Technical Communication and Social Justice

The Rhetorical Mediator: Understanding Agency in Indigenous Translation and Interpretation through Indigenous Approaches to UX by Nora K. Rivera

Hua Wang — 2024-10-26

Feminist Technical Communication: Apparent Feminisms, Slow Crisis, and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster by Erin Clark

Danielle M. Koepke — 2024-10-26

This editorial reviews Erin Clark’s Feminist Technical Communication: Apparent Feminisms, Slow Crisis, and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, which theorizes a flexible and temporary feminism for technical communicators based on an expanded framing of efficiency as the cornerstone of successful and effective technical communication. As the first book of its kind, Feminist Technical Communication situates feminism as necessary to ethical and efficient technical communication and as supportive to the social justice turn within the field. Clark interrogates issues of gender and feminism within technical communication, especially as it shows up at the intersection of risk communication and the rhetorics of health and medicine. This case study of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster examines the impacts on human health beyond the boundaries of the data collected, reports written, or public statements made. Her study uncovers the influences, impacts, consequences, and results that are often overlooked in the name of efficient crisis response and how the prioritization of economic and ecologic concerns over human health results in avoidable short- and long-term negative impacts disproportionately experienced by marginalized communities. This book calls technical communicators to critically analyze and learn from slow crises with a feminist orientation that values embodiment and dynamic movement to improve their contributions to communication regarding human health before, during, and after crises occur.

Global Social Media Design: Bridging Differences Across Cultures by Huatong Sun

Mina Bikmohammadi — 2024-10-26

Geoengineering, Persuasion and the Climate Crisis: A Geologic Rhetoric by Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder

Shankar Paudel — 2024-10-26

The 2022 book Geoengineering, Persuasion, and the Climate Crisis: A Geologic Rhetoric by Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder investigates an element of climate change that has received little consideration: geologic rhetoric. I began reading the book with an environmental and geological perspective, but it quickly became a synthesis of rhetoric, geology, environment, climate science, and risk communication. Pflugfelder’s book is technical and has a significant number of chemical names and geoengineering jargon, yet it is an enlightening rhetorical account from a scientific perspective on the global climate catastrophe. This book will be a valuable resource in graduate courses such as Technical Communication, Environmental Communication, Rhetoric and Writing Studies, Environmental Rhetoric, and Social Justice.

Transnational Feminist Examination into the Machine Learning (ML) Algorithm

Asmita Ghimire — 2024-10-26

The current usage and application of ChatGPT and other AI systems demonstrate that human intelligence can be transcribed into machine learning and replicated algorithmically. This has raised various questions about machine learning, AI, and natural language processing (Anson and Straume, 2022; Graham, 2023; Johnson, 2023; Vee, 2023; MLA-CC Joint Taskforce on Writing and AI, 2023). Scholars in the field of technical and professional communication are increasingly interested in examining the AI and machine learning system, including the rhetoric on which it is built and the cultural fabric it will create.

This paper emphasizes the importance for scholars to scrutinize data sources and types, specifically focusing on training data and its relevance, in the development of AI reasoning devices such as Wearable Reasoners.It emphasizes that what is ingrained in the system holds rhetorical significance, and the process of incorporation, as well as the types of outputs generated, are equally crucial. The article presents findings based on the utilization of transrhetorical practices (Wang, 2021) in conjunction with a Data Feminist approach (D'Ignazio and Klein, 2020). The analysis focuses on the processed data within the IBM (International Business Machine) debater claim and evidence database, initially established in 2015 and yet to be updated. Additionally, it critically evaluates the implications and consequences of utilizing such data in the training of wearable devices, exemplified by the Wearable Reasoner created in 2020 using the IBM debater claim and evidence dataset from 2015.

As an individual embodying what Chandra Mohanty refers to as "Two Third World in One-Third World" or being "a part of the social minority now, with all its privileges," I inquire from the perspective of "a person situated in the One-Third World, but from the space and vision of, and in solidarity with, communities in struggle in the Two-Thirds World" (Mohanty, 1998, p. 507). Essentially, I am concerned about whether the data accurately represents gender, particularly in the context of third-world gender and politics. My transnational feminist positionality guides my examination of the homogenizing, universalizing, and consequently othering tendencies within data, data systems, and data architecture (Aguilar, 2022).

Positionality, Privilege, and Power

Katie W Powell — 2024-10-26

Social media curriculum is fluid and demands flexibility and adaptation on a semester-by-semester basis. This experience report examines the need for and implementation of a new social media course that focuses on social justice and activism in an undergraduate technical and professional communication major. Through the lens of students’ positionality, privilege, and power, this course asks students to highlight voices and issues that related to diversity, equity, and inclusion before creating and responding to issues they’re passionate about.

Human Remains, Humanizing Language, and Bioarchaeological Reports

Kristin LaFollette — 2024-10-26

The “language of compliance” used in bioarchaeological reports has traditionally dehumanized the people represented by human remains. Because of this dehumanizing language, Indigenous communities prompted the development of “respectful terminology” to be used by bioarchaeologists when referencing the remains of their ancestors. While this terminology is not yet widely used, it is reflective of a greater ethical obligation within bioarchaeology to dignify and respect all human remains. This essay, then, argues for the broad adoption of respectful terminology, or “humanizing language,” in bioarchaeological reports. Through an exploration of the humanistic and scientific tension surrounding human remains, I frame humanizing language as a justice tool that advocates for people of the past while reorienting bioarchaeology to its humanity.

Writing as Advocacy

Tyler Sehnal — 2024-10-26

This paper responds to calls for greater advocacy and accessibility in technical and professional communication pedagogy and practice by outlining a unique approach to conceptualizing Writing Across the Disciplines curriculum, one that encourages students to engage in mental health (self-)advocacy, reconceptualize mental health (dis)ability, and view writing studies as capable of engendering access to rhetoric useful for engaging in productive mental health discourse. In this article, I outline key components of my curriculum, including assignments and learning objectives, and ultimately judge the success of this model in practice based on end-of-semester surveys. Student responses emphasized the value of situating writing studies in social justice contexts, indicating that adopting mental health studies as a framework for teaching Writing Across the Disciplines may provide a practical means of responding to calls for improving advocacy and accessibility in TPC pedagogy.