This article contributes to an emerging body of scholarship on multimodal composition in the poetry classroom through a study of Finnish lower secondary students’ digital videomaking in response to poetry. The study explores students’ use of semiotic resources in their interpretive work in transmediating a poem into a digital video, with a particular interest in their use of sound elements. Based on social semiotic theory of multimodality, the analysis shows how the students in a variety of ways used sound elements, together with other semiotic resources, to explore their interpretation of the poetic text. Sound elements in particular became a key resource in the interpretive work, giving the students the opportunity to elaborate on topical issues of interest and importance to them while reinforcing their social agency. The study demonstrates the relevance of sound elements in students’ digital composing and explorations of poetry. Furthermore, it reveals how the students showed a capacity as well as a willingness to act, to have influence, and to make substantiated claims for recognition regarding critical issues related to sexuality and society.

Predatory publishers deliver neither the editorial oversight, nor the peer review of legitimate publishers, and benefit from those whose positions require academic publications. These publishers also provide a home for conspiracy theorists and pseudoscience promoters, as their lack of scrutiny offers fraudulent academic research articles a veneer of scholarly credibility. While most predatory journals were designed to dupe researchers, the fraudulent articles they often publish are designed to be found by members of the public, and their accessibility ensures that unlike legitimate research, they are likely to be employed as evidence by those seeking evidence. While studies have examined the common features of predatory journals, their emails, and their websites, this essay situates fraudulent academic articles in posttruth discourse, offers a taxonomy of illegitimate research articles, and highlights their common rhetorical features, in the hopes that the concepts discovered here can further contribute to pedagogy and public understanding.

What does it mean for BIPOC, especially in the academy where teaching holds profound cultural and economic value, when past racism is repackaged as future pedagogical opportunity? How does white time weaponize pedagogy to “dictate the pace” (Cooper) of racial progress? The above examples demonstrate how the white, neoliberal academy’s deep investment in teaching/learning can naturalize ongoing modes of embodied and epistemic racial violence. Indeed, the continued retroactive acknowledgment of racial violence in the institution and its renarration as teaching/learning opportunity often do not signify “progress” as much as they render the real violences faced by BIPOC in the academy and otherwise as abstract “objects” for future white dissection. Furthermore, these rhetorics also obscure the ongoing pedagogies of BIPOC in the academy—both in the classroom and “backchannels”—that have long refused the projects of white time and space.

Abstract Russian disinformation activities imitate divisive U.S. political discourse within a polarized social media ecosystem. As part of a multipronged response, U.S. citizens have been urged to increase their personal vigilance and to identify inauthentic messages, hence flagging foreign-made disinformation by studying its content. However, by applying Taylor's concept of “imitation (in)security” to a set of Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA) Facebook and Instagram advertisements, this article explains why content-centered approaches to combatting disinformation need to be reimagined. Building upon imitation (in)security, we propose that the strength of the IRA disinformation campaign was not its ability to foist falsehoods upon unsuspecting Americans, but, rather, its uncanny imitation of prevalent themes, images, and arguments within American civic life. Our analysis of IRA-generated advertisements targeting U.S. military veterans demonstrates how IRA “trolls” were imitating American communication patterns to amplify existing positions within a deluge of messages marked by polysemy. Our analysis suggests readers should be less concerned by such Russian-made imitations than was suggested in much of the breathless 2016 post-election coverage, for the traction of such disinformation hinges on domestic crises and injustices that long predate Russian interference. Pointing to foreign-made social media content stokes a sense of threat and crisis—the essence of national insecurity and a main objective of the IRA's efforts—yet our actual security weaknesses are homemade.

