ENGL210: Technical Writing

7a. Distinguish between the variety of online publishing opportunities

• Describe how the Internet evolved to offer authors a new writing environment.
• Define an online blog, discussion forum, and wiki. 
• How do individuals, businesses, professors, and non-profit organizations use these social media communications tools to interact, and share information and commentary?
• Define net neutrality.

The Internet has created a new decentralized and free writing environment where anyone with a personal computer, dial-up modem, phone line, and account with an Internet service provider (ISP) can communicate across great distances. Open protocols have allowed creators to control their material without a central command structure. Data is easy to back up and difficult to destroy. Web browsers now allow Internet users to access and create their own web pages.

Blogs provide an online personal and professional writing space where authors can create, share and converse with other bloggers, such as to critique arguments, products, services. Companies, educators, and nonprofit organizations use blogs to communicate with potential clients, students, and members.

For example, businesses use this online communication platform to inform their customers about new products and services, professors use blogs to interact with and discuss academic topics with their students, while advocacy organizations use blogs to inform the public about their mission, goals, and publicize their calls to action.

Online discussion forums create an online community that professors, students, and individuals with a common interest can interact and share ideas. For example, communities can easily share and respond to topics of interest on news websites or sites such as Reddit.

Wikis, such as Wikipedia, provide crowdsourced information sites where any individual in a group who has editing privileges, can edit a central online document.

Businesses use many social media marketing tools, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn to connect with customers, promote their products and services, obtain feedback, and build a community that will generate business.

Net neutrality is the concept that the Internet should remain neutral. Many argue that Internet service providers should not be allowed to create paywalls that discriminate against website creators who cannot afford to pay hefty fees to use a provider's network to transmit content to their users and the public. ISPs should also not be allowed to cause the websites of their competitors to load more slowly than their own. 

Nonprofit organizations, such as schools, colleges, and advocacy organizations, are especially concerned about maintaining net neutrality since most cannot afford to pay high fees that would limit their ability to transmit the high-bandwidth materials students need, and potentially shut them out of the Internet, which has thrived on the free and robust transfer of information. 

To review, see The Evolution of the Internet, New Media Writing Introduction, Quickstart Guide to Social Media for Business, Don't Be a Social Media Marketing Skeptic, Blogging in the Composition Classroom, and Social Media and Web 2.0.

 

7b. Describe how different online writing contexts impact audience, document design, and creation

• Define different characteristics of online writing contexts and how they impact audience, document design, and the creation of documents.
• What does it mean for a message to go viral as it relates to audience, design, and creation?

Blogs provide an online writing space where authors can have a productive conversation with readers from across the globe. Take a look at some online blogs to see how bloggers create, present, critique, and destroy other arguments. They can also make arguments more complicated, as they offer nuanced perspectives, and receive comments from their readers.

As with any good writer, effective bloggers need to think about their audience. Try to initiate a conversation by inviting readers to question your (and their own) ideas and post comments. Choose an engaging discussion topic, and create a blog that is visually appealing and easy to read. Popular blogs tend to have a defined rhetorical stance: the theme and writing style of their posts are consistent and distinctive.

Consider these rhetorical questions to help determine the best online writing context for your social media campaign:

• Which social media platform is best? Research and explore different platforms to learn whether the communication tools they use are appropriate for your message. Research where your customers are reading, scrolling, or watching online. Create an account so you can test your message and diversify from there to reach new audiences.
• How do you find and engage the right people? Use search tools to identify and follow the people who are influencers in your industry. For example, if you are in the restaurant business, identify food bloggers in your region, follow them, and learn how you can appropriately build and grow your own list of followers and expand your influence. Connect your loyal email subscriber list with your social media activity. Find out where they are and let them know about your social media presence.
• What is the best way to engage with followers? Generating interest among your followers may take time. As we explored in Unit 1, once you understand your audience you can provide interesting, engaging, and relevant content. Some advise you to engage your audience with webchats, contests, and surveys. Others warn against employing heavy interaction tactics until your new social media efforts have had time to grow. 

