Networks, Genres, and Complex Wholes: Citizen Science and How We Act Together through Typified Text

• Published in: Canadian journal of communication Vol. 41; no. 2; pp. 287 - 304
• Main Authors: Kelly, Ashley Rose, Maddalena, Kate
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Toronto University of Toronto Press 01.01.2016
• Subjects: Actor-network theory; Coasts; Complexity; Configurations; Construction materials; Data collection; Disorders; Earthquakes; Epistemology; Ethical standards; Ethics; Genre; Internet; Kinetic energy; Knowledge management; Mediation; Medical personnel; Medical phenomena; Negotiation; Networks; Norms; Nuclear power plants; Ontology; Patients; Portuguese language; Questions; Radiation; Sampling; Science; Scientists; Seawater; Seismic engineering; Sentence structure; Separation; Social networks; Social studies; Studies; Symmetry; Tsunamis; United Kingdom > UK
• ISSN: 0705-3657; 1499-6642
• DOI: 10.22230/cjc.2016v41n2a3043

This article explores the intersection of Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). These two traditions are particularly important in the Canadian research context. We examine genre and ANT to uncover what we believe is a complementary relationship that promises much to the study of science, especially in the age of the internet. Specifically, we see RGS as a way to account for how objects come to “be” as complex wholes and so act across/among levels of network configurations. Moreover, the nature of these objects’ (instruments’) action is such that we may attribute them to a kind of rhetorical agency. We look to the InFORM Network’s grassroots, citizen science-oriented response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster as a case that exemplifies how a combined RGS and ANT perspective can articulate the complex wholes of material/rhetorical networks.