Gurak, Laura J. (1996). 'Technology, Community, and Technical Communication on the Internet: The Lotus MarketPlace and Clipper Chip Controversies.' Journal of Business and Technical Communication. 1: 81-99.
This article is a rhetorical criticism of two cases of computer-mediated communication. Gurak gathered texts from newsgroups, analyzed the rhetoric of email posts, conducted interviews and observed participants.
The article begins with a useful literature review for those interested in getting started on computer-mediated communication; the lit review is followed by a brief discussion of her methodology, a brief narrative describing the two cases she studied, and then four subsections of the body: The Technical Communities of Usenet Newsgroups, Inaccurate Information in Cyberspace, Complex Technical Information in On-line Communities, Delivery and Community. The article ends with a summative conclusion and a call for more research.
The first subsection of the body, "Technical Communities," explains the nature of usenet newsgroups and how they relate to listservs. The second section focuses on the MarketPlace case. Giving examples of messages that appeared on the internet, Gurak shows that this emotionally-charged and relatively simple technical issue lent itself to wide circulation and to distortion. In the third section, she focuses on the Clipper Chip case, emphasizing the contrast between the two cases by showing that the second was more technical and less personal. As a result the messages weren't circulated as widely, less distortion occurred, and the emotional tone of the messages remained more neutral than in the first case. In the fourth section, she discusses the growing awareness that computer-mediated communication is making the fifth canon of rhetoric--delivery--an important locus of research.
I found the article useful primarily because the lit review is a good guide to some of the literature on computer-mediated communication and to others who have viewed these issues from a rhetorical perspective. The practical use of the article for our students would be that the study shows that different kinds of information fare differently as cyber documents. If accuracy is of tantamount importance in technical communication, then the phenomenon of distortion associated with multiple reproductions needs to be taken into account.
1. Dale Sullivan's review of Laura Gurak's article. URL: http://www.hu.mtu.edu/hu_dept/tc@mtu/articlereviews/gurak_rv.htm. Date accessed: 18th February 2005.