Reddit’s “Explain Like I’m Five”: Technical Descriptions in the Wild

Taking the Tactical Out of Technical: A Reassessment of Tactical Technical Communication

“…The preceding discussion of strategies and tactics provided by Kimball (2006) is substantively tracked in each of the subsequent articles on TTC (Colton et al., 2017; Ding, 2018; Edenfield et al., 2019a, 2019b; Holladay, 2017; McCaughey, 2020; Pflugfelder, 2017; Reardon et al., 2017; Sarat-St. Peter, 2017; Sarat-St. Peter & St. Peter, 2020; Towner, 2013; Van Ittersum, 2014). There are no significant changes made to Kimball’s (2006) basic approach.…”

“…Kimball (2006) integrated the ideas of French philosopher Michel de Certeau into technical communication in an effort to provide a philosophical basis for the proliferation of do-it-yourself (DIY), user-generated content. Since that time, numerous articles have been authored applying the concept of TTC, which has solidified its importance to the field (Colton et al., 2017; Ding, 2018; Edenfield et al., 2019a, 2019b; Holladay 2017; McCaughey, 2021; Pflugfelder, 2017; Reardon et al., 2017; Sarat-St. Peter, 2017; Sarat-St. Peter & St. Peter, 2020; Towner, 2013; Van Ittersum, 2014). Today, most authors take for granted the place of TTC in technical communication.…”

She's Reddit: A source of statistically significant gendered interest information?

“…There are many small-scale qualitative analyses of subreddits. These include r/ExplainLikeImFive (Pflugfelder, 2017) and (partly quantitative) r/RoastMe (Kasunic & Kaufman, 2018). Not all analyses of Reddit have operated at the level of subreddits.…”

Making-Do on the Margins: Organizing Resource Seeking and Rhetorical Agency in Communities During Grassroots Entrepreneurship

“…More recently, TPC research has expanded to contexts beyond formal organizations (e.g., Bushnell, 1999; Grabill, 2003; Longo, 1998). For instance, online and offline user collectives have served as key sites of study for research on extrainstitutional TPC contexts and practices in Western countries (e.g., Kimball, 2017; Pflugfelder, 2017; Swarts, 2018; Van Ittersum, 2014). Yet extrainstitutional settings in the majority world , where more than half the world’s population—in particular, non-Western peoples—live in largely marginalized settings, have historically remained underrepresented in the TPC literature (Agboka, 2013; Savage & Agboka, 2015; Starke-Meyerring, 2005; Walton, 2015).…”