We are studying the political and cultural dimensions of information. Information does not exist independently of the contexts in which it is generated, supplied, and used. Information acquires power and meaningfulness through what human actors do (or don’t do) with the information.
Worldwide, citizens, communities, and NGOs are creating a wide range of information tools and uses, leading to the growth of information strategies as a vital new policy-making approach. The Toxics Release Inventory was one of the first information tools to appear in the late 1980s, and helped transform the governance of industrial pollution in the United States. Numerous tools have materialized in the past 20 years for food, pollution, clothes, biodiversity conservation, land planning, and many other sustainability domains. As a result, the norms of information provision and disclosure are changing, but with relatively little analysis thus far.
Our questions include: Why, how, when, and where do information strategies become credible, authoritative, and legitimate? How do information strategies become new regulatory tools? How does making information more available and accessible change environmental politics and policy-making? What pre-conditions are needed for information strategies to become potentially usable? Is there a requirement for an “information culture” to exist? How do different cultural contexts change the meanings and uses of information? For example, there are established societal norms in the United States regarding the availability of information, whereas people in China are still learning to demand information.
Broadly, we study whether and how citizenship and participation intersect with information. Environmental justice forms a central part of our research. How does information reflect prevailing societal power, and can information change the distributive impacts (both positive and negative) of policies and scientific & technological developments?
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