In response to disruptions introduced to the job market by AI resume screeners, this article introduces a novel theoretical framework for the life cycle of artificial intelligence systems to help unblackbox resume screening AI systems. It then applies the AI life cycle framework to a digital case study of RChilli’s job-resume matching algorithm. The article introduces an eleven-step computational job-resume matching assignment that writing instructors can use in their classrooms to explore the pedagogical implications offered by the AI life cycle framework. The assignment helps students simulate important phases in AI production and development while highlighting biases and ethical concerns in AI screening of resumes. By exploring job-resume analytics, this study helps to teach critical AI and data literacy, make job-resume matching algorithms more explainable, and transform how professional writing can be taught in the age of automated hiring.

Employers are increasingly turning to innovative artificial intelligence recruiting technologies to evaluate candidates’ online presence and make hiring decisions. Such social media screening, or social profiling, is an emerging approach to assessing candidates’ social influence, personalities, and workplace behaviors through their publicly shared data on social networking sites. This article introduces the processes, benefits, and risks of social profiling in employment decision making. The authors provide important guidance for job applicants, technical and professional communication instructors, and hiring professionals on how to strategically respond to the opportunities and challenges of automated social profiling technologies.

This study examines the content strategies of 12 Chinese universities’ international websites. Going beyond the Hofstede–Hall model, we explore a novel mixed-method study using both content strategy analysis and user research to investigate intercultural web-based communication strategies. Our study identifies the impacts of Chinese cultural and socio-political values on web content and the mismatch between such values and the information needs of globally distributed prospective students. We conclude that universities’ web content strategies should fully understand target audiences’ needs. Designers benefit from doing stakeholder interviews and competitor analysis to provide relevant, accurate, and accessible information to users from different cultures.

This article presents a case study of the Smarter Crowdsourcing project the International Development Bank and Governance Lab cohosted to cope with the emerging Zika outbreaks in Latin America countries. Using the lenses of intercultural communication methodologies, user-centered design, and global cultural flow, I examine the exclusion of at-risk populations as marginalized end users of the project. I also examine the impacts of this oversight on the effectiveness of the technocratic solutions. I then conclude by discussing the implications this case has for international health intervention, global technical communication, and community-based research.

This article examines the emergence of technical communication as an academic field in China from the perspectives of pedagogy, program building, market needs, professionalization, and local sociopolitical contexts. Highlighting the close disciplinary connections between translation and technical communication, it identifies visionary faculty with overseas experiences as national leaders in curriculum innovation. It also explores the close industry–academia connections facilitated by semi-open WeChat groups and existing approaches to building international partnerships with technical communicators in China.

How do whistleblowers reveal critical issues unknown to the public during emerging epidemics to push for policy changes? Using a case study about a medical care worker (MCW) whistleblower in China during the SARS outbreak of 2003, this paper examines the ways whistleblowers navigate through complicated networks of power and mediascape to disseminate critical risk messages and call for changes.

Teaching intercultural rhetoric and professional communication seminars has been one of my most enjoyable experiences as a college professor. It comes with a cost though. Finding relevant and updat...

This article proposes a theoretical framework of transcultural risk communication to examine how global connectivities influence communication about H1N1 flu. A case study was conducted to investigate risk management policies at global, regional, and translocal levels to cope with health threats posed by the emerging H1N1 flu epidemic. We explored how risk management approaches by Chinese Internet users facilitated the employment of a unique risk measure of exit and entry screening for returnees to China.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Space does not permit us to express adequate thanks to those who contributed essays for this special issue, nor to the more than 30 other scholars whose proposed essays we could not include. We hope that many of them will publish the work they proposed in this or other journals. Thanks also to the TCQ editors who helped and encouraged us throughout the development of the issue: Scott Mogull, Ken Baake, Ryan Hoover, Brent Henze, and the patient and kind Amy Koerber. Our humble thanks finally to the wise and generous scholars who served as reviewers of proposals and manuscripts: Michael Bokor, Daniel Ding, Sam Dragga, Richard Hunsinger, Robert Johnson, Kyle Mattson, Mya A. Poe, Jingfang Ren, Julie Stagger, and Huatong Sun. Additional informationNotes on contributorsHuiling Ding Huiling Ding is an assistant professor of professional communication at North Carolina State University. She has published in Technical Communication Quarterly; Rhetoric, Globalization, and Professional Communication; Written Communication; China Media Research; Business Communication Quarterly; Rhetoric Review; and English for Specific Purposes. Gerald Savage Gerald Savage is a professor emeritus from Illinois State University. He has published in numerous journals and essay collections and has coedited several books, including Negotiating Cultural Encounters: Narrating Intercultural Engineering and Technical Communication, coedited with Han Yu and forthcoming from Wiley-IEEE.

Abstract In this article, I argue that to understand technical communication instruction in non-Western countries, one has to pay close attention to the impacts of local cultural, educational, political, and economic contexts on technical communication practices. I identify two localized programs that share features of technical communication in China and review their programmatic positioning at national and local levels. I also suggest ways for U.S. technical communicators to start cross-cultural collaboration with local programs.

This article examines how professionals and the public employed alternative media to participate in unofficial risk communication during the 2002 SARS outbreak in China. Whereas whistle-blowers used alternative media such as independent overseas Chinese Web sites and contesting Western media, anonymous professionals and the larger communities relied more on guerrilla media such as text messages and word of mouth to disseminate risk messages during official silence and denial.

This study reports about a yearlong study of the initiation of novice grant writers to the activity system of National Institutes of Health grant applications. It investigates the use of cognitive apprenticeship within writing classrooms and that of social apprenticeship in laboratories, programs, departments, and universities, which introduced students to the genre system of National Institutes of Health grant proposals and helped them in moving from peripheral participation to more central participation. While cognitive apprenticeship employs devices such as modeling, scaffolding, coaching, and collaboration to enhance learning in formal settings, social apprenticeship requires socialization, interaction, and collaboration with experts, colleagues, and peers in informal settings to acquire disciplinary knowledge and experiences. The study suggests that writing instructors should acknowledge and incorporate resources in other activity systems in which students participate, i.e., their laboratories and home departments, and teach genre systems rather than specific genres to better facilitate students' enculturation to activity systems of disciplinary discourse communities.

Abstract This paper employs mixed methods, namely, corpus linguistic and rhetorical analysis methods, to examine Confucius's theory on language, persuasion, and virtue as reflected in the Analects. The triangulation of methods allows in-depth analysis of Confucius's use of key concepts surrounding the language—virtue relationship and the way these concepts operate in different levels of persuasion. The study shows Confucius's theory as a virtue-centered rhetoric. For him, virtuous conduct, rather than artful words, should be employed as the primary persuasive tool.