This article considers how learning environment design can help TPC instructors using social media tools in their courses to better support students' practicing of digital literacy. Based on findings from an IRB-approved qualitative study of a social media pedagogy that makes use of the platform Slack, this article contributes insight into how learning environment design in social media learning communities can assist instructors hoping to support their students as they practice digital and social media literacy activities.

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.

In User Experience Research and Usability of Health Information Technology , Jessica Lynn Campbell offers a guide on the design and implementation of usability studies to improve the user experience with health information technology (HIT). HIT is a broad and growing category, which includes applications such as telemedicine, electronic health records, and electronic communications between healthcare providers and patients. Given the increasing use of HIT, this is a welcome resource for both researchers and practitioners interested in improving user experiences and, ultimately, positive health outcomes. Campbell brings strong professional experience in the healthcare field, having worked in digital marketing, technical communication, and content creation roles. She is also an accomplished teacher and researcher within the technical communication and user experience disciplines. She draws on this diverse background to create a text intended for use by both academic scholars and healthcare practitioners.

Tables, one of the most familiar forms of data visualization, are often put to use as a popular workaround for laying out pages in word processing programs. This article illustrates examples of friction, compatibility , and congruence between accepted guidance for designing effective tables in Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) and widely adopted accessibility standards outlined by the largest international software vendors and non-profit organizations. While acknowledging critiques in critical disability studies and in TPC of standards-based approaches to accessibility, we argue that adherence to standards offers a starting point for redressing the inaccessibility created by some TPC pedagogical practices. Navigating these departures and overlaps is important because designing effective data visualizations, laying out pages, and creating accessible documents are core competencies in technical communication that instantiate deeply held professional and disciplinary commitments to creating usable and ethical documents.

This research used a participant observer method to describe and analyze the digital literacy practices of one grassroots community group that organized around the issue of municipal city council redistricting. The group proposed and advocated for city council district lines that reflected the minority-majority makeup of the city's population. The group effectively crafted different genres, including informational Google Docs, maps, form letters, petitions, social media graphics, press releases, and public speeches to advocate for their position. This research argues for the study of activists' digital literacy practices and the role of digital technology in activist efforts.

The FemTech industry, a booming segment of the health technology market, trades in feminist empowerment largely by data tracking and collection. As issues of privacy and surveillance related to users' data collection have grown, scholars in health, design, and communication have explored how health-related technologies complicate the liberatory potential of self-tracking and self-monitoring health, signaling digitally collected, intimate data as concerning and gesturing toward critical digital literacy as a requirement for technology users. By analyzing user comments about pelvic floor training devices, this article reframes intimate data to understand the ways that people create and use it to learn about themselves. This move demonstrates a new kind of literacy: biodigital literacy, which I offer as a concept and framework that highlights the unique competencies of embodied digital life.

Update culture and the afterlife of digital writing represents an ambitious project in which John R. Gallagher explores two primary claims. First, he introduces the idea of "interactive and participatory internet (IPI) templates" (p. 8) as structures that allow for constant rewriting and rereading of digital content. He argues that these templates foster communication by providing a model that encourages users to compose to each other based on certain characteristics, and arguably constraints, unique to digital environments. Second, he explores the idea that digital writers have developed new strategies that impact how they (re)compose, as well as interact, with participatory audiences who are closer to writers than ever before. In order to analyze these claims, Gallagher performs a series of interviews with forty writers who are top performing Redditors, Amazon reviewers, and online journalists/bloggers. Through these interviews, Gallagher connects common writing strategies that are employed by the writers as they work within the framework of specific templates and interact with their different audiences.

This article is the introduction to the Communication Design Quarterly special issue on digital life. It explains the exigency for this issue and details how digital literacies in technical and professional communication are complicated by emerging technologies. It also demonstrates the potential for moving toward a model of digital life as a flexible way of foregrounding and talking about the work we are all already doing to understand and improve our post-human lives.

Have you ever wondered how a researcher from the periphery can gain an enduring foothold in the pantheon of researchers from the center? This essay will attempt to answer that question. Halcyon Lawrence was a researcher, writer, and professor from the Global South who has made a mark on a community of technical communication scholars, writers, researchers, and professors with her widely discussed research articles dealing with the pros and cons, perils and promises, boon and bane of speech recognition tools and technology. Lawrence's research explores the thickets of speech recognition and proposes strategic and revisionary measures toward neutralizing the lopsided corpora of speech recognition software, vaporware, and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technology. To crystalize her contributions to justice, data justice, and racial-linguistic justice, I chose a chapter, "Siri Discipline," she (2021) wrote for the book Your Computer is on Fire (Mullaney et al, 2021). My essay highlights how her ideas have gained more traction in relation to the current disruption of the AI revolution (Gopal, 2020). That disruption is often exemplified through ChatGPT, a platform that shows how Lawrence's core insight from "Siri Discipline" can have a direct bearing on normative frameworks being developed to address burgeoning challenges ushered in by the AI revolution.

