The frames and ideographs of water reuse policy discourses: An application of narrative analysis and text analytics

This dissertation examines environmental policymaking as more of a symbol-driven ideological contest over meaning than a rationally discursive democratic process through two interpretive modes of research: historical narrative analysis and text analytic frame mapping. Both are applied to the case example of the city of San Diego's controversial policy innovation of indirect potable reuse via reservoir augmentation, or "toilet-to-tap," as it became known through local news media. The dissertation develops its theoretical foundation from the literature pertaining to political communication in public policy, including the role of signs and symbols, media theory, frames and framing, and agenda setting. Electronic documents are used as data.;The narrative analysis traces the historical development of the policy innovation and a habitus of public acceptance of wastewater reuse. Emphasis is given to ideographs as policy symbols in political communication and policymaking, and the role of frames and framing relative to extralinguistic forces that guide the trajectory of the policy innovation. The coherence of the qualitative thick description affirms the importance of interpretive history as a mode of policy research.;Text analytic frame mapping is undertaken as a linguistics-based approach to stakeholder analysis, and is conducted using two samples of newspaper articles pertaining to the San Diego case: editorials, letters to the editor, and op-ed columns (n = 77) and news articles and feature stories ( n = 278). These analyses identify the discourse participants, key actors, and organizations represented in the discourse, their policy positions, the policy symbols and ideographs used in their policy arguments, and the frames that underlie or characterize their policy positions. The findings underscore the importance of the symbolic realm in environmental policymaking.;The dissertation finds the two modes of interpretive research can be applied complementarily to mitigate the limitations of each: Interpretive narrative analysis identifies causal relationships and allows for a critical rephrasal of the phenomena of interest, but patterns that transcend the details are not easily detected, whereas text analytic frame mapping identifies patterns and organizes large volumes of unstructured text, but oversimplifies the complexity of the policy narrative by reducing it to sets of classification measures.