E-democracy and values in information systems design

In this paper I demonstrate the utility of a Values in Design (VID) perspective for the assessment, the design and development of e-democracy tools. In the first part, I give some background information on Values in Design and Value-Sensitive Design and their relevance in the context of e-democracy. In part 2, I analyze three different e-democracy tools from a VID-perspective. The paper ends with some conclusions concerning the merits of VID for e-democracy as well as some considerations concerning the dual tasks of philosophers in assessing and promoting value-sensitive technology design

Global Technical Communication and Content Management: A Study of Multilingual Quality

The field of technical communication (TC) is facing a dilemma. Content management (CM) strategies and technologies that completely reshape writing and translation practices are adopted in an increasing number of TC work groups. One driving factor in CM adoption is the promise of improving quality of multilingual technical texts, all the while reducing time/cost of technical translation and localization. Yet, CM relies on automation and privileges consistency¯an approach that is problematic in global TC with its focus on adapting texts based on the characteristics of end-users. To better understand the interdisciplinary dilemma of multilingual quality in CM, during my dissertation project I conducted a twelve-month long qualitative case study of multilingual quality at a leading manufacturer of medical equipment who had adopted CM strategies and technologies to create technical texts in several languages three years before my study began. In my study, I drew upon an interdisciplinary theoretical base (genre ecology framework, activity theory, actor-network theory, and Skopos theory) to examine the construction of multilingual quality understandings and approaches by global TC stakeholders who are employees and contractors of the company and the role of CM in their practices. Examination of the extensive data I collected through observations, interviews, questionnaires, document collection/content analysis, and software exploration uncovered the staggering disconnects in understandings of and approaches to multilingual quality. These disconnects resulted from the lack communication between stakeholders and were promoted by the different relations to CM technology and the mediating work of the new genre, chunks of content. Inhibited knowledge sharing, risk of expertise invisibility and loss, and constrained new ideas about improving multilingual quality were some of the rhetorical, social, and political implications of these disconnects. As a result of my analysis, I sketched strategies for achieving contextualized multiple-stakeholder approaches to multilingual quality and outlined leadership possibilities for technical communicators in global information development. This analysis provides TC practitioners with strategies for improving multilingual quality in CM contexts; TC educators with ideas for expanding teaching approaches by combining digital and cross-cultural literacies; and TC researchers with opportunities for rhetorical action through critiquing, theorizing, and innovating CM

The Risks of Outsourcing Security: Foreign Security Forces in United States National Security Policy

This study combines insights from international relations, diplomatic history, and civil-military relations to improve our understanding of the tenuous arrangement between the United States and its foreign military proxies. For over a century, the U.S. has armed and trained these proxies to assume responsibilities that its own military might otherwise have to bear. But throughout that time, critics have doubted whether the U.S. could or should delegate sensitive security responsibilities to dubious foreign soldiers. Such doubt highlights an international analog to the principal-agent problem normally associated with domestic civil-military relations. I examine why this international principal-agent problem arose, how it has evolved over the past century, and how this evolution has shifted the U.S.\u27s approach to bringing its foreign agents in line with its strategic objectives. From extensive archival research, I find that variation in this approach stems from changes in how the U.S., as the principal, has understood and characterized its security agents. To make sense of this finding, I advance constructivist principal-agent theory. This theory 1) reveals how the principal\u27s evolving perception of its agent defines different bases of the principal-agent problem and 2) shows how each of these bases specifies particular policies--from among all those available--for mitigating that problem

Taking Culture and Philosophy into Consideration: A Rhetorical Analysis of Marketing Strategies in China

Globalization has posed colossal challenges to professional communications, and the most significant one is to overcome the cultural barriers. Rather than looking into cultural phenomena that are superficial, this research takes a philosophical approach to investigate the beliefs and values which are the core of social systems. The overarching purpose of this research is to establish cultural competence for entering the Chinese market by a discussion of different aesthetic, emotional, and philosophical points of view. With detailed analysis and evaluation, this research provides some guidelines to appropriate future marketing strategies in China. This research contributes to the understanding of the entwinement between philosophical values and marketing strategies and it provides further insight into future research for improving communicative competence across cultures

UNBLACKBOXING TECHNOLOGY THROUGH THE RHETORIC OF TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION: BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGY AND GHANA\u27S 2012 ELECTION

