I am a political communication scholar who has conducted research on journalism and politics, digital media and civic education, environmental communication, environmental justice, and public deliberation. My books include Ground Truths: Community-Engaged Research for Environmental Justice (University of California Press, 2024); Deliberation, Democracy, and Civic Forums: Improving Equality and Publicity (Cambridge University Press, 2014); and Investigated Reporting: Muckrakers, Regulators, and the Struggle over Television Documentary (University of Illinois Press, 2005), which won three awards for best book of the year.
A course on dialogue and deliberation organized a campus forum for Santa Clara University (SCU) s... more A course on dialogue and deliberation organized a campus forum for Santa Clara University (SCU) students to give their input on designing bystander intervention training to prevent sexual assault on campus. Results of the forum informed leaders of the campus Violence Prevention Program.
A course on dialogue and deliberation organized three campus forums for Santa Clara University (S... more A course on dialogue and deliberation organized three campus forums for Santa Clara University (SCU) students to discuss how the campus could conserve water in the historic California drought. Results of the forums informed campus decision makers in Operations, Sustainability, and Residence Life.
A course on Dialogue and Deliberation organized campus forums for Santa Clara University (SCU) st... more A course on Dialogue and Deliberation organized campus forums for Santa Clara University (SCU) students to give their input on redesigning material about DEI in new student orientation. Results of the forum informed leaders of the campus Office for Multicultural Learning, which designs the DEI component of orientation.
Community-Engaged Research (CER) often involves partnerships between academic or professional res... more Community-Engaged Research (CER) often involves partnerships between academic or professional researchers and community organizers. Critical CER and organizing each aim to mobilize people and resources to produce actionable knowledge in order to build grassroots leadership and power that promote equity and justice for marginalized communities. This article argues that critical CER collaborations can benefit by carefully matching the choice of research methods with community partners’ organizing strategies to ensure that research aligns with and supports organizing goals. We aim to add to the CER literature a more specific rationale for why professional researchers should share control over the choice of research methods with community organizers, and more detailed guidance for how CER teams can select methods that best advance organizers’ goals. After summarizing the many ways in which collaborative research can support community organizing efforts, we argue that different CER methods align best with widely-used organizing approaches (including Alinskyite, Freirean, feminist, community building and resilience-based, and transformative approaches). We illustrate the discussion with examples of research conducted by and with organizations rooted in the environmental justice (EJ) movement, which prioritizes community organizing as a strategy and draws from multiple organizing traditions, including a case study of research techniques used by the Environmental Health Coalition, one of the oldest EJ groups in the U.S.
American school boards, parent teacher associations, and other school forums are crucial sites fo... more American school boards, parent teacher associations, and other school forums are crucial sites for participatory and deliberative democracy, yet they often involve debilitating inequities of power among school officials and parents, adults and students, and parents from more and less privileged backgrounds. In this interview, John Landesman, a Senior Associate at Everyday Democracy, discusses how he addresses power differences in dialogues aimed at improving parental participation and student learning in a diverse school district outside Washington, DC. Landesman argues that developing a robust equity strategy from the start is the only way to meet the aims of dialogue that strives to include a variety of perspectives. Landesman also shares insights into how to practice equity at each stage of organizing a dialogue, from inclusive recruitment and retention of participants, to forum design and facilitation, to evaluating and implementing the group’s plans. Like many contributors to t...
In response to an increasingly interdependent world, educators are demonstrating a growing intere... more In response to an increasingly interdependent world, educators are demonstrating a growing interest in educating for global citizenship. Many definitions of the “good global citizen” value empathy as an especially important disposition for understanding others across national borders and cultural divides. Yet it may be difficult for people to achieve empathy with others who are perceived as psychologically and geographically distant. Can computerized simulation games help foster global empathy and interest in global civic learning? This quasiexperimental classroom study of 301 Northern California high school students in three schools examined the effects of playing REAL LIVES, a simulation game that allows players to inhabit the lives of individuals around the world. Compared with a control group, students who played the simulation game as part of their curriculum expressed more global empathy and greater interest in learning about other countries. Identification with REAL LIVES cha...