Abstract This essay performs a critical rhetorical analysis of out-of-court texts pertaining to Naruto v. Slater, colloquially known as the “Monkey Selfie Lawsuit.” By veering from a legal positivist perspective on law and turning toward theories of the public screen, it argues that while People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) formally lost its case on appeal, it successfully litigated their case in the court of public opinion. It further offers the concept of the “litigious event”—a staged lawsuit designed for mass media dissemination—to explain my perspective. By latching onto the already-viral monkey selfies at the center of the copyright dispute, PETA took advantage of the public screen by bringing a private, logocentric civil suit into a public, image-based digital sphere. Increased coverage of the case allowed PETA's legal team to harness the power of digital media to disseminate important arguments about legal rights for animals. Naruto v. Slater functioned as a trial for media, as a strategic lawsuit for public participation—in other words, as a strategically sound and rhetorically powerful litigious event.

This paper examines the multiliteracies practices () of 20 high school students who participated in a weeklong summer research institute at the start of a 6-month-long community-based youth participatory action research (YPAR) initiative. Data analyzed included 20 digital multimodal compositions produced by youths, individual interviews with youths, and observations of youths’ participation in the YPAR initiative. Data analysis utilized theories of multiliteracies practices () and culturally sustaining pedagogies () enacted across contexts of YPAR (). Findings contribute new insights about students’ multiliteracies practices in YPAR in two ways. First, we examine how learning about research methods shifted students’ understandings of research and the role their experiences could play in YPAR. Second, we examine how students’ digital literacies practices () supported them in generating new narratives about their community in digital multimodal compositions. Finally, we consider how insights gained from our examination may support educators in developing and enacting culturally sustaining () learning contexts that build with students’ multiliteracies practices as strengths while challenging persistent educational inequities.

Grounding assumptions about the function of public discourse are critical to the formation and functioning of society. One way of examining those assumptions is through analyzing how public discourse gets represented in popular culture. Patricia Roberts-Miller’s (2004) taxonomy of models of public spheres serves as a template for the analysis of the film Thank You for Smoking (2006). This analysis demonstrates how the film both advocates for and contributes to the evolution of a post-truth public sphere by obscuring the historical controversy over tobacco. Truth and knowledge are not merely hidden or ignored but neutralized, and “spin” is therefore normalized and ultimately justified as a necessary protection of individual rights in a libertarian democracy.

In this paper, we explore the gendered aspects of scientific controversy in the digital age. This project makes use of Leah Ceccarelli’s seminal work on manufactured scientific controversy by considering its implications for the discourse on GMOs and food additives published on digital food and lifestyle blogs. We perform a discourse analysis of several blogs to look at the ways that gendered online discourse and performance influences modern anti-science rhetoric, particularly that which emanates from the sphere colloquially known as crunchy living. We look at the ways the intimate and personal feminine style of digital platforms offer experiential knowledge as a substitute for science. In the current political climate of alternative facts and fake news, this study leads to broader implications about the impact of gendered discourse on the assessment of credibility in online sources.

How do material and discursive arrangements, technologies and rhetoric, shape the subjects and objects of medical discourse (Scott & Melonçon, 2017; Selzer & Crowley, 1999)? How are the affordances of material and discursive arrangements seized by political actors? Tackling these and similar questions has been a growing preoccupation in the rhetoric of science, technology, and medicine, where researchers have sought better ways of understanding the entanglements of the symbolic and material (Booher & Jung, 2018; Graham, 2009; Jack, 2019; Propen, 2018). A perspicuous case for this research is the Ultrasound Informed Consent Act (UICA), an amendment to the Public Health Service Act mandating that women receive an ultrasound and have its images described to them before having abortions. Three US states have a version of this law, with over twenty others having laws similar to the UICA (Guttmacher Institute, 2019, n.d.). Through this law, antiabortionists are able to construct a kairotic situation through the mediating capacity of ultrasound where they can use the actual state of affairs (a woman seeking an abortion) to argue through images for a possible future (a woman foregoing abortion). This article analyzes the UICA to understand how the political speech of antiabortionists enrolls the moralizing capacity of ultrasound to construct a kairotic situation to intervene in women’s pregnancies. Starting from studies of actor-networks (Latour, 1983;1999a) and technological mediation (Verbeek, 2011; 2015), and departing to feminist rhetorical science studies (Booher & Jung, 2018; Frost & Haas, 2017) and rhetorical approaches to imagery and visualization (Propen, 2018; Roby, 2016; Webb, 2009), I argue that not only do translation processes and technical mediation distribute agencies; they construct the very situations where agencies are constituted. This study can widen our understanding of how political entities appropriate the rhetorical capacities of technology and discourse to translate their politics into legislature.

