Article Review: The Genres of Chi Omega: An Activity Analysis.

Marro facilitates the understanding of genres by explaining how people organize knowledge through day-to-day communication using digital media. Her interviews with the sisters promote her agenda by teaching the reader with examples of how her sisters utilize digital and interactive media in the day to day life. Looking critically at daily life, we realize that there are numerous activities and plenty of knowledge about the use of digital media. Hence introducing the sorority that facilitated the use of structure, order, like, search, follow, and friend functions on their digital communication devices. Her frequent interaction with the structured collection of items helps the reader to understand that the application of genres is not only possible on digital platforms, but it is also applicable in approaching public or public interests whereby users interact with structured knowledge and activities in everyday life. According to Marro, new members learn conventions codes, and genres through the understanding of the logic behind structured communications. New members acquire knowledge due to the presence of repertoire, which refers to the routinization or rendering of knowledge and activity organization. We can view the communication activities on digital media platforms as recurrent, and she already established genre solutions to the ambiguity of communication activities. Readers can compare the recurrence of the need to communicate with the reappearance of communicative problems in daily life. New members learn the hard cores of the conventions and dimensions of communication in social life by understanding the logic of structured discussions. As such, once a new person enters a new sphere with pre-existing genres, s/he uses simple logic to understand communicative interactions within existing social institutions. Marro deduced that the reason why the sisters maintained the same identities is that they share the same motive, which is to communicate. Their indulgence in digital media aims to satisfy the need to improve the self as well as the community. Although the genres they use are different, they do not affect their identities since genres are mere tools used by the sisters to achieve their motives.

The article was very instrumental in helping me understand organization of knowledge and activities through a simple task such as everyday communication using digital media platforms. The fact that I have experience with the digital interfaces, mainly through my smartphone, helped me digest and internalize the concept of forming genres without difficulty. I have come to realize that for me, learning using practical, real-life examples helps me to not only internalize but also to retain knowledge. In the beginning, however, some concepts of the genre theory were difficult to comprehend. I had difficulties in understanding genres before we covered Marro's article since the only texts I had encountered in class only provided examples based on the film industry. During one class reading, I visualized the application of Marro's article in my personal life, by pretending to be one of the sisters she interviewed. My understanding of collecting and structuring my smartphone's information is a form of structuring through the use of libraries and information systems. I do not refer to them as libraries, but instead, such things as phonebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Facebook, and Snapchat, to name but a few. I arrange these media platforms, search, list, and categorize different items that I encounter every day. Marro's examples helped me realize that in the same way, I inscribe the organization of knowledge into separate categories every day in my life.

Works Cited

Marro, Victoria. "The Genres of Chi Omega: An Activity Analysis." Stylus: A Journal of First-Year Writing 3 (2012): 25-32.