Journal of Business and Technical Communication Jul 2012

Reimagining NASA: A Cultural and Visual Analysis of the U.S. Space Program

Miriam F. Williams Texas State University

Abstract

In 2010, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) commemorated its 50th anniversary by launching an anniversary Web site, which includes links to a photographic timeline, videos, and documents that the agency views as important in telling its history. This article uses concepts from narrative theory and visual rhetoric to analyze the images used in the NASA History Timeline, paying special attention to why certain images were selected as historical markers over other photographs that are more widely published and televised. Specifically, the author uses arguments from Sontag’s On Photography and Barbatsis’s “Narrative Theory” to explain how NASA’s photographic narrative provides a story with a plot that spans from triumphs and tragedies in space exploration to pioneering efforts in racial, ethnic, and gender diversity.

Journal
Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Published
2012-07-01
DOI
10.1177/1050651912439698
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Open Access
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Topics
rhetorical criticism multimodality race and writing gender and writing
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (8)

  1. Edwards et al. (2022)
    Black Women Imagining and Realizing Liberated Futures
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  2. Olman (2022)
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  3. Winkle (2022)
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  1. Weber (2018)
    Seeing like a Rover: How Robots, Teams, and Images Craft Knowledge of Mars
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  2. Small (2017)
    (Re)Kindle: On the Value of Storytelling to Technical Communication
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  3. Weber (2016)
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CrossRef global citation count: 9 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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