Our Research

The CDE Executive Committee’s research and outreach is driven by the passions and needs of community partners, affiliates, and students. Our work exceeds local borders and we share our research nationally and globally, including: talks and a tour on a just transition and scientific expertise, talks on energy democracy, art show dialogue between artists and scientists on communication, issues about undemocratic patterns of oppression and indigenous communities. CDE projects and topics weave throughout our praxis--social justice, climate communication, local food, and more--all require we bridge the scales of local, national, and global imaginaries.​

Communication Praxis

Scholarly work on deliberation has shown that engaging diverse publics across perspectives is often more beneficial if it is actively cultivated. Inclusion of persons with differing perspectives, identities, and experiences is something we seek to cultivate. Our CDE work helps to facilitate these discussions but also encourage new forms of dialogue and engage larger publics that often feel left out of the public process.

Learn More

Our Current Projects in Communication

 

Pezzullo’s research suggests a range of communication practices remain relevant to the ways we understand environmental issues in the public sphere, including: deliberation, conflict management, campaigns, science communication, and more.

 

 

Sprain’s research and that of others suggest that theorists and practitioners of democratic deliberation are too often separate and additional research bringing these two areas of expertise together are warranted.

 

Sprain & Reinig’s research shows that managing the boundaries of expertise can create hierarchies in the group that undermine inclusive participation and mutual consideration. These situations call for a passionately impartial facilitator to intervene on behalf of the principle of equity. 

 

Diversity & Difference 

Our research prioritizes the needs and concerns of Indigenous communities, working families, and communities of color by pairing it with communication practices that enable listening and co-production. Our projects are committed to affective engagements and artistic and cultural productions that promote mutual understandings. We argue that direct practice and engagement with the world can create, extend, and sustain the possibility of drawing on cultural knowledge to design public participation from locally-relevant forms of strategic action.

                                                                                  Learn More

Our Current Projects in Diversity

 

Cultural discourses can inform the design of public participation and engagement on a variety of environmental issues

 

Inclusion is associated with action. Dialogue participants consider inclusion as involving activities like risk-taking, watching for opportunities to grow, supporting, sharing, accepting, and engaging difference intentionally.

 

When can communication heal divisive politics and help us hear more diverse voices? In what ways are communication practices—speaking, writing, listening, sharing—vital for success and empowerment?

Energy & Climate

Our research is in concert with climate justice and science advocates, and works to exemplify values that have consequences for climate action and energy democracy. This work entails the ability to analyze communication phenomena through texts, isolated, individual deeds, and carbon emissions. It is also important for transforming our ways of living and ability to amplify underheard voices on the frontlines. 

                                                                    Learn More

Our Current Projects in Climate & Energy

 

Climate action is often articulated by cities in numbers.

What do these numbers leave out?

 

Tracing meanings attached to democratic engagement practices provides insights for designing future public participation and theorizing public participation in energy governance.

​

 

 

Energy democracy calls for the democratization of energy infrastructure and prioritizes public participation in just transitions.

Our Publications

The CDE Executive Committee’s research and outreach is driven by the passions and needs of community partners, affiliates, and students. Our work exceeds local borders and we share our research nationally and globally, including: talks and a tour on a just transition and scientific expertise, talks on energy democracy, art show dialogue between artists and scientists on communication, issues about undemocratic patterns of oppression and indigenous communities. CDE projects and topics weave throughout our praxis--social justice, climate communication, local food, and more--all require we bridge the scales of local, national, and global imaginaries.

Engaging Publics Through Climate Math: Lessons from Boulder’s 2016 Climate Action Plan

Energy democracy hopes to foster community engagement and participation in shaping our transition from fossil fuels to a renewable energy-based economy. These considerations result from critiques by environmental justice, climate justice, and just transition advocates. Although many are sympathetic to energy democracy ideals, climate goals often are articulated in math terms. This essay defines the aforementioned key terms and asks: what are the limitations and possibilities of engaging publics when climate action solely is articulated in numbers? A compelling case study is the City of Boulder – recognized as a global leader in climate science and a national leader in innovative environmental planning. This essay shares work from 2016, when the City shared a climate action plan for public feedback, supported several public participation events, and passed climate action legislation goals. We argue a just transition and energy democracy ideals are hindered if we reduce climate goals to math.

Contributing Researchers: Tiara R. Na’puti, Phaedra C. Pezzullo, Leah Sprain, & Lydia Reinig

This article is now available in the

Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere

Internationally recognized researcher Professor Phaedra Pezzullo (CDE Co-Director) and three-time Sierra Club President Robert Cox combine their expertise in the award-winning Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere (5th edition). The textbook focuses on the role that human communication plays in influencing the ways we perceive the environment. This edition also explores recent events—the Trump Administration, wolf conservation, public land milestones, the Flint water crisis, corporate disinformation campaigns, new alliances for a “just transition†in a growing renewable energy economy, the People’s Climate March, international legal precedents, and more—to illustrate key terms and the significance of environmental communication. It remains the most comprehensive introductory text in the growing field of environmental communication.  

Contributing Researcher: Phaedra Pezzullo

More details about the contents and reviews of Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere are available from .

Citizens Speaking as Experts: Expertise Discourse in Deliberative Forums

Analysing how participants use expertise discourse during environmental forums, this study examines how expert and lay knowledge are infused in deliberative democracy and the necessary distinctions between ways of knowing within deliberative epistemology. Through Grounded Practical Theory and Communication as Design, we analyse how expertise discourse contributes to and might undermine democratic deliberation through empirical analysis of transcripts from environmental forums in the United States. Our analysis describes three forms of expertise discourse used by participants within deliberative forums: institutional expertise, local expertise, and issue expertise. Expertise discourse is co-produced between participants, contributes to the information base, and most frequently comes in the form of institutional expertise. This discourse practice poses two problems for deliberative democracy: participants presenting information as an evident solution, and expertise discourse creating hierarchies that foreclose participation. We offer design recommendations for how to manage these problems within environmental forums.

Contributing Researchers: Leah Sprain & Lydia Reinig

This article is now available in