ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, I considered the strategies the physicists used to begin publicly positioning their DOMC work. In this chapter, I examine how they learned about and became familiar with all of their audiences for the work.1 Generally, I address how Bouzida, a newcomer both to physics as well as to these other domains, and Swendsen, an experienced practitioner in physics but a newcomer to biology and chemistry, learned about these audiences. I was especially interested in my research in examining how experts, like Swendsen, adapt to new audiences and communities of practice, especially interdisciplinary ones that may not have recognizable or well-defined structures, or established histories with respect to interacting and communicating. I found in my work that knowing how to adapt one’s writing to a particular community entails more than having a body of knowledge that is simply learned at some point in time and always retained. Rather, it is a tool or a skill that requires continual updating as communities shift and change and as individuals enter and leave them. In particular, I show descriptively with my data how audience analysis is a social enterprise that entails direct interactions with actual audience members. Interaction in such a view is key to knowing and reaching an audience.
