[ATTW-L] Oct. 15 Deadline: Special Issue on Technical Communication In/Against Security Logics

[Christopher Morris]

Dear Colleagues:

*The Journal of Technical Writing and Communication* (*JTWC*) invites
article proposals for an upcoming special issue that examines how technical
communication contributes to past, current, and future understandings of
what it means to be “secure.”



*Proposals Due:* October 15, 2024

*Publication Date:* October 2025 (tentative)



*Guest Editor: *Dr. Christopher J. Morris, Assistant Professor of Writing,
York University

*Contact Info:* christopher.jh.morris at gmail.com



To read the full CFP, please continue scrolling or visit this Google Doc
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C-EDE-yohJxtC41pBw_3ArMaKPK8tKlu4XS8ifkA-oU/edit?usp=sharing>
.


Special Issue Description

This special issue of *JTWC* explores how technical communicators engage
methods, cultures, and discourses that rely upon threats to justify
practices and policies. Such justifications—often used to mitigate,
neutralize, or manage real and purported danger—are referred to as
“security logics.” Today, security logics are leveraged to justify
institutional and organizational actions related to immigration, public
health, policing, (inter)national security, climate, reproductive rights,
privacy and surveillance, election integrity, and emergency management.
Often, while couched in a promise of safety, policies enacted in these
areas contribute to the erosion of civil liberties, violations of human
rights, and the perpetuation of racial and economic injustices. Meanwhile,
acting as conduits for security logics are technical communicators and
common technical communication genres like manuals, instructions, reports,
data visualizations, proposals, translations, and UX/UI design. Indeed,
securitization can be inherent in technical communication and the
discipline’s defining values of safety and utility. This special issue
seeks both to confront technical communication’s complicity in corporate,
organizational, and state-sponsored security practices and to uncover how
ethical technical communication destabilizes conventional security logics
for more just outcomes.


Security Logics and Technical Communication

While *security measures* are generally understood as preparation for
threats, *security logics* are rhetorics, discourses, and communication
practices that construct or describe threats––and thereby empower
organizations and institutions to act in managing said threats.
Researchers, typically in critical security studies, tackle security logics
using frameworks like rhetorical theory, actor-network theory, and
ethnography to articulate how discursive and cultural justifications
influence individual, group, and organizational behaviors (Anwar et al.,
2020; Macías-Rojas, 2018; Sutler & Mutlu, 2013). Wrange (2022) has
described security logics as “the interplay of discursive practices on the
constructions of identity, security governance and the perception of
threats” (p. 577). For Stępka (2022), security logics comprise “an
intersubjective practice of meaning making that triggers a particular
security-oriented mind-set and shapes the perception of both the nature of
the problem and actions undertaken to deal with it” (p. 34). Technical
communication externalizes both the perception of threats and the actions
that address threats. After all, the words, visuals, and designs that
technical communicators create carry rhetorical meanings as well as
practical and technical applications.



Moreover, according to Berling et al. (2022), “Securitization theory was
not set up to just describe a reality of security politics. Rather, the
construction of the concept of securitization also reflected political and
ethical considerations about the political performativity involved in any
use (or non-definition) of security” (p. 7). Thus, technical communication
scholarship can add to security studies and vice versa by considering
performativity as not just political discourse, but also technical and
communicative labor constitutive of “security” (and raising the question of
security for whom). Notably, in this regard, Longo (2000) contends that
documentation and operation standards in technical writing can contribute
to workplace cultures of panopticism. Likewise, Scott (2003) illustrates
how medical technology and rhetoric can constitute surveillance of
marginalized groups; and, on the other hand, Ding (2009), for example, has
addressed such concerns by considering how unauthorized risk communication
amid the SARS epidemic reveals possibilities for more ethical technical
communication.



Given the prominence of technical communication in maintaining
securitization’s entangled infrastructures (as noted in the works of
scholars like Longo and Scott for instance), several definitive questions
arise for scholars and practitioners of technical communication:



·      What are the technical communication genres, technologies,
discourses, and workflows that contribute to security apparatuses, and to
what effect?



·      How do security logics in technical communication influence,
stigmatize, or support particular audiences, communities, or spaces?



