The Communication Ecology of 21st Century Urban Communities 9781433146596, 9781433146589, 9781433146602, 9781433146619, 9781433146626

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Figures
Tables
Prologue: Project History and Introduction (Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach)
References
Introduction (Yong-Chan Kim / Joo-Young Jung / Holley A. Wilkin / Matthew D. Matsaganis)
The Metamorphosis Project and Communication Infrastructure Theory
About This Volume
References
Part One: Theory and Method
Chapter One: Communication Infrastructure Theory as an Ecological Theory: Theoretical Framework and Key Concepts (Yong-Chan Kim / Joo-Young Jung)
The Storytelling System and Communication Action Context of Urban Communities
Community Storytelling
Integrated Community Storytelling Network
Connectedness to an Integrated Community Storytelling Network
Communication Action Context
An Illustrative Example of CIT Guided Research
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter Two: Toward an Integrated Urban Sociology of Communication: The Research of Sandra Ball-Rokeach and the Metamorphosis Project (Lewis A. Friedland)
Introduction
Foundations of the Ball-Rokeach Program
Media System Dependency Theory
Media Power
Communication Infrastructure Theory
Urban Sociology
Urban Communication
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter Three: Communication Infrastructure Theory for Collective Problem Recognition and Problem-Solving in Urban Communities: Beliefs, Assumptions, and Propositions (Yong-Chan Kim)
Core Beliefs about Urban Local Communities
Axiomatic Assumptions
Propositions
Conclusion
References
Chapter Four: Designing Research to Diagnose and Transform Urban Community Communication Infrastructures (Matthew D. Matsaganis / Holley A. Wilkin)
Mixed-Methods Research Designs and Approaches to Their Application
The Metamorphosis Project: Background and Initial Research Design
A Theory-Driven and Multilevel Research Design
Themes, Problematics, and Methods in Communication Infrastructure Theory-Based Research
The Role of Communication in Civic Engagement
Communication Ecologies and Urban Communities
Communication, Urban Communities, and Health
Communication and Public Space in the City
Research Methods to Support Future Communication Infrastructure Theory-Based Research
Notes
References
Part Two: Communication Infrastructure Theory in Different Contexts
Chapter Five: Overcoming Silence Through the Neighborhood Storytelling Network: Facing Controversy Over the Restart of the Nuclear Power Plant in the City of Kashiwazaki, Japan (Joo-Young Jung / Risa Maeda)
The Debate Over Nuclear Energy Production in Japan
Nuclear Issues in the City of Kashiwazaki
Willingness to Talk About Controversial Issues
Spiral of Silence Theory
Willingness to Talk in Local Contexts
Communication Infrastructure Theory
Research Questions
Methods
Measures
Results
Spiral of Silence and Willingness to Talk (RQ1)
Connectedness to the Storytelling Network and Willingness to Talk (RQ2)
Discussion
Implications of the Results
Note
References
Chapter Six: Examining the Links between Church and Local Community Engagement: The Case of Korean Immigrants in Los Angeles (Minhee Son)
Ethnic Church Engagement: Facilitating or Hindering Community Engagement?
Application of CIT in Developing a Model for Church Engagement
Study Context: Korean Immigrants and Church Engagement
Case Study: A Church for Koreans from “All Walks of Life”
Method
Research Procedure
Measures of Church Engagement
Measures of Local Community Engagement
Findings and Implications
Finding 1: Church Engagement and Neighborhood Civic Engagement
Finding 2: Church Participation and ICSN
Theoretical and Practical Implications
Conclusion
Note
References
Chapter Seven: The Enacted Communication Action Context of Ethnically Diverse Neighborhoods and Its Implications for Intergroup Communication (Chi Zhang / Wallis Motta / Myria Georgiou)
Theoretical Underpinning
Methods
The Enacted Communication Action Context
Density and Spatial Morphology
Inscription of Ethnicity
Spatial Practices
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter Eight: Digital Connections: Tracing the Evolving Role of Technology in Local Storytelling Networks (Katherine Ognyanova / Joo-Young Jung)
Media System Dependency Theory
Communication Infrastructure Theory
The Beginning: Conceptualizing and Measuring Internet Connectedness
Theory Evolution: Two Approaches to Understanding Technology
The Role of the Internet as a Facilitator
The Role of the Internet as a Catalyst
Key Trends and Directions for Future Research
References
Part Three: Communication Infrastructure Theory- Based Community Interventions
Chapter Nine: The Engaged Communication Scholar: Designing CIT-Informed Engaged Research in Diverse Communities (George Villanueva / Andrea Wenzel)
Engaged Scholarship’s Renewal
Communication Infrastructure Theory
Engaged Scholars as Community Storytelling Actors
Project Backgrounds and Methods
Connecting to Key Neighborhood Storytellers
Telling Community Stories
Discussion and Conclusions
Notes
References
Chapter Ten: Implementing Communication Infrastructure Theory- Based Strategies in Community Health Access Interventions: Lessons Learned from Two Projects in Two Cities (Holley A. Wilkin / Matthew D. Matsaganis / Annis Golden)
Communication Infrastructure Theory and Health
Integrated Connection to the Storytelling Network and Health
The Role of the Communication Action Context in Health
Intervention Project #1: 9-1-1 Project, Atlanta, GA
Strengthening Storytelling Network Connections and Leveraging Them for Outreach
Using Communication Hotspots and Comfort Zones
Intervention Project #2: Women’s Health Project, Riverton, NY
Building and Strengthening Storytelling Network Connections through Interstitial and Liminal Actors
Features of the CAC as Intervention-Enabling and Constraining Factors
Cross-Site Comparisons: Lessons Learned and Questions for Future Research
Advantages and Limitations of CIT-Based Intervention Approaches
Notes
References
Chapter Eleven: The Alhambra Project: A Prototype for Using Communication Infrastructure Theory to Construct and Evaluate a Community News Site (Nien-Tsu Nancy Chen / Wenlin Liu / Katherine Ognyanova / Evelyn Moreno)
Introduction
The City of Alhambra: Demographics and Media Landscape
Communication Infrastructure Theory
Multilevel and Multimethod Formative Research
Participatory Online News Website as Community Intervention
Evaluation of Reader Engagement and Website Outreach
Multistage Evaluation
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
Chapter Twelve: Communication Infrastructure Theory and Community-Based Program Evaluation: The Case of Media Mobilizing Project and the CAP Comcast Campaign (Garrett M. Broad)
Introduction
Evaluation Research
Communication Infrastructure Theory and Community Interventions
Case Study
Media Mobilizing Project: A Movement Media Model for Community Change
The CAP Comcast Campaign: Theory-Driven Evaluation Findings
Discussion and Extensions of Communication Infrastructure Theory
References
Epilogue: Emerging Issues and Future Directions (Matthew D. Matsaganis / Holley A. Wilkin /
Joo-Young Jung / Yong-Chan Kim)
Key Contributions of the Volume
Future Directions for Communication Research in Urban Communities
References
Contributor Biographies
Index

Citation preview

6

The broad array of issues addressed within this volume is expected to draw the interest not only of communication researchers and professionals, but also of students, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers from a variety of backgrounds and with an interest in different aspects of life in the city, including: public health, technology, civic engagement, and urban planning and design. YONG-CHAN KIM is Professor at the College of Communication at Yonsei University, Seoul. MATTHEW D. MATSAGANIS is Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. HOLLEY A. WILKIN is Associate Professor of Communication and Public Health at Georgia State University. JOO-YOUNG JUNG is Senior Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Communication, and Culture at International Christian University, Tokyo.

Kim, Matsaganis, Wilkin, AND Jung, EDS.

The book’s contributors address how urban communities are formed, reformed, and transformed from a communication infrastructure theory perspective. Through the lens of this theory, communication is defined as a fundamental social process by which cities are sustained and changed over time. The chapters in this book elaborate the theoretical and methodological frameworks of the communication infrastructure theory approach; articulate theory-driven and multi-method frameworks for the study of the city; and speak to pressing, contemporary, research- and policy-related challenges (or questions).

The Communication Ecology of 21st Century Urban Communities

The Communication Ecology of 21st Century Urban Communities addresses the questions of whether it (still) matters what neighborhood individuals live in and if it is still necessary and possible for city dwellers to build and maintain place-based communities.

www.peterlang.com PETER LANG

Cover image: shutterstock.com/oneinchpunch

The Communication Ecology of 21st Century Urban Communities Yong-Chan Kim, Matthew D. Matsaganis, Holley A. Wilkin, AND Joo-Young Jung, EDITORS

6

The broad array of issues addressed within this volume is expected to draw the interest not only of communication researchers and professionals, but also of students, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers from a variety of backgrounds and with an interest in different aspects of life in the city, including: public health, technology, civic engagement, and urban planning and design. YONG-CHAN KIM is Professor at the College of Communication at Yonsei University, Seoul. MATTHEW D. MATSAGANIS is Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. HOLLEY A. WILKIN is Associate Professor of Communication and Public Health at Georgia State University. JOO-YOUNG JUNG is Senior Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Communication, and Culture at International Christian University, Tokyo.

Kim, Matsaganis, Wilkin, AND Jung, EDS.

The book’s contributors address how urban communities are formed, reformed, and transformed from a communication infrastructure theory perspective. Through the lens of this theory, communication is defined as a fundamental social process by which cities are sustained and changed over time. The chapters in this book elaborate the theoretical and methodological frameworks of the communication infrastructure theory approach; articulate theory-driven and multi-method frameworks for the study of the city; and speak to pressing, contemporary, research- and policy-related challenges (or questions).

The Communication Ecology of 21st Century Urban Communities

The Communication Ecology of 21st Century Urban Communities addresses the questions of whether it (still) matters what neighborhood individuals live in and if it is still necessary and possible for city dwellers to build and maintain place-based communities.

www.peterlang.com PETER LANG

Cover image: shutterstock.com/oneinchpunch

The Communication Ecology of 21st Century Urban Communities Yong-Chan Kim, Matthew D. Matsaganis, Holley A. Wilkin, AND Joo-Young Jung, EDITORS

The Communication Ecology of 21st Century Urban Communities

Gary Gumpert General Editor Vol. 6

The Urban Communication series is part of the Peter Lang Media and Communication list. Every volume is peer reviewed and meets the highest quality standards for content and production.

PETER LANG

New York  Bern  Berlin Brussels  Vienna  Oxford  Warsaw

The Communication Ecology of 21st Century Urban Communities

Yong-Chan Kim, Matthew D. Matsaganis, Holley A. Wilkin, and Joo-Young Jung Editors

PETER LANG

New York  Bern  Berlin Brussels  Vienna  Oxford  Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kim, Yong-Chan, editor. Title: The communication ecology of 21st century urban communities / edited by Yong-Chan Kim, [and three others]. Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2018. Series: Urban communication; vol. 6 | ISSN 2153-1404 Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017029940 | ISBN 978-1-4331-4659-6 (paperback: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4331-4658-9 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4331-4660-2 (ebook pdf) ISBN 978-1-4331-4661-9 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4662-6 (mobi) Subjects: LCSH: Sociology, Urban. | Communication—Social aspects. | Urbanization—Social aspects. | Communities. | Community development, Urban. Classification: LCC HT153.C5947 | DDC 307.76—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017029940 DOI 10.3726/b13168

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

© 2018 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006 www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.

To Sandra, who continues to inspire us all to work with each other and with communities to build and nourish the ties that bind through storytelling

Contents

Prologue: Project History and Introduction Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach

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Introduction1 Yong-Chan Kim, Joo-Young Jung, Holley A. Wilkin, & Matthew D. Matsaganis Part One: Theory and Method Chapter One: Communication Infrastructure Theory as an Ecological Theory: Theoretical Framework and Key Concepts Yong-Chan Kim & Joo-Young Jung Chapter Two: Toward an Integrated Urban Sociology of Communication: The Research of Sandra Ball-Rokeach and the Metamorphosis Project Lewis A. Friedland Chapter Three: Communication Infrastructure Theory for Collective Problem Recognition and Problem-Solving in Urban Communities: Beliefs, Assumptions, and Propositions Yong-Chan Kim Chapter Four: Designing Research to Diagnose and Transform Urban Community Communication Infrastructures Matthew D. Matsaganis & Holley A. Wilkin

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Part Two: Communication Infrastructure Theory in Different Contexts 87 Chapter Five: Overcoming Silence Through the Neighborhood Storytelling Network: Facing Controversy Over the Restart of the Nuclear Power Plant in the City of Kashiwazaki, Japan 89 Joo-Young Jung & Risa Maeda Chapter Six: Examining the Links Between Church and Local Community Engagement: The Case of Korean Immigrants in Los Angeles 107 Minhee Son Chapter Seven: The Enacted Communication Action Context of Ethnically Diverse Neighborhoods and Its Implications for Intergroup Communication124 Chi Zhang, Wallis Motta, & Myria Georgiou Chapter Eight: Digital Connections: Tracing the Evolving Role of Technology in Local Storytelling Networks 146 Katherine Ognyanova & Joo-Young Jung Part Three: Communication Infrastructure Theory-Based Community Interventions 165 Chapter Nine: The Engaged Communication Scholar: Designing CIT-Informed Engaged Research in Diverse Communities 167 George Villanueva & Andrea Wenzel Chapter Ten: Implementing Communication Infrastructure Theory-Based Strategies in Community Health Access Interventions: Lessons Learned from Two Projects in Two Cities 185 Holley A. Wilkin, Matthew D. Matsaganis, & Annis Golden Chapter Eleven: The Alhambra Project: A Prototype for Using Communication Infrastructure Theory to Construct and Evaluate a Community News Site 203 Nien-Tsu Nancy Chen, Wenlin Liu, Katherine Ognyanova, & Evelyn Moreno Chapter Twelve: Communication Infrastructure Theory and Community-Based Program Evaluation: The Case of Media Mobilizing Project and the 220 CAP Comcast Campaign Garrett M. Broad Epilogue: Emerging Issues and Future Directions 237 Matthew D. Matsaganis, Holley A. Wilkin, Joo-Young Jung, & Yong-Chan Kim Contributor Biographies 247 Index253

Figures

Figure 1.1. Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.3. Figure 3.1. Figure 4.1. Figure 6.1. Figure 7.1. Figure 7.2. Figure 7.3. Figure 7.4. Figure 7.5.

Communication Infrastructure 12 Mediating and Moderating Roles of Community Storytelling Network between Communication Action Context (CAC) and Community Engagement 19 General Multilevel Communication Infrastructure Model for Community Engagement 21 Relationships among Collective Problem Recognition, Collective Efficacy, Problem Solving and Communication 54 The Original Metamorphosis Project Research Design 73 Model for Church Engagement and Local Community Engagement110 Business Ownership by Ethnicity in Alhambra: Main Street versus Valley Boulevard 131 Concentration of Comfort Zones around Green Lanes High Street 132 Dispersal of Comfort Zones in Alhambra 133 Same Location on Main Street, Alhambra in 2007 (Top) and 2014 (Bottom)  135 Change in Signage and Design of Turkish Patisserie on Green Lanes 136

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Figure 7.6.

Preference for different types of spaces in Harringay and Alhambra138 Figure 7.7. Areas Focus Group Participants Tend to Avoid in Alhambra 140 Figure 8.1. Facilitating and Catalyzing Approach to Integrating the Internet into the CIT Framework 152 Figure 10.1. The 9-1-1 Project in Atlanta, GA: Progression of Storytelling Network Integration 191 Figure 10.2. The Women’s Health Project in Riverton, NY: Progression of Storytelling Network Integration 194 Figure 11.1. Channels through which Residents Heard about the Alhambra Source 211 Figure 12.1. Logic Model for Media Mobilizing Project’s CAP Comcast Campaign 227

Tables

Table 3.1. Table 5.1. Table 5.2. Table 5.3. Table 6.1. Table 6.2. Table 7.1. Table 9.1. Table 9.2. Table 9.3. Table 9.4. Table 11.1. Table 11.2.

Axiomatic Assumptions and Propositions of Communication Infrastructure Theory The Event Timeline of Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Plant Zero-order Correlations of All Variables Linear Multiple Regressions for the Willingness to Express Opinions on the Nuclear Plant and Radiation Related Issues Demographic Characteristics of Survey Participants Zero-order Correlations between Church Engagement and Community Engagement Key Analytical Questions in Three Dimensions of Enacted CAC Community Organizer Gender, Organizations, and their Identified Democratic Spaces in South Los Angeles Organizations that made up the Northeast Los Angeles Riverfront Collaborative South L.A. Democratic Spaces Data Collection with Community Organizers NELA Riverfront Collaborative Project Data Collection Sources and Purposes Summary of Formative Research Components Summary of Multistage Evaluation

63 92 99 100 114 117 141 173 174 175 176 207 213

Prologue Project History and Introduction sandra j . ball - rokeach

In the communication field, I am most known for my work concerning media and power and, subsequently, a discursive approach to understanding diverse urban communities. Preceding these concerns and as a young sociologist, my attention was focused upon the legitimation of violence—be it in the service of social change or social control—development of a conflict theory of violence, and the relationships between value priorities and sexism, racism, and anti-environmentalism. Throughout these inquiries of the turbulent, yet hopeful 1960s and 70s, my positioning was the challenger of prevailing ways of defining and accounting for these social phenomena. In the process of challenging, one has to unlearn and experience ambiguity. Perhaps this is why, as Friedland notes in this volume (Chapter 2), the role of ambiguity in social change and social conflict was a constant underlying theme in my work, one that persists to this day. Being a woman in the furiously sexist environment of those times, I had to unlearn sexism—this process led to an understanding of, and an equally persistent thematic focus upon inequality. Since those more hopeful decades, neo-liberalism has generated changes in American value priorities that legitimate the stark inequalities of contemporary life in and beyond urban communities. To put it most plainly, it is freedom for capitalists and to hell with equality. The exquisite tension between individual freedom (the ‘I’) and group equality (the ‘we’) has been blown away. Robert Bellah and his

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colleagues signaled this development for the American context in terms of the loss of civic republicanism (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985). With the preceding as context, it is little wonder that I had my moment of ambiguity as I sat on my patio in a privileged area with a wide view of South and East Los Angeles watching the fires of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising. I was scared as the fires came closer to my area, but I could count on the Black and Brown private security force that served my White Cheviot Hills area to try to keep ‘their’ fires away from ‘us.’ Much more scary was one of those disruptive questions: What in the hell am I doing studying the injury prevention potentials of traffic reporting— a worthy effort to be sure, if you ignore the social dynamics of what is happening before your eyes and, more important, why it is happening. Once again, I had to unlearn and experience ambiguity, but this time, about my value priorities. I had to direct my challenger persona to myself. As a sociologically trained communication scholar, what could I bring to the Los Angeles that I loved that might, in even a small way, build upon what I had learned from the founders of the Chicago School? The challenge was not so much to apply what sociologists had uncovered about the ‘urban,’ but to bring what I could add—a communication perspective to the analysis of contemporary urban conflicts and how they might be addressed. My initial thinking focused upon civic engagement. Yet, I knew that the structural facilitators of civic engagement, wherein communities enabled themselves to represent their interests to power, had declined or vanished. As so many other scholars (e.g., Kurt and Gladys Lang) had observed, the devolution of political structures, such as political parties that had roots at the block level, had all but vanished, thereby opening the door to the media to fill the structural vacuum (e.g., Neil Smelser, Jeffrey Alexander, and others). Another prominent set of scholars was declaring that the onset of globalization and the internet meant that geographic place no longer mattered. My inclination to get to know the places of Los Angeles was mocked by such scholars as anachronistic. For example, I had one recipient of the MacArthur genius award tell me that I was on the verge of being a moron for wanting to conduct in-depth explorations of Los Angeles places, because place-based communities were a thing of the past. Being an irreverent cuss, I went with my intuition that claims of societal transformation into ungrounded cyberspace communities were a repeat of the utopian and dystopian visions that accompany every communication revolution (Sturken, Thomas, & Ball-Rokeach, 2004). Learning from historical analysts (e.g., Carolyn Marvin), it was more likely that the emerging communication ecology in context of globalization was likely to change aspects of social life, but not fundamentally destroy the importance of place-based communities where we most sensually experience everyday life.

