Technical Communication Quarterly Jan 2022

AI for Social Justice: New Methodological Horizons in Technical Communication

S. Scott Graham The University of Texas at Austin ; Hannah R. Hopkins The University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

This Methodologies and Approaches piece argues artificially intelligent machine learning systems can be used to effectively advance justice-oriented research in technical and professional communication (TPC). Using a preexisting dataset investigating patient marginalization in pharmaceuticals policy discourse, we built and tested 49 machine learning systems designed to identify and track rhetorical features of interest. Three popular and one new approach to feature engineering (text quantification) were evaluated. The results indicate that these systems have great potential for use in TPC research.

Journal
Technical Communication Quarterly
Published
2022-01-02
DOI
10.1080/10572252.2021.1955151
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Open Access
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Topics
rhetorical criticism discourse analysis technical communication professional writing artificial intelligence race and writing
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (20)

  1. Verhulsdonck et al. (2026)
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  5. Long et al. (2025)
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