WellWatch: reflections on designing digital media for multisited para-ethnography

Abstract

WellWatch was a webtool designed to create a collaborative space for communities and academics to monitor, study, and respond more effectively to the emerging shale gas industry. This article reflects on the successes and failures of the first iteration of WellWatch for academic research and its community of nonacademic participants. For academics, this tool succeeded in gathering rich narratives of the personal experiences of people living amidst natural gas development. These narratives, from multiple locations, provide insight into structural patterns associated with this industry. They gave a lens into social processes emerging from and responding to these structures. Taken together, these narratives help define next steps for research. WellWatch also proved useful for non-academics, primarily impacted landowners from Colorado and Pennsylvania. It helped landowners manage problems of individual isolation by networking them with other landowners and providing useful information about how to manage and resolve problems. It also furnished data to the people affected that they could use in their own advocacy, with potentially important effects. The tool also helped non-profit advocacy groups in assisting with networking and with sharing best practices. Based on this review of WellWatch, the article proposes a method for further developing collaborative ethnographic and community-based research through networked digital media.Key words: citizen science, community based participatory research, digital ethnography, hydraulic fracturing para-ethnography, multi-sited ethnography

Mapping the frontiers and front lines of global environmental justice: the EJAtlas

“…One recent example similar to EJAtlas although at smaller scale, is WellWatch, a USA webtool designed to create a collaborative space for communities and academics to monitor, study, and respond effectively to the emerging shale gas industry (Wylie and Albright 2014). Following Crampton's suggestion (2009), these tools can help transcend the expert/amateur or expert/grassroots activist dichotomy, while creating a new spatial knowledge politics.…”

Home rule and natural gas development in New York: civil fracking rights

“…Less obvious health effects concern fugitive emissions and air and noise pollution near wells and along the length of gathering and transmission lines, including "normal" levels of gasses and volatile organic compounds that are a by-product of compressor station operation and shale gas production (Wylie and Albright 2014). While studies of pollution are often contradictory, pointing out that pollution from gas related infrastructure is far below that of a coal-fired power plant, reports from effected communities tell a different tale.…”

Politics, ecology, and the new anthropology of energy: exploring the emerging frontiers of hydraulic fracking

“…Several of the articles that follow tell such stories Simonelli 2014;Willow;Wylie and Albright 2014). In so doing, they concurrently-though usually implicitly-contest the universality of Western science by questioning who has the power to affirm the existence of hazard and risk.…”

“…For instance, suburban residents of Cleveland, Ohio have found themselves working with rural Texans and citizens' alliances from New Mexico (Wylie 2011), and impacted individuals in Pennsylvania and Colorado have found ways to share information through new digital forums (Wylie and Albright 2014). Grassroots coalitions are also reaching across national and state boundaries as local alliances and national nonprofits work to create community-to-community education and solidarity.…”

“…Some authors use writing as a primary strategy for creating these connections (e.g., Mercer, de Rijke, and Dressler 2014;Simonelli 2014;Willow 2014), constructing critical analyses and narratives that question the current state of affairs. Others (e.g., Hudgins and Poole 2014;Wylie and Albright 2014) have concurrently developed active and empowering new platforms for community collaboration that break down the structural barriers that too often separate not only industry/government and citizens, but also citizens and academics.…”