Viewing content moderation as an infrastructure, this article uses data from interviews with 17 content moderators to argue that technical and professional communication (TPC) scholars and practitioners can use normative ethics, such as an ethics of care, as a starting place to study compliance documents and can help us move beyond critique to understand how decision-making processes are participating in ethical maintenance affected by the infrastructural freedom on various sites.
As generative AI reshapes the technical communication workplace, how do practicing professionals assess its impact on the core competencies of technical editing? This article presents the results from an exploratory survey of 41 technical communication professionals recruited via LinkedIn in the spring of 2024. Grounded in the foundational competency framework established by Rainey et al. (2005), the survey elicits practitioner attitudes toward AI's effectiveness in key areas, including writing clearly for specific audiences, learning and assessing technologies, and evaluating one's own work and the work of others. Results indicate that professionals broadly view AI as improving workflow and editing tasks, with Grammarly, Adobe CC, and MS Word emerging as preferred tools. At the same time, over two-thirds of respondents expressed concern about job displacement, and open-ended responses emphasized the need for organizational leadership, ethical frameworks, human oversight, and upskilling. Situating these findings within the historical pattern of technological disruptions in technical communication - from Taylorism to the Information Revolution - the article considers implications for the evolving role of technical editors in an AI-enabled workplace, including the emerging area of agentic AI and the potential for community-based knowledge infrastructure.
This article examines generative AI's affordances and limitations in technical editing through a care ethics framework. Using collaborative autoethnography, one instructor and four undergraduate students reflect on navigating care, GenAI, and author-editor relationships in a technical editing course. Findings suggest that GenAI can support novice editors as a communication tool but falls short of enacting the relational, context-sensitive care ethical editing demands. We call for editing pedagogy that foregrounds care alongside critical engagement with technologies.
By integrating theories of genre, kairos, and spheres, this study argues that lay and scholar patients became alternative experts in the legitimization of Long COVID. These alternative experts grasped kairotic moments to address the risks they suffered by creating and mobilizing patient-created knowledge to migrate across spheres via genre changes. The findings reveal the knowledge migration trend through two case studies and provide implications for patients, experts, and institutions.
This case study examines the evolving integration of generative AI into an upper-level technical editing course. Grounded in social justice and ethical frameworks, the authors argue that AI integration should center human experience rather than uncritical efficiency. Student coauthors offer firsthand perspectives on engaging with AI as emerging professionals, including experiences with informed refusal. The article concludes with iterative curricular revisions and recommendations for preparing technical editors to work ethically with and for AI-enabled contexts.
Technical and professional communication (TPC) programs are increasingly tasked with delivering both theoretical depth and practical skills in environments marked by shrinking budgets, faculty shortages, and rapid technological change. This qualitative study explores how faculty use course supplements, ranging from guest lectures and OER to video platforms and certification tools, to maintain pedagogical quality and curricular coverage despite resource limitations. Semi-structured interviews with seven TPC faculty across diverse institutions reveal how they navigate institutional and disciplinary pressures by integrating supplemental materials that align with their pedagogical goals across their program. Findings highlight three primary themes: staffing shortfalls, hidden labor involved in vetting and integrating supplemental content, and the enduring tension between teaching theoretical frameworks and workplace-readiness skills. Across these themes, participants also described evolving expectations for multimodal instruction as a recurring pressure shaping decisions about supplementation. Faculty also described a need to be strategic, often outsourcing instruction for technologies to digital platforms while reserving classroom time for higher-order learning objectives. When prompted about LinkedIn Learning, participants generally recognized its accessibility and structured content as useful for supplementing instruction; however, views varied on the value of its microcredential opportunities. Ultimately, the study shows that course supplements are not merely pedagogical choices but labor management strategies within under-resourced programs. When thoughtfully applied, these tools help sustain the intellectual mission of TPC programs by allowing instructors to focus their time and expertise on what cannot be automated or outsourced: context-rich, critical, and human-centered learning. In this context, LinkedIn Learning - because of its vetted, professionally produced, and accessible content - emerges as a particularly strategic supplement, allowing faculty to prioritize high-impact pedagogical work.
This special issue examines generative AI's impact on technical editing, addressing evolving editor roles, ethics, accessibility, and pedagogy. Five articles offer complementary perspectives: Agbozo, Cummings, and Reilly reconceptualize editors as content designers; Sapienza surveys practitioners on AI in editorial workflows; Bryson et al. examine care ethics and generative AI in an undergraduate technical editing course; Mallette, Gray, and Krohn integrate AI literacy with social justice in editing education; and Baker and Weech advocate human-centered approaches in the classroom. We conclude with a research agenda for sustaining human editorial judgment.
This article examines the evolving role of technical editors in an era of generative AI through the lens of machine rhetorics - the study of how computational systems engage in communication and persuasion. Drawing on structured interviews conducted in late 2024 with 12 practicing editors, writers, and content designers, the article documents how professionals are integrating AI tools into their workflows and compares their insights with current scholarship on AI and technical editing. Findings reveal that although AI tools enhance speed and efficiency in routine editing tasks, they require sustained human oversight for substantive editing, fact-checking, and contextual judgment. Participants identified a persistent expectation gap between what AI tools promise and what they deliver, particularly regarding factual accuracy and rhetorical nuance. The article argues that AI is prompting a reconfiguration of the technical editor's role toward that of a content designer skilled in deploying machine rhetorics, and it offers implications for both workplace practice and pedagogy. Follow-up interviews conducted in early 2026 reinforce these findings while highlighting evolving concerns about access, tool integration, and the mental health impacts of routine AI use.
This article argues for a human-centered, competency-first approach to integrating generative artificial intelligence (genAI) into the technical editing classroom. Drawing on scholarship in usability and technical editing pedagogy, we examine how instructors can foster a critical understanding of genAI's strengths, limitations, and ethical challenges. We argue that expertise in these competencies must precede reliance on genAI. We conclude with pedagogical tools that instructors can use to help students develop both human-centered and AI-assisted editorial proficiencies.
This study investigates the Glow fertility app's design through a cognitive walkthrough and user review content analysis to assess its impact on user empowerment. We frame our analysis within user experience and design justice, and find that Glow's ad-heavy, cluttered interface, and limited personalization hinder menstrual health management. We argue that FemTech apps must prioritize inclusive and user-centered design, offering personalized content aligned with diverse menstrual goals to support user empowerment.
This article examines Requests for Funding Proposals (RFPs) as boundary objects at the intersections of scientific research, technical, and professional communication (TPC), and social justice. Focusing on one NASA RFP, we analyze how inclusion, diversity, equity, and access (IDEA) requirements compel writers to reimagine how scientific work is conducted and how with interdisciplinary teams work across social justice and scientific research.
This study analyzes 200 technical communication job postings from three U.S. cities to examine how employers define artificial intelligence (AI) competencies. Findings reveal increasing demand for AI familiarity, especially in content-focused roles and larger markets, though language describing AI skills remains inconsistent. Traditional skills remain essential. We conclude with recommendations for integrating AI instruction into technical communication curricula to better prepare students for a workplace shaped by emerging AI technologies.
The first yearbook of the Michigan College of Mines (1915-1916) included a feature about the short-lived student drama club, the "Micomi Club" (1911-1914). It was ending because male students could no longer play female characters: "no mining engineer could be a lady." Using historical case study methods, this article argues that the yearbook feature demonstrates, in content, worries about the destabilizing potential of drag performance and, in form, the uses of humor in technical writing.
