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J. TECHNICAL WRITING AND COMMUNICATION, Vol. 38(4) 301-329, 2008
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES AS DISCURSIVE
AGENTS: METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR
THE EMPIRICAL STUDY OF KNOWLEDGE WORK
JASON SWARTS
North Carolina State University, Raleigh
ABSTRACT
Work activities that are mediated by information rely on the production
of discourse-based objects of work. Designs, evaluations, and conditions
are all objects that originate and materialize in discourse. They are created
and maintained through the coordinated efforts of human and non-human
agents. Genres help foster such coordination from the top down, by providing
guidance to create and recreate discourse objects of recurring social value.
From where, however, does coordination emerge in more ad hoc discursive
activities, where the work objects are novel, unknown, or unstable? In these
situations, coordination emerges from simple discursive operations, reliably
mediated by information and communication technologies (ICTs) that
appear to act as discursive agents. This article theorizes the discursive agency
of ICTs, explores the discursive operations they mediate, and the coordination
that emerges. The article also offers and models a study methodology for
the empirical observation of such interactions.
INTRODUCTION
It takes only a few moments of watching a surgeon or a pilot fly a jetliner to
recognize those performances as astonishingly complex and coordinated uses
of information. The activities are too complex to be performed by a single
person, because no single person could be adequately aware of and able to
perform all of the smaller tasks from which the overall task arises. Yet pilots fly
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� 2008, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.
doi: 10.2190/TW.38.4.b
http://baywood.com
and surgeons operate because it is possible to distribute the cognitive and physical
effort required to carry out those tasks [1-3]. Qualitatively different although
very much related, activities such as designing tractor gears, writing patent
applications, writing quality assurance reports, and other information-centric
knowledge work requires similar kinds of cognitive distribution [4, 5]. The latter
examples of distributed work are of interest because of their focus on writing
and discourse and the objects made from it: gear designs, patents, and assessments
of quality.
Each object is the product of a distributed discursive effort. An assessment of
quality may not be written by a single author nor written from a single source of
information, but may instead be the emergent product of information fragments
that originate with both human (engineers, field technicians) and non-human
(machine interfaces, testing instruments) sources [6-9]. The fragments may be
held together firmly in a familiar genre form or tentatively by the cognitive efforts
of those who use the information. The resulting discursive objects then help
coordinate larger activities (e.g., designing a tractor, filing a patent, issuing an
air quality permit).
This article examines the mechanisms of distributed discursive activity, in
particular, how people rely on information and communication technologies
(ICTs) for supporting simple uses of information from which larger, coordinated
uses arise. A central pillar of this argument is that ICTs change the amount,
availability, and form of information to support location-specific forms of uptake
(i.e., conversion of information into action—see [10, p. 39]). So common are
these functions that users frequently interact with ICTs, although perhaps uncon-
sciously, as if they were discursive agents, whose simple (and not so simple)
manipulations of information help create the conditions for coordinated discursive
activity to emerge. After first arguing why we have and should look at ICTs as
discursive agents, I then model how to examine the discursive functions of
technology, using an example from veterinary medicine. I conclude with an
outline of the implications for the empirical study of such knowledge work.
Before discussing distributed discursive activity and the role of ICTs, we need
to understand the role of coordination in distributed activities and how complex
coordination emerges from simple coordination. ICTs, I will argue, assist with
simple coordination.
Distributed activities are comprised of simpler, coordinated actions oriented
to the same outcome [1, pp. 178-228]. Yet while we may experience an activity
like surgery as a single, unified activity, it is actually comprised of a series of
coordinated goal-directed actions, such as scheduling, billing, and lab work that
may take place outside of the operating theater.
These actions are then comprised of a series of much simpler interactions
between people, their technologies, and information. People direct attention,
recognize patterns in machine outputs, interact with equipment, and so forth. This
breakdown of activity into goal-oriented actions and into simple operations is a
302 / SWARTS
framework [11] that is common to many activities [12-16]. More importantly, this
framework allows us to see where people focus attention. For familiar activities,
people may remain focused at the level of activity or actions (i.e., a goal-oriented
outcome), allowing their tacit knowledge to guide work at the operational level
(i.e., the steps of carrying out an activity). For those focused at the operational
level, it may be difficult, as the saying goes, to see the forest for the trees.
Regardless, successful actions are built upon successful operations and conditions
in which operations are coordinated to fulfill task goals. Complex discursive
activities can also be described in this same manner, as Swales [17, pp. 136-166]
has famously done in his explication of introductions to academic essays.
The focus of investigation in this article is coordination of discursive activities.
Genres and their aggregate repertoires [18], systems [19], and supportive ecol-
ogies [9] greatly assist in coordinating recurring discursive activities. However,
this article considers the means by which coordination emerges when the object
of discursive activity is novel, unknown, or unstable. If genres tend to assert
top-down coordination [20, 21] how can we account for and study coordination
that emerges from disparate, technologically-mediated discursive actions? This
kind of coordination builds out of simple discursive operations (e.g., reading
displays, comparing figures, etc.) that, in themselves, do not have any particular
discursive aim, only discursive potential [22]. The results of these operations
accumulate, organize, and emerge as discursive actions. Throughout the article, I
refer to these as micro-discursive operations. In information-mediated knowledge
work, these micro-discursive operations are not inherently coordinated with one
another; they are distributed throughout the environment, across people, tech-
nologies, texts, space, and time. Yet to add up to a discursive action, some effort
at coordination must be exerted.1
Policies, user guides, training sessions, systems of management, shared
theories, systems of nomenclature, and so on all serve as mechanisms of coordina-
tion [7, p. 301]. Values associated with these discursive artifacts are often captured
in the genres and in the interfaces and outputs of the technologies that people
interact with [8, pp. 59-111]. Looking at these genres (e.g., feasibility reports
and evacuation plans) and technologies (e.g., blood pressure machines and auto-
motive diagnostic tools) we see information organized into familiar forms, creat-
ing recognizable discursive objects for coordinating work activities. Scholarship
in the field is rich with studies of genre or aggregates of genres as coordinating
mechanisms [18, 19, 23] that profoundly influence the ways users understand
the objects of their work [e.g., 24-27].
Genres are associated with social action and those who use them understand
them to be reflective of community values. Users recognize genres as intentional,
DISCURSIVE AGENTS / 303
1The use of the passive voice here is intentional, as I mean to suggest that the agent bringing about
coordination is too complex for expression in the active voice at this point.
as designed to shape information into forms that are valued. In this sense, Cooren
[28] argues, people see texts as agents in the production of discourse. They exert
an influence that helps users both understand an activity, the actions of which it
is comprised, and the operations required for carrying out those actions. Genres
create coordination by helping users produce discursive objects that have a
known shape and recurring situated value. But what of those discursive objects
that are more emergent, of unknown shape and dynamic content, drawn from a
variety of sources? Here, coordination may be achieved inductively, built up from
simple discursive operations with and via texts and technologies that create
discursive building blocks and nudge a mediated form of uptake.
