Fisk-Memo11a

Science, Technology & Human Values

While STHV is seemingly not the best journal for the types of work I seem to be moving towards, it is the flagship STS journal, so it seems appropriate to at least try to submit there. The journal does not appear to entirely require a strong theoretical contribution – although there are many published articles which do such work, most commonly in the area of democratic control of technology. Articles seem to draw primarily on post-structuralist and feminist theory, and many seem to follow similar methods of discourse analysis, interview, and participant observation.

Helmreich's (2000)⁠ Flexible Infections: Computer Viruses, Human Bodies, Nation-States, Evolutionary Capitalism analyzes computer security rhetoric from an anthropological standpoint. Examining the ways in which computer viruses draw from analogies of biological immunology, he finds that the use of such analogies result in the advocacy of responses which reinforce capitalist ideals.

Stahl's (1995)⁠ Venerating the Black Box: Magic in Media Discourse on Technology performs a content analysis of Time magazine articles on the development of the personal computer. The result of this analysis uncovers the ways in which magical and religious language was mobilized in such articles as a strategy to “stabilize and close the technological frame of personal computers in the mid-1980s.”

__Articles-in-conversation: ⁠⁠⁠__ Helmreich, S. (2000). Flexible Infections: Computer Viruses, Human Bodies, Nation-States, Evolutionary Capitalism. SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN VALUES, 25, 472-491.

Nerlich, B. (2007). Media, Metaphors and Modelling:How the UK Newspapers Reported the Epidemiological Modelling Controversy during the 2001 Foot and Mouth Outbreak. SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN VALUES, 32(4), 432-457.

Pfaffenberger, B. (1992). Technological Dramas. Science Technology Human Values, 17(3), 282-312. doi: 10.1177/016224399201700302.

Schmid, S. D. (2004). Transformation Discourse: Nuclear Risk as a Strategic Tool in Late Soviet Politics of Expertise. SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN VALUES., 29(3), 353-376.

Stahl, W. (1995). Venerating the Black Box: Magic in Media Discourse on Technology. SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN VALUES, 20(2), 234.