In this article, I examine and contextualize a selection of award-winning data visualizations created by W. E. B. Du Bois and his team for the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris, France. I show that Du Bois’s success with these data visualizations is partially attributable to the ways in which he merged artistic creativity with statistical empiricism to overcome the practical and ideological constraints of his rhetorical situation, namely a need to be seen amongst the fair’s larger spectacle and a refutation of the “scientific” racism that pervaded academia at the time. The research presented confirms Du Bois as an important but previously unrecognized progenitor of data visualization and therefore deserving of much more recognition in the fields of technical and professional communication (TPC) and data visualization than he currently receives. Ultimately, I argue that his achievement recommends useful lessons for contemporary scholars, practitioners, and pedagogues of TPC and data design.

Abstract The authors present a lab-based research model that engages graduate students in undergraduate research mentorship positions that are mutually beneficial for graduate students, undergraduates, and faculty. They show how this model can be scaled up and adapted across the range of English disciplines. The authors share examples of the different types of research that they have engaged in for linguistics, literary archival studies, creative writing, and writing pedagogy. These examples illustrate how undergraduate research mentorship can prepare graduate students to teach and mentor students using effective methods in various institutional contexts.

Abstract This article profiles a University of North Carolina Greensboro undergraduate research digital humanities opportunity. The authors explain how their faculty-student-library team met challenges of generating a digital exhibit while overcoming typical resource constraints. They articulate three sites of applied knowledge the student gained from this research and detail the project design and efforts to call attention to invisible undergraduate research (UR). Such visibility facilitates additional course-based research opportunities and helps institutional stakeholders imagine further enterprising opportunities for UR despite time and material constraints.

AbstractThis article focuses on the progress of an undergraduate English major on the scholarship continuum outlined by Laurie Grobman (2009). The student engaged in authentic research in a research methods course for English majors, a class that also meets a university requirement of “quantitative intensive,” and she completed two research projects of note. Her journey has implications and significance for faculty in designing undergraduate research experiences.

Teaching and composing with multimedia humanizes online technical writing and communication classes. However, students do not always see the connection between multimedia instructional materials, multimedia assignments, and the course learning outcomes. Purposeful pedagogy-driven course design uses multimedia instructional materials to connect assignments, course materials, and assessments with course outcomes. Technical writing instructors can integrate synchronous and asynchronous multimedia elements to address not only the what and why of online technical writing instruction but also the how of multimedia instructional materials. Example multimedia instructional materials and student projects discussed in the article can increase student retention and promote engaged learning.

This article explores the catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, shedding light on the emergence of instructional writing from oral instruction. The 1549 text evinces qualities of preliterate oral communication identified by Ong. By contrast, the 1604 addendum reveals a trend toward modern plain style, which is even more pronounced in the 1647 Westminster Shorter Catechism. The evidence indicates the oral features were useful to the text’s technical aims. What Ramist plain style gains in precision and objectivity comes at the cost of other useful features, such as reiteration, contextualization, and agonism, which (in Tannen's phrase) involve a greater relative focus on interpersonal involvement between speaker and auditor/ reader.

