty self explanatory. We were tasked with tackling one of 3 areas of accessibility, alt text, headings and styles, and scripts. Our group chose alt text as it was something we were extremely familiar with. I essentially went over how to implement it in HTML code, that it's used by screen readers to help the visually impaired, and I explained how it would benefit our circulation maps. This helped me a ton as the original version of my circulation map actually lacked captions for all of my images, making it less accessible. I also put my HTML knowledge to work on the image seen on the home page (alt text is not supported by embedded content as you can interact with it by default so a screen reader should be able to just read the embedded content in most cases).

4. Interaction

• 4. Engagement Types: The various forms of communication and interaction given access to by digital technologies. This ranges from social media, to educational platforms, to even online services like banking.

Importance and Relevance:

• Without interaction you have zero collaboration, and without collaboration innovation ceases. You also cannot use the internet and its content without some form of interaction.
• Who it matters to: content creators, content moderators, software/web developers and the people who use online platforms.

Connections:

• Interaction is most related to Distribution/Circulation and Access/Accessibility. Without any form of distribution, you simply would not be able to interact with the content being circulated. On the same token, if you cannot interact with the device needed to access those sites, meaning it's inaccessible to you, then there's another barrier preventing you from accessing the content being circulated.

5. Economics

• 5. Intellectual Property: Relates to copyright, trademarks, and general ownership of digital media, extending to fair use and overall monetization.

Importance and Relevance:

• Economics are important in the sense that it allows for the originator of the content to own their content and monetize their content. This then allows for them to be able to influence how their content is distributed and ultimately consumed by the consumer.
• Who it matters to: Executives, entrepreneurs, content creators, lawyers, and the everyday user.

Connections:

• As mentioned earlier, economics directly impacts Distribution/Circulation as it can be used to lock content behind a paywall. It can also impact Access/Accessibility via the overuse of advertisements, which would clutter the page. That not only causes visibility issues for normal users, but for those with assistance devices the content could be rendered completely unviewable.