– Climate change and carbon footprints are among the most urgent concerns facing society and are key issues of corporate responsibility. The purpose of this study is to assess whether Australian companies have adjusted their footprint‐related disclosure responses. Adopting a legitimacy perspective, a key aim is to assess whether pragmatic or moral legitimation approaches dominate by determining whether disclosure tends to be more reflective of symbolism or of apparent behaviour., – Content analysis of the sustainability and annual reports of the ASX's Top 50 companies is undertaken to compare carbon footprint‐related disclosures in 2008 and 2005. Their extent and nature (action or symbolism) and the use of attention‐attracting devices are reported for the more carbon intensive and less carbon intensive sectors., – Footprint‐related disclosure rates are increasing, and disclosure is being signalled more prominently. However, while carbon‐intensive sectors appear to be pursuing a moral legitimation strategy underpinned by substantive action, the less intensive sectors are relying more heavily on symbolic disclosure., – The sample size is small and comprises only large listed Australian companies., – While the carbon‐intensive sectors appear to be taking encouraging actions, a regulatory response may be required for the less carbon‐intensive sectors to take advantage of their market power to facilitate cooperative carbon reduction with broader constituent groups. Further, incentives for the carbon‐intensive sectors may be needed to encourage ongoing efforts to bridge the carbon chasm that is emerging., – This study appears to be the first to provide direct Australian evidence on favoured legitimation tactics by assessing the symbolic versus behavioural management implicit in carbon footprint‐related disclosures.

Carbon footprints and legitimation strategies: symbolism or action?

Scholarly conversation within the field of professional communication increasingly has focused on the practice, research, and pedagogy of visual rhetoric. Yet, visual thinking has received relative...

Making the Strange Familiar: A Pedagogical Exploration of Visual Thinking

This article describes the authors' work as formative evaluators of a mixed-reality science museum installation, Journey with Sea Creatures. Looking beyond the focal point of the screen to the spatial and temporal surroundings of the exhibit, the authors employed a technique they call retrospective narrative mapping in conjunction with sustained on-site observations, follow-up interviews with museum visitors, and the development of personas to better understand the user experience in multimodal informal learning environments.

Beyond the Screen: Narrative Mapping as a Tool for Evaluating a Mixed-Reality Science Museum Exhibit

The technology for the digitized text creates fluid meaning, representing its culture in transition from the dominance of the single-authored text with its hierarchically ordered system. This new architecture for the digitized word has been making explicit the shift from human consciousness reflecting the interiority of the self to a human consciousness reflecting self in relation to others. Educators using the technology of networked writing environments need to understand how the technology functions and intervenes for pedagogical processes during models of asynchronous and synchronous collaborative writing. Both models support a constructivist view of learning; however, for each, educators need to consider the ethos of the writer as inhabiting a negotiated, shared space with readers during text production. As a consequence, cocognition may occur when writers share ideas and engage in the process of collaboration.

The Social Construct of Writing and Thinking: Evidence of How the Expansion of Writing Technology Affects Consciousness

The major objective of this research is to contribute to the academic literature by developing a comprehensive multi-modal framework to document the impression management strategies that might underpin the narrative and visual material voluntarily included in corporate annual reports. The analysis takes as its starting point the seminal work of Goffman [1959] into self-presentation, widely acknowledged as the first comprehensive exposition of the sociological phenomenon of impression management. The eight elements identified by Goffman in his dramaturgical description of impression management performances are presented as an integrated conceptual model from which such behaviour can be analysed.
Using a meso-paradigmatic approach, propositions are developed which underpin a multi-level theory explaining how micro-level incentives motivate individual organisational members to engage collectively in impression management behaviour at a meso (team) level to produce macro-level organisational phenomena such as organisational image or reputation. Prior research into impression management and organisational phenomena has typically either anthropomorphised the organisation or employed a personification metaphor in which the organisation is equated to an individual to facilitate analysis. Neither of these approaches, both of which lack empirical validity, is utilised here because the view articulated in the multi-level theory is one of the organisation as a coalition of individual actors, working collectively to produce what observers perceive as the actions or outcomes of the organisation.
Focus then narrows to the use of the corporate annual report as a strategic impression management instrument. The approach adopted is holistic and multi-modal because, as Goffman [1959] clearly articulated, impression management performances are of this nature. In the context of annual reporting, it is the combination of narrative and visual report content that represents the elements of the impression management performance. However, the question of whether mutually supportive narrative and visual strategies are adopted within and across the various sections and subsections of the annual reports has been largely ignored. As such, any understanding of impression management activity in annual reports is partial at best, and it may be the case that behaviour has been misunderstood or misinterpreted.
To facilitate the required holistic view, an integrated framework of mutually supportive rhetorical elements for narrative and visual annual report content is developed. This forms the basis from which three exploratory research questions are formulated. Case study analysis of the reporting practices of five large listed Australian companies is presented to explore these research questions. The evidence suggests that, on the whole, the nature of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports studied is consistent with the staging of a holistic impression management performance in the Goffmanian sense.
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A multimodal Goffmanian analysis of impression management behaviour in the annual reports of listed Australian companies

A growing body of literature defines a rhetoric of visible text based on page layout, typography, and the various design features afforded by page composition tools buitt into word processors and page design programs. Little has been written, however, about what a wriier needs to know about design and in what order. This article describes and demonstrates a scope and sequence of learning that encourages writers to develop their skills as text designers. It introduces relevant liierature that is helpful for such learning and it does so in an evolving format that displays visually what the essay discusses verbally.

https://www.users.miamioh.edu/simmonwm/textdesign.pdf

Teaching Text Design.

This study evaluates the effectiveness of presenting Web‐based assignments within the technical communication service course Current research on using the World Wide Web (Web) and Internet as a teaching resource investigates online writing courses, Distance Education (DE), and hypertext authoring The literature indicates good reasons for moving instruction to the Web, but there is little description of why this migration is needed in terms of the kinds of learning achieved through Web‐based writing, nor is there much specific discussion of what type of useful instructional space can be built with the Web This study is intended to provide support for centering more instruction within the environment of the Web This article describes a study using a Web site designed for technical communication instruction It defines the types of learning students experienced when using the site and presents samples of student work representing a wide range of skill development, both traditional and digital, that suppo

Robert Kramer

Papers

Teaching Text Design.

Moving Instruction to the Web: Writing as Multi-Tasking.