TC Talk

Audience is arguably the most central concept in the fields of rhetoric and tech comm. What have theorists been asking about audience from centuries ago up until the modern day, when social media has exploded the reach and interactivity of audiences? What does the evolution of audience mean for technical and professional communicators? And what is the best episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000? Books discussed include Involving the Audience by Lee-Ann Breuch and Update Culture by John Gallagher.

For transcripts and sources, visit https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/

Part 1 established how social justice is relevant to technical communication; Part 2 follows up with a parade of social-justice-oriented projects from technical communication scholars. We draw specifically from the edited collections Citizenship and Advocacy in Technical Communication by Agboka and Matveeva, and Equipping Technical Communicators for Social Justice Work by Walton and Agboka. In discussing the chapters, we touch on topics including the Hawai'i false missile alert, tarot cards for tech, ranked choice voting, and Benton's high-voltage senior design project. We hope you come away inspired by the ways people are enacting social justice in their research, teaching, and practice.

For transcripts and sources, see https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk

Tech comm may have a reputation for being "objective" and "neutral," but that reputation has made it too easy for the field to distance itself from the real injustices it has perpetuated.  In their important book Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn, Walton, Moore, and Jones show how social justice is integral to technical communication and explain foundational concepts such as privilege, intersectionality, and coalitional action. For instructors and practitioners wondering "What can I do?" this book is an excellent place to start.

Plus, stick around for Fun with Fungi with Benton, our resident fun guy.

For transcripts and sources, see https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/

[Episode image is a meme of Ina Garten with the text, "If you don't have hand-foraged wild mushrooms, store-bought is fine."]

What comes to mind when you think of racist medical experimentation in the United States? For most people, it's the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis study, during which doctors allowed Black men to die from syphilis in order to study "the natural progression of the disease," even though effective treatment existed. In her book Medical Apartheid, medical journalist Harriet Washington argues that this is just one example in a long history of racism against Black people in medical research, and that we need to face this history if we are to build trust with Black communities.

We discuss key points from her book, starting in the age of chattel slavery in the United States up through Americans' collaboration with South African apartheid doctors aiming to develop racially-targeted biological warfare.

This topic has implications for health communicators who are writing and designing for marginalized audiences. More broadly, awareness of this history is necessary to make sense of current health disparities by race, most recently made evident with COVID-19.

Old prejudices are often coded into new technologies, even those technologies that claim to enhance diversity and fairness. We break down the metaphors of the New Jim Code (from Ruha Benjamin) and the Digital Poorhouse (from Virginia Eubanks) to show how modern technological "fixes" discriminate against Black people and poor people, respectively. Even the best-intentioned algorithms can have disastrous consequences (not unlike Abi's cooking). We suggest some ways that designers and communicators can better account for race and poverty in their designs. In addition, we reveal the fourth rhetorical appeal from Aristotle's lost works.

For transcripts and sources, see https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/

One troglodyte to another, Abi takes Benton through the (semi-) scandalous history of technical communication and looks to its exciting future of inclusivity. We address how the field has answered the big questions of What are we? and Why are we here? We also answer less-significant but no-less-compelling questions like, What is the first rule of foraging? How do you pronounce the word "whaling"?  Why does Benton need a new wedding ring?

For transcripts and sources, see https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/

Abi's communication expertise and Benton's science expertise collide as they discuss "Don't Look Up," a comedy/ disaster film by Netflix in which two astronomers try to get the world to care about a planet-killing comet. Abi touches on the film's relevance to communicating in a crisis, while Benton explains how the filmmakers got the science right. In addition, Benton describes what NASA is currently doing to prep for a similar scenario, and Abi outlines her dream space-themed writing course.

For transcripts and sources, see https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/

What skills do we, and students, need to deal with fake news and other low-quality information online? (And how have Benton & Abi applied these skills to their personal political disagreements?) And what is missing from the ways instructors have typically taught information literacy?  We discuss resources that can be used in the classroom, such as True or False: A CIA Analyst's Guide to Spotting Fake News by Cindy Otis. We also discuss our favorite historical examples of fake news.

For transcripts and sources, see https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/

Abi & Benton try to come to terms with the fact that information technology has not lived up to our greatest moral hopes for it. We compare our optimistic initial experiences with the internet to our pessimistic outlooks about it today. We discuss Ridolfo & Hart-Davidson's book RhetOps: Rhetoric and Information Warfare, which reveals new ways that rhetorical knowledge can be weaponized by bad actors.

Content warning: suicide. Drawing on the book Cultish by Amanda Montell, we discuss the rhetorical strategies used by cult leaders such as Jim Jones (People's Temple) and L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology), and how we see similar strategies used today in less extreme but still potentially dangerous contexts like multi-level marketing and fitness crazes. We hope you come away from the episode with a better understanding of why people join cults and how to recognize your own weak spots when it comes to cultish rhetoric.