This study investigates collaborative interdisciplinary research writing at a large public Western U.S. university through surveys, interviews, focus groups, and textual analyses. While 75% of faculty at this institution supported campuswide interdisciplinary initiatives, only 31% believed current institutional structures enhanced such work—a 44-percentage-point gap that our analysis suggests stemmed from five key obstacles to successful interdisciplinary writing: structural barriers, career concerns (particularly for pre-tenure faculty), disciplinary cultural differences, terminological conflicts, and divergent goals between faculty and administrators. Faculty in this study focused on immediate practical challenges and professional development, while administrators prioritize institutional transformation and structural change. The study concludes with recommendations relevant for universities with comparable resources and commitment to Writing Studies informed approaches, including revised tenure guidelines that explicitly value interdisciplinary contributions, dedicated funding mechanisms, facilitated networking opportunities, and targeted writing support programs. By addressing faculty’s practical needs and administrators’ strategic vision, institutions can create environments where collaborative boundary-crossing becomes not just possible but sustainable and rewarding.

People working at the intersection of composition and user experience often serve as the connective material that binds content to use. In merging fundamental skills of both in multimodal UX, practitioners position themselves as essential mediators connecting technical information, storytelling, and technologies that carry impactful messages across disciplines, audiences, and contexts. Building on previous work that advocates for the power of narrative in AR/VR storytelling, we demonstrate how combining the composing strategy of narrative layering with user testing can guide the creation of inclusive, community-centered VR experiences. To illustrate the power of this capacity, we ground our analysis in the design of a Virtual Reality experience about advanced water purification, outlining a method for how narrative layering and UX testing can be woven together to address a variety of perspectives through interdisciplinary, layered storytelling. In doing so, we argue that multimodal UX is most powerful when it blends the needs of a range of audiences to build stories that communicate complex information in an inclusive and engaging way.

Asking for money is one of the core communicative functions of a crowdfunding campaign. This article uses a novel corpus analysis scoring technique to investigate appeals language in a corpus of 312,529 Kickstarter campaigns. Our results show distinctive use patterns involving the verbs need , raise , please , make , and hope . Conceptual patterns, such as inviting the reader to participate in the creation of a product, underlie specific formulations of successful and unsuccessful word patterns and sentences. We conclude with theoretical and practical outcomes to aid technical communicators in more effectively writing crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter.

The Fernweh Interdisciplinary Research Visualizer is a software tool employing the SCOPUS cross-disciplinary dataset to display the scope of research on interdisciplinary topics across subject areas in a bubble graph format. Researchers can conduct meta-research, discover relevant research across subject areas, and introduce students to the scope of interdisciplinary concepts with this tool. This experience report outlines the process of developing the tool, then demonstrates the results of the tool by visualizing a map of the interdisciplinary research area "social media" across 27 subject areas, 329 classifications, and 42,473 journals.

The Fernweh Interdisciplinary Research Visualizer is a software tool employing the SCOPUS cross-disciplinary dataset to display the scope of research on interdisciplinary topics across subject areas in a bubble graph format. Researchers can conduct meta-research, discover relevant research across subject areas, and introduce students to the scope of interdisciplinary concepts with this tool. This experience report outlines the process of developing the tool, then demonstrates the results of the tool by visualizing a map of the interdisciplinary research area "social media" across 27 subject areas, 329 classifications, and 42,473 journals.

This article investigates multimodal elements—images, links, gifs, videos, and galleries—of crowdfunding campaigns on the platform Kickstarter to develop an understanding of characteristics of successful campaigns. The authors scraped 327,586 campaign pages, analyzing the multimodal elements of successful and unsuccessful campaigns. They found that successful campaigns featured more images, links, and gifs and more frequently included a project video than did unsuccessful campaigns. Images, links, and the presence of a project video had a positive impact on success while gifs and project galleries did not. These findings give business communicators practical guidance, develop theoretical aspects of Kickstarter research, and validate previous findings with a larger data set.

The rapid, widespread implementation of artificial intelligence technologies in workplaces has implications for business communication. In this article, the authors describe current capabilities, challenges, and concepts related to the adoption and use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in business communication. Understanding the abilities and inabilities of AI technologies is critical to using these technologies ethically. The authors offer a proposed research agenda for researchers in business communication concerning topics of implementation, lexicography and grammar, collaboration, design, trust, bias, managerial concerns, tool assessment, and demographics. The authors conclude with some ideas regarding how to teach about AI in the business communication classroom.

