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?