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As things would have it, my school was undergoing its own disruption and transformation that eventuated in the appointment of a new Dean, Geoffrey Cowan, and the formation of a separate Annenberg Center. My Dean wanted a keystone project for our school that would be generously funded by The Annenberg Center for a four-year period. Geoff invited faculty proposals and I submitted the outlines of what I called The Metamorphosis Project: Transforming the Ties that Bind. Needless to say, that proposal was selected. Without Geoff ’s continuing support, this project would not have gotten off the ground and prospered. His civil rights activist background and his value priorities meant that he understood and appreciated the project we were proposing. Thus, it was with the formation of the Metamorphosis Project that a small team of doctoral students and I met and set out to explore relevant literatures. Friedland (see Chapter 2) eloquently reviews many of the intellectual origins of this project, so I will limit myself to supplementary remarks about the literatures that influenced how the project’s theoretical and methodological perspective took shape. Before I do so, I need to clarify the philosophy that guided the creation and running of the Metamorphosis project team from its inception in 1998 and its continuous operation until 2018. Our working relationships were importantly collaborative. The Metamorphosis Project is not my project—it is the fruit born of more than 140 graduate students with whom I have had the joy of working. As all mentors of talented doctoral students know or should know, you often learn as much from your doctoral students as they learn from you. If you build a team on the basis of trust and mutual respect, then doctoral students also learn from and support one another. Thus it was that the Metamorphosis Project “metamorph’ed” with respect to its focus of study and ways of studying with succeeding cohorts of team members. Getting back to the literatures that influenced our thinking, the first was the literature on civic engagement from a communication perspective. Probably the most vibrant and relevant was the work coming out of the Wisconsin group crafted by Jack McLeod, Lew Friedland, Dhavan Shah and many others. Early on, we asked to meet with these scholars to brainstorm and they generously agreed. Jack’s long and distinguished career included multiple and convincing demonstrations of the importance of local media for engagement. Local media were central to our thinking, though we elaborated the range of local media to include ethnic/ geo-ethnic media that were produced by and for racial/ethnic groups (Matsaganis, Katz, & Ball-Rokeach, 2011). Lew’s network and Habermasian work on the conditions for community cohesion sensitized us to thinking in a network fashion and setting that network in its communication action context. Dhavan was younger and, understandably, more interested in how the new media would enter

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the picture, a challenge that we subsequently took up (e.g., Matei & Ball-Rokeach, 2003). All of these scholars strove toward multilevel analysis, a way of thinking fully compatible with my ecological orientation. While not a part of the Wisconsin group, Philip Tichenor and his colleagues were among the first communication scholars to create an ecological approach, first reflected in the knowledge gap hypothesis (Tichenor, Donohue, & Olien, 1970), and, later in the structural influence model of communication, developed through the work of Vish Viswanath and colleagues into the interplay of communication inequalities and health disparities (Viswanath, Steele, & Finnegan, 2006). Walter Fisher, a distinguished rhetorical scholar, also influenced our work. I had the pleasure of getting to know Walt and his work, as he was my colleague at the Annenberg School—an advantage of a school with a multidisciplinary faculty. His classic 1987 book, Human Communication as Narration, sensitized us to the discursive. While his treatise spoke to the features of a story that could create resonance leading to a shared understanding of reality, our focus became the power of storytelling and storytelling agents. The most important influence beyond the communication field was the work of Robert Sampson and his colleagues on neighborhood effects, work that carried forward the Chicago School of Sociology into the 21st century (Sampson, 2012; Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997). The depth of their inquiry into the neighborhood characteristics that enabled informal social control was truly humbling. Out of this inquiry came the focus upon collective efficacy that we subsequently incorporated into our theoretical orientation. Also influential was the multilevel and multi-method approach that came to be one hallmark of our grounded approach. However, one dynamic missing from the Sampson group inquiries was communication (Matsaganis, 2015). All in all, the challenge was to be informed by, but go beyond the established literature to tolerate the ambiguity of building a fresh communication approach to the transformation of urban community under the forces of globalization, new communication technologies, and population diversity. We began by getting out of our offices and going into our field of inquiry—into a number of the diverse communities of Los Angeles. We were advantaged by the multiethnic and multilingual composition of our research teams, such that our fieldwork could be culturally sensitive. Our selection of areas was based on historical and demographic studies. We connected with community building organizations and therein lay a treasure—the community organizer. The theoretical approach guiding the chapters in this volume—communication infrastructure theory (CIT)—both articulates and expands the grounded knowledge of the community organizer. We learned to listen to these organizers

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with respect to how they went about motivating and mobilizing community members. In one public presentation of our CIT approach, a community organizer spoke up when I was challenged for having too abstract a model of the communication forces that potentiate civic engagement. In so many words, the organizer stated that we captured their practices and strategies of action—that other community organizers gave us similar feedback afforded a kind of validation that cannot come from stunning research results. The CIT strategy of action and intervention is fundamentally optimistic. In contrast to theories that emphasize resource (dis)advantage, our approach gives agency to collective storytelling and storytellers, even in otherwise disadvantaged or dominantly new immigrant communities. In these times of struggle and conflict, I think it important to note the basic optimism of a CIT directed approach to (re)building and activating communities to work in their collective interests. Collective storytelling agency is not, however, unconstrained as the storytelling network is set in its communication action context. If that context operates to close off, rather than to open up the inclinations and opportunities for communication between segments of the community (e.g., linguistic, barriers, race/ethnic divides, unsafe or unkempt public spaces), then the potentials for collective storytelling are reduced. I will not go into CIT theory per se as that is well addressed by chapters in this volume (see, for example Kim & Jung, Chapter 1; Kim, Chapter 3). Likewise, I will not detail the multi-method approach as that has been addressed elsewhere (see Matsaganis & Wilkin, Chapter 4) and is illustrated in the research reported in several chapters of this volume. While the basic elements of CIT—the storytelling network set in its communication action context—remain, the theory has necessarily been elaborated to adapt to the grounded conditions of other cultures and geographies and to concerns beyond civic engagement (see, for example, Jung & Maeda, Chapter 5; Wilkin, Matsaganis, & Golden, Chapter 10; Zhang, Motta, & Georgiou, Chapter 7). The localism of the CIT approach to urban community is its strength, but also its weakness. Each community is set in, and affected by the larger urban environment. Regional, national, and global environments also affect local communities, but the urban context is the most proximate and, probably, the most reasonable challenge for future theory development. In its inclusion of considerations of diversity, immigrants and immigration, ethnic media and racial/ethnic divides, CIT is a 21st century perspective on urban community. A well-recognized, but rarely addressed challenge is how do we mobilize communication forces to create grounded bridges or structures that bring racial/ethnic communities together in common cause while maintaining their unique socio-cultural forms (the classical part/whole challenge)? In the more

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recent years of Metamorphosis, we have added an intervention dimension to our collective enterprise that begins a program of addressing this challenge. For example, we have created a tri-lingual community news site designed as bridge between Latino, ethnic Chinese, and Anglo residents of a city based in Los Angeles County (see Chen, Liu, Ognyanova, & Moreno, Chapter 11). Metamorphosis teams have partnered with community and governmental organizations to address features of the communication action context to enable more communication hotspots— spaces and places where people gather, and converse in their everyday lives (see Villanueva & Wenzel, Chapter 9; Wilkin, et al., Chapter 10). To develop an urban community narrative that addresses the profound inequalities of our time, we are going to have to deploy communication forces from the ground up. Urban communities are in search of such a 21st century ­narrative—the narrative of the 20th century will not suffice as it was one of Black and White—it is more complicated today. That narrative has to address the conflation of race/ ethnicity with inequality in a way that resonates with the people and organizations of diverse communities. It won’t emerge from elite discourse; it will emerge from researchers and communities working together to tackle the communication challenge. The Metamorphosis Project may not continue as a major research and training program at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism with my retirement in June, 2018. The Metamorphosis approach to urban community, however, will thrive in the work and practice of many brilliant team members based in numerous locations around the world. I conclude with a sincere thank you to the many people and organizations that supported the Metamorphosis Project over two decades. Among the people that I have not yet mentioned are Elizabeth Daley, Ernest Wilson, Rebecca Avila, Patti Riley, Larry Gross, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Michael Parks, Barbara Osborn, Marita Sturken, and Doug Thomas. Among the organizations, the Annenberg Trust was the most constant supporter. We also received generous support from the First 5 LA Commission, the California Endowment, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

References Bellah, R., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W. M., Swidler, A., & Tipton, S. (1985). Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Fisher, W. R. (1987). Human communication as narration: Toward a philosophy of reason, value, and action. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.

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Lang, K., & Lang, G. (1984). Television and politics re-viewed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Matei, S., & Ball-Rokeach, S. (2003). The Internet in the communication infrastructure of urban residential communities: Macro- or meso-linkage? Journal of Communication, 53, 642–657. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2003.tb02915.x Matsaganis, M. D. (2015). How do the places we live in impact our health? Challenges for, and insights from, communication research. In E. L. Cohen (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 39 (pp. 33–65). New York, NY: Routledge. Matsaganis, M. D., Katz, V., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2011). Understanding ethnic media: Producers, consumers, and societies. Thousand Oaks, CA; London: SAGE Publications. Sampson, R. J. (2012). Great American city: Chicago and the enduring neighborhood effect. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Sampson, R. J., Raudenbush, S., & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and violent crime: A multilevel study of collective efficacy, Science, 277, 918–924. doi:10.1126/science.277.5328.918 Sturken, M., Thomas, D., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (Eds.). (2004). Technological visions: The hopes and fears that shape new technologies. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Tichenor, P. J., Donohue, G. A., & Olien, C. N. (1970). Mass media flow and differential growth in knowledge. Public Opinion Quarterly, 34(2), 159–170. doi:https://doi.org/ 10.1086/267786 Viswanath, K., Steele, W. R., & Finnegan, J. R. (2006). Social capital and health: Civic engagement, community size, and recall of health messages. American Journal of Public Health, 96, 1456–1461. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2003.029793

Introduction yong - chan kim , joo - young jung , holley a . wilkin ,

& matthew d. matsaganis

Urbanization is projected to continue to be strong for at least another 50 years. In fact, by the year 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population are expected to live in cities (United Nations, 2014). Although contemporary urban communities share some similarities with those of the past, 21st century cities are also different, and continue to change due to various structural forces. Such forces include globalization, increasing population diversity, rapid and disruptive technological innovation, and capitalism and regulation. The effects of these changes are manifold across all aspects of urban residents’ everyday lives at both an individual and a collective level. Literature on the urban condition has been burgeoning in the social and behavioral sciences in areas such as geography, economics, sociology, and public health. This volume adds to this body of work by explicitly exploring urban issues from a communication perspective. Editors and authors contributing to this book collectively ask whether it (still) matters what neighborhood individuals live in and if it is still necessary and possible for city dwellers to build and maintain place-based communities. Additionally, this book’s contributors address how urban communities are formed, reformed, and transformed. In the past, researchers in several different disciplines have approached these questions with conceptual tools such as social capital, community capital, public sphere and lifeworld, (urban) commons, community resilience, community health, collective efficacy, community integration, neighborhood revitalization, and community capacity building. While leveraging these useful

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concepts, the diverse set of studies that comprise this volume introduce, apply, challenge, and extend communication infrastructure theory to address the foregoing questions. Through the lens of the theoretical approach introduced in this volume, communication is defined as a fundamental social process through which cities are sustained and changed over time. This process is initiated and sustained by various city actors—individuals, media, and community-based organizations and institutions—who together comprise a city’s storytelling network. These actors produce stories about the city and its issues. Through communication, a city’s actors co-create a context within which they endeavor to address individual and shared concerns. The characteristics of this context (e.g., breadth of issues discussed, how they are discussed) are influenced by the structural and cultural dimensions of the city that make up the neighborhood environment in which communication takes place. This interaction between actors’ agency and the city’s structure produces an array of effects (related, for example, to civic engagement, the social integration of immigrant populations, and health.)

The Metamorphosis Project and Communication Infrastructure Theory Established in 1998 by Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach with her colleagues and students, the Metamorphosis Project at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California explored communication behaviors and problem-solving capacities in diverse urban environments. One of the critical outcomes of the Metamorphosis Project was communication infrastructure theory (hereafter CIT) (Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001; Kim & ­Ball-Rokeach, 2006). CIT was developed to explain the role of communication resources in the process of collectively recognizing and solving problems in urban communities. Local problems include, but are not limited to, economic and cultural inequalities, digital divides or inequalities, crime, local revitalization and gentrification, population changes (e.g., an influx of migrants), various types of disasters (e.g., natural disasters, such as earthquakes, or those caused by humans, such as terrorist attacks), and public health crises. A basic assumption of CIT is that civic capacities for dealing with problems in place-based communities in urban contexts are primarily built on communication resources that enable local residents to recognize shared concerns and to talk about them with others. This practice is referred to as community storytelling. One of the core claims of CIT is that when

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key local stakeholders (e.g., residents, community media, and community organizations) form a network that facilitates community storytelling, the local community will use this strong communication infrastructure to recognize and solve various local problems. The form and function of these community storytelling networks are largely influenced by community-level contextual factors (features of the communication action context). Therefore, a local community’s communication infrastructure comprises the local storytelling network that is set in a particular communication action context. Metamorphosis Project research that has developed and applied CIT reflects the theory’s potential to capture the complex communication ecology of 21st century urban communities. CIT is one of the few communication theories that explains the dynamic ecological and multilevel relationships between the communication environment and communicative action (Broad et al., 2013). In the CIT framework, communication environment is defined as a system of physical, institutional, technological, social, and symbolic resources and barriers for communicative actions in a specific socio-temporal context (e.g., urban neighborhood) while communicative action is viewed as cooperative actions of producing and sharing meaning through various channels (interpersonal and mediated ones) to achieve individual and community goals. CIT conceptualizes individuals in an urban local community as being embedded in the communication environment, where they seek resources and encounter barriers as they participate in communicative actions to solve problems in their everyday lives. CIT researchers have endeavored to conceptualize and assess an individual’s communication environment as being comprised of all available resources for communicative actions (Wilkin, Ball-Rokeach, Matsaganis, & Cheong, 2007). By focusing on how individual stakeholders (e.g., individual residents or organizations) seek to achieve their everyday goals in their local communities through community storytelling, CIT researchers emphasize the importance of conceptualizing and evaluating the web of connections to all available communication resources that community stakeholders build and rebuild. Metamorphosis Project research and the work done to build and test a theory was never meant to be just an academic exercise within the boundaries of an ‘ivory tower.’ Research in Los Angeles and other cities in the United States, as well as overseas, has delved into and examined the social issues present in the everyday lives of residents through the lens of CIT. In the spirit of making themselves and their work useful, Metamorphosis Project scholars have also developed CIT-based interventions related to public health, disaster preparedness, urban gentrification, digital divides, migration, and cosmopolitanism. This volume covers many of these issues within its chapters.

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About This Volume The chapters in this volume present, integrate, and expand on 20 years of research conducted by scholars who have been affiliated with the Metamorphosis Project. Specifically, the chapters elaborate communication infrastructure theory; articulate theory-driven and multi-method frameworks for the study of the city from a communication perspective; and the pressing, contemporary, researchand policy-related challenges (or questions) that must be explored. Although Metamorphosis and the development of CIT have their roots in Los Angeles, ­California—heralded by several scholars as a prototype city for the 21st century— the work presented in this volume spreads far beyond Los Angeles, across the United States and the world. Most of the chapters in this book were initially presented at a workshop held in Los Angeles in June 2015. Former and current Metamorphosis Project team members from Albany (New York), Atlanta, Chicago, New Brunswick (New Jersey), New York City, Washington DC, Seoul, and Tokyo, in addition to those in Los Angeles, gathered to present their CIT-based research. The four editors of this book led the workshop and encouraged participants to submit papers to be considered for this volume. After a rigorous review process, eleven chapters from the workshop and one additional chapter from Lewis Friedland, a long-time collaborator of Metamorphosis Project, were selected for this volume. All of the chapters in this volume contribute to the larger discussion around a core research question: how urban communities are formed, reformed, and transformed by communication. Specifically, the chapters of this book address these questions:

• How does the built environment of a local community facilitate or inhibit

communication between neighborhood agents, including residents, the local media, and local community organizations? • How do community organizations function as community storytellers to strengthen social and communication capital in urban neighborhoods? • What are the roles of local or hyper-local media in 21st century urban neighborhoods? What are they used for? How? • How are communication technologies incorporated into the everyday life of urban communities, and to what effects? • How do we intervene in urban communities to address health, digital, and other inequalities both within and across neighborhoods? This volume tackles these questions in 12 chapters, all of which are original contributions. These chapters are divided into three parts: Theory and Method;

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Communication Infrastructure Theory in Different Contexts; and Communication Infrastructure Theory-Based Community Interventions. The first part, Theory and Method, introduces communication infrastructure theory and reviews research methods designed and implemented in CIT studies. Chapter 1 (Kim & Jung) introduces the theoretical roots and central CIT concepts. Chapter 2 (Friedland) serves as a linkage between CIT and other relevant research frameworks. Friedland situates CIT in the larger contexts of urban sociology, urban communication, and community studies. Chapter 3 (Kim) builds upon Chapter 1 by delving deeper into the definition of CIT as a theory of collective problem recognition and problem solving in urban communities. Kim synthesizes the CIT studies conducted over the last 20 years by highlighting CIT’s core beliefs and assumptions and presenting six propositions that can be used to develop CITbased, empirically testable hypotheses. Chapter 4 (Matsaganis & Wilkin) reviews the CIT-based literature to discuss the evolution of this body of work from a research design perspective. In this chapter, Matsaganis and Wilkin make recommendations for ways to further methodological innovations (e.g., mixed methods) that could support new descriptive research, intervention and community-based participatory scholarship, as well as evaluation-driven research. The second part, Communication Infrastructure Theory in Different Contexts, includes four chapters that apply CIT to specific geographical, social, and media contexts. In Chapter 5 ( Jung & Maeda), CIT is used to examine the influence of residents’ connections to their local community’s storytelling network on their willingness to talk about a controversial issue: re-starting a nuclear power plant in a city of Northeastern Japan, in the era after the Fukushima disaster. Chapter 6 (Son) examines the role that the church plays in the lives of Korean immigrants in Los Angeles, and the ways that church participation is related to local community engagement, including sense of belonging, collective efficacy, and civic participation. Chapter 7 (Zhang, Motta, & Georgiou) delves into the issue of gentrification in two ethnically diverse neighborhoods in London and Los Angeles. By developing the concept of enacted community action context, this chapter investigates how different dimensions of the local built environment shape inter-ethnic communication and relationships. Chapter 8 (Ognyanova & Jung) synthesizes studies that have examined the role of digital technology in local storytelling processes and proposes that there are two larger approaches to understanding the role of digital technology in urban communities: one in which technology is considered a facilitator, and one in which it is treated as a catalyzing force. The third part of the book is titled Communication Infrastructure Theory-Based Community Interventions and includes four studies in which CIT has been applied to intervention research programs. Chapter 9 (Villanueva & Wenzel) discusses two Los Angeles area community engagement projects that used CIT-based

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strategies to advocate for improving the built environment (thereby engaging the problem of community change). Chapter 10 (Wilkin, Matsaganis, & Golden) compares two multiyear and multimethod intervention projects that explored factors contributing to disparities in healthcare access and utilization, one in a large Southeastern U.S. city, and the other in a small Northeastern U.S. city. The authors highlight similarities and differences in implementing a CIT-based approach to achieve healthcare intervention goals in different contexts. Chapter 11 (Chen, Liu, Ognyanova, & Moreno) discusses an intervention designed to connect storytellers in a multiethnic area of Los Angeles through the development of a shared community news website. This chapter evaluates the project and presents challenges to this type of theoretically-driven intervention. Chapter 12 (Broad) reviews and assesses the viability of the CIT approach for program evaluation research. Broad uses the case study of a community-engaged social justice project in Philadelphia to demonstrate how CIT can be used for community program evaluation. We hope that the broad array of issues addressed by the contributors to this volume draw the interest not only of communication researchers and professionals, but also of students, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers from a variety of backgrounds and with an interest in different aspects of life in the city, including: public health, technology, civic engagement, and urban planning and design.

References Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Kim, Y. C., & Matei, S. (2001). Storytelling neighborhood: Paths to belonging in diverse urban environments. Communication Research, 28(4), 392–428. Broad, G. M., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Ognyanova, K., Stokes, B., Picasso, T., & Villanueva, G. (2013). Understanding communication ecologies to bridge communication research and community action. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 41(4), 325–345. Kim, Y. C., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006). Civic engagement from a communication infrastructure perspective. Communication Theory, 16(1), 1–25. United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2014). World population prospects: The 2014 revision: Highlights Retrieved from http://www.un.org/ en/development/desa/publications/2014.html Wilkin, H. A., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Matsaganis, M. D., & Cheong, P. H. (2007). Comparing the communication ecologies of geo-ethnic communities: How people stay on top of their community. Electronic Journal of Communication, 17(1–2).

part one

Theory and Method

chapter one

Communication Infrastructure Theory as an Ecological Theory Theoretical Framework and Key Concepts1 yong - chan kim

Professor, Yonsei University joo - young jung

Senior Associate Professor, International Christian University

Communication infrastructure theory (CIT) is a product of 20 years of research that started in the late 1990s and that has been conducted by several generations of the Metamorphosis Project research team. The team was established by Sandra Ball-Rokeach at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. CIT introduces a unique approach to examining the viability of community in 21st-century cities. The Metamorphosis research team started its work across multiple Los Angeles communities at a time when two opposite trends dominated thinking around community. On one hand, there were those who claimed that structures, attitudes and behaviors that we associate with urban dwellers’ sense of community were fading away (Putnam, 2000). On the other hand, others argued the civil society was just being rebuilt and transformed (Paxton, 1999; Skocpol, 1993; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995). Questioning both these popular positions, Metamorphosis researchers took a different approach. They investigated and sought to reveal, through extensive fieldwork, the resources that urban neighborhood residents have and that can be activated to construct community, thereby enabling collective action for common

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purpose. Simultaneously, the research team examined the particular communication resource factors that stymie these processes in urban neighborhoods. A critical dimension of this work that led to the development of CIT was an emphasis on those communication resources, structures, and processes that are essential for the organization of everyday life in the city (Matsaganis, 2015; Kim, Chapter 3). As the name of the theory suggests, Metamorphosis researchers sought to reveal and analyze the communication infrastructure of urban communities at the turn of the 21st century. They and others have continued to do so since employing CIT in order to help all stakeholders in urban neighborhoods (e.g., residents, organizations and institutions, policymakers) to create and maintain strong and healthy communities. Metamorphosis Project research shows that some communities have rich and strong infrastructures for building civil society at the local level, and others have poor and weak infrastructures. Such community-level differences produce variable capacities for addressing external forces such as globalization, neo-liberal market forces, growing inequalities, emerging communication technologies, and increasing population diversity. These differences also impact communities’ abilities to mobilize internal resources to collectively recognize, define, and solve community problems (Kim, Chapter 3). From a practical perspective, CIT’s major contribution is that it enables the empirical unveiling of the communication infrastructures of urban communities so that weaknesses may be identified for the purposes of focused interventions (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a). CIT is based on the premise that communication resources are just as- if not more- important as political, economic or cultural resources in building a civil society in a local urban community (Ball-Rokeach, 1998). Similar to how an entrepreneur relies on access to the economic infrastructure’s financial and technical features in order to build a successful business, individual citizens or family units must have access to a supportive communication infrastructure in order to imagine (B. Anderson, 1991) and build community. The communication infrastructure is the product of the vast landscape of communication flows produced by people talking with one another, the media producing local stories, and local organizations bringing people together to address shared concerns. The communication infrastructure is a major player as with other types of local infrastructures in shaping the milieu of daily life. If this milieu is too noxious or insubstantial for residents to communicate with neighbors, belonging communities (i.e. communities in which members not only feel connected to their neighbors and places, but also actively engage in various neighborly behaviors) cannot form or be sustained (Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001). If a place has the means for communicative actions through which community members can imagine their places and discuss community issues, which CIT refers to as community storytelling,

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then there is an infrastructure that people can use to build civil society in their local communities (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001; Kim & B ­ all-Rokeach, 2006a). CIT is an ecological theory that takes a multilevel approach in capturing the link between the community-level communication environment (or ­community-level communication resources) and individual-level capacities or willingness to make use of the communication resources available in the communication environment. CIT conceptualizes the connection between the communication environment and individuals not merely as a one-way flow of influence or linear interaction, but as a two-way interactive process. Individuals’ connectedness to the communication environment in an urban local community may result in positive outcomes for the individuals (such as higher levels of belonging, collective efficacy, or civic participation), while such positive civic outcomes shape a better communication environment which will provide more resources for communicative actions to build civil society in a local community. The primary purpose of this chapter is to lay out the basic framework and key concepts of CIT. This chapter provides definitions of the key CIT terms that will appear throughout this volume. We will introduce one of the early multilevel studies of CIT in order to illustrate how CIT terminology was applied in research. Subsequent CIT developments and their application in different contexts will be presented in the other chapters of this volume.

