What is “delivery” and how does it matter?

Classically delivery in rhetoric is referred to as the oral/aural and bodily aspects of an oral speech and/or performance.  When we consider today, the digital world and thus digital rhetoric, James Porter has an point in that we need to re-implement and restructure what delivery is and to bring to light it’s importance.  What I have come to understand as digital rhetoric and the expressions of it that exist in today’s world, “delivery” is certainly a large factor to consider when creating a successful digital rhetorical text.

The “body” of rhetoric associated with delivery, how one presents their body as “text”, is similar to that of how a website (for example of digital rhetoric) is designed.  Websites vary in the way they are formed, shaped, designed, and marketed. This “body” is arguably the first introduction that it's audience has to the information it provides.  During a time when I was apart of a web design and marketing company, I learned about the psychology behind colors that reached into web design layout and expanded into text, amount of information presented on each page, and many other visual choices that are apart of the process. 

What I question is the legitimacy of the online avatars.  When the “body” goes from a text to an online identity and how that identity (avatar) is expressed.  The image or persona that is expressed online by people can be completely created as opposed to the classical age when the presentation was “in person” and not behind a screen with the ability to create an avatar that is of different age, gender, sex, physical appearance, etc.  But does this even matter?  Technically rhetoric is the effectiveness  of the writer, text, and audience and the message being successfully received, so does it matter how it is portrayed in association with digital rhetoric.  This leads into morality and ethics.

This questions the notion of false identification, being fooled by the writer, authorial intent, authorial execution.  When is what appropriate (and not) in the digital world?  I suggest that it’s context based and that we may possible ever fine tune a “manuel”.  There is certainly a “delivery” in digital rhetoric that needs to be explored and I look forward to more articles, essays, and publications on the subject.