Book

Transnational Assemblages: Social Justice Oriented Technical Communication in Global Disaster Management (Under Contract)

Abstract:

Transnational Assemblages: Social Justice Oriented Technical Communication in Global Disaster Management demonstrates how local knowledge and transcultural practices of recognizing, highlighting, and valuing marginalized perspectives during or after a crisis creates an opportunity for tackling social injustices in post-disaster situations. With grounded case studies of the 2015 Nepal Earthquake & 2017 Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, this book showcases how locals in marginalized and colonized spaces overcome disaster created complexities via coalitional and transnational engagements. Ultimately, this project illustrates how technical communicators can perform transdisciplinary research in disaster management to minimize the impacts of catastrophic disasters affecting the world’s most vulnerable populations.

As the world continues to suffer through climate change, environmental and other crises, this book argues that there is an urgency for the field to explore how global technical communications praxis helps to address injustices in the contemporary networked world. The book expands upon ongoing conversation regarding the social justice turn in the field by creating new social justice oriented framework for managing global disasters. This book is valuable for researchers and practitioners in rethinking digitally complex, networked, and varied modes of crisis communications in global disaster management via social justice and transcultural frameworks.

Dissertation: Comparative Study of Networked Communities, Crisis Communication, and Technology: Rhetoric of Disaster in Nepal Earthquake and Hurricane Maria

2021 CCCC Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication-Honorable Mention.

Abstract

In April and May 2015 Nepal suffered two massive earthquakes of 7.5 and 6 5 magnitudes in the Richter scale killing 8856 and injuring 22309. Two years later in September 2017, Puerto Rico underwent category five hurricane Maria killing an estimate of 800 to 8000 people and displacing hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans (Kishore et al., 2018). This dissertation project is the comparative study of Nepal’s and Puerto Rico’s networked communities, their participants (Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robison, & Weigel, n. d. ; Potts, 2014), the users (Ingraham, 2015; Johnson, 1998) and the experience architects (Gerding, 2018; Potts & Salvo, 2017) who used crisis communication practices to address the havoc created by the disaster. Using a mixed methods research approach and with framework created of Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 2005; L. Potts, 2014; Spinuzzi, 2003) as well as the Assemblage Theory (DeLanda, 2016), I argue that disasters create situations in which various networked communities are formed along with an emergence of innovative digital composition and communication practices.