The Radical Potential of Public Hearings: A Rhetorical Assessment of Resistance and Indecorous Voice in Public Participation Processes

Abstract

Little scholarship in environmental communication has considered the intersections between public participation and social movement. We fill this gap by discussing how public participation process can become sites of radical politics when publics employ disruptive or improper tactics, known as indecorous voice. Indecorum can be used to sustain protest matters beyond official forums, engage multiple audiences, and forge new identities among publics. We demonstrate the utility of indecorum through two case studies: Love Canal, NY where residents combat exposure to toxic chemicals, and Salt Lake City, UT, where publics challenge industrial expansion in a fight for clean air.

Editorial: A Research Agenda for Energy Democracy

“…The forms of public participation most commonly designated as part of energy democracy include protesting and public comment periods. Although communication scholars rarely consider the intersections between different forms of participation in environmental decision making-for example between public participation and social protest (Pezzullo, 2007;Hunt et al, 2016)-participation can come in many other forms spanning from local to national, formal to informal, unjust to just. Research on conventional forms of public participation in environmental decision-making focuses mainly on exposing the flaws of public hearings and public meetings, revealing them to be Decide-Announce-Defend (DAD) models that present only a guise of participation and deliberation (e.g., Senecah, 2004).…”