Chris Lindgren, Ph.D.

Chris Lindgren, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Technical Communication and Data Visualization

Virginia Tech

About Me

Broadly, I study how the design of digital communication. My main focus includes understanding computer coding and data-driven work as rhetorical forms of communication.

I aim to illustrate how coding and data work are more than their relationships with engineering, technical structures & systems. Every new coding and data generation learn often narrow or myopic histories about computing: Code and data are neutral technologies, objective, and without bias. Despite so much evidence to the contrary, understanding code and data as always relational across, individuals, cultures, and society isn’t the norm. My research frames code and data as forms of writing activity because such as reframing can shift our thinking about code/data as being culturally rhetorical. That its histories impact the decisions people make when they write and use code that writes and uses data.

Overall, I am invested in questions like How is coding and data work a rhetorical activity?, How does coding and data work perpetuate or create new societal problems?, and How can we help technical professionals find value in a humanities perspective on their practices?

Some of my past research has studied how capitalistic rhetoric has impacted calls for coding as the new mass literacy of our time. Overall, my research, teaching, and community-outreach projects take up a design justice approach to digital communication.

Interests
  • critical code and data studies
  • data processing, analysis, and visualization
  • visual rhetoric
  • coding literacy
  • designing communication for justice

Projects

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All Publications

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(2022). Building an Infrastructural Praxis: Understanding Twitter's embeddedness in the U.S.-Mexico Border. Building an Infrastructural Praxis: Understanding Twitter’s Embeddedness in the U.S.-Mexico Border. Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric. Special Issue: Language, Access, and Power in Technical Communication.

PDF Article

(2021). "Hello, Is This the Writing Center?": Illicit Paper Mill Activity and the Compromised Recomposition of College and University Websites. Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy.

Open-Access Article

(2021). Writing With Data: A Study of Coding on a Data-Journalism Team. In Written Communication.

PDF Cite DOI

(2021). Facts Upon Delivery: What Is Rhetorical About Visualized Models?. In Journal of Business and Technical Communication.

PDF Cite DOI

(2020). Rhetmap.org: Visualizing Collaboration through Six Years of Field Data. In Kairos.

Cite Github Repo

(2019). Representing Diversity in Digital Research: Digital Feminist Ethics and Resisting Dominant Normatives. In Proceedings of the Annual Computers & Writing Conference, 2018.

PDF Collection

(2015). Using Digital Labs to Build Smarter Computing Cultures. In Rhetoric and Digital Humanities.

PDF Collection

(2015). Utopian Laptop Initiatives: From Technological Deism to Object-Oriented Rhetoric. In Writing Posthumanism, Posthuman Writing.

Collection

(2015). Responding to the Coding Crisis: From Code Year to Computational Literacy. In Strategic Discourse: The Politics of (New) Literacy Crises.

Chapter

Skills

Python

Proficiency with specialization in data processing and analysis

Data Visualization

Proficiency across data visualization techniques, ranging in environments such as Google Sheets, Observable Notebooks, and Python

Web Accessibility

Proficiency in HTML5/ARIA web accessibility techniques

Content Design and Strategy

Proficiency in auditing, assessing, and developing web content strategies for large organizations

Contact

  • lindgren@vt.edu
  • 207 Shanks Hall, 181 Turner Street NW, Blacksburg, VA 24060
  • Enter Shanks Hall and take the stairs to Office 207 on Floor 2
  • DM Me