The Storytelling System and Communication Action Context of Urban Communities By articulating and empirically unveiling “communication infrastructures” in diverse urban residential environments, communication infrastructure theory (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001) provides a specific means by which to understand an ecological and multilevel relationship between the communication environment and communicative actions in a local community context. The communication infrastructure is defined as “a storytelling system set in its communication action context” (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001, p. 396). The full storytelling system consists of macro-, meso-, and micro-level agents. When the concept of communication infrastructure is applied to local community contexts, CIT focuses on a community storytelling network in which meso- (e.g., local media and community organizations) and micro-level (i.e., interpersonal conversations) storytelling agents play a more important role than macro-level agents (e.g., mass media) (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a, 2000b). Figure 1.1 visually describes the two interrelated components of an ideal communication infrastructure: community storytelling network and communication action context.

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Figure 1.1.  Communication Infrastructure. Adapted from “Civic engagement from a communication infrastructure perspective,” by Y. C. Kim and S. J. Ball-Rokeach, 2006, Communication Theory, 16, p.176. Copyright 2006 by the International Communication Association. Reprinted with permission.

In the following sections, we define four key concepts related to the communication infrastructure: community storytelling, integrated community storytelling network, connectedness to an integrated community storytelling network, and the communication action context.

Community Storytelling Scholars have discussed the power of storytelling for different aspects of social, institutional, and personal lives (Appadurai, 1996; Boje, 1991, 1995; Figueroa, Lawrence, Rani, & Lewis, 2002; Habermas, 1989; Kim, 2001; Langellier, 2002; Miller, Wiley, Fung, & Liang, 1997; Shaw, 1997). Among commentators on the power of storytelling in our society, Habermas’ works (1987, 1989) have been most notable in articulating the power of storytelling on building and maintaining civil society. Habermas discussed how civil society and communicative actions rely on each other in the sense that civil society is shaped by communicative actions and

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that the potential for communicative action is influenced by the quality of civil society. Habermas’ communicative action (1987), however, was largely limited to “rational” discourse. Criticizing this point, Walter Fisher (1989) recommended looking beyond rational discourse and proposed the “narrative paradigm” as an alternative view. The narrative paradigm is based on the ideas that (1) man is a storytelling animal at heart; (2) human communication, especially argumentation, is largely a storytelling process in which individuals choose stories that match their values and beliefs; and (3) one tests stories’ narrative rationality based on probability (how likely a story is), coherence (the degree to which a story makes sense structurally), and fidelity (whether or not a story is true). The narrative paradigm views the story as a fundamental form in which people express values and reasons, and subsequently decide on actions. Largely following Walter Fisher’s notions, the most basic premise of the CIT is that “community” is constructed through storytelling. This is because a community is built on shared discourses regarding who community members are, what the important issues and problems are, and how they should address and solve such problems and issues (C. J. Anderson, 1996; Offe, 1980; Tilly, 1978). Community storytelling is a generic process of communicative action in the construction of discourse on community identity, issues, and action strategies. The CIT approach broadly defines “community storytelling” as any type of communicative action that addresses residents, their neighborhoods, and their lives in those neighborhoods (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001). Unlike a limited way of defining storytelling as, for example, a folk tale that has a certain narrative structure, what CIT describes as storytelling can take any communicative form while being limited only by its subject or referent. In other words, the form can be oral or written, electronic or non-electronic, synchronous or asynchronous, or a positive or negative narrative, provided the topic concerns the local community. The forms can be varied and, for example, can include: neighborly chats over backyard fences about upcoming neighborhood events, local newspapers’ coverages of current neighborhood issues, Facebook pages or Nextdoor sites for sharing neighborhood news and information, community podcasts on local events, pastors’ sermons on church members’ responsibilities to their neighborhoods, and school newsletters announcing community events to parents. The CIT approach places storytellers into three groups: macro, meso, and micro storytelling agents (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001). They differ in terms of their primary storytelling referent and their imagined audiences. Macro storytelling agents like mainstream media tell stories primarily about the entire city, the nation, or even the world, where the imagined audience is broadly conceived as the population of the city, region, or nation. Meso agents are more focused on a particular part of the city and, in some cases, on certain groups of residents of that

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area (e.g., on a particular migrant group). In addition, the residents themselves are critical neighborhood storytellers as micro agents. When residents discuss their neighborhoods instead of simply discussing general interest topics, they become local storytelling agents, i.e. participants actively imagining their community. Among these macro, meso, and micro storytellers, CIT research has focused on the role of meso and micro storytellers in helping construct place-based communities. This is primarily because macro storytellers, including mainstream newspapers, radio stations, and TV channels, have generally failed to play the role of local community storytellers in the contemporary metropolitan urban environment. The neighborhood storytelling network is comprised of three main storytellers—local media, community organizations, and individuals within their social networks. One of the key meso-level community storytellers is local media. In the CIT framework, local media refers to those that either target specific geographical areas and/or specific populations (such as new migrants) residing in an area. To emphasize that the two conditions (geography and people) are considered jointly in the conceptualization of local media as a community storyteller, CIT researchers have developed and used the term “geo-ethnic media,” especially when dealing with ethnically diverse communities (Kim, Jung, & Ball-Rokeach, 2006; Matsaganis, Katz, & Ball-Rokeach, 2011). In this volume, we use the term “geo-ethnic media” when diversity is evident in the community (e.g., Zhang, Motta, & Georgiou, Chapter 7; Chen, Liu, Ognyanova, & Moreno, Chapter 11), while the general term “local media” is used when the community is more homogeneous (e.g., Jung & Maeda, Chapter 5; Wilkin, Matsaganis, & Golden, Chapter 10) acknowledging that not all communities are as ethnically diverse and/or not all communities’ communication ecologies include ethnically targeted media. When local media generate stories about a specific neighborhood, they become a storytelling resource that individuals or community organizations can rely on to create and distribute their own neighborhood stories. Researchers have found that the roles of local media as community storytellers promote individual residents’ sense of belonging and civic participation (Finnegan Jr. & Viswanath, 1988; Jeffres, Dobos, & Lee, 1988; McLeod et al., 1996; Stamm & Guest, 1991; Viswanath, Finnegan Jr., Rooney, & Potter, 1990). The second key meso-level community storytellers are community organizations. Several scholars have focused on the organization’s storytelling function or performance (Boje, 1991, 1995; Boyce, 1990; Gephart, 1991). For example, Boje (1991) introduced and defined the concept of “storytelling organization” as a “collective storytelling system in which the performance of stories is a key part of members’ sense-making and a means to allow them to supplement individual memories with institutional memory” (p. 106). Scholars have found that community organizations work as a channel for individual residents to become politically

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active (Alford & Scoble, 1968; Olsen, 1970), to develop civic skills (Verba et al., 1995), and to develop political self-esteem (Aberback, 1969; zurcher, 1970). ­Wilson (2001) indicated that the most important role of community organizations in the community building process is to be “the precipitators and sustainers of neighborhood conversations that imagine a viable community” (p. 36). In other words, community organizations may work as effective channels to transform individuals from mere occupants of a neighborhood’s physical space to active neighborhood participants by providing individuals with the opportunity to collectively “imagine” and “talk” about their neighborhood. Micro-level neighborhood storytellers in the CIT approach are residents themselves embedded in their interpersonal networks. The importance of everyday political conversation in building democracy was studied by Katz and associates (Wyatt, Katz, & Kim, 2000). They observed that “talk about public concerns conducted in private, even among family and friends, has political consequences” (p. 89). Similarly, CIT based studies have found that conversations among residents about their local communities were positively related to community participation, regardless of whether they occurred in such locales as home, worksites, organizations, worship, restaurants, bars, and shopping malls, on Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor, or email.

Integrated Community Storytelling Network The CIT approach is unique in that it focuses not only on the communicative actions of each storytelling agent (e.g., individual residents, local media, community organizations, etc.) but also on a “network of communicative actions” between key community storytellers. One important criterion to measure the storytelling network’s quality is the level to which the three community storytellers are connected. In an ideal community, meso and micro storytellers form an integrated network in which each storyteller motivates the others to talk about the community. In a communication environment with an integrated storytelling network, people are better informed about what’s happening in their local neighborhood and discuss neighborhood issues and events with their neighbors in a way that stimulates participation in community building activities. Conversely, when local media only address what is happening outside the neighborhood, as in the case of many new immigrant media (Lin & Song, 2006), the relationship between local media and residents as neighborhood storytellers is broken. When community organizations have no relationship with the local media and residents, community members fail to benefit from storytelling resources that would help them imagine their community.

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Previous studies on community engagement illustrated contrasting cases in terms of the level of integration among neighborhood storytellers. For example, Knut (1997) reported a case of a community in which individuals’ connections to religious organizations stimulated their use of media to engage in the democratic participation processes. This is an example of a strong relationship between two meso-level storytellers: churches as community organizations and local media (see also Son, Chapter 6). Crenson (1978) offered a less integrated storytelling network case. He reported that residents of a community with close-knit neighborhood friendship ties were relatively unlikely to be informed about community associations, and their associations did a relatively poor job of representing their interests (Crenson, 1978). This is an example of disjuncture between micro-level storytellers (e.g., interpersonal networks) and meso-level storytellers (i.e., community organizations) in a community. In their study on neighborhood belonging in seven Los Angeles metropolitan communities, Ball-Rokeach et al. (2001) reported on two contrasting cases regarding the level of integration of the storytelling network: one African American community with the highest level of neighborhood belonging and one Korean American community with the lowest level of belonging. The high belonging community had a well-integrated storytelling network in which each storyteller stimulated the others to discuss neighborhood concerns. On the other hand, the low belonging community had a fragmented storytelling network. For example, community organizations and local media did not help each other produce or share stories about the neighborhood or encourage residents to talk with their neighbors about their neighborhoods. Stories told by these key neighborhood storytellers were often about what was happening nationally or in countries of origin thousands of miles away (especially in the case of new immigrant neighborhoods). Lin and Song (2006), and more recently, Wilkin, Gonzales, and Tannebaum (2015) found similar patterns in many ethnic media in Los Angeles. For example, health news stories seldom focused on the local area or frame stories in ways to promote micro-level interpersonal storytelling about health issues among Latino residents (Wilkin et al., 2015). In local community contexts, some individuals, organizations, or various types of media could help build the “scaffolding” necessary to integrate micro- and mesolevel community actors into a storytelling network. Matsaganis, Golden, and Scott (2014) call them “interstitial actors” (see also Wilkin et al., Chapter 10). Communities with more active interstitial actors are more likely to have an integrated network of community storytellers. Moreover, a basic strategy for effective community-based communication interventions designed to accomplish a variety of goals, including increasing community belonging and health service utilization, would be to identify or develop interstitial actors in target communities (Matsaganis et al., 2014).

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Connectedness to an Integrated Community Storytelling Network We can discuss the importance of the community storytelling network on two levels. First, we can discuss it on the local community level, where we can observe institutional-level interactions among local media, community organizations, and residents. Second, there is an individual-level relationship among these key storytellers. This individual-level relationship is demonstrated in the opportunities for individuals to participate in community storytelling through their connection to each of the three key community storytellers. On the community level, an integrated storytelling network represents supportive relationships among neighborhood storytellers to generate, distribute, and review neighborhood stories. It functions as neighborhood-level communication capital (Matsaganis & Wilkin, 2014) fostered or constrained by the communication environment of a local community and used for strengthening civil society within the community. On the individual level, an integrated storytelling network means that individuals’ connection to one type of neighborhood storyteller (e.g., community organizations) stimulates connections to other types of neighborhood storytellers (e.g., local media). CIT conceptualizes this as an integrated connectedness to the community storytelling network or ICSN. This can be also understood as the individual-level communication capital that individuals should acquire, store, and use for their collective actions in and for their local communities.2

Communication Action Context Another important part of the communication infrastructure is the communication environment in which the storytelling system operates. CIT refers to this as the communication action context (CAC). CAC is composed of both resources for and barriers to community building communicative actions. Most community environments will have both resources and barriers co-existing in a dynamic relationship with the discursive vitality of the storytelling network. For example, families and children who are afraid to be on the streets or in parks or to walk home from school are less likely to meet and greet their neighbors, thus lessening the chances that they will develop relationships where they talk about shared neighborhood concerns. When residents have to leave their areas to obtain quality social, educational, or cultural services, they are less likely to build relationships with local community organizations, businesses or institutions. Residents that cannot afford to obtain services outside of their local area may feel trapped and angry in a way that lessens neighborhood pride and their willingness to invest in the community (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001). In contrast, when a local area’s environment has many places and spaces where residents can meet the requirements of their daily lives

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and where they can gather, for example, in a well-equipped and safe park, they are much more likely to be inclined to meet and greet each other, thereby setting the stage for the emergence and maintenance of an integrated storytelling network (Wilkin, Stringer, & O’Quinn, 2011; Wilkin et al., Chapter 10). The CAC as articulated in CIT is informed by, but differs from Habermas’ concept of the public sphere. Habermas addressed the importance of the social context in the development of modern Western democracy (Habermas, 1979, 1989). He linked the birth of modern liberal democracy during the 18th century to the emergence of public spaces (e.g., coffee houses, clubs, salons, societies, and voluntary associations, and the press) in which the public could organize itself as “bearer of public opinion” (Habermas, 1989). Habermas’ conception of the public sphere focused on socio-structural relationships between the quality of the social context and the quality of democracy. In CIT, the CAC highlights how these relationships unfold in specific social settings such as neighborhoods or local communities. Rather than diagnosing the social and historical milieu of public opinion formation process in modern society, the CAC captures variation among specific geographical units in how they discursively build and maintain an integrated storytelling network. The CAC concept is also related to, but different from the concept of neighborhood characteristics mentioned in the neighborhood effects studies (Sampson, 2012). Researchers such as the early Chicago School sociologists (Burgess, 1925; Park, 1915, 1926), human ecology scholars (Bates, 1997; Cronk, 1995; Hawley, 1984; Reissman, 1970), and more recently neighborhood effects scholars (­Sampson, 2012), examined how the type of neighborhood affects individual-level outcomes and quality of life. Robert Sampson’s work on Chicago neighborhoods may be one of the most rigorous studies of neighborhood effects. Sampson’s studies found that individual-level outcomes (e.g., civic, economic, or health outcomes) are not just influenced by atomistic choices of individuals but also by spatially patterned social structures (e.g., ethnic diversity, income inequality, mobility) and institutionalized processes (e.g., trust, efficacy, social norm) that shape individuals’ access to resources and produce and reproduce existing inequalities between different individuals and neighborhoods (Sampson, 2012). Similar to the neighborhood effects studies of Sampson and others, CIT proposes that individual-level communicative, social, and health outcomes are affected by structural factors of the places where individuals live. However, CIT emphasizes discursive dynamics of communication action contexts, which is largely missing in Sampson’s and other sociological works. First, CIT explains that neighborhood contexts (i.e., CAC) are not only physical but also symbolic and discursive. For example, neighborhood reputation and collective memories that are produced and reproduced over time through discursive practices

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of urban residents can become important CAC components. Second, CAC effects are mediated by community storytelling network. CAC can affect civic outcomes not only directly, as shown in many of Sampson’s works, but also indirectly through building the community storytelling network in a local community (see Figure 1.2). CIT emphasizes that neighborhood effects on civic outcomes can be materialized or intensified when they are able to strengthen the community storytelling network. Third, CAC effects are also moderated by a community storytelling network. CIT studies have demonstrated that the effects of CAC on community outcomes are influenced by the dynamic interaction with the storytelling network (see Figure 1.2). For example, features of CAC that are usually associated with a lower level of community engagement (e.g., ethnic heterogeneity or high residential instability) can have a positive influence on community engagement when combined with community storytelling network of the community. Previous CIT research has found CAC effects on individual-level communicative actions (i.e., community storytelling) and civic outcomes (e.g., neighborhood belonging, collective efficacy, and community participation). As a way to capture contextual effects on communicative actions, Kim, Jung, and Ball-Rokeach (2007) and Kim et al. (2006) elaborated on the concept of geo-ethnicity, as “ethnically articulated attitudes and behaviors grounded in a specific temporal and spatial situation” (Kim et al., 2006, p. 424). With this concept of geo-ethnicity, a researcher examines individuals’ attitudes and behaviors not just based on who they are but

Figure 1.2.  Mediating and Moderating Roles of Community Storytelling Network between Communication Action Context (CAC) and Community Engagement.

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also where they are. Kim et al. (2007) and Wilkin, Ball-Rokeach, Matsaganis, and Cheong (2007) found unique effects of geo-ethnicity on individuals’ connectedness to the Internet. Hayden and Ball-Rokeach (2007) examined the role of community technology centers as public spaces in communication action contexts for reducing digital divides in communities. After controlling for individual characteristics, Kim et al. (2006) reported a geo-ethnic effect on neighborhood engagement. In this study, the researchers found unique effects of community context by revealing that the same ethnic groups living in different neighborhoods have different levels of neighborhood belonging. Chen, Dong, Ball-Rokeach, Parks, and Huang (2012; Chapter 11 of this volume) addressed the challenge of building an integrated storytelling network in an ethnically diverse neighborhood in Los Angeles. Matsaganis and Golden (2015) and Wilkin (2013) demonstrated the importance of identifying and creating communication hotspots and comfort zones within the CAC for disseminating strategic messages, such as health messages, to residents who are not integrated into the storytelling network (also see Wilkin et al., Chapter 10). Moreover, Matsaganis and Golden (2015) demonstrated how a neighborhood’s CAC features (e.g., availability of health resources, transportation options, neighborhood-level privacy concerns regarding management of personal health information, etc.) and the social construction of these features through communication among neighborhood storytelling network actors give rise to a community-specific “field of health action” that facilitates or hinders individual residents’ health-related behaviors.

An Illustrative Example of CIT Guided Research Figure 1.3 presents a general model illustrating how communication infrastructures influence outcomes; in this case, we focus upon community engagement. Individuals’ community engagement is conceived to be influenced by neighborhood-level communication action context variables and individual-level ICSN (integrated connectedness to a community storytelling network). Individual-level structural factors primarily influence community engagement indirectly through ICSN. Ever since the first publication on CIT-based research appeared in the early 2000s, an extensive number of studies have tested all or part of this process in different contexts. One of the exemplary works that contained most of CIT’s theoretical elements was the study by Kim and Ball-Rokeach (2006b). This is also one of the first communication studies that used multilevel data to test communication factors in community engagement (McLeod, Kosicki, & McLeod, 2010). Kim and Ball-Rokeach’s (2006b) study examines the unique effects of one specific individual-level communication factor (ICSN) and two neighborhood-level

Figure 1.3.  General Multilevel Communication Infrastructure Model for Community Engagement. Adapted from “Civic engagement from a communication infrastructure perspective,” by Y. C. Kim and S. J. Ball-Rokeach, 2006, Communication Theory, 16, p.187. Copyright 2006 by the International Communication Association. Reprinted with permission.

