Communication Design Quarterly

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September 2025

  1. Review of "Queer Techné: Bodies, Rhetoric, and Desire in the History of Computing by Patricia Fancher," Fancher P. (2024). <i>Queer techné: Bodies, rhetoric, and desire in the history of computing.</i> National Council of Teachers of English.
    Abstract

    Queer Techné: Bodies, Rhetoric and Desire in the History of Computing is a little book doing big things. Author Patricia Fancher presents a well-theorized recovery of both queer lives and the lives of women in the history of computing, something of great import to scholars in technical and professional communication (TPC). Fancher engages with queer theory, rhetoric, technical communication, historiography, archival studies, mathematics, computers, and engineering, resulting in a robust interdisciplinary work. At the center of the book is Alan Turing, a pioneering mathematician and gay man, but just as important are the people around him—his queer community and the women of the University of Manchester Computer Lab. Fancher uses queer and embodied techné to explore these communities and the writing that occurred within them. Through this, she presents a case that pushes back against popular narratives of Alan Turing as a solitary genius while also bringing forward the embodied human presence in computing and TPC.

    doi:10.1145/3772174.3772179

September 2022

  1. Using situational analysis to reimagine infrastructure
    Abstract

    In this article, we ask what it means to think of infrastructure discursively through situational analysis. First, we consider how policymakers have historically used writing and rhetoric to redefine, reframe, and resituate what infrastructure can be in technical documents. Second, we address the impact of policymakers' discursive practices on the spaces and material realities of communities. We view the infrastructural function of writing "as a conceptual foundation for revealing structures and foundations of organizations that affect people" (Read, 2019, p. 237). We use three texts as the space of our discourse mapping: President Franklin Roosevelt's "Fireside Chat on the Recovery Program," the Green New Deal, and President Joseph Biden's recently proposed American Jobs Plan. Through these three cases, we argue that infrastructure has always been defined in relation to environment. Any definition of infrastructure is rooted in environment or seeks to change environment. These shifts in definition have been used strategically to bring more visibility to marginalized communities and make their concerns central to the concerns of the United States' socio-economic agenda. We close with implications for both communities and policymakers.

    doi:10.1145/3507870.3507877

August 2019

  1. Reducing harm by designing discourse and digital tools for opioid users' contexts
    Abstract

    The United States is struggling with an opioid overdose (OD) crisis. The opioid OD epidemic includes legally prescribed and illicitly acquired opioids. Regardless of if an opioid is legal, understanding users' contexts of use is essential to design effective methods for individuals to reverse opioid OD. In other words, if health information is not designed to be contextually relevant, the opioid OD health information will be unusable. To demonstrate these distinct healthcare design contexts, I extend Patient Experience Design (PXD) to include community-based and technology-based contexts of use by analyzing two case examples of the Chicago Recovery Alliance's and PwrdBy's attempts to decrease deaths by opioid OD. Next, I discuss implications of community-based and technology-based PXD within communities of opioid users, critiquing each method and suggesting four contexts of use-heuristic categories to consider when designing health communication information for users in these contexts.

    doi:10.1145/3358931.3358935

March 2017

  1. Framing illness through Facebook enabled online support groups
    Abstract

    This article examines the illness/recovery narratives created through Facebook and shared in groups associated with the trauma of venous thrombolytic events (VTEs). Until recently, there was little public focus on VTE recovery; however, due to advances in medicine, patients who might have once died are now surviving, but there is limited literature about what surviving a VTE means for the individual. As a result, people look for others like themselves to help them adjust to this situation. In this context, Facebook affordances help extend traditional illness narratives between patient and healthcare provider from a private to semi-public or public space. Individuals participating in these groups transform not only themselves, but others, eliciting empathy, sharing experiences, and developing a platform upon which to critique healthcare practices.

    doi:10.1145/3068755.3068758