Flow theory offers an individualistic explanation of media enjoyment, while cooperative learning ... more Flow theory offers an individualistic explanation of media enjoyment, while cooperative learning theory posits a social explanation for enhanced learning in groups. This classroom-based experimental study examines whether game players can experience both conditions and the influence of each on several types of civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions. We find that high quality cooperative learning contributed to acquiring civic knowledge and skills. In contrast, flow was more influential for developing dispositions to empathy and interest in learning more about the game topics. Thus, we conclude that players can experience flow while engaged in cooperative learning, but that these two conditions may support different kinds of civic learning.
Deliberative theory increasingly recognizes that the quality of policy deliberation, including it... more Deliberative theory increasingly recognizes that the quality of policy deliberation, including its legitimacy and effectiveness, depends not only on the means by which a group arrives at a decision, but also on how the group communicates its process and decisions to those outside the group. Although deliberative democrats value publicity and transparency, few empirical studies have addressed the public communication of deliberation. In this article, we derive measures of the quality of external communication of deliberative processes and decisions from contemporary deliberative theory. Through content analysis, we demonstrate how these measures can be used to compare the quality of policy recommendations that emerged from three typical kinds of deliberative bodies � a government-led stakeholder process, a convening of activists, and a citizen forum � all of which addressed the same issue of broadband Internet policy. We conclude with suggestions for how research on the communication...
Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 2019
Digital simulations are increasingly used to educate about the causes and effects of poverty, and... more Digital simulations are increasingly used to educate about the causes and effects of poverty, and inspire action to alleviate it. Drawing on research about attributions of poverty, subjective well-being, and relative income, this experimental study assesses the effects of an online poverty simulation (entitled Spent) on participants’ beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Results show that, compared with a control group, Spent players donated marginally more money to a charity serving the poor and expressed higher support for policies benefitting the poor, but were less likely to take immediate political action by signing an online petition to support a higher minimum wage. Spent players also expressed greater subjective well-being than the control group, but this was not associated with increased policy support or donations. Spent players who experienced greater presence (perceived realism of the simulation) had higher levels of empathy, which contributed to attributing poverty to struct...
Experiential Learning & Teaching in Higher Education, 2021
Campus communities continue to become increasingly diverse as the U.S. grows more sensitized to, ... more Campus communities continue to become increasingly diverse as the U.S. grows more sensitized to, yet polarized over, issues of social justice. In response, many institutions of higher learning are placing greater emphasis on students’ experiential learning about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in co-curricular experiences such as new student orientation and in coursework. Experiential educators can help students forge links between learning about DEI in the co-curriculum and curriculum, and to move from intergroup dialogue to deliberation, which allows student learning to inform institutional learning. This article describes the design, outcomes, and implications of a course on dialogue and deliberation that engaged students in consulting their peers and forming recommendations for administrators about how to improve DEI learning at an undergraduate-focused, liberal arts institution.
A course on dialogue and deliberation organized a campus forum for Santa Clara University (SCU) s... more A course on dialogue and deliberation organized a campus forum for Santa Clara University (SCU) students to give their input on designing bystander intervention training to prevent sexual assault on campus. Results of the forum informed leaders of the campus Violence Prevention Program.
A course on dialogue and deliberation organized three campus forums for Santa Clara University (S... more A course on dialogue and deliberation organized three campus forums for Santa Clara University (SCU) students to discuss how the campus could conserve water in the historic California drought. Results of the forums informed campus decision makers in Operations, Sustainability, and Residence Life.
A course on Dialogue and Deliberation organized campus forums for Santa Clara University (SCU) st... more A course on Dialogue and Deliberation organized campus forums for Santa Clara University (SCU) students to give their input on redesigning material about DEI in new student orientation. Results of the forum informed leaders of the campus Office for Multicultural Learning, which designs the DEI component of orientation.