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CAC factors (ethnic heterogeneity and residential stability) on community engagement in Glendale, California. They first tested the direct effects of the two contextual factors on community engagement to see if, even after controlling for individual-level variables, living in ethnically homogeneous (or heterogeneous) neighborhoods and living in stable (or unstable) neighborhoods affects the likelihood of civic engagement. More interestingly, this study tested interaction effects between CAC and ICSN in order to examine whether the importance of ICSN is influenced by neighborhood-level residential stability or ethnic heterogeneity. By testing this, Kim and Ball-Rokeach (2006b) aimed to investigate the extent to which residential stability and ethnic heterogeneity function as crucial components of neighborhoods’ communication action contexts that shape the effect of ICSN on civic engagement. This study found that individuals’ community engagement was influenced by two components of the communication infrastructure: ICSN and two neighborhood communication action context variables (ethnic heterogeneity and residential stability). After controlling for other individual-level and neighborhood-level factors, ICSN was determined to be the most important individual-level factor in community engagement (neighborhood belonging, collective efficacy, and civic participation). In both ethnically homogeneous and heterogeneous areas and in both stable and unstable areas, ICSN was an important factor in community engagement. Kim and Ball-Rokeach (2006b) also found contextual effects on civic engagement. Residential stability positively affected ICSN, neighborhood belonging, and collective efficacy, whereas ethnic heterogeneity was negatively related to collective efficacy. While contextual factors such as residential stability or ethnic heterogeneity did not have a direct effect on civic participation, the study found that relative importance of ICSN for the likelihood of participation in civic activities was significantly higher in unstable or ethnically heterogeneous areas than in stable or ethnically homogeneous areas. These results indicate that the relative importance of the community storytelling network is higher in less privileged local communities with limited resources in their CAC. In other words, neighborhood contexts interact with community based communication resources to make significant impacts on community engagement outcomes. Kim and Ball-Rokeach’s (2006b) theoretical model and empirical study have been applied to many subsequent studies that focus on geo-ethnic communities (Kim et al., 2006; Lin, Song, & Ball-Rokeach, 2010; Matsaganis et al., 2011), rural communities (Nah, Namkoong, Chen, & Hustedde, 2015), health communication (Kim, Moran, Wilkin, & Ball-Rokeach, 2011; Matsaganis & Wilkin, 2015; Wilkin, Katz, Ball-Rokeach, & Heather, 2015), civic engagement in disaster situations ( Jung, Toriumi, & Mizukosh, 2013; Kim & Kang, 2010; see also Jung & Maeda, Chapter 5), new communication technologies (Kim et al., in press), digital

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divides (Kim et al., 2007), and others. The CIT research framework has also been used to develop practical interventions that promote civic community by strengthening the community storytelling network (Chen et al., 2012; Literat & Chen, 2014; Wilkin, 2013; also in this volume, Villanueva & Wenzel, Chapters 9; Wilkin et al., Chapter 10; Chen et al., Chapter 11; Broad, Chapter 12).

Conclusion CIT has been developed as an ecological and multilevel theory that focuses on the effects of community-based communication resources/barriers and communicative actions on community engagement and other outcomes. The theory provides a contingent model of community engagement in which the strength of civil society depends on the quality of the community’s communication infrastructure. This chapter introduced and explained the theoretical framework and key concepts of communication infrastructure theory: communication infrastructure, community storytelling, integrated community storytelling network, connectedness, and communication action context. The theoretical and empirical framework from Kim and Ball-Rokeach’s (2006b) seminal work, which served as an important basis for many subsequent studies that applied communication infrastructure theory, was introduced to illustrate a general model of communication infrastructure theory. Other chapters in this volume provide diverse research directions that stem from the early studies and demonstrate how CIT has been theoretically expanded and practically applied in different research contexts.

Notes 1. Some parts of this chapter are adapted from two of the first author’s previous publications: Kim and Ball-Rokeach (2006a, 2006b). 2. ICSN is measured as a summation of the three interaction terms between local media connectedness, scope of connections to community organizations, and intensity of interpersonal neighborhood storytelling. ICSN = LC × INS + INS × OC + OC × LC . In this equation, LC is local media connectedness, INS is intensity of interpersonal neighborhood storytelling, and OC is the scope of connection to community organizations. To see how the ICSN measure works, we can compare two hypothetical cases: one with moderate-level integration and the other with fragmented connections. If one scores 5 (as a moderate value) on the 10-point scale for each of the three storytelling connections, his or her ICSN score will be 15. If one scores 10 (the maximum value) for local media connection, but 1 (the minimum value) for the other two storytelling connections, the score would be 7.32. Therefore, having a strong connection to one community storyteller (local media,

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for example) will not significantly increase ICSN until that connection is accompanied by strong connections to the other storytellers (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006b).

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Park, R. E. (1926). The urban community as a spatial pattern and a moral order. In E. W. ­Burgess (Ed), The urban community (pp. 3–18). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Paxton, P. (1999). Is social capital declining in the United States?: A multiple indicator assessment. American Journal of Sociology, 105(1), 88–127. Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Reissman, L. (1970). The urban process—Cities in industrial societies. New York, NY: The Free Press. Sampson, R. J. (2012). Great American city: Chicgoa and the enduring neighborhood effect. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Shaw, C. L. M. (1997). Personal narrative: Revealing and reflecting other. Human Communication Research, 24(2), 302–320. Skocpol, T. (1993). Dimished democracy: From membership to management in American civic life. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Stamm, K. R., & Guest, A. M. (1991). Communication and community integration: An analysis of the communication behavior of newcomers. Journalism Quarterly, 68(4), 644–656. Tilly, C. (1978). From mobilization to revolution. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Verba, S., Schlozman, K. L., & Brady, H. E. (1995). Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Viswanath, K., Finnegan Jr., J. R., Rooney, B., & Potter, J. (1990). Community ties in a rural Midwest community and use of newspapers and cable television. Journalism Quarterly, 67, 899–911. Wilkin, H. A. (2013). Exploring the potential of communication infrastructure theory for informing efforts to reduce health disparities. Journal of Communication, 63(1), 181–200. doi: 10.1111/jcom.12006 Wilkin, H. A., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Matsaganis, M. D., & Cheong, P. H. (2007). Comparing the communication ecologies of geo-ethnic communities: How people stay on top of their community. Electronic Journal of Communication, 17(1–2). Wilkin, H. A., Gonzales, C., & Tannebaum, M. (2015). Evaluating health storytelling in Spanish-language television from a communcation infrastructure theory perspective. Howard Journal of Communicaiton, 26, 403–421. Wilkin, H. A., Katz, V. S., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., & Heather, H. J. (2015). Communication resources for obesity prevention among African American and Latino residents in an urban neighborhood. Journal of Health Communication, 20, 710–719. Wilkin, H. A., Stringer, K. A., O’Quinn, K., Hunt, K., & Montgomery, S. (2011). Using communication infrastructure theory to formulate a strategy to locate “hard-to-reach” research participants. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 39(2), 201–213. Wilson, M. (2001). Leading the community chorus: The role of organizations in society. (Doctoral Disseration), University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Wyatt, R. O., Katz, E., & Kim, J. (2000). Bridging the spheres: Politics and personal conversation in public and private spaces. Journal of Communication, 50(1), 71–92. zurcher, L. A. (1970). Poverty warriors. Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press.

chapter two

Toward an Integrated Urban Sociology of Communication The Research of Sandra Ball-Rokeach and the Metamorphosis Project lewis a . friedland

Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Introduction The research program of Sandra Ball-Rokeach constitutes one of the few attempts over a 40-year period to sustain sociological thinking on communication. Her original contribution of media system dependency theory grew from critical engagement with the uses and gratifications paradigm dominant in the 1960s and 1970s. Specifically, Ball-Rokeach was attempting to reintroduce the dimension of institutional structure and power into the framework within which individuals made specific choices to use the media. Her research since the 1990s constitutes the most developed program in the subfield of urban communication and runs parallel to major urban sociology scholars including Wellman, Castells, and Sampson. I will argue that despite some other work in urban communication, Ball-Rokeach stood almost alone at the intersection of urban sociology and communication proper, carving out a distinct research program. Finally, I will evaluate the Ball-Rokeach program in relation to a series of urgent contemporary problematics in the field, drawing from recent developments in what is a resurgent field of urban sociology of communication.

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There is a clear theoretical trajectory to Ball-Rokeach’s work but her programmatic approach allows the discussion of distinct phases. In this initial section, I will outline the sociological foundations, stressing that this is but one possible reconstruction of her work (others can be found throughout this volume). My central concern is with the evolution of her sociological thinking from the development and initial grounding in media system dependency theory, through a middle period in which she addressed a range of properly sociological problems with system, structure, and the roles of agents, to her later work formulating and developing communication infrastructure theory. Throughout I will show how she was connected to certain core elements of sociological theory and tradition, in order to demonstrate that the later phase of her work, more directly engaged with urban communication per se, continues these themes.

Foundations of the Ball-Rokeach Program Media system dependency theory grew from Ball-Rokeach’s dissertation research conducted in 1967–1968 (parts of which were published in Ball-Rokeach, 1973) on structural and psychological ambiguity. The central question was how could individuals’ or interpersonal networks be a definitive source for the construction of a reality through the media or other texts?1 Her answer was that ambiguity was a social and environmental problem and that the media system was “an information system central to the adaptive conduct of societal and personal life” (Ball-Rokeach, 1998, p. 9) In the 1960s and 1970s the field of communication was largely dominated by functionalist research traditions on perception. Foremost among these was the uses and gratification tradition developed by Katz and the two-step flow of Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955). The field itself rested on the perceptual psychology of Asch and the development of a series of findings concerning selective perception, selective recall, selective exposure, and retention. Taken together, they represented the limited effects that media in a mass society could have on individuals (Klapper, 1960). The two-step flow bound together mass society (elite opinion formation) with the small-group or interpersonal framework for understanding the flow of opinion. Opinion was formed by business and political elites and transmitted through the mass media to local opinion leaders, who, in turn, diffused it throughout smaller interpersonal networks. This offered a path to account for the one-way flow of opinion in mass society, while still retaining an active model of diffusion. Opinion leaders, groups, and individuals effectively activated and accepted elite opinion through discussion. It was a theory that could validate a certain democratic ideal (plural differences of opinion,

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not imposed from above) but it still rested on a passive model of exposure and diffusion. At the individual level this was expressed more fully in the Uses and ­Gratifications (U&G) school developed by Katz (for summary see Katz, Blumler and Gurevitch, 1973), which asked what individuals actually did with media? In this sense, it was a more open, active, individual and agent-centered approach that circumvented the passivity of the two-step and both strong and weak effects models. This micro-framework was an ideal environment for explaining selective perception within a highly individual-centered concept of active selection. I­ ndividuals chose those media that met their needs. Ball-Rokeach in her dissertation and post-dissertation work had a different conception of the individual which continues to inform her work. To understand her encounter with U&G and its later role in her work, it is necessary to discuss her intellectual sources. First, she drew from the work of the Chicago sociologist Tamotsu Shibutani (1966) who studied the construction, circulation, and function of rumor. Shibutani drew from Deweyan Pragmatism and the symbolic interactionist tradition, particularly Mead, to develop a cybernetic theory of rumor as collective problem-solving, rather than as mere distorted communication. ­Ball-Rokeach was one of the first (and to this day few) in communication to take Shibutani’s pathbreaking work seriously. Shibutani’s theory stressed the integration of macro-and micro-levels of analysis, as well the nature of social constraint, in contrast to symbolic interactionists following Blumer who largely held that symbolic interaction was an open, free, and creative process. Both of these elements became central to Ball-Rokeach’s program. Continuing her concern with ambiguity in the social process of meaning-making, she writes of Shibutani, “In the absence of ambiguity-resolving information from the media, individuals pooled their information resources to collectively define the media” (Ball-Rokeach, 1998, p. 10). Ball-Rokeach integrated Shibutani’s work into her own emerging theories of the media system and MSD. In doing so, she placed herself squarely in the symbolic interactionist tradition, albeit with some modification. Here too, Ball-Rokeach stood outside the mainstream of the discipline of communication (although symbolic interactionism remained a vital, if then secondary, branch of sociology). Quite simply, “reality was constructed and reality had to be constructed in order for people to act with meaning” (1998, p. 10), a proposition well within symbolic interactionism. But BallRokeach extended this idea to systems of media and information, recognizing in a modern society “under most conditions, media are available and central to reality construction.” In other words, given the system of meaning and information, individuals’ constructive action is always within a set of constraints established within the media system itself.

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A third current, rare in communication, was Ball-Rokeach’s use of the concept of the authoritarian personality, drawing directly from the pioneering work of Adorno and Frenkel-Brunswik (1969).2 Specifically, she drew a link between personality rigidity to intolerance of ambiguity, as well as the idea that authoritarianism originates in incongruity between structure and culture. For the former, she writes that the idea of modes of adaptation to ambiguity influenced her conceptions of individuals’ dependency relations with the media (1998, pp. 9–10). For the latter, she notes that Horkheimer and Adorno’s analysis of fascism (1988) assumes that individuals become vulnerable in their psychological states to influence by macrostructural forces that they may not be able to see and certainly cannot control. She further links this analysis to Durkheim’s theory of sources of anomie, placing limits on the capacity of individuals and of interpersonal networks to create unambiguous social worlds. She extends this argument to the larger problem of the relative stability or instability of social systems, arguing that under conditions of social change and instability, opinion leaders and individuals do not have the same selectivity powers as under more stable conditions. A fourth central source was Richard Emerson’s theory of power-dependence relations (Emerson, 1962). He held that power means the power to control or influence others which, in turn, resides in “control over the things he values” from material resources to ego-support: “In short, power resides implicitly in the other’s dependence” (Emerson, 1962, p. 32). Power is situational in that contexts shape power directly, and contexts themselves are embedded in higher level macro-sets of relations. Power is inherently relational, because it is never a simple property or attribute, but a relation of dependence between ego and other. Finally, it is always, at least potentially, reciprocal because resources are never simply possessed by one side to be used as sanctions against the other, but the other also possesses resources in the form of labor, skills, or materials that are needed by ego, even if and when these sets of dependencies are asymmetrical. Emerson also develops an analytical framework in which the degree of power in a relation is determined by the importance that B places on goals mediated by A and inversely proportional to the availability of these goals outside of A (Scott & Davis, 2015, pp. 203–204). In short, power is a relation of dependence but not necessarily a zero-sum game. It is embedded in sets of other relations (including systemic constraints). This insight was central to Ball-Rokeach’s development of media system dependency theory, and to its subsequent extension and elaboration into communication infrastructure theory. A fifth, but critical current in Ball-Rokeach’s framework is her work on violence. After receiving her Ph.D., Ball-Rokeach immediately joined the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence as co-chair of its Media and Violence task force. The commission was formed by Lyndon Johnson in the

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aftermath of the assassinations Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King (as well as Medgar Evers and Malcolm X). According to Ball-Rokeach the conditions in the aftermath of the urban uprisings of the 1960s were parallel to those that led her to create the Metamorphosis project some thirty years later. Her work on violence “followed from my profound dissatisfaction with the kinds of questions that social scientists were asking about media effects and an equally profound introduction to the nature of power in the DC context—e.g., the ability to obfuscate who is making decisions.”3 Her work on the commission led to two statements on the nature of violence, legitimacy, and the media system. In an edited volume assembled by the co-directors of research of the Violence Commission, Ball-Rokeach (1972), argued that media effects researchers were failing to explore the broader context of violence. The first half of the piece is an analytical treatment of the sources of violence and the varying conditions in which it is treated as legitimate. She asks how violence becomes legitimated and under what conditions it is a channel for groups that cannot bring attention to causes in any other communication channel. Well before the Bourdieu reception in the U.S. she raises the question of symbolic violence and its uses and functions, and explores the relation of violence to democracy. The second half of the piece links this framework to the role of mass media and attempts to broaden the research agenda on media violence by asking how television establishes the boundaries of legitimated violence in its programming and effects. Her second major statement (Ball-Rokeach, 1980) challenged prevailing theories of violence, drawing from conflict theory to focus on power and especially the power to define what is and is not violence. This paper in Social Problems sought to move away from then prevalent deficit theories and focus on power relations. She argued for and proposed a broader analytic of violence, criticizing normative and deviant theories of violence from a conflict perspective, such that “the same set of assumptions may be employed to analyze instances of violence exhibited by the powerful or the powerless” (pp. 45, 47). This work, as in the chapter above, attempted to reframe the larger debate in communication in at least two ways. First, it broadened the understanding of violence from effects to questions of legitimacy and social conflict, contextualizing the then dominant communication approaches in a broader social framework. Second, it sought to introduce macro-, meso-, and micro-levels into the debate, anticipating her later work on urban communication. In short, in the early phase of her work, Ball-Rokeach had pulled together the elements of a sociologically grounded theory of communication that was (a) rooted in a theory of social structure and the division of labor; (b) rooted in a symbolic interactionist social psychology that was itself however (c) constrained by the systems in which both the production of meaning and social integration were

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embedded. Further, (d) these systems were themselves governed by relations of power and dependence which operated (e) in an ecologically structured field from the micro- to meso- to macro-levels of social relations. These elements remained central to Ball-Rokeach’s theory throughout. Her urban communication research program can be read as a testing and working out of its major propositions in one of the only contemporary social laboratories that contained all of the relevant levels.

Media System Dependency Theory In the first major statement “A Dependency Model of Mass Media Effects,” (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976),4 Ball-Rokeach argued that the lack of clarity in the media effects tradition may be because “researchers have proceeded from the wrong theoretical conceptions to study the wrong questions.” Mass communication involves complex relationships between “large sets of interacting variables that are only crudely designated by the terms ‘media,’ ‘audiences,’ and ‘society.’” ­Drawing from Durkheim (1893), Marx and Engels (1844/1988) and Mead (1934) she argues that the classical sociological tradition provides a “more appropriate framework” for the analysis of media effects because it treats “media and its audiences as integral parts of a larger social system.”  The choice of these three theorists was not arbitrary. From the Durkheim of the Division of Labor she drew the effects of the macro social system on its embedded “lower” levels as well as a concern with how social integration occurs under conditions of complexity; from the Marx of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts the belief that while the actions of agents are shaped by social structure in determinate ways, they are not determined by them; and from Mead the proposition that the mediation between structure and agent is always symbolically encoded, and that socialization itself is never passive, nor are the effects of media on preformed behaviorally determined individuals. That said, in MSD theory the priority of structure and agent is clear. While the social realities of individuals emerge from their “social histories and current systems of symbolic interaction” they are “fundamentally connected to the structural conditions of the society in which they live.” These structural conditions themselves are subject to historical change. With the growth of complexity (and the division of labor) people had less and less direct contact with the social system as a whole beyond their position in social structure. Media systems became vital to “system maintenance, change and conflict at the individual, group, and social levels of action” (pp. 4–5). In this earlier work laying the foundations for MSD, the elements of the agent/media system relationship are established, as is the general priority among

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them. Over roughly the next decade, in a series of studies Ball-Rokeach more fully articulated the effect of the media system on individuals with the goal of formulating “a sociological framework for the analysis of the determinants of media system dependencies” including both macro and micro variables analysis. The goal was to understand how people come to be dependent on mass media. In a pivotal article, “The Origin of Individual Media-System Dependency: A Sociological Framework” (Ball-Rokeach, 1985) she establishes a sociological framework that lays out both macro- and micro-variables and specifies their relationship in greater detail. The argument is complex, and can only be briefly summarized here. BallRokeach organizes the discussion around three theoretical issues: (1) the historicalstructural origins of individuals’ MSD; (2) the individual-media relation; and (3) the environmental, media, and individual origins of MSD. At the historical-structural level, first, the media system controls information resources and has relations with other social systems (p. 487). Second, the media dependency of individuals is determined more by structural dependency than by the individual and social psychological characteristics of individuals (p. 489). Third, media systems generate a range of information/communication roles which set the parameters for potential media dependencies. Fourth, the web of interdependent relations between the media and other social systems creates “structural dependency” (p. 490). In modern capitalist societies, the most consequential dependency relations are between the media system and the economic and political systems. Ball-Rokeach characterizes these macro relations as “relatively symmetrical.” This is in distinction to the other major social systems of the family, educational, and religious systems, which are more asymmetric in that the media system does not depend on them directly. Media information resources are more essential to the welfare of the family, education, and religious systems than are these systems’ resources for the welfare of the media (p. 493). The article also shifts from the analysis of audience to “individual media dependency,” arguing that individuals are the proper analytical unit because there is no mass audience as such. A mass audience neither has goals nor controls resources. Rather, individuals have goals which invoke a “problem-solving motivation,” and can be articulated and analyzed. Further goals function as “attributes” and not relationships. Finally, goals change with the resources available to achieve them. The specification of goals as a key attribute links media orientation to specifiable, observable, behavior (opening the questions of how goals are being articulated, pursued, achieved); behaviors, in turn, are linked to the structural contingency of resources. By focusing on goals and intentions, Ball-Rokeach moves the debate away from states of mind (attitude and opinion) or observable behavioral states, while, at the same time retaining the methodological strengths of individual orientation (ability to use survey data in a multi-level model).

