James Porter
I am a teacher and scholar of rhetoric, focusing mainly on how technologies impact communication practices, particularly the ethics of practice, both historically (the printing press) and currently (AI).
Education
- Ph.D., English, University of Detroit (1982)
- M.A., English, The University of Michigan (1976)
- B.A., English, John Carroll University (1975)
Teaching and Research Interests
- Rhetoric
- Ethics
- Professional/Technical Communication
- Rhetoric History
- Philosophy of Technology (machine ethics)
Courses Taught
- ENG/IMS 171, Humanities & Technology
- ENG 222, The Rhetoric of Information and Data Visualization
- ENG/IMS 424/524, Ethics and Digital Media
Selected Publications
Books
McKee, Heidi A., & Porter, James E. (2017). Professional communication and network interaction: A rhetorical and ethical approach. New York: Routledge.
McKee, Heidi A., & Porter, James E. (2009). The ethics of Internet research: A rhetorical, case-based process. New York: Peter Lang.
Porter, James E., Sullivan, Patricia, & Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. (2008). Professional writing online (3rd ed.). Boston: Longman.
Porter, James E. (1998). Rhetorical ethics and internetworked writing. Greenwich, CT: Ablex. (Won Computers & Writing award for Distinguished Book.)
Sullivan, Patricia, & Porter, James E. (1997). Opening spaces: Writing technologies and critical research practices. Greenwich, CT: Ablex. (Won NCTE award for Excellence in Technical and Scientific Communication, Best Book.)
Porter, James E. (1992). Audience and rhetoric: An archaeological composition of the discourse community. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall/Studies in Writing and Culture.
Selected Articles and Chapters (Since 2009)
McKee, Heidi A., & Porter, James E. (2023). Foreword. In Ann Hill Duin & Isabel Pedersen, Augmentation technologies and artificial intelligence in technical communication: Designing ethical futures (pp. xix-xxii). Routledge.
Porter, James E. (2023). Rhetoric. In Han Yu & Jonathan Buehl (eds.), Keywords in technical and professional communication (pp. 247-252). WAC Clearinghouse. DOI: https://doi.org/10.37514/PRA-
McKee, Heidi A., & Porter, James E. (2022). Team roles and rhetorical intelligence in human-machine writing. 2022 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (ProComm), 2022, 384-391. DOI: 10.1109/ProComm53155.2022.
McKee, Heidi A., & Porter, James E. (2021). Intertext: Writing machines and rhetoric. In Ann Hill Duin & Isabel Pedersen, Writing futures: Collaborative, algorithmic, autonomous (pp. 47-52). Springer. https://link.springer.com/
Porter, James. (2020). Recovering a good rhetoric: Rhetoric as techne and praxis. In John Duffy & Lois Agnew (eds.), Rewriting Plato's legacy: Ethics, rhetoric, and writing studies (pp. 15-36). Utah State University Press.
McKee, Heidi A., & Porter, James E. (2020). Ethics for AI writing: The importance of rhetorical context. Proceedings of 2020 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES’20 ), February 7–8, 2020, New York, NY, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/
Porter, James E. (2020). Foreword: Interacting with friends, enemies, and strangers. In Jessica Reyman & Erika M. Sparby (eds.), Digital ethics: Rhetoric and responsibility in online aggression (pp. xv-xxii). New York: Routledge.
McKee, Heidi A., & Porter, James E. (2018). Corporate response to employee social media missteps: A rhetorical and ethical lens. In Bastiaan Vanacker & Don Heider (eds.), Ethics for a digital age, volume 2 (pp. 51-77). New York: Peter Lang.
Porter, James E. (2018). Rhetoric, copyright, techne: The regulation of social media production and distribution. In Jonathan Alexander & Jacqueline Rhodes (eds.), The Routledge handbook of digital writing and rhetoric (pp. 259-268). New York: Routledge.
McKee, Heidi A., & Porter, James E. (2018). Digital media ethics and rhetoric. In Jonathan Alexander & Jacqueline Rhodes (eds.), The Routledge handbook of digital writing and rhetoric (pp. 401-411). New York: Routledge.
Porter, James E. (2017). Professional communication as phatic: From classical eunoia to personal AI. Business & Professional Communication Quarterly, 80(2), 174-193. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/
Work in Progress
Currently working on an article on "Writing and Machine Rhetoric."