[Research Paper] Making them pay: Comparing how environmental facts matter in two accountability contexts
How do polluters come to pay? In many popular depictions–think the George Clooney film Michael Clayton–the story ends when whistleblowers bring the facts of a powerful entity’s wrongdoing into the public sphere. Exposure and censure, presumably, follow. But even when facts come to light, they do not automatically count. Think of the many revelations about fossil fuel companies’ activities that have broken over the decades with little impact on their ability to do business. Yet, groups still manage to hold polluters to account. In this paper, Ros Donald and Lucas Graves examine two environmental case studies: The Territory, a documentary about the struggle of the Uru-eu-wau-wau community in Brazil to protect their land from illegal invaders, and the fact-checking organization Climate Feedback’s partnership with Facebook to flag misinformation on the platform. In contrast to popular stories about accountability, which hinge on using facts to change the public’s mind, we find that publicity is only part of a much more complex picture. We make the case for what we call accountability contexts as a valuable heuristic for scholars and practitioners to think about how facts matter in public life, drawing attention to how different discursive and institutional contexts shape the ways in which facts can count. By examining factors such as appeals to relevant publics, institutional rigidity, the uses of knowledge and narrative, and the role of the state, we investigate the real, messy processes that people take part in as they seek change. We believe accountability contexts can be useful for scholars, as well as a practical tool for analyzing which pathways have led to success or failure in the pursuit of accountability.
Read Assistant Professor in Public Communication, Dr. Rosalind Donald’s full paper here.
