Chris Lindgren

Professor of Technical Communication and Data Visualization

Virginia Tech

Biography

I’m an Assistant Professor of Technical Communication & Data Visualization in the English Department at Virginia Tech, where I teach courses in technical communication, literacies, and digital-cultural rhetorics of technology. I am also currently the Chair of the Special Interest Group on the Writing and Rhetorics of Code (SIGWROC).

My research studies engages digital data as a form of technical communication by understanding how computer coding is a culturally dynamic form of writing with data. You can learn more about this way of understanding coding through my article, ‘Writing with data: A study of coding on a data-journalism team."

I also apply computational social science methods to feminist and anti-racist rhetorical theories, as a means to differently understand social relationships in digital environments.

Download my CV.

Interests

critical code studies
critical data studies
data processing, analysis, and visualization
digital cultural rhetoric
coding literacy
materiality of writing

Featured Publications

Chris Lindgren, Maggie Fernandes

January, 2022 Forthcoming in Reflections (2022) Special Issue: Language, Access, and Power in Technical Communication

Building an Infrastructural Praxis: Understanding Twitter's embeddedness in the U.S.-Mexico Border

How is Twitter embedded within the U.S.-Mexico border, and how does Twitter reorganize the oppressive conditions perpetuated by the border’s sociopolitical history? We propose a theoretical framework for technical and professional communication to study and understand our role with infrastructure.

Chris Lindgren

January, 2022 Under review at Technical Communication Quarterly

Reckoning with the situatedness of data: Applying stasis to study data-driven settings

This article applies stasis to analyze the impact of situated decisions on quantitative work. I analyze a sample of situations as a data-journalism team discuss the meaning and use of data, when directly mediated by the data itself. Findings show how questions of quality were central to team discussions of potential story ideas and understanding the data and its potential uses within the scope of the potential story.

Chris Lindgren

January, 2021 In Written Communication

Writing With Data: A Study of Coding on a Data-Journalism Team

This article theorizes coding as a form of writing with data through a qualitative case study of a web developer’s coding on a data-journalism team

Chris Lindgren

January, 2021 In Journal of Business and Technical Communication

Facts Upon Delivery: What Is Rhetorical About Visualized Models?

This article demonstrates how charts during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic articulated visual arguments yet also required extended communicative support upon their delivery.

All Publications

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Chris Lindgren, Maggie Fernandes (2022). Building an Infrastructural Praxis: Understanding Twitter's embeddedness in the U.S.-Mexico Border. Forthcoming in Reflections (2022) Special Issue: Language, Access, and Power in Technical Communication.

Chris Lindgren (2022). Reckoning with the situatedness of data: Applying stasis to study data-driven settings. Under review at Technical Communication Quarterly.

Jim Ridolfo, William Hart-Davidson, Chris Lindgren (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

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

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

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Jim Ridolfo, Chris Lindgren (2020). Rhetmap.org: Visualizing Collaboration through Six Years of Field Data. In Kairos.

Cite Github Repo

Sweta Baniya, Les Hutchinson, Ashanka Kumari, Kyle Larson, Chris Lindgren (2019). Representing Diversity in Digital Research: Digital Feminist Ethics and Resisting Dominant Normatives. In Proceedings of the Annual Computers & Writing Conference, 2018.

PDF Collection

Kevin Brooks, Chris Lindgren, Matthew Warner (2015). Using Digital Labs to Build Smarter Computing Cultures. In Rhetoric and Digital Humanities.

PDF Collection

Byron Hawk, Chris Lindgren, Andrew Mara (2015). Utopian Laptop Initiatives: From Technological Deism to Object-Oriented Rhetoric. In Writing Posthumanism, Posthuman Writing.

Collection

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

Chapter

Projects

Rematriation of Inuit Knowledges Project

“Rematriation” is a term that Alaska Native (Unangax) scholar Dr. Eve Tuck uses to describe Indigenous-led methods of restoring (and sharing) cultural knowledges back with Indigenous peoples. Rematriation’s goal is to respectfully and equitably help Indigenous communities access and engage cultural knowledge to fulfill their self-determined goals. Our team of partners (VT faculty partners, community partners, foundation partners) are working together to create methods that digitally rematriate cultural knowledges back from academic and publisher databases to Indigenous peoples. We (the team) will digitize a small collection of papers and other artifacts of the deceased Inuit leader from Alaska, Caleb Pungowiyi (Cana & Corina’s father). This collection provides us with an initial model for our work that can be scaled to meet future and broader rematriation needs.

Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq (Virginia Tech, Aqqaluk Trust Alum, Pungowiyi Family), Corina Kramer (Aqqaluk Trust, Pungowiyi Family), Chris Lindgren (Virginia Tech), Kara Long (Virginia Tech Libraries)

askcomm

Python 3.x module with search patterns for event-based, community-detected twitter data.