The idea that ICTs, like texts, have the status of agents in the production
of discourse has circulated in the literature of the sociology of science for some
time [29-34]. Technologies are purposeful; they are designed by someone, and
being designed, they embody the values and actions of the designers. The extent
to which we recognize those values and identify with them influences the
perceived value of those technologies [35] such that conflicting views of those
technologies can lead to uncoordinated work practices. The coordinating and
mediating influence of ICTs that concerns us is to be found more at the level of
simple interactions.
Our interactions with these technologies, Latour argues, are pre-scripted [31].
There are successful and unsuccessful ways to interact with technologies that
correspond to the values and politics of the spaces where those technologies are
found. Since many of our technological interactions are simple ones, we are often
only dimly aware of the politics we are complicit in maintaining. We may not
recognize that the form of information may reinforce a hierarchy of expertise
regarding who can use that information. We may not see that the openness2
of
an interface shapes the organization of team efforts.
Latour’s example is of a door closer that: a) replaces the human action of
opening and closing a door; and b) embodies the human motivation to close doors
after they have been opened. By design, people can only interact with door in
a limited number of ways, and these interactions reinforce a social order. Where
automatic door closers are in use, our interactions with doors are very simple:
we walk toward them and the doors open. When we leave, the doors close. We
participate in a social order that values closed doors by stepping away from the
sensor, making our cooperation with maintaining order a simple technological
interaction of the type that we likely perform countless times in a day. The same is
true of our interactions with ICTs, which mediate how we produce, share, and
work with information.
Many technologies fragment the activities that they afford in sum by turning
those activities into a series of simple operations (e.g., pushing buttons when
304 / SWARTS
2Meaning how visible the interface is to onlookers.
illuminated, reading numbers on a machine display), and yet this is not a problem
because simplification is what we expect from our technologies. Technologies
that get in the way and draw attention to themselves prevent users from focusing
on the activities that they wish to achieve with their assistance. Still, this does
not absolve us of the responsibility to consider how technologies mediate the
production of discourse on the basis of their design. If these simple interactions,
as I will demonstrate, help create coordination, we ought to consider how. In some
situations, such study could reveal ways that ICTs mediate discourse that results
in systematic problems of coordination. To study these interactions empirically,
however, we need a methodology that accounts for the agential role of technology.
As a backdrop for considering these methodological issues, I will analyze a
simple exchange between a veterinary student and members of the anesthesia
team on which she was working.3
SITE OF STUDY
For a period of six months, I shadowed veterinary students as they carried out
work related to different rotations during a year of clinical study. For example,
while shadowing a student on a cardiology rotation, I sat in on a patient con-
sultation and on a round of cardiac testing. For anesthesia, I followed the students
from the moment their patients were anesthetized, through the procedures, and
up until the patients were revived.
For each observation, I collected data from numerous sources. I recorded
conversations throughout the observation. I made notes about the arrangement
and types of technological resources. I took copies of reference materials (those
not containing patient-specific information). For each session, I made notes
about the ways that the students and their colleagues interacted with the tech-
nologies. I looked for evidence that the technologies were performing some
discursive function that helped create opportunities for cooperative activity, the
joint assessment of a patient’s condition. My observations are verified through
post-observation interviews that I conducted with each student.
I do not intend for this analysis to comment in great detail on the organization
of discursive activity at the veterinary hospital. Instead, my purpose is to show
a relatively simple interaction between a veterinary student, an anesthesia tech-
nician, and a clinician as they attempted to assess a dog’s condition while under
anesthetic and determine what (if any) countermeasures were needed to stabilize
the dog’s condition. After first presenting the interactions between the three
people involved and offering a surface-level interpretation of how these members
achieved a coordinated understanding of the dog’s condition, I then offer a deeper
analysis of contributions made by ICTs.
DISCURSIVE AGENTS / 305
3Data from an ongoing study of veterinary students on clinical rotations and the information
technologies that they use.
DISCURSIVE NEEDS IN ANESTHESIA
Under the right circumstances, patients can yield up vast amounts of infor-
mation [36] to veterinarians. Different specialties may be interested in different
kinds of information: the appearance of the stomach lining, the patient’s neuro-
logical state, temperature, or treatment history. Each piece of information derives
from the patient’s physiological state or experience and is manufactured by
technologies such as ultrasounds, CT scans, blood pressure cuffs, and stetho-
scopes. Each technology generates information by converting information about
patients from one form (e.g., physical and auditory) to another (e.g., numerical
and pictorial) that is better suited to the discourse in which that information will
be taken up. Take the example of CT scans. Not only does a CT scan make the
invisible visible, it makes the patient’s interior available to anyone within sight
of the display, and who has the expertise to interpret the sliced images. It
also allows onlookers to see conditions that might only be indirectly suggested
by other diagnoses.
To facilitate these uses, patient information must be prepped for uptake. Infor-
mation generated about the patient at one moment in time may have lasting
value and should be recorded in a durable medium to be accessible at some future
point. Transferring physical and experiential information into numbers, obser-
vations, and images helps preserve it, yet this synchronic picture of the patient’s
health may not be sufficiently informative. For some medical tasks, a diachronic
picture of the patient’s health is more appropriate. Information mediating such
work puts data points into plots, aggregates, and other combinations. Patient
information must also be available to the right people in the right form. Changes
in a patient’s physiological state must be converted into conditions that can be
treated, or drug side effects that can be counteracted. Such transformations allow
information about a patient’s physical condition to be coordinated with other
knowledge bases.
At the veterinary hospital, animals are anesthetized for a variety of reasons,
including procedures that require the patients to be still. In the scene that follows
this section, Janet, a fourth-year veterinary student, is caring for a dog brought in
for a CT scan and a CSF tap. Early on the morning of the procedure, Janet visited
the patient to administer a sedative prior to intubation. After medicating and
anesthetizing the patient, Janet, an anesthesia technician, and a clinician inserted a
breathing tube and then connected the patient to a host of equipment, including a
ventilator, a blood pressure monitor, a heart monitor, and an anesthesia vaporizer.
These technologies delivered anesthetic and oxygen; they monitored the patient’s
vital signs, and reported back a continuous stream of information that Janet
recorded, every few minutes on the anesthesia record (see example in Figure 1).
