Mode, Medium, and Genre: A Case Study of Decisions in New-Media Design

Recently, scholars of new media have been exploring the relationshipsbetween genre theory and new media. While these scholars have provided
a great deal of insight into the nature of e-genres and how they function in
professional contexts, few address the relationship between genre and newmedia
theories from a designer’s perspective. This article presents the results
of an ethnographic-style case study exploring the practice of a professional
new-media designer. These results (a) confirm the role of dynamic rhetorical
situations and hybridity during the new-media design process; (b) suggest
that current genre and new-media theories underestimate the complexity of
the relationships between mode, medium, genre, and rhetorical exigencies;
and (c) indicate that a previously unrecognized form of hybridity exists in
contemporary e-genres.