Redesigning audiences in technical communication

This paper examines changing approaches for understanding audience in Technical Communication. By analyzing shifts in audience theory, it defines a distributed network audience (DNA) theory reconfiguring the boundaries of what an audience is for digital composition. It draws upon distributed usability of user network influences for redefining audience and how that audience affects local and hypermediated networks of both human and nonhuman actors. Further, this paper offers insights for teaching this audience concept to maximize the impact of digital communication designs. It posits that we may appeal to conventional, positive multimedia experiences, design responsively to accommodate user participation, provide clear, learnable, memorable, and usable communications, curate connections between distributed resources, and shape nonhuman references to support and constrain communication. Therefore, this paper formulates a framework for a distributed network audience theory that reassembles many of the sociocultural and technological boundaries of technical audiences and offers new teachable directions.