Who’s Winning the Public Process? How to Use Public Documents to Assess the Equity,Efficiency, and Effectiveness of Stakeholder Engagement

Abstract

It is widely recognized that stakeholder engagement processes produce advantages, but few studies acknowledge that they also can produce disadvantages. There is a global need to better assess stakeholder engagement processes by defining success and developing new methods to analyze stakeholder participation data. Our method of digitizing and coding stakeholder communications (1) produces a wide range of analyses, (2) tells the story of governance over time, (3) is comparable with other datasets, and (4) can be used wherever public documents exist. We demonstrate the utility of these integrated methods by examining statewide differences in public participation and success rates in Alaska’s Board of Fisheries’ (Board) proposal process. We determine that significantly different participation and success rates across the state indicate the existence of disadvantages and the need for further investigation into the equity, efficiency, and effectiveness of the Board process.     

VRML技术在城市景观交互显示中的应用

VRML是Internet上基于WWW (WorldWideWeb)继HTML后的第 2代Web语言 ,利用VRML技术实现城市景观交互显示 ,可以真正地实现面向对象、跨平台、分布式网络浏览 ,在城市GIS中有重要意义 ,文中对VRML技术在城市景观交互显示中的应用进行研究与实践并给出实验结果     

Shaping and Sharing Responsibility: Social Memory and Social Learning in the Australian Rural Bushfire Landscape

Responding to increased frequency and severity of bushfires, Australian governments called for “shared responsibility” for bushfire preparation and mitigation. This requires engagement between all sectors of community—government agencies, businesses, not-for-profit, and residents. Fire management agencies remain concerned about whether all communities in fire-prone landscapes are equally equipped to participate in sharing responsibility. A related question is how experience of bushfire influences subsequent community fire management practices. This paper addresses social learning and social memory in a landscape that has experienced repeat bushfires between 2006 and 2013. It examines the relationships between memory, learning and practice among a farming community in western Victoria and government agencies with bushfire management responsibility. Findings suggest that social learning and social memory interact and new practices emerge as the participants embrace “shared responsibility.” However, ambiguities remain about “what” is being shared and what being “responsible” means at different points in preparation and response.     

Understanding the 24-Hour City: Engagement,Positionality, and the Coproduction of Knowledge

This article explores the production of geographic knowledge arising through civic engagement, using the example of a research course in Pittsburgh's South Side Flats neighborhood. Although civic engagement is a persistent feature in geography research and education, recent papers note that the term civic engagement conceals diverse practices and goals and that the outcomes of engagement are usually uncertain. In this article, I argue that attention must be paid to the positionality of stakeholder groups at all stages of the engagement process and that there are necessary limits to how participatory the coproduction of knowledge can be during a civic engagement course.     

Teaching the Land of Israel as Civic Education: A Historical Exploration

Guided by the assumption that geography teaching is connected to nationalism and civic education, this study focused on the manifestation of different citizenship conceptions in the teaching of the land of Israel as implemented in the Israeli educational system. This historical content analysis of Israeli curricula resulted in a division into three periods. Whereas the first two periods reflected specific citizenship conceptions—nationalistic in the former and individualistic in the latter, the third period is characterized by an amalgamation of contradictory conceptions. These findings point to the potential and challenges facing geography education in creating a truly democratic space.     

Developing the Next Generation of Community-Based Scholars

As we train the next generation of scholars, we should be cognizant that the academy is increasingly being asked to justify its value to broader society. We discuss ways in which students can prepare for the changing directions of the academy as they participate in a community geography research training program. Our results reveal the impacts of our program, contextualize lessons learned from creating community-based research experiences, and provide data to support a framework for other scholars to develop community-based research training programs.     

Killing Carp (Cyprinus carpio) as a Volunteer Practice: implications for community involvement in invasive species management and policy

Community engagement is understood to be one of the keys to successful environmental programs—‘the social pillar’ of management. In this paper we examine community engagement where volunteers participate by killing invasive animals. Most research to date focuses on the biological or management implications of volunteer efforts for the invasive species, with little attention to the people involved or the social acceptability of killing animals in this context. Here, we report on a survey and participant observations of community fishing events in south-eastern Australia, where volunteers fish for and kill carp (Cyprinus carpio). We examine who takes part in these events, their motivations for being involved and the implications for ongoing community engagement. Survey respondents were predominantly well-educated Australian-born men, motivated to fish by a desire to spend time in nature. However, we also noted a strong response from overseas-born men with different motivations. Our survey elicited complex responses regarding killing, illustrating contradictory, sometimes conflicted experiences, which jar with personal motivations. The implications are that questions of ethics must extend to the human volunteers, and that more direct communication of program outcomes and the proposed benefits for volunteers be more rigorously assessed. We argue that invasive species management must contend with the experiences of volunteers, otherwise meaningful dialogue and program objectives risk being undermined.     

中国现代市井风情小说的流变轨迹及叙事模式

中国市井风情小说的历史源远流长,现代小说继承和发展了传统的市民文学的艺术形式。中国特殊的社会、政治、文化背景,对小说家的创作观念产生了深刻的影响,使得现代小说形成了两次市民文学浪潮,出现了以北京为代表的"古都中国市井"、以上海为代表的"挟带洋场风韵市井"、以大江南北小镇等为代表的"闾巷市井"三种最具代表性的市井叙事模式。     

Climate visuals: A mixed methods investigation of public perceptions of climate images in three countries

Imagery plays a central role in climate change communication. But whereas research on the verbal communication of climate change has proliferated, far fewer studies have focused on visual communication. Correspondingly, relatively little is known about how to effectively engage the public using the visual medium. The current research is the first mixed methods, cross-national investigation of public perceptions of climate images, with a focus on photographic climate change imagery. Four structured discussion groups in the UK and Germany (N = 32) and an international survey with an embedded experiment in the UK, Germany and the US (N = 3014) were conducted to examine how different types of climate change imagery were evaluated. The qualitative research pointed to the importance of the perceived authenticity and credibility of the human subjects in climate images, as well as widespread negativity towards images depicting protests and demonstrations. Images of climate ‘solutions’ produced positive emotional responses in the survey and were less polarizing for climate change skeptics, but they were also the least motivating of action. Familiar climate images (such as a polar bear on melting ice) were easily understood in the survey (and evaluated positively as a consequence) but viewed with cynicism in discussion groups. We present a detailed discussion of these and other key findings in this paper and describe a novel application of the data through an online image library for practitioners which accompanies the research (www.climatevisuals.org).     

Citizen science and the power of public participation in marine spatial planning

Marine spatial planning (MSP) is becoming increasingly used in the sustainable management of marine and coastal ecosystems. However, limitations on time and resources often restrict the data available for MSP and limit public engagement and participation in the MSP process. While citizen science is being increasingly used to provide fine-scale environmental data across large terrestrial planning areas, there has been little uptake in MSP to date. This paper demonstrates how consistent citizen observations can be used to identify hotspots of good and poor environmental health across a MSP region, and where environmental health has improved or degraded in the past five years; information that is difficult to obtain by other means. The study demonstrates how citizen science provides valuable insight into environmental health across a MSP region, while fostering a supportive space for the public to contribute their own observations and participate in the planning process.