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Finally, Ball-Rokeach proposes a shift to a specific type of multi-level model, one that is environmental, processual, comparative, networked, and structural. Threat and ambiguity plays a central role in regulating the relations among levels. Here she begins with a model of the social environment as threatening and/or ambiguous because unpredictable or uninterpretable (p. 498). This creates cognitive or affective discomfort (citing Dewey’s concept of “felt difficulty” [1910/1978]). Here she links personal efficacy to stable social organization (moving beyond efficacy as an attitude), arguing that unstable environments impair the capacity to organize daily life. This provides an important linkage to her later urban sociology of communication, which converges with Sampson’s studies of collective efficacy in the city. Ball-Rokeach posits a “state of pervasive ambiguity” which creates a dependence on larger information systems for the interpretation of the social environment. Social problems, in short, continually generate needs for information. This can be read as an extension of Dewey’s concept of the public (1927) challenged by problems that can only be resolved through interpretation and action. The article ends by summarizing the stages of inquiry, from macro- to microthat would be necessary to investigate individuals’ media dependency relations, asking (1) what is the media system; (2) what structural dependencies exist; (3) what levels of ambiguity or threat exist; (4) what are the foci of media messages; (5) what are the discursive foci of interpersonal networks; and (6) what are the structural locations and goals of individuals (p. 506). Although the explicit focus is on a theory of individual media dependency, the seeds of the future program of investigation of communication infrastructure theory are established here (see Kim & Jung, Chapter 1 and Ball-Rokeach & Jung, 2009).

Media Power In the mid-1990s, there was a shift in theoretical emphasis. Ball-Rokeach further clarified the micro-foundations of MSD and differentiated them from uses and gratification (U & G) in a major statement, “A Theory of Media Power and a Theory of Media Use: Different Stories, Questions, and Ways of Thinking” (­Ball-Rokeach, 1998). The first part of the article laid out the premises of U&G, reflecting her earlier discussions with Katz, as well as reprised the development of MSD, and we will not further explore this here. “A Theory of Media Power,” reiterated that MSD was not a theory of weak effects so much as a theory of the conditions that give rise to media power and constrain it (p. 15). A number of underlying assumptions were articulated. First, society is “an organism” that can only be understood through the interdependent

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relations among its parts which produce both cooperation and conflict. Second, humans have universal motivations and goals toward understanding, orientation, and play, and these are linked to growth and survival. Social actors with control of prized resources will seek to monopolize them and keep them scarce. Third, information is a necessary resource for attainment of these goals and necessary for the survival of the human species and societies. Moving from these broader species-anthropological assumptions, ­Ball-Rokeach argues that the media system itself is necessary for development, maintenance and change of human societies. It is a system which a) gathers, creates, processes and disseminates information which; b) refers to the entire product of the media system; c) the media system has specific goals, values, roles, and technologies that differentiate it from other systems further; d) MSD relations may involve the whole system or some of its parts; e) the more complex and culturally differentiated the society, the broader the scope of human goals that require media. In this system-ecological conception, large social units seek to control or truncate knowledge construction. Because individuals and interpersonal networks rarely control information needed by powerful, macro-level actors, the role of individuals and interpersonal networks is largely invariant, confined to media dissemination resources. The article does comment on the then-emerging Internet, criticizing utopian projections that the Internet would create a realm of freedom and control for users and producers and arguing “The ecological power-­dependency thrust of MSD theory cautions against such decontextualized projections” (p. 31). Of course, this was published before the growth of social media. Early in the next decade the value of individual and interpersonal data as information was to increase exponentially. This signaled a shift in resource dependency, if not power.

Communication Infrastructure Theory In 1992, Los Angeles was rocked by the unrest sparked by the Rodney King trial and verdict. This was the start of a turn towards directly addressing the problems of urban life at the turn of the 21st Century. As Ball-Rokeach recalls “I was feeling ‘What in the hell are you doing’? Do you have anything to say about viable community under conditions of population diversity?”5 Further, Ball-Rokeach was spurred by the changing media system and the decline of democracy. Specifically, this was the period when research on networks and globalization was advancing the argument that place no longer matters. She firmly disagreed at the time: “Place will always matter. Geographic locale does matter and, ultimately, if we don’t have building blocks of democracy that come to the community level then democracy is going to be very fragile indeed.”

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The Metamorphosis project grew directly from these concerns with place, the city, diversity, and, not least, civic life and democracy. Spurred by a merger in the Annenberg School of Communication, Meta, as it became known, was designated a keystone project of the new merged school by Dean Geoff Cowan. By 1998 ­Ball-Rokeach had assembled a team of four RAs and herself. She did not want Meta to “look at issues of civic engagement and community cohesion by automatically applying established models of immigration, new technology, and diversity, feeling that ‘LA is a prototype city of the 21st Century.’ The challenge was to let go of preconceived notions and go into the field, observing, listening, and talking, but also in focus groups.” The team went into the field, investigating its original four communities (for more on the early Meta studies and their findings see Kim & Jung, Chapter 1 and Kim, Chapter 3). The Meta studies would grow to become the most complete urban communication field laboratory in the U.S. Communications infrastructure theory (CIT) emerged as a way of making sense of what Meta was finding in the field. More than a method of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), it was grounded in the community itself, based on listening and meeting with community members, especially community organizers, a core group of “influentials” in the CIT framework. “In a way, CIT is an articulation of what community organizers already knew.” This in-depth series of conversations opened up the Meta team to the abundance of ethnic tabloid and other media in diverse communities. The team learned about what it came to call “geo-ethnic” media from the field work (Kim, Jung, & Ball-Rokeach, 2006; Lin, Song, & Ball-Rokeach, 2010). The SEM models that emerged were checked against the findings on the ground, still rare in communication. One of the major tasks was to establish the dependent variables and toward this end the team studied the work of sociologist Robert Sampson (among others) in a search for measures with both objective and subjective elements (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a). A second goal was to redefine participation in the context of changing political dynamics in the city. An extensive review of the fields of political communication, urban planning, and urban sociology confirmed that communication was simply “not there. People looked at politics, technology, economics, and infrastructure. But they were not looking at the discursive features of communication. That’s where the term communication infrastructure theory comes from.” Returning to earlier concerns with the division of labor and solidarity, through the close examination of groups of different ethnicities, races, and class strata Meta clarified that the navigation of 21st Century Los Angeles retains many elements of group solidarity. One of the great strengths of Ball-Rokeach’s program, and the Metamorphosis project in particular, is to have respecified the question of integration in the city as an empirical question with theoretical dimensions. Rather

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than assume that solidarity has eroded, Meta has clarified that the navigation of 21st Century Los Angeles retains many elements of group solidarity. The project recognizes that such solidarity is not always the result of a positive choice, but frequently the result of necessity imposed by the realities of residential segregation, immigrant outsider status, and poverty. However, Meta has also attempted to articulate a positive theory of solidarity and communication, in the concept of “storytelling neighborhood” the process through which people go from “being occupants of a house to being members of a neighborhood.” The central idea is that residents of neighborhoods collectively engage in a storytelling process that motivates them individually and collectively to engage in behaviors that establish both subjective and objective belonging; further, these are established in everyday exchange behaviors (Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001, p. 2). One central early (and consistent) finding was that the assertion of place not mattering was greatly exaggerated, although, as expected, it varied by neighborhood (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006b; see Kim & Jung, Chapter 1 and Kim, Chapter 3). Here, Meta’s findings offer both alternative and complement to two major theories of the relations among networks, space, and place in the 21st Century city, those of Wellman and Castells.

Urban Sociology Wellman in the early seventies began articulating a network theory of urbanism, challenging the traditional paradigm, particularly in his Toronto studies, where he demonstrated that networks of kin, previously bound together in dense neighborhoods were dispersing across the metropolitan area, although they remained linked via the telephone (Craven & Wellman, 1973; Wellman, 1982; Wellman & Leighton, 1979). Over a period of years, this central finding led to a series of arguments against the idea of “community lost,” in which Wellman (in different rubrics) argued that although dense primary ties remain important, they are no longer located in densely knit solidary networks of place (Wellman, 1979). The separation of workplace, residence, and kinship has left urban dwellers with multiple social networks connected through weak ties, maintained over distance, and linked through transportation and communication networks. The scale, density and diversity of the city and nation state change the form of urban life, making multiple weak tie networks the norm. In time, this leads Wellman to articulate a theory of “networked individualism” (Rainie & Wellman, 2012). People manage their multiple weak tie networks to their advantage, a kind of social capital investment strategy. Networked

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individualism is a form of life in network society, driven by changes in the division of labor and the space of the metropolis. Wellman has mounted the major argument for this basic shift away from place in locality, and increased dependence on networks navigated through new communication technologies. And, indeed, this is a central fact of urban life for many in the middle and upper-middle classes. These dimensions of constraint drop away over time from Wellman’s urban network sociology, but remain salient to CIT (e.g., Kim & Shin, 2016; and see Ognyanova & Jung, Chapter 8 and Chen, Liu, Ognyanova, & Moreno, Chapter 11). Manuel Castells offers a more radical vision of cities as nodes in “networks of flows” that are comprised of a “space of flows” and a “space of places.” There is not room here to unpack the larger implications of his theory of network society for contemporary urban life, but certain core elements can be compared fruitfully with the CIT program. First, networks of flows occur at a global level, so cities find both their rank (as world cities, or not) determined by this networked location. World cities are bifurcated between the classes of global cosmopolites who inhabit their central core (and partake of their world class amenities in luxury consumption and culture) and those who live in the “space of places,” more colloquially outer ring areas, suburbs, exurbs, or metropolitan towns, who serve those in the center. Castells (2010) notes: the overwhelming majority of people, in advanced and traditional societies alike, live in places, and so they perceive their space as place-based. A place is a locale whose form, function, and meaning are self-contained within the boundaries of physical contiguity. (p. 453)

Moving down a level of abstraction, Castells asserts that cities have always been communication systems that increase communication through physical contiguity. The rise of digital communication is what constitutes the space of flows, which is changing urban form itself, leading to the formation of metropolitan regions as a result of a dual process of decentralization and interconnection. He offers the example of the Southern California “Southland,” stretching from Santa Barbara to San Diego, with 20 million people, connected by networks of freeways, media coverage, and communication. As Castells notes, the Southland has “a functional and economic unity, but not institutional or cultural identity” (Castells, 2010, p. xxxiv). Because Los Angeles is such a world city, the Metamorphosis project allows us to see and test some of the central propositions of this analytical framework and its metaphors. Indeed the project shows a much richer, more complex urban and communication environment than this stark division of space and place allows. To oversimplify, LA is composed of many immigrant communities, of varying levels of income; African American communities, also varying by income and

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education; middle-class communities of Jews, White Protestants and Catholics, Armenians; Asian communities of varying income and class levels. It is no more or less typical than London or New York, but all have this complex ethnic and class patchwork. The simple dichotomies of place and space don’t account for the flows of people, labor, immigration, or communication in either. As discussed below, Meta allows us to see this ecology in a single world city, in a way that both enriches Wellman and Castells’ accounts and points to their limitations as a general description. The urban theorist whose work Meta most parallels is Robert Sampson, particularly his Great American City (2012) which takes a very different approach than Wellman and Castells to urban networks, the structure of the city, its processes of inclusion and exclusion, and solidarity. Briefly, Sampson argues that there are certain “neighborhood facts” that structure urban life, among them: continuing inequality between neighborhoods (particularly in the dimensions of race and class); the connection of these facts leading to concentrated disadvantage; the ecological bundling of crime and health as predicted by neighborhood characteristics; and finally, that this ordering runs along a spectrum from the poorest neighborhoods to the wealthiest. Equally important, Sampson shows that these factors are not simply in interaction with each other, but stem from “social-interactional and institutional processes that involve collective aspects of community–emergent properties, in other words” (Sampson, 2012, p. 47). Neighborhoods are continually structured in an ecological-interactive process with other neighborhoods and the urban ecology as a whole, but the starting conditions of each severely constrain their trajectory. Sampson critically argues that the decline of community has been confused with the decline of place. Community may or may not be disorganized, or characterized by varying levels of solidarity, but neighborhoods as places have enduring physical and social effects. Finally, Sampson (following Suttles, 1972) argues that there is a “cultural principle of difference … layered onto the ecological landscape” (p. 51). From this principle he draws the inference that one of the mechanisms of enduring spatial inequality is homophily, the tendency of people to live near and associate with people like themselves and to distance themselves from dissimilar others. He labels homophily “the demand side of inequality … a special form of hierarchy maintenance” (Sampson, 2012, pp. 54–55). This hierarchy is racial and orders the life chances of everyone within it. One of Sampson’s key findings for the field of urban communication is that perceptions of neighborhoods grow into meanings that are sustained over time. Communication and perception in the urban environment lock in symbolic judgments on neighborhoods, that, in turn, have iterative effects over time, particularly (for his work) negative perceptions of neighborhoods as crime ridden or

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disordered. These perceptions are sustained over time and themselves shape action at the level of individuals, networks, neighborhoods, and the ecology of the city as a whole. More simply, neighborhoods are places that produce meaning, and these meanings have large, structural, consequences over time. Sampson’s work offers a base for comparing and synthesizing the work of Ball-Rokeach and CIT with urban ecological theory more generally. He articulates a place-based theory of urban ecology and argues that in practice it represents a hierarchy of (largely race-driven) inequality.

Urban Communication Beyond urban sociology, there has been a growth in the field of urban communication proper (for an overview see the special issue “Communication in City and Community,” American Behavioral Scientist, edited by Katz and Hampton, 2016). We briefly address contemporary currents in urban communication research and theory, before returning to discuss the program as a whole. Friedland and McLeod (1999) offered parallel theoretical arguments concerning community integration to the then emerging CIT program. They held that communication infrastructure in local community ecologies was essential to democratic participation and community integration. Friedland (2001) developed this into a theory of communicatively integrated community, bringing together Habermas’s concepts of system and lifeworld and communicative action (­Habermas, 1985a, 1985b) with the analytical framework of community integration in a multi-level model. He applied this framework in a series of case studies of the impact of public and civic journalism on local communities (Friedland, 2012; 2003; Friedland, Long, Kim, & Shin, 2007; Sirianni & Friedland, 2001). More recently, he has advanced the theory of place-based civic communication in light of contemporary urban communication ecological research (Friedland, 2016). And Lloyd and Friedland have gathered a broad spectrum of scholars (including ­Ball-Rokeach and others in this volume) to apply the lessons of urban communication ecology to communications policy (Lloyd & Friedland, 2016). The most robust alternative (although complementary) program to CIT is that of Keith Hampton. His Living the Wired Life in the Wired Suburb (Hampton, 2001) was an early study of the interaction of urban form, social networks, community association, and ICTs. Hampton (2007) has offered an alternative to Castells’ hypothesis that “the network society may generate parallel universes, a dominant active space of electronic flows tied to a privatized world of domestic interactions, and an increasingly disconnected and abandoned space of places” (p. 715) Rather, Hampton argues that “new ICTs may not create space of flows separate from the

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space of places: and that the integration of ICTs into everyday life could reverse the trend of privatization within the parochial realm” (pp. 715–716). Responding, in part, to Sampson, Hampton (2007) conducted a 3-year, naturalistic neighborhood study in the Boston area in which he proposed a new measure of collective efficacy based on direct observation of communication practices. He found that while neighborhood Internet use supports engagement where it is already high, it also affords engagement in contexts of extreme disadvantage. Hampton argues that the literature on digital inequality with its focus on individual behavior has overlooked the context in which social and civic inequality is reproduced and more generally that there is a failure to explore ecological context and the role of communication in the generation of collective efficacy. Hampton (Hampton, Lee, & Her, 2011) finds that a focus on core ties in social networks (bonding social capital) is less significant than bridging ties through heterogeneous networks. In attempting to show how the space of flows and places might be bridged empirically, he explicitly recognizes the role of institutions. He carefully specifies a neighborhood level of institutions but also shows that neighborhoods lack institutional frameworks that could tie together interactions (again, complementing Sampson’s work with a deeper attention to explicit problems of communication, parallel to CIT). The larger implication is that the flows/places dichotomy needs to be abandoned, or respecified as a meso-level problem. Similarly, while personal networks or communities can articulate the structure of weak ties freed from the constraint of neighborhood, they do not capture neighborhood effects or their structuring impact on local communication. Finally, Hampton (2016) has focused on the problem of “persistent-pervasive community” asking whether and how “always on-always connected” media transform the core structure of our social networks. He is reframing the “mobility narrative,” the idea that communication and transportation have increasingly allowed us to “overcome” time and space, a fundamental assumption of the larger field. He argues that up till recently, we have lost old ties as we have gained new ones, keeping our network size relatively constant. The biggest change in the present is that we now accrue new ties while only selectively losing old ones; this both increases the size of our networks and reintroduces new forms of constraint, as we monitor and are monitored by actors and groups from our past. Three other urban communication research projects that parallel and complement Metamorphosis in various ways bear mentioning. The News Measures Research Project led by Phillip Napoli has explored new empirical methods of investigating local news ecologies using mixed measures that can be applied consistently to large policy issues (McCollough, Crowell, & Napoli, 2016; Napoli, Stonbely, McCollough, & Renninger, 2016). In the U.K. Nick Couldry and colleagues have carried on sustained research in three field sites on the local conditions

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of digital citizenship (Couldry et al., 2014), new forms of community-based news production (Dickens, Couldry, & Fotopoulou, 2015) and digital storytelling (Couldry et al., 2015). Finally, Sue Robinson has pursued a communication ecological program of research focused on racial disparities at the local level, including the role that social media, blogs and other digital platforms are playing in reconstituting public discussion about race in multiple American cities (Robinson, 2014a, 2014b, 2015; Robinson, 2017). The research questions and problems in each of these projects, as well as Hampton’s, should be brought to bear on the next generation of Meta research.

Conclusion Ball-Rokeach’s theory and research program spans more than 40 years. In concluding, I will comment on and summarize her relation to social theory, communication theory, and urban communication, before discussing some open questions and possible future directions. From the beginning, Ball-Rokeach’s engagement with fundamental social questions laid the foundation for her entire program. Drawing from Durkheim, she framed social integration as a problem rooted in the division of labor but also as fundamentally a communicative process. Further, drawing directly from the Chicago tradition, this communicative process was rooted in the social ecology of the city, and specifically in the question of how waves of immigration challenged social integration. Although, to my knowledge, Ball-Rokeach does not draw directly from Simmel, her mentor Emerson did, and we can see Simmel’s influence developed in the conception of the city as an irreducible, interlinked, and iterative network of sociation and communication. The Meta program moves forward both the earlier Chicago School and Hawley’s program of the city as a social ecology rooted in both urban form and place. As noted, Ball-Rokeach has had a careerlong focus on structural inequality in both society at large, and the city per se. And, from Emerson and others, she has developed a specific and sophisticated theory of power. Power is not simply power over (although it does create complex relations of dependency) but the power to act under multiple, and ecologically embedded conditions of constraint. Ball-Rokeach’s engagement with communication theory and research does not brook easy summary. But in her dialogue with Katz and Uses and Gratifications theory, she was always concerned with two sides of the structure-agency equation. She engaged with this problem in critical theory, articulating the relationship among the authoritarian personality, uncertainty, and cultural and structural inequality (one that unfortunately has continuing relevance). She has continually

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paid close attention to the micro-dynamics of communication, at the individual, small group, and interpersonal network levels. From the beginning, she has understood that both power and structural inequality have micro-dynamic properties that are irreducible, and has sought to theorize these micro-dynamics through media system dependency theory. Moving beyond U&G she created an ecological theory of the micro-dynamics of communication, initially with the mass media system as the core power center, but eventually broadening beyond a systems approach to a formal ecology of the city. This, in turn, led to the development of communications infrastructure theory, and its original conception of storytelling neighborhood as a means of bridging micro- and meso- communication dynamics. This remains the most fully developed multi-level theory of urban communication (particularly given the influence of several generations of Ball-Rokeach’s students, represented in this volume). The Metamorphosis Project is the premiere urban communication project in the U.S. and is largely read in this framework (justifiably so). But it is easy to overlook Meta’s engagement with the larger challenges of integration in a society riven by class and racial division: how can a city as diverse as Los Angeles cohere, both in its neighborhood subunits and as a whole. By addressing the mosaic of the 21st Century city Meta has assembled this polyglot mosaic, including its divisions and tensions, and created a civic communication laboratory of the city as a network of urban networks formed and reproduced through communication. It has allowed us to see both the boundaries of the city and the blurring of their geographic dimensions. Meta has also addressed the fundamental Chicago question of the relation of waves of immigration to social organization, integration and concentric form. Of course, other urban theories have long since challenged the Chicago framework of concentric circles of development as a universal pattern, but Meta has pointed toward a dual structure of 21st century urban form: neither purely networked and sprawling nor unified in self-enclosed group-bounded circles, but a complex intersection of the two. In this it has served as a valuable corrective to urban theories that posit the city as a pure network of networks (with “spaces of places” defined by absence). Meta also provides a possible framework for the future development of Hawley’s urban ecological theory: neighborhoods can also be understood as niches and with identifiable social and communicative carrying capacity, under constant pressure. Greater attention to a (revised) ecological method might lead to a more integrative explanation of the role of communication in the evolution of urban form itself. Finally, CIT and the Meta project have continually placed the challenge of structural inequality concentrated in the city at the center. Among the most exciting possibilities (in my view) for CIT would be to more systematically develop the ecological line of research. As noted, Ball-Rokeach and students picked up the affinities with Robert Sampson’s program early on and

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adapted the concept of collective efficacy, adding properly communicative dimensions (e.g., Kim and Ball-Rokeach, 2006b). Sampson’s program has involved the collection of voluminous data over more than a 20 year period on the urban ecology of an entire city, Chicago. This has allowed Sampson to more fully articulate the properly ecological relations between and among neighborhoods as well as, at a macro-level, the ecology of the city as a whole. The Meta project has received nowhere near Sampson’s overall level of support. But Meta, and now its offshoots, is closest to the Chicago research in scope and ambition in the communication field. One possible line of future inquiry would be more systematic attention to how the boundaries of neighborhoods (geographic and discursive) not only overlap, but shape and change each other communicatively over time. One of Sampson’s major findings concerns the lagging perception of inequality and its effects on neighborhoods years later. Again, the data differentials are huge, but it would be a major advance in urban communication should Meta and CIT be able to more systematically account for the mechanisms of the properly communicative dynamics of these lingering, long-term negative perceptions and their effects. If possible, this could lead to an articulation of the systematic role of communicative inequality as an ecological problem in structuring perceptions of neighborhood and neighborhood effects in many areas (civic, health, educational, criminal, and communicative). This leads to the concept and role of storytelling neighborhood. The concept was originally developed to analyze and make visible the rich discursive resources that properly exist within neighborhoods, giving rise to an emergent, collective story that citizens/neighbors themselves produce. This is a great advance over network approaches that ignore or underplay the role of place and narrative in structuring urban and civic discourse. But as it stands, the concept of storytelling neighborhood framework sometimes suggests a voluntaristic element in which systematic constraints are not fully taken into account, either of the larger mass media framework or of the social network environment in which most “storytelling neighbors” are now embedded. Further engagement with, for example, ­Hampton’s research project might lead to new insights concerning how at a micro- and network level individuals actively trade off neighborhood embedded communication with larger scale network communication. Perhaps an exploration of both upper level constraints (e.g., the mass media narratives) and lower level constraints (time spent with networked media) would help further sharpen the picture that Meta has done so much to develop. Attention to the Couldry research program might open up new understandings of the intersection of digital storytelling and placerooted narratives. But these are questions that will be taken up by the next generation of urban communication researchers, many of whom have been trained by Ball-Rokeach.