Background: People born between 1995 and 2012, referred to as Generation Z, grew up alongside significant technological advancements in communication. This cohort's oldest members are now entering the workforce. Literature review: Although the merits of generational research have been questioned, Generation Z's personal communication preferences and habits demonstrate unprecedented technological experiences and expectations in the workplace. Research questions: 1. What are Generation Z's current habits in using smart technology, social media, and voice communication for personal communication? 2. How does the current workplace communication environment appear through the lens of Generation Z? 3. Do the personal communication habits of Generation Z conflict with current workplaces? Methodology: The study reports on a 207-participant exploratory survey and 6 interviews with Generation Z members in January-March 2020. The survey included multiple choice and open-ended questions regarding respondents' personal and workplace communication habits and expectations. The interviews allowed further investigation of survey responses. Results: Working Generation Z respondents hold unexpected attitudes and behaviors, including awareness of the negatives of technology use, differences in personal preferences and professional behaviors, self-regulation of technology use, and concern for boundaries between personal and work life. Conclusion: Generation Z's ability to adapt to current workplace norms may slow changes in workplace communication. Their awareness of disruptive communication habits could make positive changes to workplace communication in the future. Employers should resist negative generational stereotypes and develop new communication policies to reflect current and future-looking technology use. This study was completed prior to COVID-19 and does not include pandemic-related workplace technology changes.

Background: Technical communication, business communication, and professional communication are potentially overlapping disciplines with open disciplinary questions. A comparative topical analysis of research topics can identify similarities and differences between them, addressing intellectual and physical concerns for each. Literature review: Recent topical analyses have been done for technical communication. Historical topical analyses have been done for business communication. Few professional communication topical analyses exist. Some studies were done 15 or more years ago, and one related comparative study exists. Research questions: 1. What research topics are unique to each of the disciplines of technical communication, business communication, and professional communication in a corpus of research abstracts spanning 1963-2017? 2. What topics are shared among the disciplines of technical communication, business communication, and professional communication in a corpus of research abstracts spanning 1963-2017? Research methodology: I used collocation analysis on the target phrases technical communication, business communication, and professional communication from a 4822-abstract corpus. I compared words collocated with target phrases to find words unique to a single term, those shared with two terms, or those shared with all three terms. Results/discussion: Findings identified science communication as a technical communication topic; other findings corroborated previous research. Business communication findings corroborated previous research and identified an emphasis on global communication. Findings show professional communication as a rhetorically flexible term that creates a space for emerging concepts and expands disciplinary boundaries. The three shared communication, pedagogy, international, and disciplinary concerns. Conclusions: The disciplines feature some overlap but maintain distinct research foci. Professional communication is a distinctive discipline that assists technical communication and business communication by incubation of emerging concepts.

The arts have not received much attention from business and professional communication (BPC) scholars who are interested in workplace communication. This article begins to fill that gap by explaining a course focused on the BPC that artists produce in their careers. Students learned BPC genres by addressing arts situations: They crafted email pitches to promoters, took promotional photography, created crowdfunding proposals, and more. I argue that teaching artist communication can give a new context to existing BPC assignments, encourage interdisciplinary initiatives, and allow for the incorporation of natively digital communication genres into existing courses.

Indie rock musicians are a group of extra-institutional individuals who play an often-vibrant role in urban economic development. The organizational structure that guides their professional activities has yet to be investigated. Interviews with 18 indie rock musicians provided a way to investigate organizational structure. They reported a build structure featuring the principles of audience development, slow growth, and unevenness. The constraints of the musician’s professional situation require long-term promotion of aesthetic products to a slowly growing audience in a saturated market that produces unevenness through power imbalances. This slow-growing structure contrasts with organizational structures that provide immediate benefits.

This book aims to develop a new conception of creative industries, a term largely associated with the aggregated economic activity of artists. Hartley, Wen, and Li expand the scope of creative industries by defining creativity as newness of any variety and arguing that newness emerges from groups communicating with each other. This wide definition of creative industries invites scholars of entrepreneurship communication and technical communication to join the multidisciplinary conversation on the creative industries. The authors’ very distributed understanding of creativity raises interesting questions, allows for the study of large-scale phenomena, and leaves open questions of precarity and devalued expertise.