Erin Brock Carlson

Assistant Professor

Erin Brock Carlson’s research centers the relationships between place, technology, and power, focusing on how communities work together to address complex public problems through communication and community organizing. Her current projects include documenting the experiences of West Virginians affected by natural gas pipeline development; advocating for access and distribution of ethically collected and curated public health data; and developing place-based methods for community engagement pedagogy.

Erin is also working on a larger project about the importance of place-based knowledges to Appalachian organizing and activism in the midst of regional economic transition, drawing from a yearlong participatory photovoice project with a group of community organizers.

She teaches courses in professional, technical, and multimedia writing, as well as Digital Humanities and accompanying research methods.

Specializations:

Technical and Professional Communication
Public and Digital Rhetorics
Participatory Research Methodologies
Community Engagement and Service Learning
Rhetorical Theory

Recent Publications:

Carlson, Erin Brock. (2022). “Who am I fighting for? Who am I accountable to?”:
Comradeship as a frame for nonprofit community work in technical communication. Technical Communication Quarterly. https://doi-org.wvu.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/10572252.2022.2085810

Carlson, Erin Brock, Michelle McMullin, & Patricia Sullivan. (2022). Adapting digital and archival practices via platforms for collaboration in technical communication classes. In Teaching Rhetoric and Composition through the Archives. Tarez Samra Graban & Wendy Hayden (Eds.), 158-177. Southern Illinois University Press.

Caretta, Martina Angela, & Erin Brock Carlson. (2022). Coercion via eminent domain and legal fees: the acceptance of gas extraction in West Virginia. Environmental Justice. https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2021.0093

Gouge, Catherine, & Erin Brock Carlson. (2022). Building towards more just data practices. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 65(1). 241-254. https://doi-org.wvu.idm.oclc.org/10.1109/TPC.2021.3137675

Carlson, Erin Brock, & Martina Angela Caretta. (2021). Legitimizing situated knowledge in rural communities through storytelling around gas pipelines and environmental risk. Technical Communication.

Caretta, Martina Angela, Erin Brock Carlson, Rachael Hood, & Bethani Turley. (2021). From a rural idyll to an industrial site: An analysis of hydraulic fracturing energy sprawl in Central Appalachia. Journal of Land Use Science. https://doi-org.wvu.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/1747423X.2021.1968973

Carlson, Erin Brock. (2021). Visual Participatory Action Research methods: Presenting nuanced, co-created accounts of public problems. In Equipping Technical Communicators for Social Justice Work: Topics, Theories, and Methodologies. Rebecca Walton & Godwin Agboka (Eds). Utah State University Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/84921

Carlson, Erin Brock, & Gouge, Catherine. (2020). Rural health and contextualizing data. Journal of Business and Technical Communication 35(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/1050651920958502

Carlson, Erin Brock. (2020). Embracing a metic lens for community-based participatory research in technical communication. Technical Communication Quarterly 29(4), 392-410. https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2020.1789745

Overmyer, Trinity, & Carlson, Erin Brock. (2019). Unpacking place as a design thinking tool. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 33(4), 431-436. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1050651919854079

Carlson, Erin Brock. (2019). Please sign here (and share it to your Facebook and Twitter feeds): Online petitions and inventing for circulation. Computers and Composition 52, 175-194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2019.01.003

Carlson, Erin Brock. (2019). Metis as embodied, techno-feminist intervention: Rhetorically listening to Periods for Pence. Computers and Composition 51, 14-30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2018.11.002

Carlson, Erin Brock. (2018). Navigating shifting social media networks: An ecological approach to anonymous mobile applications. Kairos 22.2. http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/22.2/praxis/carlson/index.html

Carlson, Erin Brock, & Overmyer, Trinity. (2018). Photovoice methods: Interrogating participant-researcher dynamics through digital, mobile data. In Research Methods for the Digital Humanities. Lewis Levenberg, Tai Neilson, & David Rheams (Eds.). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10/1007/978-3-319-96713-4_8