The Civic Informatics of FracTracker Alliance: Working with Communities to Understand the Unconventional Oil and Gas Industry

Abstract

Unconventional oil and gas extraction is fueling a wave of resource development often touted as a new era in US energy independence. However, assessing the true costs of extraction is made difficult by the vastness of the industry and lack of regulatory transparency. This paper addresses efforts to fill knowledge gaps taken up by civil society groups, where the resources produced in these efforts are used to make informed critiques of extraction processes and governance. We focus on one civil society organization, called FracTracker Alliance, which works to enhance public understanding by collecting, interpreting, and visualizing oil and gas data in broad partnerships. Drawing on the concepts of civic science, we suggest that the informational practices of civil society research organizations facilitate critical knowledge flows that we term "civic informatics." We offer three case studies illustrating how different characteristics of civic informatics enable public-minded research as well as build capacity for political mobilizations.Finally, we suggest that empirical studies of civic informatics and its facilitators offer insights for the study of "engaged" Science and Technologies Studies (STS) that seek to generate new models of science at the intersection of praxis and theory.

Toward anticipatory governance of human genome editing: a critical review of scholarly governance discourse

“…The term itself, however, can denote a variety of activities with a variety of different aims, ranging from placation or enrollment of recalcitrant publics to serve scientific actors' goals (Boaz, Biri, and McKevitt 2016;Wynne 2006) to diffusion of scientific understandings and framings in public dialogue (Hurlbut 2017) to genuine, though limited, efforts to empower publics in scientific decision-making (e.g. Bertrand, Pirtle, and Tomblin 2017;Kaplan et al 2019) or conduct 'engaged research' guided by civil society interests and needs (Cavalier and Kennedy 2016;Jalbert, Rubright, and Edelstein 2017). This range of forms and aims evokes Arnstein's (1969) 'ladder of citizen participation' (1) in policy planning, sweeping from nonparticipation (or manipulation) through forms of tokenism to genuine citizen power.…”

<b>Engaging the Underground: An STS Field in Formation</b>

“…For example, Wylie et al's article "Materializing Exposures" describes civic science efforts that include working with data scientists to produce environmental monitoring devices that help communities visualize the toxic releases from oil and gas wells (Wylie et al 2017). In a similar vein, Jalbert et al's piece in the same thematic collection describes how the non-profit FracTracker Alliance in the northeastern US has used maps of bans, development moratoria, and crude oil train routes to help communities better visualize the risks of exposure and politically mobilize (Jalbert, Rubright, and Edelstein 2017).…”

Seeing power with a flashlight: DIY thermal sensing technology in the classroom

“…STS researchers are bringing these modes of action-based inquiry from perspectives of making, feminism and civic/citizen science. Increasingly, STS scholars are moving from writing about the activities of scientists and engineers, particularly concerning environmental justice (Allen, 2003;Brown and Mikkelson, 1997;Ottinger and Cohen, 2011;TallBear, 2013), and analyzing the 'activist' or nontraditional scientists who work with them (Allen, 2004;Brown et al, 2006;Murphy, 2006), to participating in and collaborating with community based organizations (CBOs) and non-profits (NGOs) on the ground (Dillon et al, 2017;Fortun, 2009;Jalbert et al, 2017;Martin, 2016;Sellers et al, 2017). This paper extends this growing literature and set of practices by demonstrating and theorizing how to bring these traditions into the classroom.…”