This article is the introduction to the Communication Design Quarterly special issue on digital life. It explains the exigency for this issue and details how digital literacies in technical and professional communication are complicated by emerging technologies. It also demonstrates the potential for moving toward a model of digital life as a flexible way of foregrounding and talking about the work we are all already doing to understand and improve our post-human lives.

The FemTech industry, a booming segment of the health technology market, trades in feminist empowerment largely by data tracking and collection. As issues of privacy and surveillance related to users' data collection have grown, scholars in health, design, and communication have explored how health-related technologies complicate the liberatory potential of self-tracking and self-monitoring health, signaling digitally collected, intimate data as concerning and gesturing toward critical digital literacy as a requirement for technology users. By analyzing user comments about pelvic floor training devices, this article reframes intimate data to understand the ways that people create and use it to learn about themselves. This move demonstrates a new kind of literacy: biodigital literacy, which I offer as a concept and framework that highlights the unique competencies of embodied digital life.

Have you ever wondered how a researcher from the periphery can gain an enduring foothold in the pantheon of researchers from the center? This essay will attempt to answer that question. Halcyon Lawrence was a researcher, writer, and professor from the Global South who has made a mark on a community of technical communication scholars, writers, researchers, and professors with her widely discussed research articles dealing with the pros and cons, perils and promises, boon and bane of speech recognition tools and technology. Lawrence's research explores the thickets of speech recognition and proposes strategic and revisionary measures toward neutralizing the lopsided corpora of speech recognition software, vaporware, and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technology. To crystalize her contributions to justice, data justice, and racial-linguistic justice, I chose a chapter, "Siri Discipline," she (2021) wrote for the book Your Computer is on Fire (Mullaney et al, 2021). My essay highlights how her ideas have gained more traction in relation to the current disruption of the AI revolution (Gopal, 2020). That disruption is often exemplified through ChatGPT, a platform that shows how Lawrence's core insight from "Siri Discipline" can have a direct bearing on normative frameworks being developed to address burgeoning challenges ushered in by the AI revolution.

This research used a participant observer method to describe and analyze the digital literacy practices of one grassroots community group that organized around the issue of municipal city council redistricting. The group proposed and advocated for city council district lines that reflected the minority-majority makeup of the city's population. The group effectively crafted different genres, including informational Google Docs, maps, form letters, petitions, social media graphics, press releases, and public speeches to advocate for their position. This research argues for the study of activists' digital literacy practices and the role of digital technology in activist efforts.

Update culture and the afterlife of digital writing represents an ambitious project in which John R. Gallagher explores two primary claims. First, he introduces the idea of "interactive and participatory internet (IPI) templates" (p. 8) as structures that allow for constant rewriting and rereading of digital content. He argues that these templates foster communication by providing a model that encourages users to compose to each other based on certain characteristics, and arguably constraints, unique to digital environments. Second, he explores the idea that digital writers have developed new strategies that impact how they (re)compose, as well as interact, with participatory audiences who are closer to writers than ever before. In order to analyze these claims, Gallagher performs a series of interviews with forty writers who are top performing Redditors, Amazon reviewers, and online journalists/bloggers. Through these interviews, Gallagher connects common writing strategies that are employed by the writers as they work within the framework of specific templates and interact with their different audiences.

In the wake of the controversy surrounding the new AI chatbot application, ChatGPT, I wonder how Logie would seek to include this new technology in his work. I ponder this because, throughout the book, Logie presents compelling evidence for why the concepts of invention, composition, and internetworked writing should be embraced and not feared. While some denounce the application and take to social media to disparage the possible negative impact on students, creativity, and composition, ChatGPT, I believe Logie would argue, would be a powerful tool we can implement to become "composers." He believes that through cloud computing services we are now more apt to collaborate, use, remix, and create rhetorical modes that extend far beyond the formulaic argument, therefore we are composers. So, Logie applies the idea of a composer as someone who is a "prosumer" (Toffler). This composer is media literate and transforms traditional rhetorical canons into multimodal compositions such as memes, Google Docs, and digital collages. However, his overarching argument is that internetworked writing tools have democratized writing through that same offering of innovative outlets. His book is arranged in a way that walks the reader through this argument.

