International experiences of digital empowerment in a climate justice frame

Project Information

DIGI-EMP

Grant agreement ID: 101027274

DOI

10.3030/101027274

Project closed

EC signature date 19 March 2021

Start date 1 May 2021

End date 30 April 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 171 473,28

EU contribution

€ 171 473,28

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI TRENTO
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DIGI-EMP (International experiences of digital empowerment in a climate justice frame)

Reporting period: 2021-05-01 to 2023-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project aimed to explore whether and (if so) how individuals affected by climate change experience and perceive empowerment through digital crowdsourcing campaigns provided by organisational actors. Unequal inclusion in climate change debates and decision-making processes remains a significant global problem, perpetuating local and global structural inequalities in experiencing and addressing climate change. In response to this issue, various international non-governmental civil society (INGO) and governmental organisations (IGO) have initiated crowdsourcing campaigns to involve citizens around the globe. Such campaigns provide open calls through digital platforms with varying aims around participation, ranging from individual submissions of climate change data (e.g. photo evidence or disaster tracking) to group submissions of innovative solutions to specific environmental problems. As such, these campaigns aim to provide participatory processes. They should therefore, in theory, empower individuals through more participatory digitally-enabled processes (= digital empowerment), a notion and hypothesis this project aimed to test through the lens of climate justice. In particular, the project sought to explore how digital empowerment is understood in theory and practice (RQ1), how crowdsourcing participants viewed and assessed these initiatives’ capacity to empower, and whether they consequently experience them as empowering (RQ2).

This project is focused on empowerment in theory (= concept) and practice (= experience). It does, however, speak to wider issues around democracy, such as: (1) processes of democratisation: through its focus on empowering unequally engaged communities, and (2) digital divides (= the gulf between developed & developing regions in digital technology usage and skills): through its questioning of whether crowdsourcing empowers communities that are already privileged (thus empowered) in their access to digital technologies. The climate justice frame specifically addresses social and political injustices such as unequal and therefore undemocratic global involvement in climate change debates, issues that could in theory be addressed through empowering practices. Thus, while these significant global social problems did not lie within the scope of this specific project, there are clear links to these wider issues, and the project results were therefore applied in a way that they would speak to these debates, for example through discussions of digital empowerment theory in relation to digital-visual misogyny in climate cases and Global North-South relationships in research. This project addresses these issues by exploring whether and (if so) how individuals affected by climate change experience and perceive empowerment through efforts to “gain control” (socially, politically, or otherwise) of their own living conditions by engaging in digital crowdsourcing activities offered by INGO in the Global North with a climate change priority. To do so, this project drew on qualitative research with case study organisations WWF and Greenpeace.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project results draw on online-ethnographic observation of crowdsourcing case studies from the WWF and Greenpeace, interviews with WWF and Greenpeace staff involved in crowdsourcing initiatives, ethnographic observation of users involved in crowdsourcing initiatives, and (as an extension of the original work) visual articulations of gender dynamics in climate change online discussion groups. Findings from the activities are documented in scientific reporting that has been disseminated at a range of conferences between 2021-2023.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project has provided a range of valuable insights into digital political empowerment in climate crowdsourcing initiatives. It has, above all, shown that, while organisations involve users through these activities, the purpose of environmental crowdsourcing is not necessarily rooted in empowerment. Instead, these initiatives arise from a range of different thematic and organisational needs in climate change mitigation. Similarly, participants in these activities do not necessarily join these towards becoming empowered, but for a wide range of reasons that are at times depoliticised and/or be locally rooted. Beyond the project’s empirical work, a range of key concerns in state-of-the-art research were integrated. These include current narratives on digital political power in relation to Global North-South relationships, power dynamics surrounding women and non-binary persons, as well as the role of methodological choices in expressions of power in digital social research.
In combination, these findings showed the intricate ways in which digital media, climate justice, and aspects of region are intertwined. Beyond the findings already accumulated here, it is expected that future outputs from these results will further highlight the complex ways in which regions matter in these Global North-to-South opportunities, as well as the ways in which these collaborations mould digital political power dynamics.

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