In this episode of Room 42 we discuss discursive affordances, network-building, and cultivating fan bases! Social media technologies are often considered a marketing tool in the Technical Communications community. 

Dr. Huatong Sun ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of Digital Media and Global User Experience Design at University of Washington Tacoma. She studies how to design and innovate for usable, meaningful, and empowering technology to bridge differences in a globalized world. Book author of “Cross-Cultural Technology Design” (2012) and “Global Social Media Design” (2020) from Oxford University Press, she writes for pubic media including Fast Company and The Conversation, speaks at SXSW, STC, UXPA, CHI, and ATTW, and offers workshops at local SIGs and international conferences. 

Thinking about some tools as being only for marketing limits our ability to take into consideration the transformative power to restructure our networks and build new platforms globally that are inclusive. 

Huatong Sun discusses some of her transnational fieldwork findings elaborated in her recent book “Global Social Media Design.” We review the iterations of her course “social media”, that she has been giving for the past eight years and  discuss the strategies of splicing networks and cultivating fan bases with social media technologies that are globally robust, i.e., designing for inclusivity by engaging cultural differences and nourishing differences into the design resources.

For transcript, links, and show notes: https://tccamp.org/episodes/what-social-media-means-for-technical-communicators