“Rhetoric behind the digital screen”: wayfinding across the splinternet of AI—a rhetorical quartet of an affective writer

Abstract Drawing on and recontextualizing Elizabeth Forbes’ theory regarding the quartile facets of a developing writer—(1) maker, (2) artist, (3) creator, and (4) performer, and Karen Lunsford’s approach of wayfinding—(1) worlds apart, (2) literacy in the wild, (3) ecologies and networks, and (4) transfer in writing studies, this study, inspired by the notion of affective economy and splinternet, offers a rhetorical quartet pertaining to the literary career of China-related writers to argue that circulation naturalizes the rhetorical processes that govern meaning within the configuration of digital age. Moreover, this study examines the role of digital algorithms as accelerants, magnifying the dissemination of these narratives and marrying a mutual dance between text and reader. In our view, emergence of affect unsettles AI-dominant networks of literature, offering a middle ground to recalibrate the relationship between rhetorical circulation and splinternet transfiguration.