Results by title

Climate change has shifted from future menace to current event. As eco-conscious electricity consumers, we want to do our part in weening from fossil fuels, but what are we actually a part of?

Committed environmentalists in one of North America’s most progressive regions desperately wanted energy policies that address the climate crisis. For many of them, wind turbines on Northern New England’s iconic ridgelines symbolize the energy transition that they have long hoped to see. For others, however, ridgeline wind takes on a very different meaning. When weighing its costs and benefits locally and globally, some wind opponents now see the graceful structures as symbols of corrupted energy politics.

This book derives from several years of research to make sense of how wind turbines have so starkly split a community of environmentalists, as well as several communities. In doing so, it casts a critical light on the roadmap for energy transition that Northern New England’s ridgeline wind projects demarcate. It outlines how ridgeline wind conforms to antiquated social structures propping up corporate energy interests, to the detriment of the swift de-carbonizing and equitable transformation that climate predictions warrant. It suggests, therefore, that the energy transition of which most of us are a part, is probably not the transition we would have designed ourselves, if we had been asked.
 

In this innovative volume, Anto Mohsin brings Indonesian studies together with science and technology studies to tell the story of the entanglement of nation building and social justice during the state’s rapid post–World War II project to supply electricity to the entire country. He shows that attempts to illuminate the country were inseparable from the effort to maintain the new nation-state, chart its path to independence, and legitimize ruling regimes. In exchange for an often dramatically improved standard of living, people gave their votes, and their acquiescence, to the ruling government.

Essential reading on a hard-to-study but dominant communication tool, encrypted messaging apps—WhatsApp, Signal, and their kin—showing their promise and dangers.

Pundits have long pointed to social media’s power to catalyze or end political movements—and to strengthen or weaken democracies. But this power is shifting from social media platforms (such as Facebook and YouTube) to lesser-studied encrypted messaging apps (such as WhatsApp and Signal). This urgent book explains how these technologies work and how they differ from their predecessors, outlining their strengths and vulnerabilities at a crucial stage in their evolution.

While many Facebook users have at least heard of propaganda and the algorithms used to filter and highlight content on that platform, they are more likely to trust messaging apps as sources of authentic and secure information. Paired with a growing distrust of traditional media, more people are joining large groups on these apps and using them as news sources, even when those groups include relative strangers. This makes these apps particularly vulnerable to political propaganda—and even government espionage.

Security studies scholar Inga Kristina Trauthig and propaganda scholar Samuel Woolley consider both the role of these apps in spreading disinformation and as tools for maintaining free speech and civic discourse in the face of censorship. The same closed nature that makes these apps seem trustworthy has made them particularly difficult to research. And so this qualitative study draws on some 180 interviews with propagandists, activists, influence campaigners, and other users in fourteen countries. The book’s findings and the authors’ recommendations are crucial for understanding the future of online communication and safeguarding democratic speech.

Equipping Technical Communicators for Social Justice Work provides action-focused resources and tools—heuristics, methodologies, and theories—for scholars to enact social justice. These resources support the work of scholars and practitioners in conducting research and teaching classes in socially just ways. Each chapter identifies a tool, highlights its relevance to technical communication, and explains how and why it can prepare technical communication scholars for socially just work.
 
For the field of technical and professional communication to maintain its commitment to this work, how social justice intersects with inclusivity through UX, technological, civic, and legal literacies, as well as through community engagement, must be acknowledged. Equipping Technical Communicators for Social Justice Work will be of significance to established scholar-teachers and graduate students, as well as to newcomers to the field.
 
Contributors: Kehinde Alonge, Alison Cardinal, Erin Brock Carlson, Oriana Gilson, Laura Gonzales, Keith Grant-Davie, Angela Haas, Mark Hannah, Kimberly Harper, Sarah Beth Hopton, Natasha Jones, Isidore Kafui Dorpenyo, Liz Lane, Emily Legg, Nicole Lowman, Kristen Moore, Emma Rose, Fernando Sanchez, Jennifer Sano-Franchini, Adam Strantz, Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq, Josephine Walwema, Miriam Williams, Han Yu