Communication Design Quarterly Mar 2017 Open Access

Forum design and the changing landscape of crowd-sourced help information

Jordan Frith University of North Texas

Abstract

The help documentation landscape has changed with the growth of various forms of social media. People now post how-to videos to YouTube, they write crowdsourced documentation for open-source software, and they participate in and draw from a wide range of help forums. These forums are a form of crowdsourced help information in which experts and amateurs come together to address questions and explain materials. While these online forums can be thought of as a threat to the roles of technical communicators, they also present opportunities for professionals to adapt their skills to new roles as "community managers" of professionally sponsored forums. This article examines that point by showing how communication design is important for developing online help forum communities. Through the analysis of ethnographic and interview data, the article covers different areas of design important for understanding help forums as networked forms of technical communication.

Journal
Communication Design Quarterly
Published
2017-03-22
DOI
10.1145/3068698.3068700
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Topics
technical communication qualitative research social media
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Cited by in this index (4)

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    Communication Design Quarterly
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    Technical Communication is a Social Medium
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  4. Cagle et al. (2019)
    Shades of denialism: discovering possibilities for a more nuanced deliberation …
    Communication Design Quarterly

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