These texts and technologies were accompanied by others, including Janet’s
classroom notes, the patient’s chart, the doctor’s orders, and a PDA on which
Janet had access to drug formularies, dosage calculators, and other references.
306 / SWARTS
Janet’s duties were to move the dog between procedures and monitor his state
of anesthetization and general state of health. The anesthesia technician and
the clinician, both assisted in between supervising other student-led cases. The
anesthesia technician and clinician were generally aware of how each of the
cases were progressing, but still relied on each student to apprise them of any
changes in the patient’s condition.
An overall goal of the interactions between anesthesia students and the other
members of the anesthesia team was to create a coordinated understanding of
the patient’s condition. Although there are common ways to express condition,
each condition is potentially unique. A coordinated understanding of the condi-
tion and any measures needed to improve or maintain it builds out of simple
DISCURSIVE AGENTS / 307
Figure 1. A sample of a veterinary anesthesia record [37].
exchanges of information. Patient condition is a discursive object, an ad hoc
arrangement of patient information supporting an assessment of good or poor
condition, continually revised as new information is generated. Deciding on the
patient’s condition, however, is not always easy, as many different factors,
including the length of the procedure, patient’s prior medical history, and
combination of anesthetics given can influence how one assembles and interprets
the physiological information. To illustrate these difficulties and to see how one
can make empirical observations of coordination arising from discursive opera-
tions, I will consider a scene of anesthesia work where such coordination was
achieved. First is an analysis of the coordination at the level of spoken discourse:
Anesthesia Technician: Yeah, his drugs are hitting him pretty hard. I guess
that’s what’s worrying me. He’s probably not going to take much to . . . yeah,
not much Thio[pental] at all. Not much to give his pressures too. So we’ll
just have to really be careful on that.
. . .
Anesthesia Technician: Um, you might want to turn it [vaporizer delivering
anesthetic] down a bit.
Janet: Okay. (unintelligible).
Anesthesia Technician: Yeah, exactly. Let’s run it on one and four. Alright?
. . .
Janet: [To the clinician], his pressure’s a little low
Clinician: So’s his heart rate
Janet: Yeah. Um. Should I draw *** [anesthetic countermeasure]
Clinician: Um, what are we doing with this guy?
CT Technician: (unintelligible) [type of scan]
Clinician: but as far as any other procedures?
CT Technician: I have no idea.
Janet: Plus or minus CSF tap.
Clinician: Um, yeah I would give it [anesthetic countermeasure]. It’s prob-
ably a little low for a unintelligible.
Janet: Yeah, he’s 112 [heart rate?].
Clinician: That’s fine.
Janet: Does it have to be given any particular way? Like . . .
Clinician: Like?
Janet: Like back flow?
Clinician: Intravenously.
Janet: Okay. His heart rate’s already jumped up to 114 from like 112.
Down and back. Much higher now. And his pressure’s already jumped up
to 80 from like 55.
. . .
Janet: [To the clinician], so, the pressure went up, but only temporarily. And
it’s continuing to drop now, where the last reading says like 47.
Clinician: Okay, so they’re just about done. Right?
Janet: Yeah, so is that going to be okay?
308 / SWARTS
Clinician: What’s the vaporizer on?
Janet: What?
Clinician: What’s the vaporizer on?
Janet: Um, probably two. I can put it down to one and a half.
Clinician: Yeah.
Janet: It was only on two for the way over [to the prep room]
Clinician: Okay. We’ll be done soon, so I think wake him up’s going to be
the answer.
Janet: Okay.
From the start of this patient’s case, Janet and the technician could tell that the
patient was more sedated than would normally be expected prior to intubation.
Where dogs would normally be awake and looking around, this dog appeared
nearly comatose, stirring only when touched. The technician warned Janet that
the patient would not need much additional anesthetic (Thiopental) in order to
be ready for the procedures. Nor would they need to set the vaporizer quite as
high for delivering additional anesthetic during the procedures. There was at least
some initial concern that any additional anesthetic would adversely affect the
patient’s pressures, and so Janet was cognizant of that potential effect.
Once in the CT room, the patient’s blood pressure started to drop, along with
his heart rate. In preparation for this potentiality, Janet had prepared an injection
of the anesthetic countermeasure, which would bring the dog’s blood pressure
and heart rate back up. The only danger in giving this medication was that by
bringing the patient’s pressure and heart rate up, the patient may start to revive
from the anesthetic. Janet called over the clinician, who agreed with Janet that
the dog’s vitals were low enough to merit intervening, especially since there was
still another procedure to take place.
The countermeasures had the intended effect, but only temporarily, as the
patient’s condition again deteriorated. By this time, the only procedure remaining
was a CSF tap, after which the patient would be revived. The clinician deter-
mined that while Janet’s assessment was accurate, the patient did not require
another dose. Instead, the two decided that the dog’s condition was good enough
for the time remaining in the procedure. The only measure necessary was to
turn back the flow rate of the vaporizer.
The purpose of the interaction was for Janet, the anesthesia technician, and the
clinician to agree on the state of the patient’s condition. Together and at different
points during the scene, the team members negotiated and jointly built a sense
of the dog’s condition as a stable-enough discursive artifact that allowed them to
agree on an action to take, follow through on that action, and then monitor any
resulting changes in the patient’s condition.
Condition was negotiated on the basis of patient information rendered up by
physical observations of the situation and by quantitative observations made
by the monitoring equipment. Yet there is more to the negotiation and coordinated
approach than is evident at the level of spoken discourse. There are many small
DISCURSIVE AGENTS / 309
discursive interactions that both reveal, structure, and organize information to
afford its use in the construction of that dog’s condition. Janet and all of the
members of the anesthesia team treated the technologies around them as discursive
agents, participants in the construction of a sense of the patient’s health.
These technologies made information about the patient visible and put it in a
valued form. Moreover, these technologies also changed the manner of infor-
mation uptake; they changed how and when the information was available. They
determined the form and the quantity of information. They altered the ways
in which that information was made visible to those in the room. This is the
discursive role that the technologies played, and if we layer in a consideration of
the technologies supporting the interactions described above and look at how the
participants interacted with them, we can see more precisely how members of the
team created a coordinated and actionable account of the patient’s condition.