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Regardless, these advances are only possible because of the deep, sociological foundation that Ball-Rokeach has established, and for that, the entire communication research community owes a debt of gratitude.

Notes 1. In this section I draw heavily from Ball-Rokeach’s intellectual autobiographical account in Ball-Rokeach (1998), a critical source for those wishing to delve more deeply into the development of MSD and its intellectual foundations. 2. For a more recent critique of the influence of The Authoritarian Personality in political psychology see Martin (2001) which anticipates some of the work of Haidt (2013) on liberal and conservative social psychology; see also Stenner (2005). 3. Personal communication via email, June 26, 2016. 4. Hereafter I will refer to Ball-Rokeach alone in all pieces where she is first author, after the initial reference. 5. All quotes from Phone Interview, Sandra Ball-Rokeach, June 5, 2016.

References Adorno, T. W. (1969). The Authoritarian personality (Vol. Studies in prejudice). New York, NY: Norto. Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (1972). The legitimation of violence. In E. Short, Jr. & M. E. Wolfgang (Eds.), Collective violence (pp. 100–111). Chicago: Aldine-Atherton. Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (1973). From pervasive ambiguity to a definition of the situation. Sociometry, 36(3), 378–389. Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (1980). Normative and Deviant Violence from a Conflict Perspective. Social Problems, 28(1), 45–62. Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (1985). The origins of individual media-system dependency: A sociological framework. Communication Research, 12(4), 485–510. Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (1998). A theory of media power and a theory of media use: Different stories, questions, and ways of thinking. Mass Communication and Society, 1(1–2), 5–40. Ball-Rokeach, S. J., & DeFleur, M. L. (1976). A dependency model of mass-media effects. Communication Research, 3(1), 3–21. Ball-Rokeach, S. J., & Jung, J.-Y. (2009). The evolution of media system dependency theory. In R. Nabi & M. B. Oliver (Eds.), Sage handbook of media processes and effects (pp. 531–544). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Kim, Y.-C., & Matei, S. (2001). Storytelling neighborhood paths to belonging in diverse urban environments. Communication Research, 28(4), 392–428. Castells, M. (2010). The rise of the network society: The information age: Economy, society, and culture volume I (2nd Edition with a New Preface edition). Chichester; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Couldry, N., MacDonald, R., Stephansen, H., Clark, W., Dickens, L., & Fotopoulou, A. (2015). Constructing a digital storycircle: Digital infrastructure and mutual recognition. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 18(5), 501–517. Couldry, N., Stephansen, H., Fotopoulou, A., Macdonald, R., Clark, W., & Dickens, L. (2014). Digital citizenship? Narrative exchange and the changing terms of civic culture. Citizenship Studies, 18(6–7), 615–629. Craven, P., & Wellman, B. (1973). The Network City. Toronto: Centre for Urban and Community Studies and Department of Sociology, University of Toronto. Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems. New York, NY: Holt-Rinehart & Winston. Dewey, J., Thayer, H. S., & Thayer, V. T. (1978). How we think and selected essays 1910–1911 the middle works of John Dewey, volume 6, 1899–1924. ( J. A. Boydston, Ed., 1st ed.). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Dickens, L., Couldry, N., & Fotopoulou, A. (2015). News in the community?: Investigating emerging inter-local spaces of news production/consumption. Journalism Studies, 16(1), 97–114. Durkheim, E. (1893). The Division of Labor in Society. Glencoe: Free Press. Emerson, R. M. (1962). Power-dependence relations. American Sociological Review, 27(1), 31–41. Friedland, L. (2014). Civic communication in a networked society: Seattle’s emergent ecology. In J. Girouard & C. Sirianni (Eds.), Varieties of civic innovation: Deliberative, collaborative, network, and narrative approaches (pp. 92–126). Nashville: Vanderbilt Universty Press. Friedland, L. (2012). Civic communication in local communities: Beyond Web 2.0. In C. Sirianni (Ed.), Civic life in the 21st century. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Friedland, L. A. (2001). Communication, community, and democracy: Toward a theory of the communicatively integrated community. Communication Research, 28, 358–391. Friedland, L. A. (2003). Public journalism: Past and future. Dayton, OH: Kettering Foundation. Friedland, L. A. (2016). Networks in place. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(1), 24–42. Friedland, L. A., Long, C., Kim, N., & Shin, Y. J. (2007). The construction of the local public sphere: School conflict in Madison, Wisconsin. In Media and public spheres. London and New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Friedland, L. A., & McLeod, J. M. (1999). Community integration and mass media: A reconsideration. In D. P. Demers & K. Viswanath (Eds.). Mass media, social control, and social change (pp. 197–226). Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press. Habermas, J. (1985a). The theory of communicative action, volume 1: Reason and the rationalization of society (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1985b). The theory of communicative action, volume 2: Lifeworld and system: A critique of functionalist reason (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Haidt, J. (2013). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York, NY: Random House LLC. Hampton, K. N. (2001). Living the wired life in the wired suburb: Netville, glocalization and civil society (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Toronto, Toronto. Hampton, K. N. (2007). Neighborhoods in the network society the e-neighbors study. Information, Communication & Society, 10(5), 714–748.

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Hampton, K. N. (2016). Persistent and pervasive community new communication technologies and the future of community. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(1), 101–124. Hampton, K. N., Lee, C., & Her, E. J. (2011). How new media affords network diversity: Direct and mediated access to social capital through participation in local social settings. New Media & Society, 13(7), 1031–1049. Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (1988). Dialectic of enlightenment. New York, NY: Continuum. Katz, E., Blumler, J. G., & Gurevitch, M. (1973). Uses and gratifications research. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 37(4), 509–523. Katz, E., & Lazarsfeld, P. F. (1955). Personal influence: The part played by people in the flow of mass communication. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Katz, V. S., & Hampton, K. N. (2016). Communication in city and community: From the ­Chicago school to digital technology. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(1), 3–7. Kim, Y. C., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006a). Civic engagement from a communication infrastructure perspective. Communication Theory, 16(1), 1–25 Kim, Y. C., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006b). Community storytelling network, neighborhood context, and neighborhood engagement: A multilevel approach. Human Communication Research, 32(3), 411–439. Kim, Y. C., Jung J., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006). Geo-ethnicity and civic engagement: From a communication infrastructure perspective. Political Communication, 23(3), 421–441. Kim, Y. C., & Shin, E. (2016). Localized use of information and communication technologies in urban neighborhoods of Seoul: Experiences, intentions, and related factors. American Behavioral Scientist, 61(1), 81–100. Klapper, J. T. (1960). The effects of mass communication. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Lin, W., Song, H., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2010). Localizing the global: Exploring the transnational ties that bind in new immigrant communities. Journal of Communication, 60, 205–229. Lloyd, M., & Friedland, L. (Eds.). (2016). The communication crisis in America, and how to fix it (1st ed. 2016 edition). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Martin, J. L. (2001). “The authoritarian personality,” 50 years later: What lessons are there for political psychology? Political Psychology, 22(1), 1–26. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1988). The economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844 and the communist manifesto (M. Milligan, Trans., 1st ed.). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. McCollough, K., Crowell, J. K., & Napoli, P. M. (2017). Portrait of the online local news audience. Digital Journalism, 5(1), 100–118. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Napoli, P. M., Stonbely, S., McCollough, K., & Renninger, B. (2016). Local journalism and the information needs of local communities: Toward a scalable assessment approach. Journalism Practice, 11(4), 373–395. Rainie, L., & Wellman, B. (2012). Networked: The new social operating system. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Robinson, S. (2017). Networked voices: Race, journalism, and progressive politics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Robinson, S. (2014a). Introduction: Community journalism midst media revolution. Journalism Practice, 8(2), 113–120.

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Robinson, S. (2014b). The active citizen’s information media repertoire: An exploration of community news habits during the digital age. Mass Communication and Society, 17(4), 509–530. Robinson, S. (2017). Legitimation Strategies in Journalism: Public storytelling about racial disparities. Journalism Studies, 18(8), 978–996. Sampson, R. J. (2012). Great American City: Chicago and the enduring neighborhood effect. University of Chicago Press. Scott, W. R., & Davis, G. F. (2015). Organizations and organizing: Rational, natural and open systems perspectives. Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Shibutani, T. (1966). Improvised news: A sociological study of rumor. Indianapolis, IA: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. Sirianni, C. J., & Friedland, L. A. (2001). Civic innovation in America: Community empowerment, public policy, and the movement for civic renewal. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Stenner, K. (2005). The authoritarian dynamic. Cambridge and New York, NY: Cambridge ­University Press. Suttles, G. (1972). The social construction of communities. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wellman, B. (1979). The community question. American Journal of Sociology, 84, 1201–1231. Wellman, B. (1982). Studying personal communities. In P. Marsden & N. Lin (Eds.). Social structure and network analysis (pp. 61–80). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Wellman, B., & Leighton, B. (1979). Networks, neighborhoods and communities. Urban Affairs Quarterly, 14, 363–390.

chapter three

Communication Infrastructure Theory for Collective Problem Recognition and Problem-Solving in Urban Communities Beliefs, Assumptions, and Propositions yong - chan kim

Professor, Yonsei University

This chapter aims to identify and explain the beliefs, assumptions, and propositions of communication infrastructure theory (CIT). First developed by Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach and her associates through their work on the USC Metamorphosis Project, CIT has been applied to various communities in Los Angeles and other cities in the United States, as well as other countries (see Ball-Rokeach, Prologue). With well-defined boundaries of applicable areas and definitions of major terms, CIT provides a useful theoretical framework to enhance our knowledge about the role of communication in building and maintaining urban communities (see Introduction and Kim & Jung, Chapter 1). In this chapter, CIT is framed as a theory that highlights the importance of communication resources—defined here as physical, institutional, technological, social, and symbolic means for communicative actions in a specific socio-temporal context. These communication resources, often scarce and unevenly distributed, are critical for linking collective problem recognition (i.e., awareness, perceived

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relevance, and salience of community issues and problems) and collective problem solving in urban local community contexts. Based on seminal works (Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001; Kim & BallRokeach, 2006a) and many CIT studies that have been published in the past 15 years, I will identify and explain four core beliefs, six axiomatic assumptions, and six propositions of this theory. CIT is still evolving as research continues to address new contexts, issues and research problems. Therefore, I do not mean to provide exhaustive lists of beliefs, assumptions, and propositions related to CIT. This chapter instead builds on existing, empirical CIT research and provides insight into the type of questions CIT can help address.

Core Beliefs about Urban Local Communities All theoretical hypotheses are linked to core beliefs. Core beliefs determine why “one takes some state of affairs as evidence for one hypothesis rather than another” (Longino, 1979, p. 43). CIT is based on four core beliefs about contemporary urban places and communication. The first belief is that place-based local communities still matter in 21st-century urban environments. There are scholars and commentators who have proclaimed the death of distance (Cairncross, 2001) or the death of geography (Morgan, 2004)—and the decline of place-based local communities (Putnam, 2000). However, place-based local communities still matter as sites for problem recognition and problem solving. Most problems (e.g., political, economic, social, educational problems, natural disasters, public health risks, etc.) that we need to solve collectively still occur in specific local places. In addition, collective efforts to resolve such problems also need to happen at a certain local place. The second core belief underlying the development of CIT is that communication is a process through which urban communities emerge, thrive, transform, and decline. Like John Dewey (1929), George Herbert Mead (1934), Robert Park, and other Chicago School scholars (Park, Burgess, & McKenzie, 1984), CIT researchers believe that the communities of individuals are constituted through various types of interactions and communication. CIT posits that a communication infrastructure is necessary—though it is not (always) sufficient—for building and maintaining a working urban local community that has the capacity to collectively recognize problems and take collective action to resolve them (­Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006; Kim & Jung, Chapter 1). Local communities have various types of infrastructures—e.g., physical infrastructure such as roads, traffic systems, water, power, airports, bridges, telecommunication networks,

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and so on, as well as political, business, education, cultural, and social infrastructures. The communication infrastructure helps local residents build a shared identity, form shared values, and organize collective actions for dealing with common problems. CIT defines communication infrastructure as community storytelling system set in communication action context (see Kim & Jung, Chapter 1). The quality of communication infrastructure is a barometer for measuring the problemsolving capacity of a local community and the quality of life of individuals and the community. The third core belief underlying CIT is that urban communities are built on everyday stories and storytelling; urban community members have the potential to be storytellers of the places they live in and of their everyday lives in those places. Just as Lewis Mumford (1961) illustrated that cities are basically containers of stories and storytelling, CIT researchers also believe that contemporary cities and the communities within them survive and grow based on their capacity to produce, share, store, review, and recreate stories about places and lives in those places through various means from face-to-face conversation to advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs). Urban neighborhood environments vary in their capacity to provide storytelling opportunities for residents and local organizations. The fourth core belief underlying CIT is that it is possible to build and strengthen community if we are able to assess and strengthen its communication infrastructure’s capacity to share, store, review, and recreate stories about places and lives in those places. This fourth belief is logically related to the second and the third beliefs described earlier. We can build, maintain, and strengthen local place-based local communities in a city by (a) diagnosing the conditions of the communication infrastructure; (b) assessing the quality and quantity of stories that are produced and shared; (c) evaluating factors that enable or constrain community storytelling among key community stakeholders; and (d) developing and conducting intervention programs to improve the communication infrastructure (e.g. encouraging community members to participate in producing and sharing local stories, or building a local community environment where community storytelling becomes easier). See Chapters 9–12 for examples of CIT-based interventions.

Axiomatic Assumptions CIT is guided by the following six axiomatic assumptions, which are built on the four core beliefs mentioned in the previous section. These axiomatic assumptions

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of CIT provide theoretical foundations for the empirical hypotheses listed in the next sections that have been proposed and tested by CIT researchers in their studies. The axiomatic assumptions presented here and the propositions in the next sections are less systemically aligned than those seen in purely axiomatic theories using deductive reasoning such as uncertainty reduction theory (Berger & Calabrese, 1975). However, the assumptions and the propositions we will discuss below will still show how CIT researchers develop empirical hypotheses based on a set of theoretical rationales. CIT is designed and evolved as a communication theory that explicates the relationship among collective problem recognition, collective problem solving, and communication. The axiomatic assumptions listed here have to do with how these three concepts are related to one another. The first axiomatic assumption is that a communication is a necessary condition for individuals to recognize collectively that a problem exists within a community. Without an adequate level of communication, it becomes difficult or even impossible for community members to identify a community problem. Other communication theories, including many mass media effects theories (such as agenda setting theory, framing theories, or cultivation theory), opinion and attitude formation theories, and campaign theories, have drawn attention to this role of communication as a means of shared problem recognition. These theories commonly attempt to explain how media and interpersonal communication make individuals or groups of individuals form certain views, including biased or fragmented ones, about various community problems. CIT posits that the community-level capacity for articulating community issues helps urban residents to come to a common understanding of the problems they share within their local communities. Second, collective problem recognition leads to participation in collective problem-solving activities only when individuals have access to resources for communicative actions. Communication resources—e.g., local media, local organizations, and residents—enable talking not only about problems, but also about collective capacities to solve the problems. The access to such communication resources is a critical condition for individuals to have a sense of efficacy for taking up problem-solving activities. Figure 3.1 summarizes this process. When individuals in a community have access to (a) communication resources to share their understanding of problems and collective capacities to deal with the problems, (b) perceive self and collective efficacy, and (c) engage in conversation with neighbors about the means of problem solving, they are more likely to participate in collective problem solving (e.g., participation in community activities). Collective problem recognition itself does not necessarily lead to a collective problem-solving activity (Kim & Shin, 2016). Even when individuals in a

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Figure 3.1.  Relationships among Collective Problem Recognition, Collective Efficacy, Problem Solving and Communication.

community collectively recognize a problem, they can choose from two alternatives: problem avoidance and problem solving. This dual path is in parallel to the individual-level coping strategy options against stressors: fight or flight (Cannon, 1932). Some of the coping strategies (e.g., taking actions to deal with stressors) are considered adaptive, while others (e.g., ignoring stressors) are considered as maladaptive (Albrecht & Goldsmith, 2003). Similarly, at the community level, collective problem avoidance is considered to be maladaptive, while participation in collective problem solving is considered to be adaptive. When faced with similar community-level problems, some communities may actively counter the problem and mobilize available resources to resolve it, while others may not. This community-level difference in problem solving participation is influenced by the quality and quantity of communication resources in each community. Third, community-relevant communication will be more likely than communication that is irrelevant to the community to serve as a resource for community problem recognition and problem solving. In other words, among the various types of communication resources, only those mobilized for storytelling about the local community can effectively facilitate collective problem recognition and collective problem solving. Critical, multilevel, conditions for mobilizing community members to advance from problem recognition to participating in problem-solving activities include the following: (a) community level availability of communication resources that can be mobilized to produce, share, and receive stories about the local community; and (b) individual level access to these local storytelling resources and use of them to produce stories about their neighborhood. If the communication resources in a local community are mobilized by local agents (e.g., residents, local media, and local organizations) for addressing issues other than those relevant to the local community, then their potential to help

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individual community members to recognize and subsequently attempt to solve pressing, local problems may be seriously weakened or damaged. We can see this, for example, in ethnic media talking only about their country-of-origin news while not paying significant attention to what is happening in their host communities. Ball-Rokeach et al. (2001) and Lin and Song (2006) demonstrate this in their respective studies of Asian American media in Los Angeles. In addition to the community-level condition, the individual-level condition (i.e. having connection to communication resources) also should be met to facilitate problem-solving participations. If individuals, including those in a local community with rich communication resources for storytelling (so that the community-level condition is met), do not (or are not willing to) have access to the resources, their chances of participating in problem recognition and problem solving also become limited. Fourth, various community-relevant communication resources available in a community become more effective when they are integrated with one another to form a network among them for community storytelling. In an integrated network for community storytelling, each of the storytellers has to not only produce and share community stories but also encourage other local agents to play the role of community storytellers. If an individual lives in a local community with an integrated storytelling network, he or she is more likely to develop an integrated connection to community storytelling network or ICSN (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a; Kim & Jung, Chapter 1). Fifth, community stakeholders’ connections to communication resources (i.e., ICSN) are often influenced by community-level contextual factors (i.e., CAC factors) (Kim & Jung, Chapter 1). Individuals’ communication opportunities in storytelling communities are shaped by the place in which such community storytelling occurs. There are community contextual factors (e.g., population characteristics, residential stability, quality and quantity of public spaces, reputation of the place, etc.) that enable and constrain community members’ ability or willingness to connect to communication resources in producing, sharing, and receiving community stories (Wilkin, Matsaganis, & Golden, Chapter 10; Zhang, Motta, & Georgiou, Chapter 7). Last, the relative importance of communication resources becomes higher when a community lacks other types of resources. Even when a local community lacks other types of critical resources (natural, economic, technological, institutional, political, social, educational, or cultural), it still can develop and maintain communication resources, as found by early Chicago School scholars in various immigrant communities in Chicago (Park et al., 1984). Chicago School ­Scholars demonstrated that even when other resources were very limited in immigrant communities, the immigrants were able to develop and maintain communication resources for survival and growth (e.g., immigrant media). When a local

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community has a rich pool of resources, besides communication resources, its reliance on communication resources may not be critical. However, in a community where other resources are limited, there will be a higher level of dependence on communication resources (Ball-Rokeach, 1988).