Technical communication instructors, especially those with expertise in visual rhetoric, information design, or multimedia writing are well-suited to teach an introductory Digital Humanities (DH) course. Offering a DH course provides an opportunity to reach extrafield audiences and work with students from a variety of humanities disciplines who may not have the option of taking such a course in their home department. The article advocates for a DH course that offers a methods-driven pedagogy that engages students with active learning by requiring them to research, dissect, and report on existing DH projects, as well as work with existing datasets and methods from prior student research projects or existing DH tools. The sample student project reviewed here uses the data visualization software ImagePlot, and discussion includes how the student used the tool to examine changes in brightness, hue, and color saturation, as well as calculate the total number of distinct shapes from 397 comic book covers. Ultimately, the students are tasked with developing a research question and moving to an articulated methods-driven approach for exploring the question. The student project along with the tools and sample datasets available with them are treated as a module that may be included in an introductory DH course syllabus or training session.

Rhet Ops: Rhetoric and Information Warfare provides a timely set of perspectives on the intersections of digital rhetoric and militarized operations conducted to foment or curtail violence. Rhet ops, shorthand for rhetorical operations, refers to the use of rhetorical theory by state or non-state actors to carry out coordinated military actions (operations). Perennial questions about rhetoric, ethics, and technical and digital communication (i.e., Katz, 1992; Lanham, 1993; Ward, 2014) inform 16 chapters by practitioners and academics who provide analytical and practical insights into "what it means to learn the art of rhetoric as a means to engage adversaries in war and conflict" (Ridolfo & Hart-Davidson, p. viii, emphasis in original). Rhet Ops' focuses on "the dark side of digital composing" (Ridolfo & Hart-Davidson, p. 3, emphasis in original)---from GamerGate to ISIS to the seemingly benign digital interfaces we interact with every day---making it especially salient in a time when violence and rhetoric intertwine constantly. Further, editors Ridolfo and Hart-Davidson have curated examples of #RhetOps on Twitter for years which fosters indefinite public tracking of #RhetOps, a move toward accountability.

Discussions about communication and education have become focused on social justice in recent years, and with good reason. Social justice is at the forefront of many aspects of our daily lives in news, education, and even entertainment. As digital rhetoricians and educators, we have found ourselves looking for ways to work at the intersections of our field and social justice to improve both learning experiences and networked communication in non-academic contexts. This work is both timely and needed, as the hierarchies and inequities experienced in "real life" often translate to, and are amplified by, networked and digital forms of engagement. Fortunately, Rhetoric, Technology, and the Virtues offers an insightful and practical discussion about ethical frameworks that contribute to our understanding of digital social justice. Colton and Holmes persuasively argue for the value of Aristotle's virtue ethics, especially the idea of hexis , as a model for empowering students, educators, and others to enact digital social justice. As they explain, Aristotle identified virtues "such as patience, courage, temperance, and liberality" that contribute to ethical behavior and "are developed not solely through reason or by learning rules but through practice of the emotional and social skills that enable us within a community to work toward...human flourishing and general well-being" (p. 32). An essential part of Aristotle's framework is hexis , a person's disposition that has been crafted through habit and repeated practice (p. 11). Colton and Holmes effectively demonstrate how a virtue ethics framework can empower individuals to take ownership of the ethical implications of digital practices. Throughout the book, Colton and Holmes address familiar topics in digital rhetoric ranging from captioning (pp. 3--5, 49--73), remixing (pp. 74--94), and issues inherent in online activism (pp. 95--126).

Derek N. Mueller's Network Sense: Methods for Visualizing a Discipline (2017) presents a compelling argument for adding distant reading and thin description to the Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies (RCWS) research methods portfolio. Not only can these methods help professionals address information overload, but the methods also support disciplinary wayfinding and network awareness for veteran and initiate practitioners and scholars alike. Network Sense 's explicit goal is to help current and new members in RCWS avoid information overload and better understand their discipline and where it is going. Mueller's presentation and evidence builds upon lived academic experience of ever-expanding growth in research, conferences, publications, and professional activities in RCWS. Similarly, his detailing the dearth of non-local, reliable, and consistently gathered data articulates the experience and lived frustration of many scholars. Finally, his presentation and analysis regarding the increasing number of scholars cited at the end of the long tail as opposed to having more repeatedly cited authors explains the felt experience of sharing or disciplinary niching or potential diffusion. Winning the 2018 Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award, as well as the 2019 Research Impact Award by the Conference on College Composition and Communication, underscores this book's value to its fields.

Every organization relies on information to communicate with prospects and customers - blog posts, articles, whitepapers, user manuals, web portals, videos, tweets, social media posts, moderated forums, and more. This means that many people are creating content and are delivering it in multiple ways. To meet our users' needs, we need information architecture (IA) to provide the framework for developing and delivering this information. Although most content creators do not think of themselves as information architects, many of them perform tasks that are information architecture responsibilities. If you decide what information gets created and delivered, identify keywords to support findability, or organize the hierarchy for a table of contents, you are performing IA tasks. To learn who was performing these tasks and how they ended up with this role, I conducted a survey. This article presents my analysis of the results based upon my experience and relevant industry sources.