·      In what ways do rights advocates and those affected by security
logics leverage technical communication for their own personal and local
benefit?



·      How can technical communicators ethically engage technology,
institutionalization, and data without passively succumbing to the
perniciousness of security logics?



·      How should we use technical communication to distinguish
meaningfully between justified and unjustified security logics for
securitization adherents as well as skeptics?



·      How might security studies inform, clarify, or expand technical
communication and vice versa?



Research in technical communication has largely engaged security logics
only indirectly, by way of several discrete (though related) subareas,
namely ethics, risk/crisis communication, surveillance studies, and
tactical communication. Therefore, we have an opportunity to examine
security logics on its own terms as principle and praxis. We might consider:


Ethics

The field of ethics in technical communication analyzes the extent to which
writers and designers can affect outcomes, both good and bad. This
consideration can be applied to security apparatuses that rely on
documentation, technology, and rhetoric. Katz (1992) identified the “ethic
of expediency” in his rhetorical analysis of Nazi technical documentation
that was used in Germany’s bid to “secure” the Third Reich. Stanchevici
(2013) later adopts Katz’s concerns about expediency, by showing how
security service reports rhetorically classified Soviet citizens in ways
that empowered Stalin’s regime. Similarly, Ridolfo & Hart-Davidson’s 2019
edited collection *Rhet Ops: Rhetoric and Information Warfare* establishes
a critical imbrication between digital technology, applied rhetoric, and
securitization in the post-9/11 U.S.


Risk/Crisis Communication

Organizations and communities use risk/crisis communication to convey
information about threats. For best results, these communication processes
rely on effective, ethical (though oftentimes challenging) methods. Scott
(2003), for example, has shown how particularistic constructions of “risk”
related to HIV deployed security logics that actually further imperiled
communities-at-risk. Youngblood (2012) has examined how an “access-security
tension” influenced local government agencies in how they shared public
information about emergencies. More recently, Young (2020) has explored how
user experience design and technical communication contributed to a
“privacy crisis” for Zoom post-COVID, wherein the application’s security
and users’ privacy had been compromised.


Surveillance Studies

Surveillance generally entails monitoring others to ensure security.
Technical communicators participate in this monitoring, sometimes
intentionally, sometimes not.  Young (2023), in articulating the
ever-expanding relationship between technical communication and
surveillance, has noted that “Themes of cultural imperialism are
particularly present in national security rhetoric.” In considering
pedagogical implications, Pflugfelder & Reeves (2024) demonstrate how
surveillance and security motivate pedagogical approaches to artificial
intelligence.


Tactical Technical Communication

Tactical technical communication, a do-it-yourself approach practiced by
non-state, non-institutional actors, offers a potential starting point from
which to conceptualize technical communication beyond or against security
logics. Randall (2022) has called for a tactical technical communication
not based in utility, while Aguilar (2022) has recognized “indirect
communication” practiced by marginalized groups as additionally “tactical.”


Practical Relevance

Security logics have wide-ranging applications, and technical
communication’s role in those applications—be they digital technology,
surveillance, privacy and data concerns, or otherwise—may continue to come
under greater scrutiny. Thus, this special issue provides practitioners,
researchers, and educators opportunities: to revisit codes of conduct and
ethics; to develop heuristics and strategies for identifying effective and
ineffective security practices; to draft and implement appropriate, humane
risk/crisis communication campaigns; to think through ways to engage
students and colleagues in discussions about the real-world impact of
technical communication labor; and to generate other next steps for those
invested in articulating and/or responding to security logics.


Specific Topics that May Be Covered

This call invites proposals for case studies and original research articles
that explore a relationship between security logics and technical
communication practices. Proposals by U.S. and international contributors
from higher education, industry, and government are all welcome and
encouraged. Submission topics may include but are not limited to:



·      Risk/crisis communication

·      Surveillance studies

·      Usability/UX/UI

·      Medical/health communication

·      Tactical technical communication

·      Documentation

·      Border rhetorics

·      Rhetorical legitimation

·      Ethics

·      Public writing

·      Organizational communication


Submission Guidelines

Please email proposals (of no more than 400 words, not including citations
and references) as a .doc file to Chris Morris (
christopher.jh.morris at gmail.com), with the subject line “[Last Name] JTWC
Proposal on Security Logics.”