TECHNOLOGIES AS DISCURSIVE AGENTS
Before discussing the discursive functions, it is important to note that the
technologies are not acting as discursive agents in the sense that they are speaking with
any rhetorical intent. Even so, it is easy enough to perceive things this way, as the
members of the anesthesia team often did. On many occasions, for instance, members
of different anesthesia teams would make comments like: “the blood pressure monitor
is telling us that his pressure is too low.” Of course, the blood pressure monitor is not
telling anyone anything and it is certainly not telling anyone that the pressure is too
low. Rather, the agency attributed to these technologies is in the way that they
influence the participants’ ability to gather and interpret information and to convert
that information into action. In a re-analysis of the same scene from above, I consider
four discursive functions: transformation, dis/aggregation, broadcast, and relay. While
I discuss these discursive functions separately, in practice, the functions overlap.
Transformation
Instances when information of one type is converted into another are acts of
transformation. Technologies serving this function reduce the labor required
to take information available in one form and convert it into others that may be
scaled differently, expressed in different units, or may be semantically connected
to other discourses.
In anesthesia, people rely on transformative technologies when information
about a patient’s condition require translation into terms or units by which
the patient’s condition can be more readily assessed. For example, a scale trans-
forms a patient’s weight into pounds, and conversion software on a PDA
transforms pounds to kilograms. Each step is a transformation of information
across representational states. These small transformations result in a number
that can be plugged into fluid rate calculators.
310 / SWARTS
Transformed information also acquires other characteristics that afford dis-
tributed and coordinated uses of information. Transformative technologies
multiply the amount of available information, producing variants of the same
information in different forms. The transformed information is also then more
fluid, as it can be taken up into a larger variety of discourses that may rely on the
same information but in different forms.
Dis/Aggregation
Another bundle of related discursive functions is aggregation and disaggre-
gation. Technologies can take multiple streams of information and connect them
in meaningful arrangements. A heart monitor may transform the physical sen-
sation of a beating heart into a number, but the anesthesia record aggregates
multiple readings in a line chart that shows increasing, decreasing, or stable
values. Aggregators create discursive objects that afford work- specific uses and
interpretations, which is to say that they also serve transformation functions.
When data points come together, the points remain the same, but what emerges
from them is an aggregate discursive object that is not wholly present in any one
piece of data. As in the case of the anesthesia record, aggregators often require
information to be transformed prior to aggregation. Units of information must
be complementary and the modes (e.g., numerical, pictorial, auditory) must be
compatible.
The counter-function to aggregation is disaggregation, the splitting of dis-
cursive objects into multiple data streams. Sometimes the found form of infor-
mation does not serve the needs of all users. Technologies like the anesthesia
record can then take a complex discursive object and split it into useful pieces
of information that other users may recruit into other discourses. For example, a
blood pressure machine disaggregates overall heart function into pulse and into
systolic and diastolic blood pressures. The anesthesia record disaggregates the
condition of anesthetization into the anesthetics delivered, their amounts, and
times of delivery. Aggregation and disaggregation alike change the form of access,
which may favor or disfavor the use of that information by people with different
training and expertise.
Broadcast
Broadcast technologies make private information public, by distributing to
all within range. Broadcast technologies replace the effort needed to deliver
information and make it continuously available. As with the dis/aggregation
technologies, broadcast technologies can have transformative functions. For
example, a heart monitor measures a patient’s heart rate and transforms those
readings into numbers in order to broadcast that information to people at a distance
or to those who are unable to take their own readings. The number is continually
DISCURSIVE AGENTS / 311
updated and broadcasted, which affords the creation of an aggregated, real-time
account of changes in the patient’s vital signs.
A broadcast technology’s influence on uptake is that when information is
more shareable, coordination may become easier to achieve because more people
have access to the same information.
Relay
A function related to broadcasting is relaying, which differs in that information
is broadcasted across time and place and requires the use of technologies to receive
that information. A broadcast technology operates in real time and within the
confines of a particular place where that information is to be used. Although not
exclusively true, people who inhabit the same physical place are often engaged
in the same, similar, or complementary activities. That is, the assumption is that
broadcasters send out information to those who have compatible uses of that
information and who require no technological assistance to receive it, whereas
relay technologies do.
Information that is relayed crosses boundaries of place, as facilitated by mobile,
networked technologies, may be taken up into discourses the author had not
anticipated. Relaying technologies also broadcast across boundaries of time.
Information that was broadcast at one moment may travel through a network and
be retrieved minutes, days, or years later. Information conveyed through relay
technologies retains evidence of its discursive origins, of other information with
which it has held company [38]. To the extent that users are aware of those origins,
they may be prompted to apply an associated interpretive frame. For instance,
a technology that makes interactive tissue and cell slides helps users apply
information that would normally require the mediation of a microscope in settings
where no microscopes are available or where they would be impractical to use.
The relay technology would allow the user to think like a microscope. We can
see this discursive function and the others at play through a re-analysis of the
anesthesia scene considered earlier.
RE-ANALYSIS WITH MEDIATING TECHNOLOGY
Janet and her colleagues distributed their efforts to assess the patient’s condition
over their locally available ICTs. They offloaded to the technologies small-scale
discursive responsibilities for generating, transforming, aggregating, broadcasting
and relaying information about their patient. These micro-discursive operations
helped create the ground for coordinated assessment. These operations often
occurred in rapid, overlapping succession, appearing to be as simultaneous as
the coordination that resulted. To carry out the analysis, I will again recount the
scenario, but I will divide it up to intervene with narrative analysis of the
technological interactions. A supplemental summary of the discursive functions
performed by the available technologies is included in Appendix A. To assist in
312 / SWARTS
this analysis, I have included, in curly braces, the technologies that the partici-
pants attended to while speaking.
Intubation
Anesthesia Technician: Yeah, his drugs are hitting him pretty hard. I guess
that’s what’s worrying me. He’s probably not going to take much to . . .
yeah, not much Thio[pental] at all. Not much to give his pressures too.
So we’ll just have to really be careful on that {anesthesia record, syringe}.
This remark begins the interactions in which members of the anesthesia team
decided that the patient was potentially having an adverse reaction to the
anesthesia, as indicated by an abnormally low heart rate and blood pressure.
The source of the problem was the amount of anesthetic that the dog had been
given and its apparent tolerance for the sedatives delivered in the pre-medication
phase. In the above remark, the technician started with a physical observation, that
the patient was more sedated than would be expected. The objective at this stage
was to anesthetize the patient more fully, so that a breathing tube could be inserted.
The first issue to negotiate was to decide how much more sedated the patient
needed to be. Prior to this point, the technician had looked at the anesthesia
record, on which Janet had written the amount of anesthetic delivered. The
anesthesia record relayed information about the sedative and the conditions under
which it was delivered. In other words, the paper on which Janet’s pre-medication
actions had been written, conveyed information across time and the genred form
of the anesthetic record helped shape that information into a form that was useful
during the intubation. The record also transformed the dog’s apparent state of
anesthetization into a quantitative amount of sedative that produced the effect.
