Communication Design Quarterly Sep 2022

"It must be a system thing"

Dana Comi

Abstract

Drawing on qualitative data collected from program participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), I show how federal government assistance information infrastructure often does not remediate, and instead exacerbates, existent inequalities. I use the example of WIC's Approved Product List (APL) to show how the APL, as a genre that's part of WIC's information infrastructure, contributes to a hyper-standardized benefit redemption process that increases visibility and vulnerability for program participants. This article argues that increased attention to the genres that make up information infrastructures may help to better locate sites of inequity like the APL, and better understand how systemic/structural problems perpetuate infrastructurally.

Journal
Communication Design Quarterly
Published
2022-09-01
DOI
10.1145/3507870.3507874
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Topics
race and writing

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Littlefield (2025)
    From Tactical Technical Communication to Infrastructural Writing: The Role of U…
    Communication Design Quarterly

Cites in this index (6)

  1. Konrad (2021)
    Access Fatigue: The Rhetorical Work of Disability in Everyday Life
    College English
  2. Frith (2020)
    Technical Standards and a Theory of Writing as Infrastructure
    Written Communication
  3. Read (2019)
    The Infrastructural Function: A Relational Theory of Infrastructure for Writing…
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  4. Hart-Davidson et al. (2007)
    Coming to Content Management: Inventing Infrastructure for Organizational Knowl…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  5. DeVoss et al. (2005)
    Infrastructure and Composing: The When of New-Media Writing
    College Composition and Communication
Show all 6 →
  1. Grabill (2003)
    On divides and interfaces: Access, class, and computers
    Computers and Composition
Also cites 5 works outside this index ↓
  1. 10.1016/j.jneb.2014.02.003
     ↗
  2. Bowker G. C. (1999)
    Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences
     ↗
  3. 10.2307/j.ctt4cgpfh.4
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  4. 10.1080/00335638409383686
     ↗
  5. Todd J. E. Newman C. & Ver Ploeg M. (2010). Changing participation in food assistance programs among low-inco…
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 1 View in citation network →

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