Community-Engaged Research (CER) often involves partnerships between academic or professional res... more Community-Engaged Research (CER) often involves partnerships between academic or professional researchers and community organizers. Critical CER and organizing each aim to mobilize people and resources to produce actionable knowledge in order to build grassroots leadership and power that promote equity and justice for marginalized communities. This article argues that critical CER collaborations can benefit by carefully matching the choice of research methods with community partners’ organizing strategies to ensure that research aligns with and supports organizing goals. We aim to add to the CER literature a more specific rationale for why professional researchers should share control over the choice of research methods with community organizers, and more detailed guidance for how CER teams can select methods that best advance organizers’ goals. After summarizing the many ways in which collaborative research can support community organizing efforts, we argue that different CER methods align best with widely-used organizing approaches (including Alinskyite, Freirean, feminist, community building and resilience-based, and transformative approaches). We illustrate the discussion with examples of research conducted by and with organizations rooted in the environmental justice (EJ) movement, which prioritizes community organizing as a strategy and draws from multiple organizing traditions, including a case study of research techniques used by the Environmental Health Coalition, one of the oldest EJ groups in the U.S.
American school boards, parent teacher associations, and other school forums are crucial sites fo... more American school boards, parent teacher associations, and other school forums are crucial sites for participatory and deliberative democracy, yet they often involve debilitating inequities of power among school officials and parents, adults and students, and parents from more and less privileged backgrounds. In this interview, John Landesman, a Senior Associate at Everyday Democracy, discusses how he addresses power differences in dialogues aimed at improving parental participation and student learning in a diverse school district outside Washington, DC. Landesman argues that developing a robust equity strategy from the start is the only way to meet the aims of dialogue that strives to include a variety of perspectives. Landesman also shares insights into how to practice equity at each stage of organizing a dialogue, from inclusive recruitment and retention of participants, to forum design and facilitation, to evaluating and implementing the group’s plans. Like many contributors to t...
In response to an increasingly interdependent world, educators are demonstrating a growing intere... more In response to an increasingly interdependent world, educators are demonstrating a growing interest in educating for global citizenship. Many definitions of the “good global citizen” value empathy as an especially important disposition for understanding others across national borders and cultural divides. Yet it may be difficult for people to achieve empathy with others who are perceived as psychologically and geographically distant. Can computerized simulation games help foster global empathy and interest in global civic learning? This quasiexperimental classroom study of 301 Northern California high school students in three schools examined the effects of playing REAL LIVES, a simulation game that allows players to inhabit the lives of individuals around the world. Compared with a control group, students who played the simulation game as part of their curriculum expressed more global empathy and greater interest in learning about other countries. Identification with REAL LIVES cha...
Flow theory offers an individualistic explanation of media enjoyment, while cooperative learning ... more Flow theory offers an individualistic explanation of media enjoyment, while cooperative learning theory posits a social explanation for enhanced learning in groups. This classroom-based experimental study examines whether game players can experience both conditions and the influence of each on several types of civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions. We find that high quality cooperative learning contributed to acquiring civic knowledge and skills. In contrast, flow was more influential for developing dispositions to empathy and interest in learning more about the game topics. Thus, we conclude that players can experience flow while engaged in cooperative learning, but that these two conditions may support different kinds of civic learning.
Deliberative theory increasingly recognizes that the quality of policy deliberation, including it... more Deliberative theory increasingly recognizes that the quality of policy deliberation, including its legitimacy and effectiveness, depends not only on the means by which a group arrives at a decision, but also on how the group communicates its process and decisions to those outside the group. Although deliberative democrats value publicity and transparency, few empirical studies have addressed the public communication of deliberation. In this article, we derive measures of the quality of external communication of deliberative processes and decisions from contemporary deliberative theory. Through content analysis, we demonstrate how these measures can be used to compare the quality of policy recommendations that emerged from three typical kinds of deliberative bodies � a government-led stakeholder process, a convening of activists, and a citizen forum � all of which addressed the same issue of broadband Internet policy. We conclude with suggestions for how research on the communication...
Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 2019
Digital simulations are increasingly used to educate about the causes and effects of poverty, and... more Digital simulations are increasingly used to educate about the causes and effects of poverty, and inspire action to alleviate it. Drawing on research about attributions of poverty, subjective well-being, and relative income, this experimental study assesses the effects of an online poverty simulation (entitled Spent) on participants’ beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Results show that, compared with a control group, Spent players donated marginally more money to a charity serving the poor and expressed higher support for policies benefitting the poor, but were less likely to take immediate political action by signing an online petition to support a higher minimum wage. Spent players also expressed greater subjective well-being than the control group, but this was not associated with increased policy support or donations. Spent players who experienced greater presence (perceived realism of the simulation) had higher levels of empathy, which contributed to attributing poverty to struct...
Experiential Learning & Teaching in Higher Education, 2021
Campus communities continue to become increasingly diverse as the U.S. grows more sensitized to, ... more Campus communities continue to become increasingly diverse as the U.S. grows more sensitized to, yet polarized over, issues of social justice. In response, many institutions of higher learning are placing greater emphasis on students’ experiential learning about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in co-curricular experiences such as new student orientation and in coursework. Experiential educators can help students forge links between learning about DEI in the co-curriculum and curriculum, and to move from intergroup dialogue to deliberation, which allows student learning to inform institutional learning. This article describes the design, outcomes, and implications of a course on dialogue and deliberation that engaged students in consulting their peers and forming recommendations for administrators about how to improve DEI learning at an undergraduate-focused, liberal arts institution.
This chapter focuses on public scholarship on environmental communication, including the major ap... more This chapter focuses on public scholarship on environmental communication, including the major approaches to this kind of research, and their potential rewards and risks for scholars, communities, and the natural world. The chapter argues that the purposes of this research should especially drive scholars to practice participatory research with communities, not simply on or for them, and to center issues of environmental justice.
Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance, 2019
This chapter assesses the state of democratic innovations in North America, including the United ... more This chapter assesses the state of democratic innovations in North America, including the United States, Canada, and English-speaking countries of the Caribbean. We begin by setting these innovations in the contexts of democracy on the continent, which includes both established democracies and countries that have only recently decolonised. We go on to discuss major trends in democratic innovations over the past two decades in North America, including referendums and initiatives, mini-publics and collaborative governance, and digital participation in political and civic life. We note the broad range of issues addressed by these innovations and their effects on democratic institutions at different levels of governance. Finally, we draw several lessons and ideas for reform from the uneven impacts of democratic innovations in North America.
Many have argued that inequalities of access to the Internet in an information-driven society pos... more Many have argued that inequalities of access to the Internet in an information-driven society pose a serious social problem and that public investment is needed to solve it. Others contend that the digital divide is a minor concern that will resolve itself without government involvement and spending. The positions we take on this debate depend upon our understanding of how new technologies spread throughout society, whether we think Internet access is a frill or a necessity, and our vision of whether government can and ought to help broaden access.
Challenging the chip: Labor rights and environmental justice in the global electronics industry , 2006
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a policy approach that holds manufacturers accountable ... more Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a policy approach that holds manufacturers accountable for the full costs of their products at every stage in their life cycle. EPR typically involves requiring that producers take back their products at the end of their useful lives, or pay a recycling contractor to do so, thereby internalizing the costs of recycling or disposal in a manufacturer’s bottom line. When companies know that they will bear the costs of product return and recycling, they are more likely to redesign their products for easier and safer handling at each step in the life cycle. This approach “enforces a design strategy that takes into account the upstream environmental impacts inherent in the selection, mining and extraction of materials, the health and environmental impacts to workers and surrounding communities during the production process itself, and downstream impacts during use, recycling and disposal of the products” (EPR Working Group 2003, 2). In short, by requiring a company to take its products back, EPR aims to force the company to make the products cleaner in the first place. The idea of applying EPR policy to electronics arrived in the United States in the 1990s as a welcome import from Europe. This chapter traces EPR’s adoption by coalitions of U.S. environmental, labor, and health activists seeking a comprehensive policy solution to the health and safety threats posed by the high-technology industry’s internationalization.