The dosage allowed the technician to determine how sedated the dog actually was,
by comparing that dosage to a normal dosage range for a dog of that size. She
determined that the dog had not been overdosed, but that it was instead simply
“hit hard” by the drugs. In the moments prior to the technician’s arrival, Janet
had reached the same conclusion, by relying on her PDA to access a drug
formulary, which relayed to her a range of adverse effects associated with the
sedatives along with a dosage calculator for verifying the dose.
Already, Janet and the technician were able to start off with the same inter-
pretation of the dog’s condition. The syringe full of Thiopental, which was within
sight of both, then broadcasted information about Janet’s intentions for the
second stage of anesthetization, or so it seemed. Janet had drawn up the maximum
amount of Thiopental that she thought they might need for a dog of this size,
weight, and age. She had done so while waiting for the premedication sedatives
to take effect. Because the syringe was clear and had units of measurement printed
on the outside, the technician saw that a maximum dose had been drawn. This
information prompted her warning that the patient would not need that much.
Janet had drawn up the maximum amount, but did not necessarily intend to use all
DISCURSIVE AGENTS / 313
of it. It is unclear if the technician saw the sticker that Janet had added to the
syringe to mark of how much of the total volume she actually intended to deliver.
Adjusting the Vaporizer
Anesthesia Technician: Um, you might want to turn it [vaporizer delivering
anesthetic] down a bit. {monitoring equipment,4
anesthesia vaporizer}
Janet: Okay. (unintelligible) {monitoring equipment}
Anesthesia Technician: Yeah, exactly. Let’s run it on one and four. Alright?
{monitoring equipment}
At this point, Janet and the technician had administered enough of the
Thiopental to enable them to proceed with the intubation and to hook up the
patient to monitoring equipment that included a heart monitor, a blood pressure
monitor, a ventilator, and an anesthesia vaporizer. The primary objective at this
point was to ensure that the patient’s vital signs would be visible to all members
of the team. When properly arranged, the high-contrast displays could be read
from a distance and through the protective glass of the CT observation room.
Since, for obvious reasons the team members could not ask the patient about
his condition, the monitoring equipment took measurements of physiological
signs given by the patient’s body. While the team could palpate the patient as
needed, the monitoring equipment would maintain a constant update needed to
see changes in his vital signs. In these cases, the monitoring equipment replaced
a significant amount of labor by broadcasting that information. The monitoring
equipment helped make the information less private by moving it out of the
patient’s body and into recognizable symbolic form.
While not the only discursive technology present, the monitoring equipment
served very important and diverse functions for mediating access to and use of
patient information. In addition to broadcasting information and holding it in
place, the equipment also transformed information across representational states.
The equipment transformed physiological information about the patient into
data the team members could interpret (although not without complication) in
ways that were potentially more reliable and constant than checking the same
vitals by hand. The team members could then compare these numbers with known
acceptable ranges for animals of that patient’s size and weight.
These numbers gave the technician some indication of how much anesthetic
needed to be given continuously in order to both keep the patient anesthetized
and to keep his vitals at an acceptable level. Based on a simple comparison of the
broadcasted numbers to acceptable ranges, the technician determined that the
314 / SWARTS
4Note that all of the monitoring equipment was clustered together and kept either on the patient's
gurney or on stands which accompanied the gurney. Because all of the monitoring equipment was
kept together, I could not always discern when any one piece of technology was used, although the
accompanying dialogue often gives strong indications.
current vaporizer setting would deliver too much anesthetic. Seeing the same
numbers, Janet understood the technician’s request to be a comment on how the
anesthetic would affect the patient over the course of both procedures.
The monitoring equipment also served another critical function in that they
both disaggregated and aggregated information about the patient. To say that
the patient looked as if he had been hit hard by the anesthetic is an assessment
based on seeing an aggregate of available physiological and visual data (e.g.,
breathing, color, and reactions to touch). The monitoring equipment disaggre-
gated such observations into multiple variables (e.g., pulse, blood pressure,
blood-oxygen levels) that were then given numerical expression. At the same time,
the monitoring equipment also physically aggregated these figures by keeping
them all in roughly the same physical location. This physical proximity invited
quick comparison of different outputs as in the moments that followed.
CT Scan Monitoring
Janet: [To the clinician], his pressure’s a little low. {anesthesia record, moni-
toring equipment}
Clinician: So’s his heart rate. {anesthesia record, monitoring equipment}
Janet: Yeah. Um. Should I draw *** [anesthetic countermeasure]. {anes-
thesia record, monitoring equipment}
Clinician: Um, what are we doing with this guy? {CT screen}
CT Technician: (unintelligible) [type of scan].
Clinician: but as far as any other procedures? {CT screen}
CT Technician: I have no idea.
Janet: Plus or minus CSF tap. {anesthesia record}
Clinician: Um, yeah I would give it [anesthetic countermeasure]. It’s
probably a little low for a unintelligible. {anesthesia record, monitoring
equipment}
Janet: Yeah, he’s 112 [heart rate?]. {monitoring equipment}
Clinician: That’s fine. {monitoring equipment}
Janet: Does it have to be given any particular way? Like . . . {syringe, moni-
toring equipment}
Clinician: Like?
Janet: Like back flow?
Clinician: Intravenously.
Janet: Okay. His heart rate’s already jumped up to 114 from like 112.
Down and back. Much higher now. And his pressure’s already jumped up
to 80 from like 55. {monitoring equipment, anesthesia record}
Janet intended to draw the clinician’s attention to the patient’s low blood
pressure. Looking at those figures, the clinician was also able to see that the
patient’s heart rate was low, a result of the disaggregation of relevant data into
separate data streams. Both pieces of information were essential to determining the
patient’s condition and their close proximity in the bank of monitoring equipment
made a quick comparison relatively effortless. The close proximity of these
DISCURSIVE AGENTS / 315
technologies kept various representations of the patient’s condition present and
reinforced their collective importance to the discursive activity of assessing
condition.
The monitoring equipment also helped articulate information that could be
aggregated with other pieces. Because the equipment was always on, it provided a
constant stream of real-time measurements. Upon recording these outputs onto a
graph printed on the anesthesia record, Janet could see a trend of improvement or
deterioration. The anesthesia record also aggregated other pieces of information,
including the number of drugs given, the amounts, and the schedule of procedures
to be performed. The anesthesia record helped relay information about the other
procedures in which the patient’s condition would be a factor. The clinician asked
what was planned for the patient, indicating that he wanted to know how long the
dog needed to be under anesthesia. Janet retrieved this information from the
anesthesia record and noted that he was scheduled for a CSF tap, a relatively
short procedure. Because the clinician was also within view of the CT scan results
coming back and broadcasted on the CT technician’s screen, he had some sense
of how far along the scan had progressed.
