Creating Social Space through Communication

Professional writers utilize various methods to effectively communicate information, instructions, and persuasive information to influence actions or decisions. Their primary objective is to “produce relationships between people and ideas,” while simultaneously enhancing their organizations’ reputation (319). Such relationships can be defined as concrete or abstract and represent social space (320). Writers not only initiate connections through the creation of user-centered documents, however, they tend to form these networks before the final documentation even reach their audiences.

Workplace environments act as catalysts between a successfully written document and its targeted audience. Traditional work settings employ a division of labor model project managers and personnel specializing in certain aspects of a project. Mangers are charged with planning, organizing, commanding, and controlling actions – bureaucratic management. Whereas each employee has particularly individualized responsibilities related to project outcomes (322). Yet, more companies are experimenting with instituting an innovative model that promotes collaboration throughout all phases of each project – integrated teams. Integrated teams are composed of individuals from various specialties who share in a holistically determined effort to complete a task (324). Writers are then able to contribute their expertise, acquire new skills, and partake in team decisions to support documentation development (324-334).

In addition to orchestrating networks, professional writers create social space with readers. Writers participate in research to situate readers in efforts to determine social and visual aspects of texts. Investigating cultural constraints that alter readers’ reactions permits information to become more usable. When readers cannot make meaning of texts, writers have either constructed ineffective information, chose an inadequate method for presenting ideas, or did not target the audience accordingly – a perspective supported by the current Society for Technical Communication’s Code for Communicators (350).  

Professional writers engage reader interaction by means of text when communication can be well-received. Professional writers, therefore, engage in risk communication as the result of either transferring information to a public that understands and accepts it, or in some formulations, persuading the public to accept a given risk (366). Identifying constraints is an approach of risk assessment to define and negotiate communication, which becomes a web, a network, an interactive process of exchanging information, opinions, and values among all involved parties (368).  To achieve effective social space with readers must not separate risk assessment from risk communication. It is essential to view readers as participants in the writing process.

Although there are numerous techniques professional writers can employ to construct social space in various facets and environments, their foremost consideration should be to develop user-centered documents while simultaneously adhering to organizational agenda. This balance correlates with their ethical perspective and responsibility to all stakeholders – management, integrated teams, and readers. By instituting a form of collaboration across the board, technical writers are better equipped to produce usable texts enhancing communication to influence readers’ decisions and actions.