Technical Communication and Social Justice

The Exigence of Ethical AI: Understanding Algorithmic Bias and Moving Towards Anti-Racism

2025-02-15T00:48:08+00:00

Meredith Broussard’s "More Than a Glitch" explores the biases in AI, focusing on race, gender, and ability. The book highlights how technology often fails marginalized groups, with examples from facial recognition, predictive policing, and medical diagnostics. Broussard introduces "technochauvinism," the belief that computational solutions are superior, and critiques this mindset. She emphasizes the need for AI systems to be designed with fairness and accountability, advocating for public interest technology. The book calls for a change in mindset to build nonsexist, antiracist technology, stressing the importance of addressing biases to prevent harm and ensure equity.

Dear Campus Community

2025-04-15T18:17:47+00:00

The authors examine the ways that institutional responses to crises provide spaces for institutional critique and reforms. Using a case study of campus responses to the George Floyd Protests in the Summer of 2020 and in conversation with a coalitional approach, the authors carry out an exploratory sequential mixed method study of the letter corpus using natural language processing and rhetorical analysis. Combining the concept of permission structures from political discourse with Black Feminist Epistemologies, the authors suggest that institutional responses to crises can create positive permission structures that support coalitional change while calling for further reforms.

Situating Public Memory as a Keyword in Technical and Professional Communication

2025-07-24T13:32:26+00:00

Building on the previously implicit relationship between public memory and technical and professional communication (TPC), this article argues that explicitly bringing these fields of study into dialogue with one another helps researchers and practitioners think more rhetorically about the social impact of their work. Situating public memory as a keyword in TPC illuminates past injustices to deepen our understanding of current conditions. Accordingly, we call for work in TPC that outwardly engages public memory—work that explores TPC’s role in shaping public memory narratives and the impacts those narratives have on different peoples, places, and events.

Race Conversations as Technical and Professional Communication

2025-10-01T20:29:55+00:00

This study aims to provoke transformative dialogue on race discourse in technical communication, resonating across academic, professional, and societal contexts. I situate discussions concerning race within the domain of technical communication, wherein the dissemination of specialized information to diverse audiences is paramount. I first present a conversation that highlights prevalent arguments in race and communication. Then, I present technical communication scholarship currently addressing race and advancing social justice, organized around themes gleaned from current literature found through certain search terms. This article includes a case study of how the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) digital platforms foster critical race conversations. By envisioning future directions for race discourse in technical communication, I've identified key takeaways from the analysis, including strategies for shaping and adapting race conversations to maintain relevance and effectiveness, grounded in real-world examples of TPC practices. Collaborative efforts with allies are also highlighted as essential in mitigating cultural fatigue and fostering meaningful dialogue amidst pushback.

Rare vs. Rarely Diagnosed

2025-10-22T20:45:00+00:00

This article demonstrates how online health communities use intersectional practices of counterstory and coalition building to advocate for their illnesses within the greater medical community. This study analyzes 320 online postings, 84 published narratives, 30 written reflections, and 10 interviews in an online health community for Asherman syndrome, a rare illness that develops after reproductive surgery. The findings of this study highlight how patients pose an important counterstory of Asherman syndrome as a “rarely diagnosed” condition to increase awareness of the illness among medical professionals. Additionally, individuals use their own unique positions with coalitions to create TPC that leads to changes in healthcare outcomes. This article argues that TPC researchers can amplify this patient-created TPC to help intervene in healthcare concerns.

Creating, Implementing, and Deploying a Diversity and Inclusion Style Guide

2024-09-19T21:08:11+00:00

This article focuses on the process of creating, implementing, and seeking buy-in for Trinity University’s Diversity and Inclusion Communication Guide. This process a) authentically addresses sensitive topics, and b) “lives and breathes” in line with an editorial style guide that is “always in progress.” Ideally, the guide and the article together provide insight into the research, creation, and deployment process I undertook, highlighting the strategies I employed for institutional buy-in. Hopefully, this work can also help technical communicators develop similar guides and deployment strategies for their institutions or organizations.

Ethical Usability: Technical Communication Strategies to Addressing User-centered Challenges in E-governance

2025-08-19T18:32:01+00:00

While the 21st century has witnessed the rapid adoption of digital technologies to reform economies and foster civic participation, the implementation of e-governance in sub saharan African regions like Nigeria has faced multiple criticisms. Although lauded as a viable means of leveraging information and communication technology (ICT) to improve the delivery of government services, e-governance has degenerated in Nigeria despite progressive policy frameworks. While several studies have investigated e-governance from a macro level perspective, focusing on the sociopolitical and infrastructural barriers, this study shifts the focus to the micro level challenges that reflect everyday frustrations encountered by individuals navigating e-governance platforms. This study adopts a user centric approach that synthesizes scholarship from technical communication scholars, articulating a Critical Socio Technical Usability Analysis (CSTUA) to identify effective design and communication techniques for e-governance that recognizes a diverse linguistic landscape like Nigeria. Addressing the micro level usability challenges that impede citizens’ access to essential government services is fundamental in reiterating the very promise of e-governance –to democratize sociopolitical and economic access.