Ever since its inception as a u22humanisticu22 research discipline (Miller, 1979; Dombrowski, 1994), technical communication has striven to balance workplace exigencies with attention to the broader rhetorical, social and ethical issues within which technical communication is situated. Recently, this humanistic agenda has expanded from a simple awareness of contextual factors surrounding work (see, for example, Collier and Toomey, 1997) to calls for technical communication research in non-workplace and other non-traditional sites. Frequently these calls for u22extra-institutionalu22 research (Kimball, 2007) are driven by the assumption that usersu27 indigenous technical communication is inherently more user-centered - and therefore more democratic - than the more traditional technical documentation underwritten by corporations (see, for example, Johnson, 1999; Kimball, 2007). This dissertation articulates and challenges our fieldu27s assumptions about the revolutionary nature of extra-institutional documentation. Drawing on Aristotleu27s broad classification of `habits of mindu27 or modes of inquiry outlined in the Nicomachean Ethics, as well as Johnsonu27s user-centered theory, this dissertation examines 2 extra-institutional sites in which users generate and organize their own technical documentation: Hackaday.org, a hacker database consisting of an intertextual network of hacks (which are short step-by-step instructions for hacking), and Black Hair Media, a virtual DIY hair extension community with an explicitly Afro Centric twist. Retaining characteristics of traditional proprietary technical communication and the u22malleable, animated and visually complexu22 forms of communication associated with virtual communities (Bolter, 1991, p. 26), these two extra-institutional sites illuminate ways that knowledge and power are negotiated in digital spaces that lack a centralized regulatory power.
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