Technical Communication, like many areas of the humanities, suffers from bad PR. Many see tech comm as soulless, robotic, bland writing that deserves to be automated and discarded from human engagement.
My research counters this reductive understanding, focusing on the emotional, human stories of technical communication. From the historical joy behind the plain language movement to the dark iteration of COVID mortality graphics, my research projects draw out counter-narratives of technical communication.
Every year hundreds of thousands of people watch videos about writing on YouTube. Though these views are comparatively small for social media, they are comparatively large for academia. What are these videos about? Who makes them? Where do they connect with and diverge from academic practice? I'm currently working on two projects to chop off part of the answer to these questions: one about technical communication and one about writing pedagogy more broadly.
Communicating the magnitude of large numbers to the public is notoriously challenging. It is hard for the average person to imagine the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars other than to lump it all into one category of "unfathomably large."
In one of my latest research projects, I investigate how designers attempted to display the total deaths during the COVID19 pandemic. I'm interested in the way these graphics approach readers through both logic and emotion with a varying array of visual designs.
