{"title":"Introduction to Special Issue on 21st-Century Ethics in Technical Communication: Ethics and the Social Justice Movement in Technical and Professional Communication","authors":"Josephine N. Walwema, J. Colton, S. Holmes","doi":"10.1177/10506519221087694","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10506519221087694","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business and Technical Communication","volume":"36 1","pages":"257 - 269"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48221470","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Everyday Ethics at the Border: Normative Ethics for the 21st Century","authors":"Beau S. Pihlaja","doi":"10.1177/10506519221087937","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10506519221087937","url":null,"abstract":"This study uses examples from a case of everyday technical and professional communication (TPC) at a small multinational company on the Mexico–U.S. border to illustrate how coordinating analytical frameworks commonly used in TPC analyses—activity theory (AT) and actor-network theory (ANT)—can help TPC scholars and practitioners negotiate interpreting others’ asynchronous communication fairly and justly, even in complex, intercultural contexts. The examples illustrate why developing normative ethics for the 21st century requires attention to the ways that goal-oriented activity and the flat, networked interaction of the human, nonhuman, and black-boxed forces intersect in everyday TPC practitioners’ lives and work.","PeriodicalId":46414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business and Technical Communication","volume":"36 1","pages":"296 - 325"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42729169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Ethics of Delivering Bad News: Evaluating Impression Management Strategies in Corporate Financial Reporting","authors":"E. DeJeu","doi":"10.1177/10506519211064618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10506519211064618","url":null,"abstract":"Business communication textbooks offer impression management (IM) strategies to help students learn how to soften bad news. But corporations sometimes use these strategies in ethically questionable ways. This article analyzes IM strategies in a landmark case of ethically dubious corporate financial reporting. Findings suggest that the company, Ivax, manipulated three standard IM strategies by overamplifying its power to fix a financial crisis, substantially downplaying bad news, and concealing damaging information. Ivax also used a fourth, less familiar strategy: It buried contradictory information in legal disclaimers. Instructors need to help students become ethical writers who avoid questionable IM strategies like these.","PeriodicalId":46414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business and Technical Communication","volume":"36 1","pages":"190 - 230"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2022-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44021599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Drawing Into Being: Charter Graphics and Their Functions","authors":"L. Dush","doi":"10.1177/10506519211064615","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10506519211064615","url":null,"abstract":"Prior researchers have identified charter documents as texts that serve an outsize role in stabilizing social reality and mediating work, writing, and network building. While charter documents are typically authoritative and text-only tomes, this article expands the category to include charter graphics, visual texts that serve similarly important genre and network functions. Through retrospective analysis of one charter graphic and its role in a decade-long project by a nonprofit organization, this article demonstrates the potential rhetorical, social, and network functions of charter graphics; distinguishes them from charter documents; and offers suggestions for both practitioners and researchers.","PeriodicalId":46414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business and Technical Communication","volume":"36 1","pages":"165 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2021-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42659184","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Decolonizing the Color-Line: A Topological Analysis of W.E.B. Du Bois's Infographics for the 1900 Paris Exposition","authors":"Lynda C. Olman","doi":"10.1177/10506519211064613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10506519211064613","url":null,"abstract":"As infographics are implicated in racist policies like redlining, we need to decolonize the genre. But previous studies have found that infographics’ panopticism—their at-a-glance reduction of complex issues—makes them tend to support hegemonic power structures in spite of their designers’ intentions. A way out of this dilemma can be located in the first attempt to decolonize the infographic: W.E.B. Du Bois's series depicting Black life in the United States, created for the 1900 Paris Exposition. This topological analysis of Du Bois's decolonial project reveals both problematic and promising avenues for our own attempts to decolonize the infographic.","PeriodicalId":46414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business and Technical Communication","volume":"36 1","pages":"127 - 164"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2021-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49544928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Project-Oriented Web Scraping in Technical Communication Research","authors":"John Gallagher, A. Beveridge","doi":"10.1177/10506519211064619","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10506519211064619","url":null,"abstract":"This article advocates for web scraping as an effective method to augment and enhance technical and professional communication (TPC) research practices. Web scraping is used to create consistently structured