In Drew Holladay (2017) article, “Classified Conversations: Psychiatry and Tactical Technical Communication in Online Spaces” he examined the “practices of participants in online mental health discussion forums conversations as they interpret technical documents” (p. 8). Holladay investigated the tactical technical communication used in online mental health forums, the current medical discourse used to diagnose and document mental health, the ethical and humanistic elements at stake, one discussion board focused on PTSD and the other two boards focused on Autism spectrum conditions, the privacy and rights in online spaces, the tactical technical communication used to create parallel social roles, the reliance on secondary sources for information, the reclamation of diagnosed terms to dictate identity, the doubt in medical professionals and skepticism about prescribed medications, and including personal experiences from the patient into medical documents to create a more diversified understanding. Holladay’s purpose was to propose a direct reform of diagnostic language because “such changes to technical documents would afford a place for the disparate, granular accounts of people receiving mental health care in the official record and, perhaps, facilitate the legitimation of their perspectives in local and institutional contexts” (p. 22). Holladay’s intended audience was medical professionals, individuals diagnosed with a mental disorder, and instructors of technical communication seeking inclusive knowledge about how mental disorders should be understood and how specialized knowledge should be made more accessible for everyone and not used as an exclusionary tool. Holladay approached his research by obtaining sufficient Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, giving his participants a voice without explicitly criticizing any one culprit, and skillfully avoiding a bias by simply showing the data and offering a possible solution to the obvious miscommunication.
Tag: Identity
Dragga, S. & Voss, D. (2003). Hiding humanity: verbal and visual ethics in accident reports. Technical Communication, 50 (1), (pp. 61-82).
In Sam Dragga and Dan Voss’s (2003) article “Hiding Humanity: Verbal and Visual Ethics in Accident Reports,” they identified “how the reporting of human injuries and fatalities in accident reports often strips victims of their humanity and hides the tragic human consequences of technological failures from individuals trying to devise appropriate public policy, establish effective safety regulations, and modify or abolish dangerous industrial processes—government officials, company executives, labor representatives, community activists, and ordinary citizens” (p. 61). Dragga and Voss reviewed a series of accident reports and how they portrayed human beings in both the words used and the illustrations, the focus on objects in the accident, the legal and ethical factors governing the publication of people’s photos, the rights to privacy or lack thereof, and the proposition of techniques to humanize reports. Dragga and Voss’s purpose was to use technical communicators’ skills to “communicate clearly the human dimension of accidents, making the loss of lives and the anguish of survivors impossible to ignore” by being sensitive, creative, and ethical (p. 79). Dragga and Voss’s intended audience was technical communicators writing and illustrating accident reports. Dragga and Voss made a solid case for their argument by providing numerous examples of the omission of the victims in accident reports and covering their bases by pointing out the legal issues that accident reporters face when publicizing sensitive information about victims.
ENG 591 Tech. Comm. 