Doctoral Dissertation Research: Use of Digital Technologies by Indigenous People for Communication Within and Beyond Communities

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

The use of information and communication technologies by indigenous people has opened new opportunities for these marginalized groups to communicate across geographic distances and to influence policy and decision making. This doctoral dissertation research project will investigate the capacity of the Internet to facilitate productive dialogue among indigenous peoples, scientists and government agencies. The project will provide new insights into how digital interactions produce empowerment as well as inequalities for the various stakeholders involved. Project findings have the potential to provide new insights regarding how vulnerable groups might better leverage digital technologies to empower themselves as well as how different stakeholders might collaborate with one another and with policymakers across cultural, epistemological, and bureaucratic barriers in a search for solutions to changing environmental conditions. The doctoral student will work with local Inuit communities in northern Canada, but these issues affect marginalized populations globally, and the project will provide insights into the Internet as a forum for enabling international dialogue and decision making in a diverse set of locales in the U.S. and elsewhere. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career. The project will address three core questions: (1) How are environmental change issues articulated online? (2) Are such digital discourses shaped and constrained by current policies and do they affect the ways in which the Inuit engage with such policies? (3) What are the technological and discursive attributes of the Web that contribute to these constraints? The doctoral student will use a combination of topic modeling and critical discourse analysis to explore these questions and provide an understanding of the discursive framework with which the Inuit must engage. He also will analyze the experiences of Inuit as they engage with digital spaces as well as how cultural and epistemological aspects of digital technologies may prevent them from being fully engaged. The research has implications for the theoretical and policy-based understanding of digital technologies, the engagement of technologies by indigenous and marginalized peoples, and the communication of environmental information and knowledge.