How would a Technography Work?

Many, though by no means all, of the major workplace writing studies in the past twenty years or so have relied on ethnographic research methods, and in my opinion we’ve learned a great deal. For instance, individual authorship is much different in the classroom than in the office space, and writing review is often an act of socialization rather than simply correcting and improving a text. My gut feeling, though, is that the tools with which writing review is conducted have changed to the point wherein we need to start thinking of technography rather than ethnography. A technography is an ethnography wherein the human activity in question is observed and recorded via technology. That single definition isn’t a stretch from a more traditional ethnography: certainly, an ethnographer takes notes and transcribes them using technology, and can observe in person how people use technologies to carry out their daily activities.

But, having read through a couple of Kien’s works, I’m beginning to revise that definition to something more like: a technography is a study in which technology is regarded as an active participant among a pool of other participants. According to Kien, “industry uses the word technography to define real-time, multiuser document production. In this scenario, many users network and interface with the technology directly to produce a common text, much like having a group of individuals each equipped with chalk and eraser gathered at a blackboard to produce a text” (Qualitative Inquiry, 14:7: 1102). This particular example is so much in line with how I suspect workplace writing review takes place that I think it’s worth beginning to think of technography as a useful way of theorizing that activity. Within individual engineers in particular, the drive to write is usually missing entirely, and because the engineering profession requires substantial amounts of writing they normally only write in teams. From an ethnographic research perspective, the individual fades into the background as the rhetoric of engineering takes over via many hands and keyboards.

A true technographic study would look at the performative aspects of both the participants and the technologies in question. But if I’m looking at workplace writing revision, how is it technographic? How would I describe the role the technologies play in aiding the revision? The first step is to discover what kinds of tools engineers use for workplace revision, and that can be done pretty quickly. Regardless of the particular tool in question, a technographic approach allows for analysis of how that tool is used—and uses—the writers. For instance, MS Word will make spelling and grammatical suggestions, and my experience with students engineers suggests that those suggestions are almost always followed. Thus, MS Word makes suggestions during the revision process, and those suggestions are followed. An ethnography would make note of the humans’ response to the software while potentially overlooking the software’s role. This seems to be technography’s value, not that an ethnographer would ignore technology—there is too much evidence that that is simply not the case—but that we need a theory to account for the technological actor.

A technographic outlook also allows us to insert the workplace into the classroom via the dynamic nature of digital workspaces. In other words, since work isn’t necessarily performed in the cubicle anymore, those digital workspaces can be accessed from the classroom, thus allowing students and instructors (and researchers) a peek inside while treating the black box that makes it all possible as an active participant.

I’ve searched the EBSCO Communication and Mass Media Complete database for references to “technography,” but found only two sources, both by Kien. My guess is that while actor-network theory, which seems to serve as a foundation for how technography is theorized in communications studies, is well known amongst TC researchers, technography is not.

My concern, and it’s minor, is that “technography” is simply another way of saying something else, which of course is built upon something else, and which all comes back to something (ever) else. But such is the nature of all theories, that they are based upon the metaphors and analogies of others, and that while the current theories of a generation work well, they will inevitably be supplanted by others. But my sense is that the value, to me, to TC, of technography is that it allows for a greater latitude in interpreting the writing actions of groups within a technological framework that accounts for that framework as an actor. I’ll have to do additional reading to find out how technography, stated as such or not, is represented within the literature.
For now I think the next step is to determine which revision tools engineers typically use for writing/reviewing in teams. Team working (I’m deliberately avoiding the overused “teamwork”) is a key component of technography, and engineers from students and recent graduated to older, more experienced PEs work in teams almost constantly. So the team aspect of this particular technography, dealing as it does with writing review, might need to begin with a couple of pilot studies (really just informal asking around). The first should be something like:

“When you review written documents in teams, what kinds of technology do you use?”

The next would need to begin focusing in on a particular action, or rhetorical situation, in which the engineers work in teams in order to revise a document. My question at that point is whether an ethnographic approach (direct observation) might work better than simply seeing a record of the revision process (the “before” document, an “in-process” snapshot,” and then the “final,” marked-up document)? I think both, just to be safe.

Another possibility might be to install screencasting software to capture the revision as it happens within the team and then simply review the recording and make a transcript. Of course, that might be dependent upon whether I could reassure my participants that I wouldn’t show their work to anyone else. Engineers rely upon their ideas and designs for income, and it wouldn’t be fair to share that work.

OK, next step: identify what kinds of workplace revision take place at engineering firms.