To investigate the generic features of firm-generated advertisements (FGAs) in cross-cultural contexts, this study analyzed 327 FGAs by Dell Technologies and the Lenovo Group on Twitter and Sina Weibo. Integrating affordances and multimodality into genre analysis, the study showed that the FGAs were characterized by (a) flexible move structure, (b) persuasive language, (c) visual illustration, and (d) hyperlinks, hashtagging (#), and mentioning (@) functions. The FGAs on Sina Weibo, compared with those on Twitter, tended to use more language play, emojis, and contextual product pictures and show more emphasis on the niche of products, incentives, and celebrity endorsement.

Writing and genre scholarship has become increasingly attuned to how various nontextual features of written genres contribute to the kinds of social actions that the genres perform and to the activities that they mediate. Even though scholars have proposed different ways to account for nontextual features of genres, such attempts often remain undertheorized. By bringing together Writing, Activity, and Genre Research, and Multimodal Interaction Analysis, the authors propose a conceptual framework for multimodal activity-based analysis of genres, or Multimodal Writing, Activity, and Genre (MWAG) analysis. Furthermore, by drawing on previous studies of the laboratory notebook (lab book) genre, the article discusses the rhetorical action the genre performs and its role in mediating knowledge construction activities in science. The authors provide an illustrative example of the MWAG analysis of an emergent scientist’s lab book and discuss its contributions to his increasing participation in medical physics. The study contributes to the development of a theoretically informed analytical framework for integrative multimodal and rhetorical genre analysis, while illustrating how the proposed framework can lead to the insights into the sociorhetorical roles multimodal genres play in mediating such activities as knowledge construction and disciplinary enculturation.

The study of revision has been a topic of interest in writing research over the past decades. Numerous studies have, for instance, shown that learning-to-revise is one of the key competences in writing development. Moreover, several models of revision have been developed, and a variety of taxonomies have been used to measure revision in empirical studies. Current advances in data collection and analysis have made it possible to study revision in increasingly precise detail. The present study aimed to combine previous models and current advances by providing a comprehensive product- and process-oriented tagset of revision. The presented tagset includes properties of external revisions: trigger, orientation, evaluation, action, linguistic domain, spatial location, temporal location, duration, and sequencing. We identified how keystroke logging, screen replays, and eye tracking can be used to extract both manually and automatically extract features related to these properties. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate how this tagset can be used to annotate revisions made by higher education students in various academic tasks. To conclude, we discuss how this tagset forms a scalable basis for studying revision in writing in depth.

Scholarship on trajectories of becoming with literate activities is of growing interest in Writing Studies, particularly in accounts of writing grounded in cultural-historical and dialogic approaches, and in lifespan accounts of writing. The research reported here contributes to those conversations by tracing trajectories of becoming that are dynamically nonlinear, necessarily messy, and predicated on exceptionally complex streams of times, places, life experiences, artifacts, and literate activities. I draw from one case study with Alex, once a deeply faithful Christian who, over complex trajectories of semiotic becoming, lost her faith and was left to make sense of drastic perspectival shifts, in large part, through literate activity. Weaving analyses of talk across 2 years, 15 interviews, and multiple texts and textual interactions, I trace a narrative of Alex’s trajectories of unbecoming/becoming. I argue that Writing Studies needs flexible, theoretically grounded methods to trace becoming across lifespan trajectories and I address this imperative by showcasing one approach— dialogic animation protocols coupled with dialogic analyses.

This article describes a research assignment for first-year composition students that combines film and television motif analysis and role-playing, thus creating an opportunity for students to write critiques of contemporary institutions.

ABSTRACT Fallacies are traditionally defined as potentially deceptive failures of rationality or reasonableness. Fallacy theories seek to model this failure by formulating standards of rationality or reasonableness that arguers must observe when engaging in argumentative interaction. Yet it remains relatively easy to reject or avoid fallacy judgments even in the most clear-cut cases. In this article, I argue for a pluralist approach to criticism in which the fallacy accusation is only the starting point for a more complex form of criticism. In a pluralist approach, the identification of fallacies works as a first step precisely because it can be so easily set aside. In doing so, the evaluator seeks other evaluative angles that depart from the original one. As a case in point, I exemplify the approach on a piece of argumentative discourse in the scientific context. I conclude by spelling out some of the methodological consequences of the present approach.

