James Porter

Biography

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 Credentials

Ph.D., English, University of Detroit
M.A., English, University of Michigan
B.A., English, John Carroll University

Teaching Areas

Rhetoric, Ethics, Professional/Technical Communication, Data Visualization

Professional Experiences

Taught formerly at Michigan State University, Case Western Reserve University, Purdue University, University of California at Santa Barbara.

Research Interests

I do research and scholarship on professional communication, digital rhetoric, and technology, and, most recently, on the emergence and influence of AI-based writing systems.

Listing of Select Publications

Books

• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2017). Professional communication and network
  interaction: A rhetorical and ethical approach. New York: Routledge.
• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2009). The ethics of Internet research: A rhetorical, case-
  based process. New York: Peter Lang.
• Porter, James E., Sullivan, Patricia, and 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 and Writing award for Distinguished Book.)
• Sullivan, Patricia and 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 2017)

• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2023). Foreword. In Ann Hill Duin and 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 and Jonathan Buehl (eds.), Keywords in technical and
  professional communication (pp. 247-252). WAC Clearinghouse.
• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2022). Team roles and rhetorical intelligence in human-
  machine writing. 2022 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (ProComm),
  2022, 384-391.
• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2021). Intertext: Writing machines and rhetoric. In Ann Hill
  Duin and Isabel Pedersen, Writing futures: Collaborative, algorithmic, autonomous (pp. 47-52).
  Springer.
• Porter, James. (2020). Recovering a good rhetoric: Rhetoric as techne and praxis. In John Duffy
  and Lois Agnew (eds.), Rewriting Plato's legacy: Ethics, rhetoric, and writing studies (pp. 15-36). Utah State University Press.
• McKee, Heidi A. and 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.
• Porter, James E. (2020). Foreword: Interacting with friends, enemies, and strangers. In Jessica
  Reyman and Erika M. Sparby (eds.), Digital ethics: Rhetoric and responsibility in online aggression
  (pp. xv-xxii). New York: Routledge.
• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2018). Corporate response to employee social media
  missteps: A rhetorical and ethical lens. In Bastiaan Vanacker and 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 and Jacqueline Rhodes (eds.), The Routledge handbook of
  digital writing and rhetoric (pp. 259-268). New York: Routledge.
• McKee, Heidi A. and Porter, James E. (2018). Digital media ethics and rhetoric. In Jonathan
  Alexander and 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 and Professional Communication Quarterly, 80(2), 174-193.