As we learn later, the clinician was attempting to determine how much longer
the dog would be under anesthesia. If the dog was to be revived within a short
amount of time, then that might lead to one course of action. Because the patient
was to undergo another procedure, the clinician determined that the patient’s
condition was poor enough to merit use of a countermeasure. From simple
comparisons of numbers on the monitoring equipment and time estimates taken
from the visible progress ofthe CT scan and from the schedule, relayed by the
anesthesia record, the clinician and Janet were able to coordinate a common
understanding of the patient’s condition and then take action.
CSF Tap Monitoring
After delivering the countermeasure, the results of Janet’s actions were imme-
diately transformed into numerical information, which she read off of the moni-
toring equipment. She saw that the heart rate jumped to 114 from 112 and that
the pulse came up to 80 from 55. The previous figures, she had preserved in the
anesthesia record, which relayed them to her from a point in the past. In their
aggregate, graphed form, the improvement in heart rate and blood pressure was
obvious. Finally, at the start of the second procedure:
Janet: [To the clinician], so, the pressure went up, but only temporarily. And
it’s continuing to drop now, where the last reading says like 47. {anesthesia
record, monitoring equipment}
Clinician: Okay, so they’re just about done. Right? {anesthesia record,
monitoring equipment}
Janet: Yeah, so is that going to be okay? {monitoring equipment}
Clinician: What’s the vaporizer on? {vaporizer}
316 / SWARTS
Janet: What?
Clinician: What’s the vaporizer on? {vaporizer}
Janet: Um, probably two. I can put it down to one and a half. {vaporizer}
Clinician: Yeah. {vaporizer}
Janet: It was only on two for the way over [to the prep room]
Clinician: Okay. We’ll be done soon, so I think wake him up’s going to be
the answer. {monitoring equipment}
Janet: Okay. {monitoring equipment}
At the start of the CSF tap, Janet had moved the patient back to the anesthesia
prep room and was continuing to monitor his condition. She noticed, however,
that the patient’s blood pressure had again started to drop. Responding to Janet’s
question, the clinician looked at the anesthesia record to update his understanding
of the patient’s schedule, in case any further procedures had been ordered after an
ophthalmology team had reviewed the results of the CT scan. The record did not
show any additional procedures, which meant that following the CSF tap the
patient would be revived. Responding to Janet’s implicit question about the
patient’s condition, the clinician appeared to conclude that although he could
see that the patient’s heart rate and blood pressure had again dropped, the best
approach was to wait until the patient was to be revived.
Layering in the local ICTs helped articulate the ways that coordination present
at the level of spoken discourse was afforded by subtle micro-discursive opera-
tions supported by the texts and technologies. The simple interactions between
people and ICTs and their subsequent mediated interactions with each other
underscores the role that ICTs play in creating coordinated discursive activity.
The remainder of this article attempts to outline methodological implications
for empirical investigations of these mediating effects.
METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS:
STUDYING MEDIATED DISCOURSE
The first methodological consideration when undertaking an empirical study
of mediated discourse is choosing an object of study. Following Kaptelinin, I
suggest adopting the “functional organ,” a “functionally integrated, goal-oriented
configuration of internal and external resources” [39, p. 50] as the object of
study. To illustrate, instead of saying that Janet is the object of this study, the
object is instead Janet and all of her mediating technologies, which become
extensions of her ability to fulfill her professional responsibilities. In this case,
the monitoring equipment is inseparable from any analysis of what Janet does
to monitor the patient’s condition.
From a practical standpoint, studying a functional organ requires the researcher
to start with a research subject but then look outward to the technologies and their
physical and virtual environments. Such a shift in research focus makes empirical
studies far more complex; however, even this complexity can be managed through
DISCURSIVE AGENTS / 317
a multi-tiered approach to the collection and analysis of data. While my particular
area of concern is the micro-discursive operations facilitated by ICTs, I will step
back for a moment to discuss an analytic framework in which my methodological
recommendations fit: Clay Spinuzzi’s concepts of the macroscopic, mesoscopic,
and microscopic levels of analysis [8, pp. 25-58].
At the macroscopic level of analysis, our attention goes to culturally-and
historically-situated activities as well as to the environments supporting them.
The culture and history of these activities, broadly defined, will be captured in
the design of spaces where those activities take place. Important sources of
data include patterns of traffic flow, the ways walls are used to create public and
private space, the ways walls create disciplinary spaces (e.g., rooms for clinical
pathology, for radiology, for anesthesia, etc.), and the lines of sight allowing
people sharing a space to see each other’s work.
The cultural and historical significance of these activities will also be cap-
tured in the histories and designs of the technologies found there. The technol-
ogies may be designed to create information that is specific to the discursive
activities typically supported in a given space, helping users understand the
discourses that they enact.
The mesoscopic level is the level of actions. Here we begin to see circum-
scribed tasks that are attributable to people who may appear principally respon-
sible for carrying them out. Actions such as identifying a set of symptoms,
estimating damage on a vehicle, or reading a street sign appear to be more limited
in scope, but they are integral parts of larger activities (e.g., diagnosing an
illness, writing an insurance settlement, or providing driving directions). People
are assisted in these actions by technologies and other discursive artifacts that
help guide that activity toward pre-scripted ends.
Spinuzzi argues that many of the mediating qualities associated with the macro
and mesoscopic levels are captured in genres and in the interfaces of technologies,
which he argues have considerable impact on operations at the microscopic
level. At this level, we are looking through the ecologies that define the character
of any discursive activity, through the discursive actions by which those activities
are carried out, and to the simple discursive operations underneath.
Certainly genres of information impose downward coordination on many
activities. Knowledge of the kind of discursive object one wants to create can
clearly guide how one interacts with information. But when the discursive object
is not clear, when no genre explicitly guides its creation, and when the object is
fashioned from streams of data that are distributed physically and cognitively, I
suggest that we should look at the discursive agency that people tacitly attribute to
their technologies. This perspective takes us further toward a consideration of the
semantic potential [22] of information technology as mediators of discursive action.
Each of these levels describes activity in successively richer detail. Although I
have separated them here, they are integrated in analysis. In order to understand
why Janet makes numerical notations on a sheet of graph paper, one must
318 / SWARTS
understand that doing so is part of the process of tracking vital signs, which is
part of administering anesthesia. Each level helps explain what is happening on
other levels. Consideration of activity at these levels suggests different research
questions and objects of study, as outlined in the following table (Table 1).
