Background: Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce involves consumers re-selling products to other consumers using online platforms. Research identifies trust as a major factor in this exchange. It concludes that seller-generated product descriptions can mitigate mistrust. Further, technical and professional communication research can reveal what content sellers tend to provide and can reveal how platform design may encourage that content. Literature review: C2C e-commerce and TPC researchers agree that mistrust can be mitigated by detailed content, and they call for platform designers to help improve platform and seller reputations. Research questions: 1. What content do sellers provide about their technical products? 2. How do the platforms' web form designs and the associated documentation about listing a product for sale encourage certain content types? Research methodology: Four platforms were chosen using specific criteria. Product descriptions were collected once per week for six weeks, generating 1900 product descriptions. These descriptions were unitized and given reliable content categories, a methodology called quantitative content analysis. Further, the documentation and processes for posting items were explored to determine how they may encourage content types. Results/discussion: Sellers mostly provide product information and sales procedures, and they rarely give benefits and goodwill to the buyer. The platform design seems to encourage this content because of the content-entry process, the content-entry options, and the required and unrequired content entry. Conclusions: This study invites technical and professional communicators to provide more guidelines for users about the kinds of content they may include, and designers to explore the content entry process using usability and user-experience research.

This study describes how reflections allowed students to express their audience awareness as they wrote a multiaudience messages packet. We present an analysis of 27 reflections in which students described their experience when responding to the various audiences. Students’ reflective depth varied, though deeper reflections demonstrate sophistication in considering audience constraints and values. Students reported difficulty with negative and persuasive messages and indicated concern about their credibility. Reflections can help instructors understand how students are considering audiences for business documents, which instructors can use to improve their instruction and assess how well students consider business audiences.

Introduction: Technical and professional communication (TPC) instructors value audience awareness, using peer- and client-based projects to facilitate it. We explore how students' audience awareness is facilitated by the case method, which presents students with a professional communication task within a workplace scenario. Situating the case: Case-method research suggests including a detailed audience and situation, multiple genres, and multimedia. Few studies have explored how case materials facilitate students' audience awareness. About the case: A 12-week case that was consistent with case-method research asked students to respond to an engineering firm's internal problem with a proposal and report. How the case was studied: Students from two sections of a genre-based course completed reflections about their audience awareness after the proposal and report. We qualitatively analyzed 51 reflections. Results/discussion: Students stated they could understand the facts about their primary audience but couldn't identify secondary and tertiary audiences. Students stated they could identify audience needs, but they disagreed about the amount of detail to understand those needs. Also, students stated they could respond to the audience using appropriate evidence and writing style. Conclusions: When using the case method, instructors should know that students may need varying levels of detail to interpret their audience's needs. Also, including data and conflicting needs gives students opportunities to make strategic decisions about content.

Using a cultural-historical genre analysis of the Gantt chart, the author describes how, when a project’s progress and scope are being considered, this popular project management visualization evokes managerial values of certainty and simplicity. These values, instantiated in early 20th-century scientific management philosophy, are made visually manifest in Henry L. Gantt’s popular chart. These charts require technical and professional communicators to gauge the rhetorical implications of using them when providing their expertise in communicating project management.

Background: This study examined discourse during the problem resolution process in face-to-face technical-support interactions between technical-support providers and users at a helpdesk. Specifically, this study responds to the limited discourse-based research in technical-support interactions, despite the agreement that exploring communication within these interactions can help to improve them. Literature review: Research in technical communication has only begun to systematically explore the microlevel (smaller, moment-to-moment) communication in these interactions, though it has provided a well-established understanding of their macrolevel (genre) structure. Further, research has not completely explored how the two participants in the interaction work discursively to resolve technical problems and what strategies appear to promote user satisfaction. Research questions: 1. What microlevel discourse do technical-support providers employ to resolve technical problems? 2. What microlevel discourse do users employ when collaborating with technical-support providers to resolve technical problems? 3. What microlevel discourse from both technical-support providers and users appears in satisfactory interactions? 4. What exchange patterns between the two participants appear in satisfactory interactions? Methodology: Using speech-act discourse analysis, this study examined 17 helpdesk interactions that resolved problems. These interactions occurred at a large, Midwestern US university helpdesk at which 11 instructors sought help with instructional technologies. Using a post-session survey completed by the users, I compared interactions with above- and below-average levels of user satisfaction to determine which microlevel discourse promoted user satisfaction with the help experience. Results: Technical-support providers employed signals announcing their thoughts and actions, gave explanations of the technology, and communicated confirmations or denials to user questions. Users employed inquiries about the technology, gave background information, and communicated confirmations or denials to technical-support provider questions. Statistically significant results about both speakers’ discourse indicate that typical instructional strategies (such as explanations) do not necessarily characterize more satisfactory interactions. Instead, alternate forms of instruction (minimal responses or giving background information from personal experience) contribute toward satisfactory outcomes. Also, users’ facility in asking follow-up questions or in giving further background information even during the problem-resolution stage appears to promote satisfaction. Further, a closer examination of the exchanges reveals how both participants interact in these ways. Conclusions: This study provides further insight into the typical instructional strategies identified by other researchers. Specifically, although explanations or directions do characterize problem resolution, these discourse strategies do not necessarily characterize distinctly satisfactory problem resolution. As one of the only studies of the functional discourse within technical-support interactions, this study provides researchers and practitioners further insight into how these important interactions work when technical-support providers resolve problems.