Technical Communication Quarterly Jan 2017

Reddit’s “Explain Like I’m Five”: Technical Descriptions in the Wild

Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder Oregon State University

Abstract

The genre of technical description is seeing a resurgence, particularly in online locations, where new, hybrid versions have emerged. The technical explanation, one such hybrid, proliferates on the social message board site Reddit and the message board “Explain Like I’m Five,” in which answers to complex questions are crowdsourced. This study examines 233 such questions and their answers, identifying the effort needed to generate technical explanations as distributed and coordinative technical communication work.

Journal
Technical Communication Quarterly
Published
2017-01-02
DOI
10.1080/10572252.2016.1257741
CompPile
Open Access
Closed
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