ABSTRACT In order to explore the possibilities of affirmative ethics and algorithmic judgment, this article puts machinic rhetoric in conversation with classical imitation pedagogy. Taking a machine-learning chatbot as my example, I examine how imitation and repetition in a restrictive economy of rhetorical models produces a limited affirmative ethics through dialectical relations. Drawing on Hannah Arendt's concept of representative thinking to theorize a procedure for algorithmic judgment, I argue that rhetorical training requires the affirmation of a plurality of models if it is to generate not only versatility but also ethical repetitions.

ABSTRACT This article develops a theory of rhetorical impression through a critical genealogy of the term phantasia. The genealogy demonstrates cause for understanding phantasia as impression, not image. I trace phantasia as impression through the work of Plato and Aristotle but ultimately argue that the stoics offer the most productive leads for thinking through impressions, materiality, and sensations together. Specifically, I demonstrate how the stoics' concept of lekton can productively mediate the relationship between rhetoric, materiality, imagination, and idealism. In the closing section, I suggest how a theory of rhetorical impression can address lacunae in existing new materialist approaches.

What does it mean to be literate in contemporary rhetorics of nostalgia? How can such knowledge lead to a better-designed world? From scrutinizing digital technologies of longing like Facebook’s On This Day to pursuing Afrofuturistic traditions toward neostalgic tomorrows, this essay surveys the human need to bathe in lost pasts, how such longing is coded into our lives, and how it can be activated by rhetoric students to design equitable futures. In doing so, I propose five tenets of nostalgic design, a making-centric approach to the rhetoric of memory that (1) interrogates technologies of nostalgia, (2) learns from user longings, (3) urges solidarity across a design’s lifespan, (4) fragments isolated traditions, and (5) surveys the past for lost futures. Within each movement, I both introduce defining features of the rhetoric of nostalgia and assignments that aid students in remaking the memory systems around them.

This article analyzes user work during open game development and presents an alternative model for participatory design. During open development, developers publicly distribute incomplete games, discuss their design goals, and facilitate user feedback. This article examines user work on an open development forum using conventional content and discourse uptake analyses. It finds that users customize their participation, engage with multiple objects of design, and affect design through collective action.

This article proposes resistance as a form of participation in user experience settings. It details a study to include people living with HIV in codesigning a health education technology, and it found that participants resisted online education initiatives, citing HIV stigma on social media and privacy concerns. Taken with queer theory, these findings underscore the offline inequities mediating interaction on social media for those living with HIV and open alternative design arrangements reflecting participants’ embodied experiences.

This study explores the viability of making in technical and professional communication (TPC) pedagogy. This article reports a pedagogical case study of making as a way to enact design thinking in the TPC classroom. By aligning the values in making and design thinking with TPC learning goals, this study discusses the opportunities in maker-based learning and proposes a set of heuristics for integrating making with TPC pedagogy.

Abstract This article examines the construction of and contestation over the idea of the nation through contemporary popular cinema in India. Building on his experience of discussing the Bollywood spy thriller Raazi (2018) in an English class, the author proposes that “reading” the film in terms of gender and genre can not only help students apply modes of textual analysis to narratives in other media but also alert them to the location of such narratives within larger discursive frameworks of defining national identities. Raazi presents a critical and ideological counterpoint to the generic conventions of the spy thriller within the increasingly polarized sociopolitical context of the Indian subcontinent. The film presents an unlikely female protagonist as both the physical agent and the psychological subject of the violence integral to the “action” of an espionage film. It also interrogates the oppositional relation between the patriotic “self” and the foreign “other” that lies at the basis of the militaristic conception of the nation and ultimately reveals the shared human vulnerability of both to the traumatic effects of pursuing the idea(l) of nationalism at the expense of individual moral integrity. Thus a close reading of the film's narrative structure and conventions, as well as a critical engagement with the historical context of its production and reception, can be pedagogically fruitful ways of understanding and critiquing the processes through which a nation is collectively imagined into being.

