Action Research and Wicked Environmental Problems: Exploring Appropriate Roles for Researchers in Professional Communication    

The authors report on a 3-year action-research project designed to facilitate public involvement in the planned dredging of a canal and subsequent disposal of the dredged sediments. Their study reveals ways that community members struggle to define the problem and work together as they gather, share, and understand data relevant to that problem. The authors argue that the primary goal of action research related to environmental risk should be to identify and support the strategies used by community members rather than to educate the public. The authors maintain that this approach must be supported by a thorough investigation of basic rhetorical issues (audience, genre, stases, invention), and they illustrate how they used this approach in their study.

Blythe, Stuart, Jeffrey T. Grabill and Kirk Riley. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Risk Communication>Community Building>Environmental

Building a Community of Professional Communicators by Mapping Needs and Assets    

For an institution with a regional focus, part of program building involves identifying resources in the region the program serves. This effort can be complicated in regions that generally lack the kind of high-tech industry that draws technical communicators. One cannot easily find a ready-madecommunity of professional communicators in such places, leaving some to wonder whether a professional writing program would be able to thrive. Nevertheless, communicators are ubiquitous, even if most of them don’t identify themselves as such.

Blythe, Stuart. CPTSC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Business Communication>Community Building

Institutional Critique: A Rhetorical Methodology for Change  

We offer institutional critique as an activist methodology for changing institutions. Since institutions are rhetorical entities, rhetoric can be deployed to change them. In its effort to counter oppressive institutional structures, the field of rhetoric and com-position has focused its attention chiefly on the composition classroom, on the de-partment of English, and on disciplinary forms of critique. Our focus shifts the scene of action and argument to professional writing and to public discourse, using spatial methods adapted from postmodern geography and critical theory.

Porter, James E., Patricia Sullivan, Stuart Blythe, Jeffrey T. Grabill and Libby Miles. CCC (2000). Articles>Rhetoric>Theory

New Media Technology II

Two collaborative presentations about the status and factors that influence technology adoption within research in technical communication programs.

Amidon, Stevens R., Stuart Blythe, Libby Allison, Miriam Williams and Meloni McMichael. CPTSC (2005). Presentations>Multimedia>Technology

The Value of Seeking Interdisciplinary Models for Smaller Professional Writing Programs  

Technical communication strains disciplinary boundaries, which can make program development difficult. In a time when we are experiencing what Richard Lanham calls 'a complete renegotiation of the alphabet/icon ratio upon which print-based thought is built,' no traditional departmental home (e.g., English) seems appropriate. One look at the classified section of the Society for Technical Communication Web site suggests that a technical communication student should graduate with competence in information technology and visual rhetoric (among other possibilities) as well as writing. For many of us, however, those competencies fall outside the disciplinary boundaries as defined at our local institutions and in fact we may face penalties for developing such competencies. As a member of a department of English and linguistics, for example, my department has no way to reward me for learning CGI scripting or FrameMaker.

Blythe, Stuart. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education

Wrestling With Proteus: Tales of Communication Managers in a Changing Economy    

Because communication specialists often lack the power and prestige of other knowledge workers, such as engineers and product designers, managers who direct the work of communication specialists face unique challenges. This study, based on interviews with 11 communication managers, found that their agency and identity were determined both by the structure of the organizations in which they worked and by their use of genres, technologies, and regulatory techniques. With their work undergoing transition because of globalization, outsourcing, and rapid technological change, the stories that these managers tell demonstrate the importance of studying management as it specifically applies to communication specialists.

Amidon, Stevens R. and Blythe, Stuart. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Management>Communication