and well-sampled data sets about domains, communities, demographics, and topics of interest to TPC scholars. After providing an extended description of web scraping, the authors identify technical considerations of the method and provide practitioner narratives. They then describe an overview of project-oriented web scraping. Finally, they discuss implications for the concept as a sustainable approach to developing web scraping methods for TPC research.","PeriodicalId":46414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business and Technical Communication","volume":"36 1","pages":"231 - 250"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2021-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46666790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords for Big Data by Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Daniela Agostinho, Annie Ring, Catherine D’Ignazio, Kristin Veel","authors":"D. Reamer","doi":"10.1177/10506519211064622","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10506519211064622","url":null,"abstract":"Thylstrup, Agostinho, Ring, D’Ignazio, and Veel’s Uncertain Archives: Critical","PeriodicalId":46414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business and Technical Communication","volume":"36 1","pages":"251 - 254"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2021-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41384141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Damir Ivankovic´, E. Barbazza, N. Klazinga, D. Kringos
{"title":"Comment on Verhulsdonck and Shah's “Lean Data Visualization: Considering Actionable Metrics for Technical Communication”","authors":"Damir Ivankovic´, E. Barbazza, N. Klazinga, D. Kringos","doi":"10.1177/10506519211054926","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10506519211054926","url":null,"abstract":"Actionable information is paramount in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. When information is actionable, it has greater potential to inform decision making and behavior changes that can benefit both individuals and society at-large (Kringos et al., 2020). Verhulsdonck and Shah (2021) described a lean approach to COVID-19 data visualizations using dashboards. Their article provides valuable insights into the importance and use of actionable metrics from the perspective of technical","PeriodicalId":46414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business and Technical Communication","volume":"36 1","pages":"105 - 113"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44577418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Making Actionable Metrics “Actionable”: The Role of Affordances and Behavioral Design in Data Dashboards","authors":"Gustav Verhulsdonck, Vishal Shah","doi":"10.1177/10506519211044502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10506519211044502","url":null,"abstract":"We appreciate Ivanković et al.’s comment and agree we need a “more holistic approach to characterize and operationalize actionable metrics for COVID-19 dashboards, using information which is both fit for purpose and use.” Holistic understandings help articulate principles to design better dashboards while developing actionable metrics for various purposes. But to be more holistic, we need to understand the contexts and reasons for use of dashboards and actionable metrics in general. Your comment provided three important recommendations for dashboards based on your study (Ivanković et al., 2021). As you note, we need to","PeriodicalId":46414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business and Technical Communication","volume":"36 1","pages":"114 - 119"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2021-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44633768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Institutional Literacies: Engaging Academic IT Contexts for Writing and Communication by Stuart A. Selber","authors":"L. Dush","doi":"10.1177/10506519211044713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10506519211044713","url":null,"abstract":"Stuart A. Selber’s new book, Institutional Literacies: Engaging Academic IT Contexts for Writing and Communication, published in the midst of the global pandemic’s great shift to remote learning, explores the neglected topic of academic information and technology (IT). Selber defines academic IT as “centralized campus units responsible for planning, implementing, managing, and evaluating information technologies for institutional purposes” (p. xi). If academic IT units were a powerful force shaping local teaching and learning practices prior to 2020, they are even more so now. Our universities would simply not function at this historical moment without the technologies, policies, and people of academic IT. In arguing that writing and communication teachers should strategically engage with academic IT, Selber has done the field an important service, providing both grounds and methods for future pedagogical, administrative, and research projects that engage these powerful institutional entities. Overall, Selber approaches academic IT from a rhetorical and institutional perspective, arguing that teachers must understand academic IT units as particular local formations. The book both reflects and leverages Selber’s many years of engagement with academic IT at his home institution, Penn State University. Its central contribution is a three-part heuristic to guide teachers of writing and communication as they historicize, spatialize, and textualize academic IT units on their campus. The heuristic, Selber says, will help teachers to “order their thinking about what academic IT units Book Review","PeriodicalId":46414,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business and Technical Communication","volume":"36 1","pages":"120 - 123"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2021-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45831424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}