Wednesday, Jan. 22

Tools have agency and biases
Hostile architecture
Views of ethics: Who is the technical communicator? What ethos do they have?
Katz talks about an interplay of phronesis and praxis
- - Phronesis is a kind practical (and ethical) wisdom
  - Praxis is a practical, reflective (and ethical) doing
- Instrumentalist view of ethics in technical communication positions technical communication as an act of simply conveying information. Exaggerated version: technical communicator explains the company's information and ideas.
  - - Katz disagrees because the purposes for communicating are always motivated, and the ethical commitment is really one of subservience to a corporation or social unit.
- Ethic of expediency, the goal of technical communication is to communicate the means to an end, and to prioritize the ability to accomplish a task. The technical communicator helps a user accomplish a task.
  - - Katz disagrees because the task itself may have bad outcomes or be unethical. He refers to a technical memo composed during the Holocaust about improving gassing vans. The "task" may be genocide, thus expediency is an ethical question.
- Ethics of care, emphasizes empathy and compassion, the welfare of people. The goal of the technical communicator is to maximize welfare.
  - - Katz summarizes some of the research in this area, with no disagreement
- Ethics of transparency, the idea of making truth objective and accessible, transparency is a neutral stance toward communication.
  - - Katz argues transparency is a mythological ideal that can cloak profit motives, conceal frame things in particular ways, conceal things deemed “irrelevant,” make things clear without necessarily engaging any public deliberation

Markel and Selber, Ethical and Legal Obligations

Frameworks of:
- - rights (what individuals are guaranteed),
  - justice (the equity of outcomes),
  - utility (the amount of good or use from outcomes), and
  - care (relations to others)
Ethical obligations: to an employer, to the public, to the environment
- - Employer: competence, diligence, generosity, honesty and candor, confidentiality, loyalty
  - Public: fairness, safety, effectiveness
  - Environment: preservation, long-term sustainability
Legal obligations:
- - copyright (appropriate use of other’s IP),
  - trademark (claimed trademarkTM; registered trademark®),
  - contracts (agreements among parties),
  - liability (injuries or damages caused by a product)\

Corporate culture and codes of conduct

Whistleblowing, some argue justified if you have evidence a corporate problem is hurting or will hurt others and have tried to resolve the issue internally, but also may hurt the whistleblower and those around them (retaliation is common)

Social media policies

Principles:

abide by laws;
comply with accessibility standards,
abide by the code of conduct and organizational policies on social media,
use employer’s resources,
tell the truth,
don’t mislead audiences,
use design to highlight important ethical and legal information,
be clear,
avoid discriminatory language,
acknowledge assistance from others

Reading Responses

Agustin

I like to think that every decision we make comes with an ethical consideration. It can be as small as deciding to walk somewhere instead of driving to be more environmentally friendly. In the case of technical writing, being aware of ethical considerations is a skill and ability that should be implemented.

Kosuke

Reading the chapter by Katz reminded me of an activity last quarter where information and data are considered to be "truthful" or "objective" but it can often times be misleading. The activity was to determine who was the better baseball player between player A and player B.

There is no fault in the data and the data seems like player B is the better player given this information, but if you look closely, you can see that player A has outperformed player B both years. I think this shows that data can be misleading and make people draw different conclusions even though the data itself is "truthful." I'm hoping that this class can help me avoid these issues and teach me the correct way to communicate.

George

One example that refers to the legal framework as a technical communicator is a whistleblower such as Edward Snowden who exposed the CIA for spying on United States citizens. This is an example because he felt it was necessary to tell the people as the government was hiding the information from them.

Kira

In this reading, I was intrigued by the concept of “work for hire” and was looking into how this works with journalism. Apparently, some journalism can be considered work for hire, or at least some aspects of their work, which ends up making their writing owned by the company/magazine/newspaper they’re writing for. I think this is just an interesting concept because especially with journalism and that kind of writing, it feels personal and stylistic, which contradicts in my head the idea of some other entity owning the work. Major publications like the NYT don't do this, but this was an interesting and complex example of how this can play out.

Michelle

Toward the end of the reading, Markel and Selber talk about some principles for ethical communication, one of these principles is to not mislead the user. They talk about avoiding things like false implications and exaggerated claims. In thinking about the relevance of these principles in our social media-dominated lives, I wonder how these considerations might transfer to how advertisement is approached nowadays. I feel like I see a lot of companies that use implications and exaggeration as strategies to push forward their products. I wonder how the ethical considerations vary when creating things like ads vs technical documents, especially when ads might be the first thing that a user sees which motivates them to buy and use a product. I’m thinking about beauty products like shampoo for example which sometimes can claim to “repair” (without showing data) and on the instructions label try to motivate users to also pair with another product from the brand. With what products might these considerations be more important?

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