All proposals should include:



·      Author name(s), affiliation(s), and email address(es)

·      A provisional, descriptive title for the proposed article

·      A summary of the topic/focus of the proposed article

·      An explanation of how the proposed topic/focus connects to the theme
of the issue

·      An overview of the structure/organization of the proposed article
(i.e. how the author will address the topic within the context of the
proposed article)



Questions about this special issue and prospective submissions should be
directed to the guest editor, Chris Morris, at
christopher.jh.morris at gmail.com.
Timeline

CFP published: *August 15, 2024*

Proposals due (400-word max): *October 15, 2024*

Authors notified by: *November 15, 2024*

Full manuscript drafts due: *March 15, 2025*

Reviews to authors: *May 15, 2025*

Revised manuscript due: *July 15, 2025*

Special issue published: *October 2025*
References

Aguilar, G. L. (2022). Framing undocumented migrants as tactical technical
communicators: The tactical in humanitarian technical communication. *2022
IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (ProComm)*,
246–250. https://doi.org/10.1109/ProComm53155.2022.00051



Anwar, N. H., Sawas, A., & Mustafa, D. (2020). Without water, there is no
life: Negotiating everyday risks and gendered insecurities in Karachi’s
informal settlements. *Urban Studies*, 57(6), 1320–1337.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098019834160



Berling, T. V., Gad, U. P., Petersen, K. L., & Wæver, O. (2022). *Translations
of security: a framework for the study of unwanted futures* (1st ed.).
Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003175247



Ding, H. (2009). Rhetorics of alternative media in an emerging epidemic:
SARS, censorship, and extra-institutional risk communication. *Technical
Communication Quarterly*, 18(4), 327–350.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10572250903149548



Katz, S. B. (1992). The ethic of expediency: Classical rhetoric,
technology, and the Holocaust. *College English*, 54(3), 255–275.
https://doi.org/10.2307/378062



Longo, B. (2000). *Giant brains controlling scientific knowledge: A history
(in progress) of human/computer relationships*. New Histories of Writing,
Session 2. 2000 MMLA Convention. Kansas City, MO.

https://case.edu/affil/sce/Texts/Longo.html



Macías-Rojas, P. (2018). The prison and the border: An ethnography of
shifting border security logics. *Qualitative Sociology*, 41(2), 221–242.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-018-9382-2



Pflugfelder, E. H., & Reeves, J. (2024). Surveillance work in (and)
teaching technical writing with AI. *Journal of Technical Writing and
Communication*. https://doi.org/10.1177/00472816241260028



Randall, T. S. (2022). Taking the tactical out of technical: A reassessment
of tactical technical communication. *Journal of Technical Writing and
Communication*, 52(1), 3-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/00472816211006341



Salter, M. B., & Mutlu, C. E. (2013). *Research methods in critical
security studies: An introduction* (1st ed.). Routledge.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203107119



Scott, J. B. (2003). *Risky rhetoric: AIDS and the cultural practices of
HIV testing*. Southern Illinois University Press.



Stanchevici, D. (2013). The rhetorical construction of social classes in
the reports of Stalin’s secret police.  *Journal of Technical Writing and
Communication*, 43(3), 261–288. https://doi.org/10.2190/TW.43.3.c



Stępka, M. (2022). *Identifying security logics in the EU policy discourse:
The migration crisis and the EU*. Springer Nature.



Wrange, J. (2022). Entangled security logics: From the decision-makers’
discourses to the decision-takers’ interpretations of civil defence. *European
Security*, 31(4), 576–596.

https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2021.2021889



Young, S. (2021). Zoombombing your toddler: User experience and the
communication of zoom’s privacy crisis. *Journal of Business and Technical
Communication*, 35(1), 147-153. https://doi.org/10.1177/1050651920959201



Young, S. (2023). *Working through surveillance and technical
communication: Concepts and connections.* (1st ed.). State University of
New York Press.



Youngblood, S. A. (2012). Balancing the rhetorical tension between right to
know and security in risk communication: Ambiguity and avoidance. *Journal
of Business and Technical Communication*, 26(1), 35–64.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1050651911421123
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