Fuelling an Environmental Conflict through Information Diffusion Strategies

Abstract

When an environmental conflict occurs, the information people have access to play a crucial role in how the conflict develops. Through a case study of an ongoing conflict related to a highly contested wind farm in Québec (Canada), this paper focuses on how the news of the project was announced by the developer and on how it was then diffused by different involved actors. It aims to answer the following questions: who is informed, when are these people informed, and how does it impact the unfolding conflict? Field observation and in-depth interviews with 93 individuals involved in the public hearing process were conducted. An important part of the analysis was made using social network analysis to reconstruct diffusion of the news of the project among the sample over a 5-year period. The main findings showed that the developer made strategic choices regarding information diffusion (confidentiality, exclusion of some actors—especially the citizens, rumors, etc.) that spurred on opposition in the latest stage of development of the project. The population's awareness was slow to grow, mainly because the news of the project was slow to spread in the community.

Keywords:

• information diffusion
• primary source
• social relations
• opposition
• wind energy

Acknowledgments

The first author wishes to thank the participants of this study for their generosity, and the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la société et la culture, the Canadian Community of Practice in Ecosystem Approaches to Health, and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research Team on Gender, Health and Environment for the financial support received for the study. The authors wish to thank Jena Webb and Simon Bilodeau Gauthier for the linguistic review of this manuscript.

Notes

1. In order to avoid confusion, the wind prospector and the wind developer will hereafter be considered “the developer.”