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Tembusu College

Science, Technology and Society Seminar Series

“Queue Up, You Stupid!”: Communicating About Technology Problems

Speaker: Professor Massimiano Bucchi (University of Trento, Italy)

Respondent: Dr Tyson Vaughan (Asia Research Institute and Tembusu College)

Friday 19th February 3-4.30pm

Master’s Common Lounge

Abstract

Communication about technology has long been neglected within the filed of science and technology communication. This visual exploratory study focuses on how users can communicate with and about technology in public places through warning signs posted on technological devices. Three broad categories of messages have been identified: bad design, malfunctioning and disciplining users. By analysing examples within each category, we suggest that studying these communicative situations can be a key to understanding how users are engaged in continuous, elaborate and sometimes even conflicting framing of technological devices (e.g. with regard to their purpose, appropriate uses, shifting boundaries between functioning/ malfunctioning) and how such framing, in turn, can be used to readjust/ realign social behaviour and organisational routines.

Please click on the image above to register. The paper being discussed is available from: http://bit.ly/1W4HRMw