1st Edition
Embodied Environmental Risk in Technical Communication Problems and Solutions Toward Social Sustainability
This collection calls for improved technical communication for the public through an embodied, situated understanding of environmental risk that promotes social justice.
In addition to providing a series of chapters about recent issues on risk communication, this volume offers a diverse look at methodological practices for students, researchers, and practitioners looking to address embodied aspects of crisis and risk that incorporate UX, storytelling, and dynamic text. It includes chapters that bring embodiment to the forefront of risk communication, highlighting the cycle of content creation, dissemination, public response and decision making, continuing iterations of educational efforts, and recovery, toward increasing adaptive capacity as a whole. In addition, this work directs necessary attention to overcoming perceptual difficulties, memory lapses, definitional differences, access issues, and pedagogical problems in the communication of risks to diverse publics.
This collection is essential reading for scholars and can be used as a supplemental text or casebook for courses in technical communication, environmental communication, risk and crisis communication, science communication, and public health.
Dedication
Foreword: Huiling Ding
Chapter 1: Introduction, Mary Le Rouge and Samuel Stinson
PART I: Representations of the Human Body
Chapter 2: Toward an Audience-Centered Approach: Rhetorical Analysis of University Crisis Communication Emails
Courtney Cox & Erika Sparby
Chapter 3: Embodied Risk Communication in the COVID-19 Pandemic Environment
Bolanle Olaniran & Joseph Williams
Chapter 4: Judging the Unprecedented: Common Sense and Risk During COVID-19
Scott Weedon
Chapter 5: College Freshmen Challenging Embodied Environmental Risks
Uma Krishnan
PART II: Representations of the Earth’s Body
Chapter 6: The Ohio River: Re-imagining Water Risk Through Embodied Deliberation
Barbara George & Heather Manzo
Chapter 7: Private Groundwater Contamination and Integrated Risk Communication
Simon Mooney, Sarah Lavallee, Jean O’Dwyer, Anna Majury, & Paul Hynds
Chapter 8: Public Responses to a Proposed Wind Farm and their Application to Technical Communication Methods
Mary Le Rouge
Chapter 9: Evaluating Ecological Perceptions and Approaches in the Fourth National Climate Assessment Report
Diane Martinez
PART III: Representations of Human and Earth Together
Chapter 10: Reconciling Gestures: Overcoming Obstacles to Transcultural Risk Communication in South African Coal Mines
Beverly A. Sauer
Chapter 11: Reanimating Risks: Forest Giants and Their Role in Technical Communication
Cooper Day & Christopher Scheidler
Chapter 12: Technical Writing as Embodiment: iFixit
Elizabeth Baddour
Chapter 13: Changing Places: Understanding Climate Change Risk Communication and Comprehension through Socially Constructed Features of Place
Zachary Garrett
Chapter 14: An Antiracist Rhetoric of Embodied Risk
Samuel Stinson
Biography
Samuel Stinson is assistant professor of English with Minot State University where he also serves as the director of the Northern Plains Writing Project and coordinator of the English concentration in the M.Ed. program. He also serves as a list manager for the WritingStudies-L listserv and currently co-coordinates the Writing about Writing special interest group with the Conference on College Composition and Communication. His research interests include professional writing, multimodality, game studies, and pedagogy. His current research focuses on writing transfer and online platforms.
Mary Le Rouge is director of writing at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She is an active member of the Conference on College Composition & Communication and its Environmental Special Interest Group, among other organizations. Her research lies at the intersection of the humanities and the sciences, looking for ways to improve communication between experts, policymakers, and the public.
