Professional Communication and Network Interaction

Book excerpt: Digital technologies and social media have changed the processes, products, and interactions of professional communication, reshaping how, when, with whom, and where business professionals communicate. This book examines these changes by asking: How does rhetorical theory need to adapt and develop to address the changing practices of professional communication? Drawing from classical and contemporary rhetorical theory and from in-depth interviews with business professionals, the authors present a case-based approach for exploring the changing landscape of professional communication. The book develops a rhetorical theory based on networked interaction and rhetorical ethics: seeing professional communication as involving new kinds of networked interactions that require an integrated view of rhetoric and ethics. The book applies this frame to a variety of communication cases involving, for example, employee missteps on social media, corporate-consumer interactions, and the developing use of artificial intelligence agents (AI bots) to handle online communication.