This study audits and analyzes the online content provided by the U.S. government for The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). In order to both educate Americans about the ACA and enroll those who needed insurance into plans offered by the U.S. and/or state governments, policy analysts, communication designers, and web developers at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) created and published a substantial array of online content. These policy statements, infographics, blog posts, videos, forms, and other resources were designed to engage the public and translate the complexities of the ACA into usable information for patients. However, a content audit and analysis of ACA-related online content reveals the ways that this content did not provide a navigational structure for patients newly insured (or already insured) to find them, as over time the e-commerce function of the site buried its educational purpose. From this analysis, designers of online public policy information will gain a better understanding of how to design as a part of a strategy to balance multiple, critical user roles and tasks.

Coding, like other forms of written communication, is both science and art. This is not a new or revolutionary idea. In 1974, Donald Knuth published "Computer Programming as an Art" and declared that "[a] programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better" (p. 673). In 1984, Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution introduced us to the Hacker Ethic, one tenet of which is that we can create art and beauty on the computer (p. 31). Many other authors and coders have argued similar cases about the socially situated nature of programming since.

Technical communicators should be conscious of how the algorithms that govern "middleware" (software that structures the presentation of data) constrain their ability to represent information. We use critical theory from the digital humanities to discuss how critical visual literacy allows designers to better present contextual information to enhance the user experience. We illustrate this approach with an example of medical communication by using social network analysis software to demonstrate the spread of Ebola in Africa.

This paper presents the results of a case study focusing on information and communication design in indigenous villages of rural India. The villages examined for this study were geographically remote and socio-economically underdeveloped, and their populations represented individuals who possessed low levels of literacy, limited language proficiency in English and mainstream Indic languages (e.g., Hindi and Bengali), and limited familiarity with computer us and computing practices. The authors sought to examine this context by conducting ethnographic field research involving a variety of methods. Through these approaches, the authors found a range of cultural and contextual factors are instrumental in shaping and co-creating communication design solutions for underserved international audiences. (Such factors include such as long-term research engagements, in-situ design development, and embracing dialogic and reflexive praxis when designing for local audiences.)

As Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) utilized in workplaces, classrooms, and community organizations continue to proliferate, it follows that the kinds of knowledge necessary to assemble those technologies in order to engage in effective professional communication are becoming increasingly complex. This article details a study conducted of two student teams engaged in a service-learning class in which they were tasked with producing high-quality digital products---a mini-documentary and a simple, but interactive website---for client organizations---an art classroom in a local public school and a mentoring initiative within a local non-profit. The main findings of this study are that students mobilized a variety of resources and created a flexible network of technologies, knowledges, people, and modes of communication in order to address issues pertinent to their clients. In addition, I argue that the most important resource students mobilized was knowledge itself, indicating that one of the most important aspects of digital composing may be in-depth, practical knowledge of technologies, modes, and the genres they involve. Ultimately, the implications of this limited, classroom-based case study are that a situated understanding of how to assemble knowledges for the effective design of communication within a given communication infrastructure may be more important than access to the most cutting-edge modes and technologies, especially when working with resource-poor organizational clients.

Computer-assisted translation (aka machine translation) is on the fast track to becoming a utility. Translation will automatically become part of everything we do. Computers, websites, touch screen devices, in-car navigation systems, kiosks in public places, ATMs, airline self-service terminals -- basically any consumer-facing graphic user interface -- will include a "translate" button. In fact, the beta version of the Android operating system includes just that in the latest rendition of the Chrome browser. That's just the start of things to come. Machine translation will soon be ubiquitous!

Humans routinely fail to comprehend complexity and anticipate long-term consequences. Systems dynamicists try to overcome these weaknesses by developing computer-supported models that can account for multiple variables in non-linear relationships. Using programs such as STELLA and Vensim, systems dynamicists create stock-and-flow diagrams, equations, and, ultimately, interfaces that enable others to interact with the model. This paper describes how one such model was developed and speculates on roles that technical communicators might play in future projects.

In this paper we analyze the works of the Keio-NUS CUTE Center at the National University of Singapore in order to uncover the dispositions of "analogness" and "digitalness" in regards to the relationship between users and interfaces. By comparing concepts of embodiment from a philosophical perspective, paired with the computer science treatment of analog and digital data, we derive a contingent definition for analog-like and digital-like interaction. With case studies as reference, we outline a continuum to describe types of interfaces based on these dispositions, which could then be further analyzed using characteristics for designing analog-like, digital-like or hybrid-like interactive systems. We then propose a new methodology for designing novel interactive systems that are analog in nature, called interactive analog media (IAM) and finally describe a prototype system called Linetic, which exemplifies some of the characteristics described in this paper.