Propositions As of 2017, communication infrastructure theory (CIT) studies are the focus of more than 100 academic papers and dissertations. Based on these works, as well as the core beliefs and axiomatic assumptions explained earlier, I derived six propositions as empirically testable hypotheses both inductively (based on empirical studies) and deductively (based on theoretical reasoning presented in the previous sections). Future studies can produce additional hypotheses based on these propositions. One point to note is that the propositions discussed in this section are limited to those explaining individual residents’ opportunities and actions for communication, problem recognition, and problem solving in their local communities. Other types of CIT-based propositions focusing on meso-level storytellers (e.g., community organizations or local media) or macro-level ones are not included in this section. One critical communication concept of CIT explaining individual residents’ participation in collective problem recognition and problem solving is integrated connection to community storytelling network or ICSN. As explained in details in Kim and Jung (Chapter 1), it is about the degree to which individuals connect in an integrated way to each of the critical community storytellers such as other residents, local media, and community organizations. All of the propositions below contain ICSN as a critical element. In the following paragraphs, I attempt to explain each of the propositions and provide supporting evidence from works based on CIT. P1: Individuals’ integrated connectedness to a community storytelling network (ICSN) is a factor that can lead to the likelihood of problem recognition in an urban local community. This proposition states that individuals are more likely to recognize community issues and problems (e.g., political issues, economic crises, public health risks, natural disasters, etc.) if they have a high-level ICSN. Problem recognition is often measured in research by assessing whether individuals are aware of community issues and/or the degree to which these issues are perceived as relevant and salient in individuals’ everyday lives. This proposition is related to axiomatic

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assumptions 1, 3, and 4. For example, Literat and Chen (2014) suggest that ICSN increases the likelihood that local residents are exposed to community issues and agree to spread campaign messages dealing with the issues. It has been found that ICSN could help community residents appreciate health disparity issues (Wilkin, 2013) and become aware of broadband policies for digital literacy (Katz, Matsaganis, & Ball-Rokeach, 2012). According to previous studies conducted using CIT, access to community storytellers is also related to perceiving some local areas as problematic (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006; Kim & Jung, ­Chapter 1) and recognizing intergroup conflicts between different race or class groups as community-level problems (Broad, Gonzales, & Ball-Rokeach, 2013). Assuming the connection between ICSN and collective problem recognition, several studies have suggested intervention programs that focus on leveraging factors related to ICSN (e.g., measuring and using the capacities of local media, community organizations, and individual residents to share community stories) to find target audiences and deliver campaign messages (Cheong, Wilkin, & Ball-Rokeach, 2004; Wilkin & Ball-Rokeach, 2011; Wilkin, Stringer, O’Quin, Montgomery, & Hunt, 2011). Similarly, Matsaganis, Golden, and Scott (2014) documented a four-year health communication intervention to build community-level consciousness (i.e., health problem recognition) regarding collective health issues through strategies designed to repair communication disjuncture between individuals and health and human service organizations. Several chapters in this volume such as Wilkin et al. (Chapter 10) and Chen et al. (Chapter 11) provide examples of diagnosing community storytelling network for developing intervention strategies. P2: Individuals’ connectedness to a community storytelling network (ICSN) can lead to motivation for, efficacy for, and participation in activities related to problem solving in an urban community. Previous CIT studies have tested the proposition that ICSN is a critical factor for individuals to be motivated to take up collective problem solving (e.g., having a high level sense of neighborhood belonging), to develop a strong sense of collective efficacy, and to participate in various community-level problem-solving processes (e.g., community engagement, community participation, disaster preparedness, cultural adaptation, or health-related problem-solving activities). This proposition is based on axiomatic assumptions 2, 3, and 4. CIT studies conducted thus far regarding proposition 2 can be grouped into four areas, based on the specific types of problems addressed. The first group deals with residents’ civic participation in local community issues and problems.

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In their seminal work on CIT conducted in Los Angeles, Ball-Rokeach et al. (2001) show that individuals’ integrated connection to a community storytelling network (ICSN) facilitates their belongingness to their local ethnic communities as a source of motivation for participating in community-level problem solving processes. As an extension of this study, Kim and Ball-Rokeach (2006) found that ICSN increases not only neighborhood belonging but also perceived collective efficacy for community problem solving and civic participation. In this study, Kim and Ball-Rokeach also found that neighborhood belonging as a source of participation motivation increases collective efficacy and civic participation. Many other studies have confirmed the relation between ICSN and community engagement in different geographical contexts and with various populations including SNS users (Kim & Shin, 2013) and the elderly (Kang, 2012). The second group addresses issues related to emergencies such as natural or political disasters. Several studies dealing with problems related to the situation after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States have found that those with high-level ICSN are more likely to take actions (e.g., donate money, participate in candlelight vigils, attend religious meetings, etc.) that contribute to collective problem-solving in the aftermath of a disaster than those with low-level ICSN (Cohen, Ball-Rokeach, Jung, & Kim, 2002; Kim, Ball-Rokeach, Cohen, & Jung, 2002; Kim, Jung, Cohen, & Ball-Rokeach, 2004). Joo-Young Jung and her colleagues’ work in Japan after the Great East earthquake disaster in 2011 also reports a similar result ( Jung, Toriumi, & Mizukosh, 2013; see also Jung & Maeda, Chapter 5). Similarly, Kim and Kang (2010) found that ICSN was a critical factor in individuals’ disaster preparedness actions before, during, and after the crisis of Hurricane Ivan in 2004. A third group of studies, based on proposition 2, has explored problems migrants experience in their efforts to adapt to their host society. For example, Katz (2010) demonstrated the importance of ICSN among Latino immigrant families in Los Angeles in developing their abilities to talk about community issues and increasing their opportunities for cultural adaptation to the host society. In their study of Korean Chinese migrants in Seoul, Kim and Kim (2015) showed that ICSN facilitates not only civic engagement in the host society (i.e., South Korea) but also a particular type of cultural adaptation, integration, which is an active and bi-cultural adaptation that builds and maintains migrants’ connections to the social, economic, and cultural resources in both the host society and the home country (i.e., China). Last, many CIT works have addressed health-related problem solving in local community contexts. For example, we found in a study on geo-ethnic communities in Los Angeles that when other conditions are held constant, ICSN has significant

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positive effects on individuals’ knowledge (about health-related problem-solving capacity) about chronic diseases such as breast and cervical cancer, hypertension, and diabetes (Kim, Moran, Wilkin, & Ball-Rokeach, 2011). Other studies also have reported positive effects of ICSN on health-related problem-solving capacities (Katz, Ang, & Suro, 2012), health-information seeking (Kim, Lim, & Park, 2015), health-prevention behaviors (Wilkin, Katz, Ball-Rokeach, & Heather, 2015), and access to health-enhancing resources such as medical care facilities, grocery stores with healthier food options, and places for exercising (Matsaganis & Golden, 2015). P3: Factors of communication action contexts (CAC) either facilitate or constrain individuals’ connectedness to a community storytelling network (ICSN) in an urban local community. Communication action contexts (CAC) are communication environments where resources and other factors either enable or constrain connections between storytelling agents. This context makes it either easier or more difficult for individuals and communities to have strong integrated storytelling networks (see Kim & Jung, Chapter 1 for details about CAC). Some studies have examined relationships between CAC factors and the level of ICSN. These studies first identify specific CAC factors and assess their effects on ICSN and community engagement. For example, Kim and Ball-Rokeach (2006) focus on two CAC factors: ethnic heterogeneity and residential instability; they report that both ethnic heterogeneity and residential instability work as negative factors in ICSN. Several recent studies have found that the number of coffee shops (Shin & Kim, 2014, Apirl), number of cultural spaces (Cho & Kim, 2014), and number of single-person houses (Shon & Kim, 2015) in a local community show significant effects on ICSN. Related to these neighborhood-effects studies, other studies focus on individuals’ perception about CAC factors in ICSN. For example, E. Jung and Kim have examined perceived neighborhood boundaries ( Jung & Kim, 2014) and commuting time ( Jung & Kim, 2015) as factors in ICSN. Matsaganis and Golden (2015) developed a new concept, “field of health action,” that describes the result of the interaction between the CAC and the local storytelling network, which manifests in everyday conversations in the community and that influences residents’ capacity to collectively solve health-related problems (Wilkin et al., Chapter 10). Based on this concept of field of health action, some of the recent CIT research has focused on assessing and developing “communication hotspots” or “comfort zones” (Wilkin et al., 2011), both of which function as CAC components that can help individual residents build stronger connections to local community storytellers; that is, a stronger ICSN (Wilkin et al., Chapter 10).

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P4: The relative importance of ICSN as a factor in community problem solving is higher among those who live in less privileged communities. In CIT the relative importance of communication infrastructure for collective problem recognition and problem solving is predicted to vary among different communities. The communication infrastructure works with other types of infrastructures (e.g., physical, political, economic, or cultural) to build and maintain urban local communities. In a community with rich economic, political, or cultural infrastructure, communication infrastructure is just one of the resources that individual residents can rely on to connect to their local communities. However, in a less privileged community that lacks the most basic infrastructures, its residents would rely relatively more on the communication infrastructure. Several empirical CIT studies have shown that the relative importance of ICSN varies depending on the levels at which other resources are available. For example, Kim and ­Ball-Rokeach (2006) find that ICSN’s effect on community engagement in Los Angeles is stronger in the census tracts in less privileged areas (e.g., areas with more minorities, higher poverty levels, lower education levels, lower residential stability, and higher ethnic heterogeneity) than in more privileged areas. Furthermore, Kim and Kim (2008) demonstrate that the positive effect of ICSN on community engagement in South Alabama in the United States is stronger in communities with lower incomes, lower levels of education, and a higher percentage of black population than those with higher incomes, higher levels of education, and more ethnic diversity. P5: The relation between problem recognition and participating in problem-­ solving activities is moderated by ICSN. Recognition of community problems does not necessarily lead to collective problem-solving activities. There should be a connector between problem recognition and problem solving. CIT predicts that ICSN plays this role: problem recognition is connected to problem solving more often among individuals with higher ICSN than those with a lower ICSN. When faced with collective problems, individuals with higher ICSN will be more likely participate in problem-solving activities than those with lower ICSN. To address this proposition, some of the CIT studies test interaction effects of ICSN and community-based problem recognition on problem-solving activities. For example, among those who live in a place fraught with problems (e.g., lack of resources, high crime rate, etc.), the recognition of a problem (e.g., the neighborhood having a negative reputation) could have two contrasting effects: facilitating participation in activities to solve this problem or regression to inaction. CIT predicts that ICSN will determine

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which path individual residents will take; among the residents who recognize the community problems, those with high ICSN will be more likely to take action to solve the problem, while those with low ICSN will hesitate to participate in problem-solving activities. For example, Kim and Shin (2015) reported based on their survey data collected from Seoul residents that the relationship between problem recognition (measured as number of local problems each respondent mentioned and perceived severity of the problems) and problem solving participation (measured as scope and intensity of community activity participation) are moderated by ICSN. Other studies show that in the context of emergencies (e.g., related to natural disasters or terrorist attacks), individuals with high ICSN are encouraged to take action to deal with the situation while those with low ICSN are less likely to participate in problem resolution (Cohen et al., 2002; Kim et al., 2004; Kim & Kang, 2010). P6: Whether new media use will be a positive or negative factor in community engagement is moderated by ICSN. Proposition 6 is a special case of proposition 5. When a new media technology or service is introduced to a local community context, it can be both a blessing and curse for a local community. In other words, communication technologies have the potential to create “pulling effects” (pulling individuals to their place-based local communities) or pushing effects (pushing individuals away from their local communities) (Kim & Shin, 2016). Kim et al. (2015) summarized CIT-based views regarding such contrasting effects of new media technology on community engagement with the following four points: (1) new media technology must be part of the communication infrastructure of a community to function as a facilitator of community involvement; (2) if it does not do so, it can be a detracting factor in community engagement; (3) whether new media technology will be incorporated into the communication infrastructure of local civic engagement depends on the existing quality and strength of the community storytelling network; and (4) at the individual level, the use of new media by residents will have positive effects on local community engagement when the residents have a high-level ICSN. In other words, CIT offers a conditional view emphasizing contingent effects of new media technologies on urban local communities with the most critical conditional factor being individuals’ connection to community-based storytelling network. Among individuals with high ICSN, new media technologies will have positive effects on community engagement while among those with low ICSN, the same technologies will not have such effects. Many previous CIT studies have tested and confirmed either directly or indirectly this conditional view regarding the effects of new media technologies on

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community engagement. Matei and Ball-Rokeach (2003) found that the Internet has different effects on neighborhood belongingness in seven different ethnic neighborhoods in Los Angeles. For example, Internet use has a positive effect on neighborhood belongingness in English-speaking communities that show relatively high-level ICSN scores, while it has negative effects on belongingness in “new” immigrant areas such as those inhabited by Asians or Latinos that generally show low level ICSN scores. More recently, Ognyanova et al. (2013) report that not Internet use per se but community-oriented use of the Internet promotes community participation (see also Ognyanova & Jung, Chapter 8). Jung and Moro (2012) demonstrate that even during an emergency, such as the Fukushima earthquake in 2011, individuals connected to SNSs, although with different motives, depending on their social and geographical conditions. More specifically, a study about Seoul residents’ use of SNS found that individuals’ SNS dependency on two dimensions of collective efficacy (informal social control and social cohesion) were moderated by ICSN: the positive effects of SNS dependency was higher among those with high ICSN than those with low ICSN (Kim et al., 2015).

Conclusion In this chapter, I attempted to collect and assemble theoretical bricks of communication infrastructure theory to build a path for communication infrastructure theory to be labeled as a formal theory. After reviewing the empirical studies based on CIT, I framed CIT as a theory explaining the relationships among collective problem recognition, collective problem solving, and communication resources among residents in urban local communities. I presented four core beliefs, six axiomatic assumptions, and six propositions. Table 3.1 shows how the axiomatic assumptions and the propositions are related to each other. The core beliefs, the axiomatic assumptions, and the propositions explained in this chapter show that CIT is a verifiable and refutable social scientific theory with great potential to evolve into a more generalized theory of collective problem recognition and collective problem solving in urban community contexts. The lists of beliefs, assumptions and propositions presented in this chapter should not be taken as completed nor fixed; they will continue to be updated as CIT research evolves. However, based on the beliefs, the assumptions, and the propositions discussed here, various CIT works can be compared, integrated, and used to develop advanced discussions about communication phenomena in 21st-century urban communities.

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Table 3.1. Axiomatic Assumptions and Propositions of Communication Infrastructure Theory. Axiomatic Assumptions

Propositions

AA1. A community problem is recognized through communication.

P1. Individuals’ ICSN is a consistent factor for likely recognition of problem.

AA2. Collective problem recognition leads to collective problem-solving activities only when individuals in a community are connected to certain communication resources.

P2 Individuals’ ICSN is a consistent factor likely to motivate participation in the problem-solving process.

AA3. Only a certain type of communication resource would help in connecting problem recognition and problem solving

P3 Factors of communication action contexts either facilitate or constrain individuals’ connectedness to the community storytelling network.

AA4. Communication resources show synergy effects when they are integrated.

P4 The relative importance of ICSN as a factor in community problem solving is higher among those who live in less privileged areas.

AA5. Individuals’ connectedness to communication resources is influenced by contextual factors.

P5 The relation between problem recognition and taking up problem-solving activities is moderated by ICSN.

AA6. The relative importance of communication resources become higher when there is a lack of other types of resources.

P6 New communication media incorporated in individuals’ everyday lives as a tool for problem solving is shaped by existing communication infrastructure.

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Katz, V. S. (2010). How children use media to connect their families to the community: The case of Latinos in Los Angeles. Journal of Children and Media, 4(3), 298–315. Katz, V. S., Ang, A., & Suro, R. (2012). An ecological perspective on U.S. Latinos’ health communication behaviors, access, and outcomes. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 34, 437–456. Katz, V. S., Matsaganis, M. D., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2012). Ethnic media as partners for increasing broadband adoption and social inclusion. Journal of Information Policy, 2, 79–102. Kim, E. & Kim, Y. C. (in press). Communication infrastructure, migrant community engagement, and integrative adaptation of Korean Chinese migrants in Seoul. Communication Research. Kim, Y. C., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006a). Civic engagement from a communication infrastructure perspective. Communication Theory, 16(1), 1–25. Kim, Y. C., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006b). Community storytelling network, neighborhood context, and civic engagement: A multilevel approach. Human Communication Research, 32(4), 411–439. Kim, Y. C., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Cohen, E. L., & Jung, J.-Y. (2002). Metamorphosis of civic action: From local storytelling to national action. In B. Greenberg (Ed.), Communication and terrorism (pp. 289–304). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Kim, Y. C., Jung, J., Cohen, E., & Ball-Rokeach, S. (2004). Internet connectedness before and after September 11, 2001. New Media & Society, 6(5), 611–631. Kim, Y. C., & Kang, J. (2010). Communication, neighborhood engagement, and household hurricane preparedness. Disasters: The Journal of Disaster Studies, Policy & Management, 34(2), 470–488. Kim, Y. C., & Kim, K. S. (2008, August). Distrust in local news media and civic engagement: Moderating roles of race and connection to community-based communication resources. Paper presented at the The annual convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Chicago. Kim, Y. C., Lim, J. Y., & Park, K. (2015). Effects of health literacy and social captial on health information behavior. Journal of Health Communication, 20(9), 1084–1094. Kim, Y. C., Moran, M. B., Wilkin, H. A., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2011). Integrated connection to neighborhood storytelling network, education, and chronic disease knowledge among African Americans and Latinos in Los Angeles. Journal of Health Communication, 16(4), 393–415. Kim, Y. C., & Shin, E. (2016). Localized use of information and communication technologies in Seoul’s urban neighborhoods. American Behavioral Scientist, 60, 81–100. Kim, Y. C., Shin, E., Cho, A., Jung, E., Shon, K., & Shim, H. (2015). SNS dependency and community engagement in urban neighborhoods: The moderating role of integrated connectedness to a community storytelling network. Communication Research. Advance online publication. Kim, Y. C., & Shin, I. (2013). Effects of “smartphone dependency” on traditional media use and talking with others: Applying media system dependency theory. Journal of Korea Association for Broadcasting & Telecommunication Studies, 27(2), 115–156. Lin, W.-Y., & Song, H. (2006). Geo-ethnic storytelling: An examination of ethnic media content in contemporary immigrant communities. Journalism, 7, 362–388. Literat, I., & Chen, N. T. N. (2014). Communication infrastructure theory and entertainment-education: An integrative model for health communication. Communication Theory, 24(1), 83–103.

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Longino, H. E. (1979). Evidence and hypothesis: An analyis of evidential relations. Philosophy of Science, 46(1), 35–56. Matei, S., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2003). The internet in the communication infrastructure of urban residential communities: Macro-or mesolinkage? Journal of Communication, 53(4), 642–657. Matsaganis, M. D., & Golden, A. G. (2015). Interventions to address reproductive health disparities among African-American women in a small urban community: The communicative construction of a “field of health action”. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 43(2), 163–184. Matsaganis, M. D., Golden, A. G., & Scott, M. E. (2014). Communication infrastructure theory and reproductive health disparities: Enhancing storytelling network integration by developing interstitial actors. International Journal of Communication, 8, 21. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago: University of Chicago. Morgan, K. (2004). The exaggerated death of geography: learning, proximity and territorial innovation systems. Journal of Economic Geography, 4(1), 3–21. Mumford, L. (1961). The city in history. San Diego, CA, New York, NY, London: A Harvest Book Harcourt. Ognyanova, K., Chen, N.-T. N., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., An, Z., Son, M., Parks, M., & Gerson, D. (2013). Online participation in a community context: Civic engagement and connections to local communication resources. International Journal of Communication, 7, 24. Park, R. E., Burgess, E. W., & McKenzie, R. D. (1984). The city: Suggestions for the study of human nature in the urban environment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Shin, H., & Kim, Y. C. (2014, Apirl). The community function of a third place: Coffee houses and neighborhood storytelling. Paper presented at the Korean Association for Broadcasting & Telecommunication Studies, Bi-Annual Conference, Cheju, Korea. Shon, K. E., & Kim, Y. C. (2015). Effects of family type on community engagement; From a communication infrastructure perspective. Working Paper. Working Paper. College of Communication, Yonsei University. Wilkin, H. A. (2013). Exploring the potential of communication infrastructure theory for informing efforts to reduce health disparities. Journal of Communication, 63(1), 181–200. doi:10.1111/jcom.12006 Wilkin, H. A., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2011). Hard-to-reach? Using health access status as a way to more effectively target segments of the Latino audience. Health Education Research, 26(2), 239–253. Wilkin, H. A., Katz, V. S., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., & Heather, H. J. (2015). Communication resources for obesity prevention among African American and Latino residents in an urban neighborhood. Journal of Health Communication, 20, 710–719. Wilkin, H. A., Stringer, K. A., O’Quin, K., Montgomery, S. A., & Hunt, K. (2011). Using communication infrastructure theory to formulate a strategy to locate “hard-to-reach” research participants. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 39(2), 201–213.

chapter four

Designing Research to Diagnose and Transform Urban Community Communication Infrastructures matthew d . matsaganis

Associate Professor, Rutgers University holley a . wilkin

Associate Professor, Georgia State University

Cities are inherently complex ecosystems and everyday life in the city is marked by phenomena and is shaped by processes that unfold at multiple levels of analysis. To study such complex phenomena and processes, and to develop and test theories that account for them, it is most helpful, if not necessary, to rely on multi- and mixed-methods research designs (Benoit & Holbert, 2008; Creswell, Klassen, Plano Clark, & Smith, 2011; Matsaganis, 2016). Simply defined, multimethod studies employ more than one quantitative or qualitative method, whereas mixed-methods research relies on both quantitative and qualitative methods (­Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007). Both robust multi- and mixed-methods research designs facilitate the analyses of data that lead to an understanding of how microlevel urban community actors (i.e., residents), meso-level (e.g., local organizational actors and institutions), and macro-level agents (e.g., mass media, state and federal level policymaking bodies) interact with each other to shape everyday life in the city, but also how the community context (e.g., features of the physical and built environment, socio-economic conditions in the community) influences and is influenced by the actions of community actors. These are all considerations

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that informed the research design used by the Metamorphosis Project research team in its original pursuit to study the role of communication in maintaining and improving civic engagement in the socio-demographically diverse city of Los Angeles at the turn of the 21st century. It is through this work that communication infrastructure theory (CIT) was developed and the assumptions underlying this seminal research continue to shape most CIT-based studies today (published in this volume and beyond). In this chapter, we begin with a more formal definition of mixed-methods research, we situate the original Metamorphosis Project research design that led to the development of communication infrastructure theory (CIT) in this context, and describe its main components. Subsequently, we explore the CIT-based literature to identify research designs and specific methods that have been employed in studies that speak to larger themes we find in the broader urban communication literature. We conclude with a discussion of how future research based on CIT could contribute to the burgeoning body of work on urban communication from a methodological perspective.

