Transcultural Risk Communication on Dauphin Island: An Analysis of Ironically Located Responses to the Deepwater Horizon Disaster

Abstract

This article uses the ironic delivery sites of rhetorics surrounding the Deepwater Horizon disaster to foreground the importance of transcultural communication in constructing risk. Whereas hegemonic entities used community centers as spaces for dissemination, local actants took up digital media. With ecocritical and ecological-economic approaches, this article uses actor-network theory and the concept of digital guerrilla media to frame risk as being produced by complex transcultural networks that take into account the importance of location.

Keywords:

• actor-network theory
• BP
• Dauphin Island
• Deepwater Horizon oil spill and communication
• digital guerrilla
• disaster rhetorics
• ecocritical and ecological-economic approaches
• rhetorics of risk
• transcultural communication

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am deeply indebted to the anonymous reviewers of this article, whose generous feedback was instrumental in the development of my arguments. In addition, my advisor and mentor Angela Haas has been formative in my thinking about cultural studies approaches to technical communication contexts.

Notes

I did not ultimately participate in clean-up efforts because, although some small tarballs were reported prior to my visit, significant quantities of oil did not come ashore until June 26—the day after I left Dauphin Island, Alabama.

BP has since sued Halliburton, a U.S. contractor, for part of the estimated $42 billion for clean-up efforts. BP claims Halliburton did faulty cement work on the Deepwater Horizon rig (Rushe, 2012). This lawsuit will play out within the historical context of U.S.-based legislation requiring those who create hazardous waste sites to be responsible for subsequent harm. This act, the U.S. Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, significantly impacts the practices of corporations dealing with hazardous materials in the U.S. (Lundgren and McMakin, 2009).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Erin A. Frost

Erin A. Frost is a graduate assistant in the Department of English at Illinois State University. She holds an MA in professional writing and rhetorics and is pursuing a PhD with specializations in technical communication, rhetoric and composition, and women's and gender studies.