Agency and the Tube

I first came across the term agency in Dr. Holmevik's class.  He applied the term to web and video game navigation, but he tweaked the term for the digital media and called it egency.  Basically an egent was a person who made decisions that governed the egent's experience.  

For example, on Youtube, you may go on to watch one video before going to some other website, but then you see a few related videos that you also want to watch.  If you choose to experience the related videos, you might run out of time to check out the other website.  Also, if you choose to follow the related video link, you are choosing to watch one video over another. There may have been five different related videos you wanted to see, but if you continued to navigate through the related videos without hitting the back button, you might never get to see all five related videos that you wanted to see. If four different people were given the same options, their journey and destinations could be entirely different based on their choices.

In the real world, the agent still makes decisions that causes world-shaping, unique journeys for each person.  The rhetor chooses his or her words wisely to hopefully shape the minds of the audience.  The audience then can carry out the work necessary to act upon the rhetor's ideas and change the world.  However, the audience also has the agency to ignore or oppose the rhetor.  This is what I understand Giesler to mean when they say that there is an illusion of agency.  The rhetor expects to be the agent while speaking, but the audience too are agents.  And actually, it is most likely the audience's agency that makes speakers susceptible to stage fright.  We like to be liked and only the audience has the power to like us--they are the only ones who can bring in more people and encourage the occurrence of other speaking opportunities.