Embodied Environmental Risk in Technical Communication: Problems and Solutions Toward Social Sustainability

This collection calls for improved technical communication for the public through an embodied, situated understanding of environmental risk that promotes social justice.

In addition to providing a series of chapters about recent issues on risk communication, this volume offers a diverse look at methodological practices for students, researchers, and practitioners looking to address embodied aspects of crisis and risk that incorporate UX, storytelling, and dynamic text. It includes chapters that bring embodiment to the forefront of risk communication, highlighting the cycle of content creation, dissemination, public response and decision making, continuing iterations of educational efforts, and recovery, toward increasing adaptive capacity as a whole. In addition, this work directs necessary attention to overcoming perceptual difficulties, memory lapses, definitional differences, access issues, and pedagogical problems in the communication of risks to diverse publics.

This collection is essential reading for scholars and can be used as a supplemental text or casebook for courses in technical communication, environmental communication, risk and crisis communication, science communication, and public health.

Samuel Stinson is Assistant Professor of English with Minot State University where he also serves as the director of the Northern Plains Writing Project and coordinator of the English concentration in the M.Ed. program. He also serves as a list manager for the WritingStudies-L listserv and currently co-coordinates the Writing about Writing special interest group with the Conference on College Composition and Communication. His research interests are in professional writing, multimodality, game studies, and pedagogy. His current research focuses on writing transfer and online platforms.

Mary Le Rouge is Director of Writing at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She also volunteers as Associate Publisher for Monographs, Collections, and Conference Proceedings at the WAC Clearinghouse, an open-source publisher for the field of writing studies. She is an active member of the Conference on College Composition & Communication and its Environmental Special Interest Group, among other organizations. Her research lies at the intersection of the humanities and the sciences, looking for ways to improve communication between experts, policymakers, and the public.