ANALYZING COMPUTER- MEDIATED COMMUNICATION IN PROFESSIONAL ENVIRONMENTS: AN ACTIVITY THEORY APPROACH Clay Spinuzzi, University of Texas at Austin
Jan 27, 2015
ANALYZING COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION IN PROFESSIONAL ENVIRONMENTS: AN ACTIVITY THEORY APPROACHClay Spinuzzi, University of Texas at Austin
An illustration: Circulating knowledge
Spinuzzi, C. (2010). Secret sauce and snake oil: Writing monthly reports in a highly contingent environment. Written Communication, 27(4), 363–409.
Challenges of studying CMC in professional environments
CMC is not an end in itself, but a way to accomplish cyclical work objectives
CMC genres are part of an ecology of genres, providing additional ways to communicate, ways that interact with other genres
To understand how these ecologies of genres work in professional environments, we must understand the activities they mediate
To investigate, I (and many others in professional communication) have turned to field studies.
Field studies
Software developers (1997) Traffic safety workers (1998-1999) Telecommunications workers (2000-
2001) Proposal writers (2005) Office workers (2006) Search marketing firm (2008) Coworking (2009-2011) Nonemployer firms (2009-2011)
Research questions
How do Semoptco’s workers produce monthly reports? What tools and texts do they use?
How do they share information and procedures as they produce reports?
How do they ensure that the reports address critical rhetorical concerns such as audience analysis and ethos?
These research questions implied a field methods to characterize the ecology of genres being used to mediate the work.
Data collection methods
Site interviews (with manager, 40m and 30m)
Pre-observation interviews (20-30m) Naturalistic observations (3 1-hour
observations of each participant) Post-observational interviews
(semistructured, about 30m, after each observation)
Artifact collection (documents, photos of work environment and texts)
Data coding and analysis methods Coding. Starter codes, open coding, axial coding
for all data sources. Triangulation. Compared data:
Across data types, same incident. Examined how the same incident was represented in two or more data types.
Across participants. Examined how the same phenomenon was represented in two or more participants’ data.
Across visits. Examined how different actions were taken at different points of the work cycle.
Member checks. Solicited comments from participants on a draft analysis.
Analytical constructs
Genre ecologies Communicative events Sociotechnical graphs Operations tables Activity systems Activity networks CDB tables
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Miller, C. R. (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70(2), 151–167.
Russell, D. R. (1997). Rethinking genre in school and society: An activity theory analysis. Written Communication, 14(4), 504–554.
Genres
See:
10
Genre (Spinuzzi 2008, p.17)
“not just text types” “typified rhetorical responses to
recurring social situations” “tools-in-use” “a behavioral descriptor rather than a
formal one” Through their use, genres “weave
together” different kinds of work
Search Engine Optimization
“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site or a web page (such as a blog) from search engines via ‘natural’ or un-paid (‘organic’ or ‘algorithmic’) search results ...”
Wikipedia, “search engine optimization”
The central genre: Monthly reports
20pp monthly reports 10-12 reports per
month per specialist Written in the first 10
business days = approx 20-24pp/day
Integrated writers
hdo.utexas.edu
“In their perception, writing is a less important and unloved part of their work, yet these writing tasks are often vital.”
Spinuzzi, C. (2003). Tracing genres through organizations: A sociocultural approach to information design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Spinuzzi, C. (2008). Network: Theorizing knowledge work in telecommunications. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Genre ecologies
See:
Genre ecologies
Comediated (report + annotations + IM + BRILLIANCE + conversation + WikiAnswers + …)
Official and unofficial genres (report vs. annotations; external emails vs. IMs; BRILLIANCE vs. task lists)
Genres develop in one activity, but are often imported into another
Constant coordination & consolidation
IM: Who’s here? Can you answer my quick
question? Can we plan for this meeting?
Can you meet me face to face?
Internal Blogs: What have I discovered
about SEO? What are the best practices
for this service (e.g., YouTube)?
Email: Can the client adjust/add
content to the website? Does the client know how
this new development will affect their SEO?
Does the client trust me?
BRILLIANCE (info system): What actions have we
taken on this project? What results came from
those actions?
Engeström, Y. (1990). Learning, working, and imagining: Twelve studies in activity theory. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit Oy.
Russell, D. R. (1997). Writing and genre in higher education and workplaces. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 4(4), 224–237.
Spinuzzi, C. (2011). Losing by Expanding: Corralling the Runaway Object. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 25(4), 449 – 486.