AbstractStudents are more likely to embrace failure in learning when they are intrinsically motivated, but formal education in the United States operates through extrinsic rewards that make failure something to fear and avoid. Accordingly, the author examines the lessons of “Failure Club,” a writing course he designed to challenge this basic pedagogical contradiction.

Meeting the needs of users requires an understanding of the contexts where they interact with materials. This entry presents an approach for integrating script theory into usability to develop medical materials individuals can use in the settings where they receive or perform healthcare activities. The entry introduces technical communication professionals to script theory and presents mechanisms for using script theory to research patient expectations of and presents usable materials for health and medical contexts.

The authors present the results of a study of a three-way international collaboration project among one Hungarian class and two classes from Michigan and Washington, respectively. This multifaceted study focused on business planning, web design, and accessibility with the aim of investigating the effect of accessibility instruction on the production of business plans and websites. The distinguishing feature of this study was its emphasis to orient the three student groups on disability and accessibility issues from the perspective of the critical social model of disability advanced by disability studies theorists. The researchers collected quantitative and qualitative pre/postproject survey data from their three classes. They combined this data with the text of student emails sent among the project teams and instructor notes about their teaching to arrive at conclusions about the effectiveness of the collaboration using a mixed-methods approach. The results from the data analyses revealed significant benefit of the client–provider relationships among the three classes and the accessibility instruction provided by the Washington class to the other two classes on the business plans and websites.

Health and medical contexts have emerged as an important area of inquiry for researchers at the intersection of user experience and technical communication. In addressing this intersection, this article advocates and extends patient experience design or PXD ( Melonçon, 2017 ) as an important framework for user experience research within health and medicine. Specifically, this article presents several PXD insights from a task-based usability study that examined an online intervention program for people with voice problems. We respond to Melonçon's call ( 2017 ) to build PXD as a framework for user experience and technical communication research by describing ways traditional usability methods can provide PXD insights and asking the following question: What insights can emerge from combining traditional usability methods and PXD research? In addressing this question, we outline two primary methodological and practical considerations we found central to conducting PXD research: (1) engaging patients as participants, and (2) leveraging multidisciplinary collaboration.

Technical and professional communication (TPC) and user experience (UX) design are often seen as intertwined due to being user-centered. Yet, as widening industry positions combine TPC and UX, new streams enrich our understanding. This article looks at three such streams, namely, design thinking, content strategy, and artificial intelligence to uncover specific industry practices, skills, and ways to advocate for users. These streams foster a multistage user-centered methodology focused on a continuous designing process, strategic ways for developing content across different platforms and channels, and for developing in smart contexts where agentive products act for users. In this article, we synthesize these developments and draw out how these impact TPC.

Academic work increasingly involves creating digital tools with interdisciplinary teams distributed across institutions and roles. The negative impacts of distributed work are described at length in technical communication scholarship, but such impacts have not yet been realized in collaborative practices. By integrating attention to their core ethical principles, best practices, and work patterns, the authors are developing an ethical, sustainable approach to team building that they call constructive distributed work. This article describes their integrated approach, documents the best practices that guide their research team, and models the three-dimensional thinking that helps them develop sustainable digital tools and ensure the consistent professional development of all team members.

Using rhetorical genre theory, the authors theorize the engineering design process as a type of embodied genre enacted through typified performances of bodies engaged with discourses, texts, and objects in genre-rich spaces of design activity. The authors illustrate this through an analysis of ethnographic data from an engineering design course to show how a genred repertoire of embodied routines is demonstrated for students and later taken up as part of their design work. A greater appreciation of the interconnection between genre and design as well as the role of typification in producing embodied genres can potentially transform how writing studies conceives of and teaches both design processes and genres in technical and professional communication settings.