In this project, I seek to “unblackbox” technology; by which I mean, I seek to, in the words of Latour, “open up” or “debug” the biometric technology used by Ghana for its 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. Through the process of “unblackboxing,” I demonstrate the value of technical communicators to technology studies by analyzing technical documents that accompanied the biometric verification device which was adopted and used by Ghana to conduct its 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. I argue in this dissertation that technical documentation does not merely accommodate users to technologies, but also it provides avenues to articulate broader issues like localization, ideology, subjectivity, and the social justice implications of the various technologies we adopt and use. We are also positioned to understand how a society reacts to issues that are historically, politically, culturally rooted in their context. I maintain that documentation writing is one of the defining activities of technical communication. Thus, it is important to continue to build upon and expand the analyses of these types of documents to critically assess the role they can play in discussions about technology especially in international contexts. By performing a rhetorical-cultural analysis of various technical documents that accompanied the biometric device used in Ghana, I hope to aid technical communicators to reconsider received knowledge about the purposes and uses of technical documentation, such as instructional manuals. More importantly, by embarking on this project, I am able to: interrogate the “international” in international technical communication; discuss documentation design in international context; expand research on the importance of technical documentation to technology studies in a non-Western context (Ghana); demonstrate how rhetorical and cultural theories can be combined to study technology in international contexts

Globalizing the Local in the SilkAir MI 185 Crash Investigation

While effective definitions of culture and broader theories of intercultural complexity can help frame the work of professional communicators on worksites and projects of international importance, these definitions and theories may not fully prepare practitioners for complex motives at play in the development of some transnationally momentous documents. Moreover, even though professional communicators may benefit from working definitions of national and communal cultures, such knowledge and articulations are not enough when transnationally disparate jurisdictions intersect decision-making. These administrative assemblages (see A. Ong, 2005, 2006, 2008) function as hierarchies that complicate intercultural work in ways professional communicators have not fully considered. Intentional to the scope of this paper, I associate these jurisdictions, or administrative assemblages, with larger sovereignties, nation states that in their breadth map over and subsume the diverse cultural milieus much recent professional communication scholarship has examined without considering the role these assemblages play in distributing local power globally in outcomes that are not always just for human populations. (For such scholarship see, for example, Bokor, 2011; Dura, Singhal, & Elias, 2013; Fang & Rajkumar, 2013; Hunsinger, 2006; Price, Walton, & Petersen, 2014; Raju, 2012; Savage & Mattson, 2011; Savage & Matveeva, 2011; Sun, 2006; Towner, 2013; Voss & Flammia, 2007; Warren, 2006; Yu, 2010.

Globalizing Procedsural Justice. Some general remarks

[Resumen] Entre los muchos problemas que plantea la globalización, es particularmente relevante el de la justicia civil, dado que la circulación global de las relaciones jurídicas hace necesario pensar en una tutela supranacional del derecho. Se trata de establecer qué derechos van a ser efectivamente tutelados, en favor de qué sujetos y con qué método. El arbitraje internacional sirve sólo para los ricos, mientras que la mediación encuentra muchos límites y no es una solución válida en todos los casos. Excluida la hipótesis de un único código procesal mundial, es necesario pensar en una adecuada armonización de la disciplina procesal naciona

A systems approach for unpacking the mechanisms of a global society

The world-system theory (WST) provides an excellent platform to discuss the dissemination of wealth between nations and the hierarchical value of being a leading nation in the progression of globalization. The primary focus of this paper is to unpack the tenets of globalization and to investigate how each area proposed serves as a system of interrelated parts that function as a whole. When we think about the collapse of the American economy back in 2008, we must also consider the domino effect that crippled core nations such as the EU countries and Japan. We are speaking about a world economy not just a single framework. Therefore, it is important that we view globalization as a system of interlocking components, recognizing that a change in one part results in changes elsewhere in the system. The outcome is that globalization has opened America's borders to skilled foreign workers. Graduates must prepare themselves well to compete in this new global marketplace. More research is needed using the WST. A better understand on how nations are dealing with eroding super powers and embracing a new paradigm of hegemony with repeating patterns of interdependence between nations

Scholarship in international technical communication, 1950-1989: a historical study

This thesis is a study of the published scholarship in international technical communication from 1950 to 1989. It provides insight into the four decades\u27 worth of scholarship as well as a resource for the development of present and future scholarship in international technical communication. It attempts to answer the following research questions: What did scholars of international technical communication study in each decade? What are the similarities and differences among the four decades in terms of scholarship in international technical communication? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the relevant scholarship in the four decades? What can we learn from the scholarship in these four decades? To answer these questions, I reviewed articles collected from the main journals and conference proceedings in technical communication published in the United States. I summarized and coded these articles according to their major subjects. Based on my review of this literature, I drew conclusions about the character and value of the published scholarship in international technical communication from 1950 to 1989 --Abstract, page iii