Activity systems
See:
Activity system
Based on work in activity theory: Vygotsky, Leont’ev, Engestrom
Understands human activity as mediated, collective, oriented to a cyclical objective, motivated, developmental
Serves to provide top-level context for specific (conscious) actions and underlying (unconscious) operations
Serves to expose systematic contradictions: sources of tensions, disruptions, innovation
hdo.utexas.edu
hdo.utexas.edu
Activity networks
See:
Engeström, Y. (2008). From Teams to Knots: Studies of Collaboration and Learning at Work. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gygi, K., & Zachry, M. (2010). Productive tensions and the regulatory work of genres in the development of an engineering communication workshop in a transnational corporation. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 24(3), 358–381.
Spinuzzi, C. (2011). Losing by Expanding: Corralling the Runaway Object. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 25(4), 449 – 486.
Activity network
Based on Engestrom Activities can be chained, with the output
of one activity becoming the input of another (ex: software)
Activities can be overlapping, sharing one or more point
Activity networks put activity systems into relation, allowing us to see how inter-activity contradictions drive the development of activities in tandem
Activity network
Based on Engestrom Activities can be chained, with the output
of one activity becoming the input of another (ex: software)
Activities can be overlapping, sharing one or more point
Activity networks put activity systems into relation, allowing us to see how inter-activity contradictions drive the development of activities in tandem
hdo.utexas.edu
Activity network
Based on Engestrom Activities can be chained, with the output
of one activity becoming the input of another (ex: software)
Activities can be overlapping, sharing one or more point
Activity networks put activity systems into relation, allowing us to see how inter-activity contradictions drive the development of activities in tandem
Team Description Objective Composition Genres
Project Teams that launched and maintained campaigns. Team members were in
separate physical spaces.
The account
Account manager, 1-2 specialists.
Assigned by CEO.
Instant messaging (IM), email, meetings, conference
calls, drop-in visits…
Apprentice-ship
Colocated buddy/ mentoring teams. In SEO,
gave way to support teams during the study.
The apprentice
Account Managers; pairs of
specialists
Informal conversations in workspace,
IM
Support Colocated, formal three-person teams to determine
load and status of accounts.
Oversight, awareness of service
Senior specialist, 2 specialists
Drop-in visits, IM, email,
BRILLIANCE notes,
meetings.
Functional
Teams encompassing entire departments: SEO, paid
search, etc.
The department's function
All department members
Reporting parties;
lunches; IM; email; internal
blogs…
Values Cross-boundary teams, initiated during the study, that worked on enacting
core values
The cultural value
Self-chosen from across the company.
Values team meetings;
email.
Taco club Pairs who shared breakfast tacos on Wednesday
mornings.
Cross-department
al social network
Self-chosen pairs of workers from
different functional teams.
Taco club meetings;
email.
Activity networks
Spinuzzi, C. (2012). Working Alone, Together: Coworking as Emergent Collaborative Activity. Journal of Business And Technical Communication, 26(4).
Spinuzzi, C. (2013, accepted). How Nonemployer Firms Stage-Manage Ad-Hoc Collaboration: An Activity Theory Analysis. Technical Communication Quarterly.
Analytical constructs
hdo.utexas.edu
Genre ecologies Communicative events Sociotechnical graphs Operations tables Activity systems Activity networks CDB tables
Challenges of studying CMC in professional environments
CMC is not an end in itself, but a way to accomplish cyclical work objectives
CMC genres are part of an ecology of genres, providing additional ways to communicate, ways that interact with other genres
To understand how these ecologies of genres work in professional environments, we must understand the activities they mediate
Publicly available online services (PAOS)
Divine, D., Hall, S., Ferro, T., & Zachry, M. (2011). Work through the Web: A Typology of Web 2.0 Services. In A. Protopsaltis, N. Spyratos, C. J. Costa, & C. Meghini (Eds.), SIGDOC’11 (pp. 121–127). New York: ACM.
Divine, D., Morgan, J. T., Ourada, J., & Zachry, M. (2010). Designing Qbox: A Tool for Sorting Things Out in Digital Spaces. GROUP’10 (pp. 311–312). New York: ACM.
Ferro, T., Hall, S., Derthick, K., Morgan, J. T., Searle, E., & Zachry, M. (2009). Understanding How People Use Publicly Available Online Services for Work. SIGDOC ’09 (pp. 311–312). New York: ACM.
Activity streams
Hart-Davidson, W., Zachry, M., & Spinuzzi, C. (2012). Activity streams: Building context to coordinate writing activity in collaborative teams. SIGDOC’12: Proceedings of the 30th Annual ACM International Conference on Design of Communication. New York: ACM. 279-287.
McCarthy, J. E., Grabill, J. T., Hart-Davidson, W., & McLeod, M. (2011). Content Management in the Workplace: Community, Context, and a New Way to Organize Writing. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 25(4).
Impacts of new forms of collaboration
Long-term trends: outsourcing noncore functions, including to independent contractors
More projectification Results-only work environments
(ROWEs) More distance work (from home offices,
coworking spaces, coffee shops) More ways to communicate/more layers
of CMC communication
Questions?