Employing these levels of analysis to anesthesia, we see that it breaks down
into a variety of discursive actions, such as intubation, monitoring vital signs, and
tracking patient condition. Members of the anesthesia team accomplish these
tasks with the assistance of available texts and technologies, which help them
structure and organize available information so that it can be readily used. These
discursive actions then break down into simpler micro-discursive operations
such as reading equipment displays, comparing sets of numbers, and making
hash marks or simple notations on graph paper, which help create basic conditions
for coordination.
DISCURSIVE AGENTS / 319
Table 1. Research Questions and Objects of Study at Macro-, Meso-,
and Microscopic Levels
Macroscopic Mesoscopic Microscopic
Question
Orientation
Question
Types
Objects
of Study
Activity: culturally and
historically defined.
What kinds of
discursive work are
these technologies
intended to serve?
How does the archi-
tecture of a room
arrange people and
information?
e.g., how has the
anesthesia record
evolved over time to
support the creation
of condition narratives?
Architectural layout
of room. Cultural,
institutional, and
professional histories
of support technologies.
Actions: goal-directed
tasks that collectively
constitute an activity.
In the course of what
goal-oriented tasks do
people interact with
technologies?
What discursive func-
tions do users require
their technologies to
handle?
e.g., in service of what
information needs do
students use local
computer terminals?
User-defined tasks and
the sequences of
technological, textual,
and interpersonal
interactions enacted
to carry out those tasks.
Operations: simple
physical or mental
interactions by which
actions are carried out.
What kinds of infor-
mation do technologies
create (e.g., in mode
and form)?
Who has access to the
technologies?
How do the users
interact with those
technologies (e.g.,
reading, touching, etc.)?
e.g., how does the
student use patient
information that is
collected by touch?
Simple observations of
habitual technology
use. Orientation of
technologies to all
participants.
Data Collection
Case studies performed in naturalistic settings will provide the best study
design for witnessing the mediating effects of technology. In some instances,
however, quasi-experimentation may be a possibility, assuming that the researcher
can ethically exert some control over the kinds of technologies used if not the
people who actually use them.
The first step in data collection is to identify all of the actors involved in the
discursive activity, both human and non-human. Equally important, we must
have some understanding of the nature of the relationships between actors, the
motivations of human actors, and the design histories of the non-human elements.
The level of detail depends on the depth of the claim.
Types of Data
Much of the analysis of discursive activity will be framed by the researchers’
notes, through which one should attempt to create a rich picture of the environ-
ments in which people interact with texts, technologies, and each other. Initially,
researchers should gather information about the physical layout of the work
spaces. Descriptive notes, sketches, and photographs of these places will pro-
vide some information about the lines of sight, public and private areas, places
where people congregate, places where information is stored, and movements
throughout. Just as the architecture of any building guides users to inhabit and
move through it in a particular manner, so too do the spaces in which people work.
Make a note of technologies, texts, instruments, and other artifacts that may
be present. Note their arrangement in space. From these notes it is possible to
perform some macroscopic analysis of the work setting by constructing a map
of the networked interactions between humans and non-humans. Figure 2 is
a selection from a map showing Janet and the mediated interactions with her
patient. The map shows the possible points of connection and routes of connection
to the different sources of information. The clinician, for instance, can see all of
the monitoring equipment, and the patient. He can also talk to Janet. These are
routes to the patient and sources of mediated information about the patient.
Maps such as these can be further enriched with information about the cultural,
professional, and institutional histories of the technologies in use. What are the
precursors to the texts in use? To what other institutional discourses does the
information in those texts contribute? What technologies preceded blood pressure
machines or CT scans? How are the mediating perspectives of those precursor
technologies folded into the new devices, for example, in the way that old
typewriter designs are folded into modern keyboard layouts and modern concepts
of desktops are carried forward on computer operating systems? These progenitor
technologies mediate interaction and information in ways that are compounded
[40] in the interfaces of the technologies that the research participants may be
using.
320 / SWARTS
With notes about the physical layout of the room, we can tell, for instance,
if there are areas where a technology might not be visible. If this is the case, it
may be important to know if that technology has a broadcast function and if
it broadcasts visually, audibly, or both. Take pictures of interfaces and samples of
output. The aim is to understand how these technologies create information,
represent it symbolically, store it, and share it. It is important to know, for
instance, that a blood pressure machine records pressures as systolic and
diastolic pressures, that it only provides a moment-by-moment display, and that
it shares the information by broadcasting it to anyone within sight of the interface.
When these technologies are used, attempt to see how they are used, by whom,
under what circumstances, in what order, and in combination with what other
texts or technologies?
Another type of data to capture is talk. What are the research participants
saying, to whom, and when? It is often the case in knowledge work that, to invoke
Austin [41], we do things with words. We create work objects out of words
[42] and we perform discursive tasks on those objects in consistent ways that
can be tracked by analyzing the patterns of language we use to talk about them
[43]. To capture what is spoken in addition to information about how participants
DISCURSIVE AGENTS / 321
Figure 2. Network of mediating agents in anesthesia.
use technologies, audio or video tapes are recommended. By studying talk, we can
determine what discursive functions the participants assign to their technologies.
At the same time, we should gather information about how people interact
with technologies, texts, and other people. Much of this information can be
supplied with a researcher’s descriptive notes. Diligent researchers should, how-
ever, annotate their data with additional information about the interactions as
they occur. Video obviously provides the same kind of detail, but may be more
difficult to transcribe. As seen earlier, I marked the transcript of Janet’s work
with notes about the technologies that she was looking at or directly using. As a
result, the transcript not only shows what she was doing with words, but what
technologies and texts she was oriented to while performing those actions.
A caveat: an outsider is not always the best person to make observations about
the kinds of artifacts that may be important to an activity. Researchers should
be mindful of their outsider status and attempt to triangulate their data whenever
possible. Interviews with participants can fill in some of the gaps, especially when
the research participants are allowed to comment on the researcher’s assumptions
and interpretations of the activities observed. I often recount or show a section
of activity and then provide an explanation of what I saw happening, encouraging
the participant to correct my interpretation. I also ask the research participants
to point out technologies, texts, instruments, and other artifacts that they consider
to be important. I then give additional attention to these artifacts during the
course of my observations. A team-based approach, with both insiders and out-
siders on the team may be a worthwhile approach.
Another source of triangulation is to make multiple observations of the same
participants and of different participants performing the same tasks. Look for
ways in which their performances are similar when using the same technologies
and texts.
