CFP Communicating Hydrofracking

[David Boromisza-Habashi]

Richard Buttny, rbuttny at syr.edu

CFP Communicating Hydrofracking

Call for Papers: “Communicating Hydrofracking,” a special issue of the journal ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION.  Deadline for submissions: January 5, 2015.
Guest editors: Richard Buttny, Syracuse University (rbuttny at syr.edu), & Andrea M. Feldpausch-Parker, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (amparker at esf.edu)

High-volume, horizontal hydraulic fracturing (HVHHF) is an unconventional method of gas and oil extraction commonly known as “hydrofracking” or “fracking” in North America and the UK, or coal-seam gas extraction in Australia.  HVHHF involves injecting water, sand, and chemicals into horizontal wells to fracture shale or coal seams to release deposits of natural gas and oil.  HVHHF has been called a “game changer” for energy production world-wide.  In depressed rural areas, natural gas drilling is seen as an economic boon for communities.  Natural gas is touted as a cleaner burning source of energy than coal and a way to reduce green-house gas emissions.  HVHHF, however, comes with a suite of social and environmental concerns such as water contamination, air pollution, increased truck traffic and road damage, seismic activity, economic boom-bust cycling, and industrial stigma.  The cumulative impacts of HVHHF on local communities, the environment and on anthropogenic climate change are currently unknown but its impact on other fossil fuel and renewable energy sources and supporting technologies is already becoming obvious to energy and environmental researchers alike.

In countries where HVHHF is under way (e.g., US, UK, Poland, Australia) numerous environmental or public health controversies have arisen.  There is presently a ban or moratorium on HVHHF in France, Germany, Quebec, parts of Switzerland, Bulgaria, and New York State.  To put this issue into perspective, HVHHF is arguably the most contentious environmental controversy in New York State history and has been called the policy question of the decade.

Environmental Communication as a field can contribute to this debate through studies of communication processes or impacts on many levels from gas company advertising, to media coverage, grassroots groups’ formation and strategizing, public hearings, conflicting experts’ assessments, governmental decision-making processes, and environmental review processes.  How HVHHF gets framed, what narratives are told, how risk gets constructed, and how environmental disasters are explained are all central concerns of Environmental Communication studies.

List of potential issues that papers might focus on:
-Studies of the competing voices, interests, and discourses involved in the HVHHF controversy;

-The David versus Goliath story of multinational gas companies reach in rural, peri-urban and urban areas;

-Grass-roots citizen group formation and strategies in calling for regulations or a ban;

-Scientific/technical experts offering conflicting risk assessments;

-Impact of HVHHF on energy production and infrastructure dialogue such as moving to renewable energy sources;

-Tensions between science and politics in decision making;

-Media coverage (newspapers: national or local; television) and its impact on public opinion;

-The influence of documentaries, e.g., Gasland, or feature films, e.g., Promised Land, on the public and the gas industry’s critical response;

-Sense of place: accounts of living in a fractured landscape and the industrialization of rural landscapes and communities;

-Environmental impact review: writing the Environmental Impact Statement, public hearings, inter-governmental hearings;

-The uses of the internet (listservs; web pages; social media) in mobilizing opposition or support;

-Door-to-door contact (landsmen seeking landowners to lease, opponents circulating a petition to ban, campaigning for political office), lawn signs.



--
David Boromisza-Habashi, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, University of Colorado Boulder

http://colorado.academia.edu/DavidBoromiszaHabashi

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