Messages "go viral" when you have succeeded in impacting your audience and you have an effective document design. Viral messages are words, sounds, or images that compel the audience to pass them along to their friends and colleagues. The messages use sparks and triggers to grab the audience's attention, and prompt them to act or mobilize their community.

Does your message have the following three attributes to go viral?

1. Does it have an emotional appeal that people will feel compelled to share?
2. Does it have a spark or trigger (does it challenge, provide novelty, or incorporate humor) to motivate interest?
3. Is it relevant to the audience? It must be immediately accessible, salient, and important.

To review, read Blogging in the Composition Classroom.

 

7c. Apply best practices of technical writing to assessing new communications contexts

• What are the technical writing best practices that can help assess new communication contexts?

Use the same best practice technique and principles regarding audience analysis which we explored in Unit 1 to help create an appropriate message for your social media audience. However, social media offers a growing body of searchable personal information to augment the broad organizational tasks, including market research, recruitment, and customer service. Businesses use data they obtain from social media sites, such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, to research and reach their target audiences. 

• Find your target market by searching for keywords and hashtags that relate to your business, and see what users say about them. You may find influencers among them.
• Engage your target market by investing some time to research and get to know your audience – what they seek and what they like – and start to build relationships with them.

Another best practice is to create brief, focused messages to engage your audience. For example, the more you Tweet, the more visible you are. Your tone should also be conversational, engaging, and show interest. 

To review, see Six Tips for Getting the Most out of Your Small Business Tweets.

 

7d. Describe the ethical and safety issues regarding communication and the Internet

• What are the ethical and safety issues regarding communication and the Internet?
• Define netiquette. Explain how digital ethics help create a social media ethos.
• What are some ethical issues related to social media and the workplace?

New online communication tools and social media allow small businesses and rural communities to connect with global suppliers, vendors, and other physically-remote partners in the global marketplace as never before. However, these communication pathways can also open opportunities to transfer fraudulent, illicit, and unwanted information.

The lack of authorial attribution in many online forums can make it difficult to research whether the information shared is credible and accurate. It is important to gauge credibility, authenticity, and possible bias in a source, such as to determine whether the author has a conflict of interest that might call the information they share and post into question.

Netiquette refers to following practices that employ social and ethical etiquette on the Internet. As with any ethical or moral code of conduct or issue, users often disagree about what constitutes netiquette and may raise questions about the best format for textual and visual communications.

• What language and tone are appropriate online?
• What guidelines govern the online community?
• How should audiences use, remix, and alter online source material? What is the fairest way to reference and cite these sources?
• How should users portray themselves online, whether through avatars, gaming, and other social media? How should we develop and maintain this online ethos?
• How should employers and employees approach the blurred line between private and public? What constitutes a public forum?

Digital ethics also refers to how we construct and present ourselves in social media, which affects how our audience receives our communications and intentions. For example, our LinkedIn and Facebook profile pages allow us to build a digital character or representation – our Aristotelian ethos. Our choices reflect our goals, as a student and as a professional.

Social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook allow organizations to speak directly to, and solicit responses from, the public quickly and affordably. Many legal issues around social media ownership and usage in a business setting remain undefined.

For example, businesses and organizations need to define who owns the social media assets a staff member created, such as Facebook walls, Twitter handles, and contact lists when an employee leaves the company.

Hiring managers also risk violating anti-discrimination laws when they learn private and personal information when they turn to social media to recruit or screen potential employees, such as a job candidate's race, gender, or sexual orientation. Similarly, are employees free to use colorful language, make unseemly remarks, or critique their employer on their social media sites? In many instances, the lines that separate the public and private space have blurred.

To review, see Digital Ethics and Social Media in the Workplace: Research Roundup.

 

Unit 7 Vocabulary

• Blogging
• Digital Ethics
• Net Neutrality
• Netiquette
• Verifiability
• Viral