CCR691 – Final Project – Potts

Potts, Liza. “Using Actor Network Theory to Trace and Improve Multimodal Communication Design.” Technical Communication Quarterly 18 3 (2009): 281-301. Print. Potts begins the article by demonstrating how CNNs list of Hurricane Katrina missing/survivors was an exercise in a non-function network – or a non-network.  Because of the sites inability for users to interact with the system to “add important details, edit names, locate duplicates,... Read More

Network – Spinuzzi

Spinuzzi, Clay. Network:  Theorizing Knowledge Work in Communications. New York: Cambridge UP, 2008. Chapter One:  Networks, Genres, and Four Little Disruptions In this introductory chapter Spinuzzi does a lot of definitional work in order to inform the rest of his study.  S. is an activity theory researcher at heart; however, he also sees that AT has severely limited itself.  To understand and work past these limitations, Spinuzzi recommends... Read More

Reassembling the Social – Latour

Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. New York: Oxford UP, USA, 2005. Print. Introduction: How to Resume the Task of Tracing Associations* In the introduction, Latour illustrates how the traditional goals/definitions of sociology have been to apply the “social” lens to explain a state of affairs. In fact, the “social” as it is used in the social sciences has been overused to the point of meaning... Read More