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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:  

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/ProComm53155.2022.00078

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. 

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: 

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: 

Work in Progress

Currently working on an article on "Writing and Machine Rhetoric."