| Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are important research areas for scientists examining theories of communication, conflict resolution and collaborative decision-making, particularly because they offer impressive analytical capabilities and the capacity to integrate different modes of deliberation and forms of content. The exponential growth in the adoption and diffusion of these digital media currently has, and will likely continue to have, considerable social ecological implications in part because ICTs are increasingly positioned as places of convergence for politically contested information and knowledge. However, the nature of these implications, especially questions concerning how these technologies influence or mediate changes in policy and/or the policymaking process itself is unclear and controversial. Technological enthusiasts, for example, argue that ICTs have potential to upgrade democracy by improving the way we devise means to clarified ends whereas technological pessimists challenge that, far from ushering in a new age of democracy, new media technologies actually hinder coordinative action by reducing more personalized modes of communication. This research examined both face-to-face and online communication facilitated by three institutions in California—the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD), the California Environmental Justice Action Committee (CEJAC) and Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)—as they sought to reach decisions concerning a series of environmental justice-related issues. Informed by a mixed methodological approach, this research characterizes the challenges and opportunities afforded by the traditional face-to-face (F2F) settings hosted by the three organizations (i.e., public hearings, public meetings and workshops, respectively) and communication within these settings differed from and integrated with EJ communication in the institutions’ corresponding new media or ICT-based environments (i.e., general content websites and interactive mapping applications). The research found that, while there were obvious limitations to F2F participation, the pragmatic modes of communication that took place in these three settings were not replicated in the online environment. Most troublesome was that ICT-based communication tended to be less trustworthy, interactive and coherent than corresponding communication in F2F settings. The dissertation concludes by putting forth an alternative ICT-based framework for just environmental governance that enables interdependent, multi-directional and adaptive forms of knowledge production and decision-making. |