Data Analysis
The object of analysis when looking at transcripts and notes about a discursive
activity are mediated interactions. There are a variety of ways to approach such
an analysis, although an inductive approach that attempts to understand actions
by looking at the underlying operations may lead to a more precise under-
standing of the kinds of mediation at work.
An inductive approach to data analysis would begin with close readings of the
transcripts, from which researchers could identify micro-discursive operations
and the discursive actions that arise from them. Data analysis should begin with
an inductive approach to coding transcripts of the observations and interviews.
These categories of discursive activity should arise from iterative readings of the
transcripts. The participants will reveal many of the discursive functions that
they attribute to their technologies along with their expectations about the kind
of work those technologies contribute.
322 / SWARTS
Once a set of discursive actions can be identified and defined in a coding
scheme then the researcher can look for instances of that discursive activity
throughout. For each instance of the activity, one can catalogue the interactions
between people, technology, and texts in order to understand the actions and
operations constituting that activity. Where possible, researchers should attempt
to compare instances of the same discursive actions mediated by different sources
and emerging from different sets of micro-discursive operations to see if the
outcome is different. One can use the network map to sketch out the order of inter-
actions or the “mediation path” that coincides with the discursive act in question.
A mediation path shows possible points of re-structuring and re-organizing that
information goes through. It is a handful of mediating resources set into temporary
coordination to serve an ad hoc discursive goal.
If we know that Janet makes notations on the anesthesia record in order to
mark changes in a patient’s condition, it is useful to know (confirmed by obser-
vations) that all marks in the anesthesia record are preceded by Janet looking
at and reading (confirmed in the interview) the readouts of the monitoring equip-
ment. One can then examine the interactions between Janet and the monitoring
equipment to see how these interactions mediate information about the patient
and subsequently mediate Janet’s interaction with the anesthesia record. What
we have isolated here is a mediation path (see Figure 3) that influences the
enactment of a discursive activity: monitoring a patient’s condition.
The doctor does not see the anesthesia record and so his source of information
about the patient is not directly mediated by that text, except in so far as he gets
information from Janet, whose interpretation of the patient comes through the
anesthesia record, which holds an aggregate representation of blood pressure
readings, which are numerical transformations of the patient’s actual blood
pressure. From an analytic standpoint, we can observe the simple interactions
that Janet has with the anesthesia record (e.g., filling in blanks, making hash
marks, etc.), look at the simple interactions between the anesthesia record and
the blood pressure machine (e.g., a recording of the machine display), and finally
between the blood pressure machine and the patient (e.g., transformation of actual
pressure into a numerical measurement of actual pressure). Through these trans-
formations, Janet is able to support her physical observations of the patient with
symbolic information about the patient mediated through the blood pressure
machine and the anesthesia record. The clinician can then verify the information
he receives from Janet via his reading of the blood pressure machine and his
observations of the patient, two information sources to which he does have access.
CONCLUSION: APPLYING THE DESIGN
Although the technologies used by the members of the anesthesia team
were designed to serve useful ends, it is also important to consider the ways
that the technologies change information-centric knowledge work in possibly
DISCURSIVE AGENTS / 323
counterproductive ways. Just as these technologies alter the form and distribution
of information in useful ways, they also, potentially, negatively impact other
work practices by altering both our means of access to information and our
ability to use it. Even based on the positive interactions described in this brief
study, we can intuit some possible negative outcomes, which when studied in
light of the methodological concerns outlined in the second half of this article,
present important empirical questions.
Transformation technologies convert information across representational
states. These states, as Winsor [44] indicates, are associated with different kinds
of knowledge and power. When transformational technologies are put into play,
especially when they both collect and transform information, one concern is how
the transformation opens or closes access to that information. While the trans-
formation might make the information more easily connectable to other streams
of information, one needs to consider how others may be using that information
and the impact of the transformation on their use.
Dis/aggregation technologies can constrain work activities for the same
reasons. Instead of transforming information across representational states, aggre-
gation technologies transform by embedding information into units that may
324 / SWARTS
Figure 3. Mediation path showing Janet’s interaction with the patient.
require a different kind of expertise to unlock or that may speak to one particular
use of the information at the expense of others. When information is locked into
an aggregate form, some audiences’ interests will be better served than others.
Disaggregation has a similar effect, requiring users to assemble their own dis-
cursive objects from separate streams of data.
Broadcast technologies have the impact of making private information public.
In some situations it is useful to have information broadcast in an accessible
form. Those receiving the information can apply it to their own ends and work
independently. An unintended result may be that work relationships are altered,
information-sharing and information-processing relationships may be changed.
Publicly available information also enables supervision and surveillance. What
are the effects of these changes on discursive activity?
Relay technologies facilitate the transfer of information across place and time.
They ensure that useful pieces of information can be called up and applied in a
variety of settings. However, many relay technologies are not sensitive to context.
They are not aware of the ways that information becomes useful as it is shared
among people, texts, technologies, and other streams of information in a specific
context and moment. The content itself may be unnecessarily constraining or,
worse, misleading and uninformative.
Regarding both the positive and negative qualities of interacting with tech-
nologies as discursive agents, the point is the same: these technologies have
prescriptions that are designed into their functionality and their interfaces. Where
this issue concerns us is when these technologies are increasingly used to mediate
knowledge work. When people start to interact with their technologies as dis-
cursive agents, responsibility must begin to shift to those who are critically
equipped to assess the value and future design directions of these tools. Thus, a
secondary purpose of this article has been to discuss the methodological impera-
tives associated with studying these effects.
By studying the discursive functions of ICTs and observing their mediating
impact on discursive activity, we may see how successful coordination is afforded
by ICTs. Perhaps more importantly, in situations where coordination fails, an
analysis like that discussed in this article may point to the systemic ways that
ICTs contribute to the problem.
DISCURSIVE AGENTS / 325
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326 / SWARTS
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DISCURSIVE AGENTS / 327
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Other Articles On Communication By This Author
Swarts, Jason, Together with Technology: Writing Review, Enculturation and Techno-
logical Mediation, Baywood, Amityville, New York, 2007.
Swarts, Jason, Mobility and Composition: The Architecture of Coherence in Non-Places,
Technical Communication Quarterly, 16:3, 2007.
Swarts, Jason, Coherent Fragments: The Problem of Mobility and Genred Information,
Written Communication, 23:2, 2006.
Swarts, Jason, Textual Grounding: How People Turn Texts into Tools, Journal of Techn-
ical Writing and Communication, 34:1, 2004.
Direct reprint requests to:
Jason Swarts
Dept. of English
North Carolina State University
Campus Box 8105
Raleigh, NC 27695
e-mail: [email protected]
DISCURSIVE AGENTS / 329