Source-based writing is a common but difficult task in history and philosophy. Students are usually taught how to write a good text in language classes. However, it is also important to address discipline-specificity in writing, a topic likely to be taught by content teachers. In order to design discipline-specific writing instruction, research needs to identify which reading and writing activities during the source-based writing process affect students’ thought process quality and text quality, as assessed by content teachers. We conducted a think-aloud study with 15 (11th grade) students who performed two source-based writing assignments, each representative of its discipline. From the data, we derived 11 activities, which we analyzed for duration, frequency, and time of occurrence. Results showed that the disciplines required different approaches to writing. For philosophy, the writing process was dominant and influenced quality, leading us to conclude that philosophical thinking and writing are intertwined. For history, the planning process appeared to be paramount, but it influenced text quality only and not the quality of the thought process. In other words, historical thinking and writing appear to be separate processes. Our findings can be used to develop strategy instruction that reinforces better writing, adapted to discipline-specific writing processes.

The present study used a longitudinal mixed-method design to investigate the relationship between post-PhD researchers’ writing conceptions and their experiences, scholarly trajectory, and networking capabilities. A total of 134 Spanish post-PhD researchers answered the Post-PhD Experience—Survey scales on Academic Writing and Social Support. One year later, a subsample of 21 participated in retrospective multimodal interviews, in which visual methods (Journey and Network Plots) were applied to analyse their writing trajectories during this period of time. The person-centred analysis revealed three post-PhD profiles regarding writing conceptions and evidenced differences among them in the way they participate in the research community and interact with other researchers. Qualitative results suggest the post-PhD researchers in each profile position themselves in the community differently and subsequently engage in distinctive writing experiences. The study provides evidence of how writer profiles appear to mediate trajectories and networking, something not evident when using only sectional designs. Relational agency is revealed to be an important aspect of productive writers. Pedagogical implications are discussed, particularly the need to promote writers’ awareness on how their writing conceptions intertwine with their strategic management of research writing practices in different contexts.

Constructing mental health interventions comes with specific methodological challenges, especially when working with vulnerable communities. Developing means of assessment for such projects compounds these challenges because the need to protect participant information may conflict with the need to produce persuasive results about the intervention to obtain funding for additional care. This article seeks to redress these methodological challenges by proposing new protocols for approving and assessing mental health interventions centered within multiply marginalized communities.

Empathy competence is considered a key aspect of excellent performance in communication professions. But we lack an overview of the specific knowledge, attitudes, and skills required to develop such competence in professional communication. Through interviews with 35 seasoned communication professionals, this article explores the role and nature of empathy competence in professional interactions. The analysis resulted in a framework that details the skills, knowledge, and attitudinal aspects of empathy; distinguishes five actions through which empathy manifests itself; and sketches relationships of empathy with several auxiliary factors. The framework can be used for professional development, recruitment, and the design of communication education programs.

Writing and communication researchers are in the early stages of developing procedures for reusing and maximizing the analytical potentials of qualitative data. Contributing to this effort, we critically reflect on our methodological decision-making process in developing innovative procedures for cross-analyzing two distinct studies. Our reflection responds to the need for published guidance on how to undertake methodological adaptation, the lack of which limits opportunities for other researchers to develop new study procedures to address complex problems. By discussing how and why we made particular methodological choices and adaptations in our collaborative study of faculty and doctoral student writers, we propose collaborative secondary data analysis as a fruitful avenue for qualitative writing researchers and show its potential to enact richer and more equitable research designs.

From May through July 2020, we collected several hundred images shared on Facebook depicting blame for U.S. Covid-spread. Across these posts, we identified recurring patterns of blame accomplished through two rhetorical devices: attenuation and augmentation. We found two themes in these patterns of blame: individualizing social unsafety and identifying Americans as outsiders. In this article, we explain the processes of panopticonning, and provide examples of the two discourses of blame that result from panopticonning in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.