Faculty Research
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Political Economy of Peer Production(2020) Birkinbine, Benjamin J.; O'Neil, Mathieu; Pentzold, Christian; Toupin, SophieItem CCID: Articulating a Design-Thinking Center for Multimodal Communication(2016) Macauley, William J. Jr.; Hepworth, Katherine; Mays, ChrisIn higher education institutions, writing in the disciplines (WID) and writing across the curriculum (WAC) programs are commonly received reluctantly by other disciplines and programs (Perelman). The context for these programs - servicing schools and departments but remaining apart from them - creates problems for facilitating effective service. At the University of Nevada, Reno, a new program began in 2015, called Composition and Communication in the Disciplines (CCID) and focusing on building student writing, presenting, and multimodal communication. To counter disciplinary reticence about such programs, CCID uses design thinking at its relational heuristic. In this context, design thinking serves as a means to engage with diverse disciplines and modes of communication active on campus while avoiding the perception of imposed disciplinarity. Although a number of scholars have written about the parallels between design and writing (Purdy; Norman), design thinking has yet to be used as part of a writing program in this way. This panel presentation includes a short overview of CCID, followed by details of how and why this design thinking-based, multimodal communication program is developing. Hepworth will focus on how design thinking is used to teach the building of effective multimodal student presentations. Mays will focus on how design thinking can be used to enrich writing, encouraging students to see it as active engagement with dynamic audiences. Macauley will discuss design thinking as an opportunity to improve student agency and self-efficacy as communicators.Item History, power and visual communication artefacts(2016) Hepworth, KatherineThe role visual communication plays in disciplining and governing our thoughts, identities and behaviours has seldom been given the attention it deserves in historical investigation. This article argues that visual communication artefacts are a valuable source of historical evidence, particularly for historians who are interested in the interplay of ideology and power. Artefacts are approached from the epistemological position that they cannot be value neutral. The countless artefacts we see and use in daily life constantly reinforce or contradict our beliefs, values and self-identities. It is in reaction to this constant push and pull with the artefacts around us that we form, maintain and re-form our understandings of the world and of ourselves. This article presents a theory of how visual communication artefacts are imbued with the governance ideologies of the time and place in which they were created. It argues that visual communication artefacts disseminate governance ideologies through time and space, in ever lessening degrees of discipline and control. For the historian interested in power, ideological shifts or changing popular attitudes, visual communication artefacts are therefore a rich, largely untapped resource. In order to frame the argument, this article begins by outlining my deconstructionist perspective on the role of historians and histories. This is followed by an argument for the Foucauldian understanding of governmental power and discourse technologies as robust theoretical foundations for a theory of how discourses become embodied in artefacts. It concludes by suggesting the opportunities for using discourse technologies (embodied governance) as a framework for investigating the role of artefacts in power exchanges.Item Visual Methods in Psychology: Using and Interpreting Images in Qualitative Research(2012) Hepworth, KatherinePsychology is without doubt a broad, deep and well-established research field. Its status as a field that is part-health care, part-science and part-humanities gives psychological research broad terrain to explore, and these explorations regularly provide headline grabbing findings with broad impacts. While it is respected for these strengths, to the uninducted observer, psychology does not come to mind as a field in which diverse visual experimentation readily occurs. The pairing of ‘visual methods' and ‘psychology' in the title of this book is perhaps initially surprising. Nevertheless, it contains 22 articles on psychological research that involve significant visual elements at some stage of the research process. These articles document research from a broad range of sub-fields within psychological research including conversation analysis, discursive psychology, narrative psychology, personal construct theory and psychoanalysis.Item Governmentality, Technologies, & Truth Effects in Communication Design(2018) Hepworth, KatherineThis chapter argues that communication design knowledge and artifacts are inherently governmental. As a means of communication that combines aesthetics and function, communication design knowledge is a product and producer of a uniquely pervasive form of governance that has seldom been studied. While several researchers and philosophers have expressed interest in the relationship between power, communication design knowledge and communication design artifacts, the governance inherent in communication design has yet to be seriously investigated. Building on the author's PhD research, this chapter extends Foucault's theories of discursive technologies, truth effects, and governmentality to account for how communication design artifacts and practitioners participate in the discourses surrounding them. Embodied discourse is proposed as the mechanism for this participation. From this perspective, all artifacts are seen as enmeshed in discursive entanglements, continually being imbued with regulatory meaning, and in turn, regulating their viewers and users. Finally, a framework for investigating the technologies implicit in communication design is presented, along with a discussion of the regulatory qualities of communication design artifacts, and of specific processes within communication design practice.