The representation of a new technology in the educational technology community: Telling the multimedia story

Beginning in the mid-1980s multimedia was widely discussed within the educational technology community as an innovative new technology with considerable potential. This study investigates how multimedia was represented in three journals read by segments of the educational technology community.;The aim of this study is to illuminate how the representation of a new technology is a function of ongoing discursive practices within the community. The methodology employed is discourse analysis. This study has two research questions. First, what rhetorical devices or features were used to describe multimedia? Second, how are these features embedded in the social context of the educational technology stakeholder group?;This research supports the following. Stakeholders in a community of interest such as educational technology use characteristic rhetorical resources associated with their community to construct narratives which are descriptions of a new technology. These narratives include claims regarding what are said to be the technology's inherent characteristics or facilities. The characteristics of a new technology are then seen as the accomplishments of the stakeholders in that they are realized through discursive practice within the stakeholder community.