Reality TV: Remaking television culture, 2d Ed. , 2009
From the sea change in American television in the 1980s emerged a programming trend variously des... more From the sea change in American television in the 1980s emerged a programming trend variously described as “infotainment,” “reality-based television,” “tabloid TV,” “crime-time television,” “trash TV,” and “on-scene shows.” The welter of terms created by television critics to describe these new programs masked their underlying connection as a response to economic restructuring within the industry. In this essay I offer a rough categorization of these programs, sketch the industrial context from which they emerged, and point to the economic problems they were meant to solve. I focus mostly on the distinctive conditions of prime-time series, putting aside made-for-TV docudramas and entire cable channels (such as Court TV) that may have similar production practices and genres.
Documentaries are nonfiction programs that convey experience, provide information, and offer anal... more Documentaries are nonfiction programs that convey experience, provide information, and offer analysis. Many memorable and respected programs in American television journalism were documentaries. In part this is because documentaries offer journalists the luxury of more airtime to explore a single topic in greater depth than the shorter-format evening news or newsmagazine programs. In addition, documentarians are often freer to express their own conclusions on controversial issues than beat reporters, who are more constrained by the demands of objectivity and balance. Although the line between documentary and docudrama is often blurry, documentaries are less likely to dramatize or re-enact events. In contrast to talk shows, documentaries aim to go beyond “talking heads” offering opinions to convey the lived experience of people, places, and events. Documentary makers usually construct their programs from some combination of recordings in the field, compilations of archival materials, interviews, graphics, and animations. Many types of broadcast documentary have emerged over the years, including investigative, social, political, historical, cultural, biographical, diary, and those focused on nature.
Defamatory statements are those which harm an individual’s reputation in the eyes of the communit... more Defamatory statements are those which harm an individual’s reputation in the eyes of the community. The law distinguishes between slander (spoken defamation) and libel (written or broadcast defamation). Libel law attempts to balance the interests of journalists and others with the rights of individuals and organizations to protect themselves against false and injurious attacks. American libel law has changed significantly since the 1960s, offering greater freedom to journalists to criticize public figures. At the same time, libel law has also become more complex, creating ongoing uncertainty about when journalists are on safe ground. Libel lawsuits are still the most common legal complaints filed against the news media. Defense against these can be time-consuming and costly; suits occasionally result in large monetary damage awards, and can be abused by the powerful to divert attention from their own wrongdoing and muzzle their critics. Despite these problems, attempts to reform libel law have rarely succeeded, in part because of opposition from news organizations.
This is the first book devoted entirely to summarizing the body of community-engaged research on ... more This is the first book devoted entirely to summarizing the body of community-engaged research on environmental justice, how we can conduct more of it, and how we can do it better. It shows how community-engaged research makes unique contributions to environmental justice for Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities by centering local knowledge, building truth from the ground up, producing actionable data that can influence decisions, and transforming researchers’ relationships to communities for equity and mutual benefit. The book offers a critical synthesis of relevant research in many fields, outlines the main steps in conducting community-engaged research, evaluates the major research methods used, suggests new directions, and addresses overcoming institutional barriers to scholarship in academia. The coauthors employ an original framework that shows how community-engaged research and environmental justice align, which links research on the many topics treated in the chapters—from public health, urban planning, and conservation to law and policy, community economic development, and food justice and sovereignty.
Investigated Reporting is Chad Raphael's ambitious exploration of the relationship between journa... more Investigated Reporting is Chad Raphael's ambitious exploration of the relationship between journalism and regulation during American television's first sustained period of muckraking, between 1960 and 1975. Offering new and important insights into the economic, political, and industrial forces that shaped documentaries such as Harvest of Shame, Hunger in America, and Banks and the Poor, Raphael puts investigative television documentary into its institutional, regulatory, and cultural context. Those who see investigative reporting as a watchdog on government will be surprised to find that these controversial reports relied heavily on official sources for inspiration, information, and regulatory protection from muckraking's critics. Based on superb historical research using primary sources, including recently opened papers from the Nixon White House, Raphael exposes the complex play of influence through which investigative documentaries were both shaped and attacked by government officials, and highlights the troubling legacy for contemporary regulation of television news.
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