Mixed-Methods Research Designs and Approaches to Their Application Although combining multiple quantitative or qualitative methods in the context of the same study can present its own challenges, the integration of quantitative and qualitative methods in research is considered more complicated, because the divide between postpositive (quantitative) and social constructivist or interpretive (qualitative) approaches to research has not been fully bridged. A growing number of researchers across the social sciences, however, agree that preserving this divide is unproductive. A deeper discussion of the complementarity argument, based on which quantitative and qualitative methods can be fruitfully combined, is beyond the scope of this chapter (for more, see Tashakkori & Teddlie, 1998). A more formal definition of mixed-methods research design, though, is necessary. In an influential report commissioned in 2011 by the U.S. Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, mixed-methods is defined as an approach that: (a) focuses on theoretically grounded research questions that “call for real-life contextual understandings, multilevel perspectives, and cultural influences”; (b) employs “rigorous quantitative research assessing the magnitudes and frequency of constructs” and “rigorous qualitative research that focuses on the meaning and understanding of constructs”; and (c) utilizes and builds on the strengths of multiple methods, such as intervention trials and in-depth interviews (Creswell et al., 2011, p. 4).

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Proponents of mixed-methods research design argue that there are enough similarities in fundamental beliefs of both postpositivist and social constructivist perspectives to form “an enduring partnership” (Reichardt & Rallis, 1994, p. 85). These include the beliefs that (a) research is value laden, (b) observations are shaped by the theoretical framework employed, (c) reality is socially constructed, (d) theories cannot be proven beyond any doubt, and (e) multiple theories can contribute to our understanding of the same phenomenon (Reichardt & Rallis, 1994). Two perspectives have emerged to support mixed-methods research designs: the pragmatist and the transformative approach. The pragmatist approach focuses on how quantitative and qualitative methods can be combined to answer particular research questions. From a pragmatist perspective, we understand social phenomena through abductive reasoning (Morgan, 2007), which moves back and forth between induction and deduction (typically associated with constructivist/qualitative and postpositivist/quantitative approaches, respectively). This is the case when, for example, through inductive reasoning, observations lead to theory elaboration, which subsequently leads to the formulation of new theory-driven research questions. The transformative approach to mixing methods shares with the pragmatist perspective the notion that reality is socially constructed. It takes a step further, though, to say that “all knowledge reflects the power and social relationships within society, and that an important purpose of knowledge construction is to help people improve society” (Mertens, 2003, p. 139). A transformative approach is open to the use of any method as long as the methods chosen help investigators achieve change that will benefit populations disproportionately affected by disparities (e.g., social, health, digital). Under the umbrella of this larger transformative perspective we find specific approaches that have gained traction in communication research, including a community-based participatory research approach (Minkler & ­Wallerstein, 2008) and the engaged scholarship perspective (Napoli & Aslama, 2011). The former is frequently employed in health communication research, and the latter is used in several subfields of communication, including organizational and political communication. Six types of mixed-method designs have been employed in studies guided by a more general pragmatist or transformative approach to research (Creswell, Plano Clark, Gutmann, & Hanson, 2003). In the sequential explanatory design, researchers collect qualitative data to build on data collected previously through quantitative methods. Findings from analyses of these two different types of data are integrated in the interpretation phase of the study. In the sequential exploratory design, a primarily qualitative investigation is followed by the collection of quantitative data. There are also two types of concurrent (or convergent) designs. In the concurrent triangulation design, researchers collect quantitative and qualitative data simultaneously. They combine findings from their analyses of the two sets of data

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to provide a richer understanding of the phenomenon under study. In the nested concurrent design, researchers also collect both quantitative and qualitative data. However, one method is embedded in the other and data collected one way are analyzed to produce answers to a dominant question, whereas data collected via the other method are analyzed to answer a secondary question (e.g., survey data are used to capture the types of media individuals connect to in their everyday lives to stay on top of community affairs, and interview data are collected to understand how individuals make decisions about what media to use to accomplish different goals). Finally, depending on how qualitative and quantitative methods are combined, studies designed to facilitate change (e.g., an intervention project and its evaluation), may rely on a sequential transformative or concurrent transformative research design (Creswell et al., 2003). Against the backdrop of this larger discussion around research design, and multi- and mixed-methods in particular, we next present the components of the initial Metamorphosis Project research design.

The Metamorphosis Project: Background and Initial Research Design The Metamorphosis Project was designed to address how communities were changing through the combined forces of increasing population diversity and communication technology; and, more significantly, to examine the effects of these changes (Matei, Ball-Rokeach, Wilson, & Gutierrez Hoyt, 2001). The fact that early Metamorphosis Project research unfolded in Los Angeles was consequential for the research design. At the turn of the century, several urban scholars looked at Los Angeles as a prototypical 21st century cosmopolis (Fulton, 1997). Τhe socio-demographic makeup of the city and its role as a major gateway city for new immigrants called for careful consideration of the role of race, ethnicity, and immigration generation. Los Angeles’ history, marked, among other things, by inter-ethnic conflict and residential segregation had to be considered (for the role of the Los Angeles uprising of 1992 in the development of Metamorphosis, see Ball-Rokeach, Prologue). The abovementioned factors combined have, over time, determined population dynamics across the city’s neighborhoods; what languages are spoken in those communities; if and what media and community-based organizations are available (but also who these organizations serve); the extent to which residential communities are well integrated and cohesive; whether they have richer or poorer stores of social capital and collective efficacy; and whether residents feel they have and actually possess the capacity to effect desired changes in their neighborhoods.

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The research team focused on a variety of communities across the sprawling metropolis that is Los Angeles. Researchers selected neighborhoods based on several criteria, key among them being gaining access to areas with high concentrations of residents with the ethnic backgrounds most prevalent across the city (e.g., Mexican- and Central American-origin residents, Chinese and Korean-origin populations, African Americans, White European-original groups). The ethnicities represented in the samples recruited in the initial phase of Metamorphosis represented approximately 90% of the Los Angeles county population. The centers of study areas selected were within 10 miles from the city’s Civic Center to ensure that they were relatively close to each other. And study area contours were drawn based on recent U.S. Census data, available in-depth studies on the social geography of Southern California (e.g., Allen & Turner, 1996), and on established real estate areas. Additionally, though, the research team was concerned with identifying areas that would be recognizable from the residents’ point of view for their cultural and historical coherence. While this was difficult to always ascertain a priori, investigators sought to do so during data collection. For instance, researchers asked telephone survey participants questions, such as, “How do you identify the neighborhood you live in?” Such questions allowed, among other things, to determine consensus (or lack thereof ) among residents of study areas about the name and boundaries of their neighborhoods. Initially, the research team focused on seven areas (Matei et al., 2001; Son & Ball-Rokeach, 2017):1

• Central San Gabriel Valley (1st to 4th generation ethnic Chinese): This

area includes the incorporated city of Monterey Park and portions of three other incorporated cities. Residents vary from middle to upper middle class. • Boyle Heights (1st to 4th generation Mexican-origin): This East L.A. area includes Boyle Heights and View Terrace. Residents vary from working to middle class. • Greater Crenshaw (African American): This large area in South L.A. includes 5–6 known communities (e.g., Leimert Park, Baldwin Hills). Residents vary from upper middle class to working and underclass. • Koreatown (1st and 2nd generation Korean-origin): This Central City area serves as a commercial and service center for Korean-origin people in Southern California. Residents are largely working and lower middle class. • Pico Union (1st and 2nd generation Central American-origin): Residents of this Central City area are generally poor and have relatively low levels of education.

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• South Pasadena (Anglo and largely Protestant): This area east of downtown

LA is an incorporated city with largely middle and upper middle class residents. • The Westside (Anglo with a large representation of Jewish residents): This area includes 4–5 known communities. Residents fall largely within the upper middle class. This early Metamorphosis Project research was guided by a pragmatist approach to research design. An overarching research question—how civic society is formed and transformed in 20th and 21st century urban environments—guided the selection of both quantitative and qualitative methods. Before starting formal research in a study area, the research team tracked down and analyzed existing data about the area (e.g., from the U.S. Census, the local Department of Public Health), mapped data from secondary sources regarding the availability of community-based organizations (including, for instance, health and human service organizations), and organized research team field trips, in order for researchers to observe the community and talk informally with residents and members of local organizations (e.g., staff of local public libraries, leaders of churches, staff of local health clinics). Subsequently the team designed more formal data collection efforts. A telephone survey (a quantitative method) was a central element of these efforts. Data collected through telephone survey were complemented by data collected through other methods, usually qualitative in nature. The mixed-methods design employed in the initial stage of CIT studies took the form that most closely resembles the design defined in the literature as sequential explanatory. Following is a brief summary of the original research methods employed by the Metamorphosis Project and Figure 4.1 illustrates the different phases of the project. Telephone survey. A survey was administered to community residents over the telephone (using a Random-Digit Dialing method).2 The survey was translated (and back translated) and administered for the initial study areas in English, Spanish (with Mexican and Central American colloquialisms), Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese) and Korean. Questions that allowed for the creation of key measures remained the same over time (with minor modifications), to facilitate comparisons across communities and over time. The Integrated Connection to the Storytelling Network (ICSN) was developed as a key index of individual residents’ integration into their neighborhood’s storytelling network (see Kim & ­Ball-Rokeach, 2006, Kim & Jung, Chapter 1, and Kim Chapter 3). Other measures included the Internet Connectedness Index (ICI), developed to capture the scope and centrality of the Internet in the everyday life of community residents ( Jung, Qiu, & Kim, 2001), as well as indices to assess residents’ sense of attachment to

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Figure 4.1.  The Original Metamorphosis Project Research Design, as it emerges through the initial wave of studies through which communication infrastructure theory (CIT) was developed. Residents, community organizations, and geo-ethnic media represent the three main actors in each neighborhood’s storytelling network (STN). Double-headed arrows indicate that data collected from an STN actor can be combined with data collected from the others to develop a richer and more complete understanding of a community’s STN and its larger communication infrastructure.

their community (belonging), collective efficacy, and political participation (BallRokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006). Additionally, survey questions enabled researchers to get at what local media and organizations were more important to local residents. These data guided additional data collection efforts to understand the community from the point of view of these media and organizations (discussed below). Focus groups. Focus group studies were designed to give texture and depth to the data obtained from telephone interviews; that is, they supplemented and expanded upon issues touched on in the survey and got at more latent attitudes and perceptions. Geo-spatial mapping. Typically in the context of focus groups, the research team also gathered data from community residents who has previously participated in the telephone survey about how comfortable or fearful they felt across the various neighborhoods of Los Angeles County. Participants used markers

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to draw their own black and white copies of the county map (black to indicate their neighborhood area, green the areas they felt comfortable in, orange the areas they felt somewhat but not completely comfortable, red for areas they were afraid to be in, and blue to indicate areas that they did not know). Maps were processed and analyzed employing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques. The resulting mental maps were indicative of the way in which people perceived Los Angeles’ urban space, rather than the actual social and economic health of various areas of the city. Studies based on these data (e.g., Matei & ­Ball-Rokeach, 2005), revealed distorted perceptions of areas of the city; distortions did not correlate with actual crime data, but with the presence of larger populations of people of color. Mail-out surveys. Telephone survey participants who were eligible but could not participate in focus groups were sent all the materials necessary to complete the “fear and comfort” mapping exercise and return their data to the research team. Interviews. Members of local and ethnically-targeted media (geo-ethnic media) and community-based organizations were interviewed to explore their role in a community’s everyday life and as part of the neighborhood storytelling networks. Guided by survey data, researchers started their investigation by focusing on those organizations residents identified as most important to them. This approach to selecting organizations allowed researchers to approach neighborhood actors who were more likely to play a central role in efforts to integrate the local community’s storytelling network. In one early study, for instance, Wilson (2001) examined the capacity of local community organizations to spark storytelling about the neighborhood across the areas they served.

A Theory-Driven and Multilevel Research Design The research design that supported early Metamorphosis Project’s research was not only characterized by its reliance on both quantitative and qualitative methods. As indicated above in the types of data collected, driven by a nascent, ecological, and communication-centered theoretical approach, which evolved into communication infrastructure theory (CIT), the Project’s researchers created a multilevel research design to examine and understand the many factors that operate at and across levels of analysis to affect urban community residents’ everyday life. As an ecological theoretical framework (see also Kim & Jung, Chapter 1), CIT assumes that individuals’ behaviors—communication and others—are

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shaped by the features of the residential community they live in (e.g., availability of communication resources in the local media market or environment, presence/ lack of community-based organizations, the socio-economic profile of the community, available public transportation options). This assumption guided (and continues to guide) researchers to collect data that enable understanding the community from the point of view of residents (micro-level), community-based organizations and local and ethnically-targeted media (meso-level), but also larger scale social institutions, such as mainstream media and health and human service organizations whose scope of activity extends beyond the local community level (macro-level). Taken together, these actors and the relationships among them comprise a neighborhood’s storytelling system.3 Critical, based on the theory, has been the assessment of the nature and strength of the relationships among community stakeholders, across levels of analysis; and how these relationships are shaped by the environment in which they develop (i.e., the communication action context). As a communication theory, CIT also places emphasis on narratives and storytelling, arguing that it is through storytelling that the fabric of community gets woven and preserved. In the initial wave of studies, Metamorphosis Project team researchers argued that communication is a fundamental process through which life in urban communities gets organized. Ball-Rokeach et al. (2001) asserted that storytelling, particularly storytelling about one’s community, is “the most agentic process in the construction of those precious bonds that gestate co-orientation in the form of imagined community …, bonds requisite to the formation of interpersonal and collective modes of neighborly association” (p. 394). This belief has guided much of the CIT scholarship to date and has had an impact on the choice of research methods used. In fact, over time, researchers employing CIT have grown more interested in better understanding the content of communication in urban communities. Doing so has also led, for example, to the use of quantitative content analysis to study local and ethnically targeted media (together labeled geo-ethnic media) storytelling (Lin & Song, 2006; Lin, Song, & Ball-Rokeach, 2010), but also to the broader use of qualitative methods. Interview data, for instance, were collected from radio producers from two Los Angeles stations to examine their storytelling practices and the barriers they faced to telling local stories (Hardyk, Loges, & Ball-Rokeach, 2005). In another example, interviews with residents and local health providers in a community in New York State revealed the factors behind the communication disjuncture between these community actors, which, in turn, was responsible for the underutilization of healthcare services (Matsaganis, Golden, & Scott, 2014).

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Themes, Problematics, and Methods in Communication Infrastructure Theory-Based Research After the initial major wave of publications in the early 2000s, the agenda of the Metamorphosis Project expanded, driven chiefly by the evolving interests of the research team, including new graduate students, research partners, and funding agents. For example, a partnership with First 5 L.A., a nonprofit organization established in 1998 and funded through tobacco tax revenues earmarked to fund health, safety, and early education programs for children in California, was reflected in a new emphasis on health and families. Research focused on new questions and filling gaps identified in earlier research also meant introducing additional types of data collection. For example, Katz (2007), employing a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design, in which quantitative data from a random-digit-dial survey aided creating a suitable sample of families recruited for the main part of the study, investigated the role of children as facilitators in the social incorporation of families in South Los Angeles. In this case, interviews with children, parents, and local health and human service providers allowed Katz to examine the significance of families in the communication infrastructure of their communities of settlement. Interview data in this study were complemented by field observations collected at the locations of several local organizations. As the number of Metamorphosis Project alumni has grown over time, with most moving away from Los Angeles, research applying and elaborating CIT has also continued in other U.S. cities, but also in urban communities in Europe and Asia. This work, too, has contributed to the richness of methods employed to elaborate CIT and improve our understanding of urban communities. Matsaganis (2016) identified four major themes in the broader urban communication literature, including: communication and civic engagement; communication ecologies and urban communities; communication, urban communities, and health; and communication and public space. We use these themes to organize CIT studies and to highlight ways in which they have led to research design innovations. Apart from the four aforementioned major themes, we also identify two problematics that emerge from the review of the CIT literature: the problematic of technology (how technological innovations are incorporated in urban communities and how they shape and are shaped by communication in the city) and the problematic of change (how urban communities change, when, and by whom). A full account of all CIT studies that speak to a particular theme and problematic is impossible within the constraints of a single chapter; therefore, our goal here is to illustrate with examples how research methods were employed together with CIT to address these themes and problematics. We also emphasize CIT-based studies

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that were conducted in new geographical contexts, including cities across the U.S. and urban communities in other countries, in most cases building on prior Los Angeles-based studies by the Metamorphosis Project.

The Role of Communication in Civic Engagement The role of communication in encouraging and preserving civic engagement in urban communities was Metamorphosis’ original focus. It is no surprise, therefore, that interest in this and related questions has persisted over time in the CITbased literature. A subset of studies under this theme speaks to the problematic of technology and civic engagement in urban communities. For example, employing a survey as part of a sequential explanatory research design, Jung, Toriumi, and Mizukoshi (2013) showed that individuals more integrated into their residential community’s storytelling network (STN) and who were also more active online, were more likely to participate in civic activities in the aftermath of the Great East Japan earthquake of 2011. In a related study, conducted in the context of the same larger project, Jung and Moro (2014), relied primarily on survey data, but also on the analysis of a select number of Twitter timelines to describe the ways in which Tokyo residents used social media in the aftermath of the earthquake. (For a review of studies employing CIT and focused on technology-related issues, see also, Ognyanova and Jung, Chapter 8.) Another subset of studies focuses on the role of local media in producing and maintaining civic engagement in urban communities. Chen, Dong, Ball-Rokeach, Parks, and Huang (2012) explore the role of media in residential communities and civic engagement. Their goal is to report on an ongoing “research-driven communication intervention” (p. 931) to develop a hyperlocal news website to promote civic engagement in an ethnically diverse urban neighborhood (see also Chen, Liu, Ognyanova, & Moreno, Chapter 11). Data were collected through both quantitative and qualitative methods—semistructured interviews with community organizations and local government representatives, focus groups, ethnographic field observations, but also a tri-lingual web-based survey—demonstrating a sequential exploratory and transformative design.

Communication Ecologies and Urban Communities This stream of research focuses on the webs of communication resources—­ including media, organizational, and interpersonal resources—that urban community residents rely on to achieve various goals (e.g., staying on top of community affairs, seeking health information). We refer to these webs of resources as communication ecologies (Wilkin, Ball-Rokeach, Matsaganis, & Cheong, 2007). Wilkin

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et al. demonstrate how the configuration of individuals’ communication ecologies depends on the goals they seek to achieve, but also on other factors such as their ethnicity, the geographic community they live in, and their access to communication technologies. For example, Latinos living in Glendale, a relatively ethnically diverse community, indicated using mainstream English-language media for learning about what was happening in their neighborhoods, while Latinos living in the predominantly new Latino immigrant Southeast L.A. area relied more on Spanish-language media and interpersonal resources for this goal. In one study, Lin et al. (2010)—through a multi-method research design that included a random-digit-dial telephone survey of more than 1,000 residents across four different immigrant communities in Los Angeles and quantitative content analysis of more than 8,000 stories published in 51 ethnic newspapers—describe how differences in the communication practices of these communities (e.g., communication with family and friends, media consumption) might affect how they experience transnationalism—i.e., living both “here,” in their country of settlement, and “there,” in their country of origin. In other studies, the focus is on media organizations in urban communities. In one project, Hardyk et al. (2005) investigate the practices of two local radio stations in Los Angeles to find out how these media forge relationships to other media, local organizations, and community residents, thereby contributing to community integration. The authors offer insight into how community residents responded to these practices, and how the media producers’ strategies contributed to organizational success (higher ratings, revenues). The study employed a qualitative multi-method research design, which included interviews with radio station producers, textual analysis of radio shows, and direct field observations of daily operations at the radio stations. Data in this case were integrated in the analysis and interpretation phases of the study. Finally, another study speaks to the communication ecologies and the city theme, but also takes on the problematic of change through the lens of CIT and from an engaged scholarship perspective. Through a qualitative, multi-method study that involves in-person interviews and focus groups and that is designed to facilitate community change, Broad et al. (2013) map and examine the communication ecologies of more than 150 practitioners working in community-based, social change–oriented organizations, and they explore how an academic research team can use this information to design engaged scholarship projects that will strengthen the communicative ties that bind communities together (see also Broad, Chapter 12, for another example that addresses this theme and problematic).

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Communication, Urban Communities, and Health Considerable research in recent years has examined health and place, mostly outside, but increasingly also inside, the field of communication (see Matsaganis, 2015). Studies from two research-driven intervention projects—one based in Atlanta, Georgia, and one in a small city in New York State—have investigated how the material environment of communities and the social construction of this environment through communication (interpersonal and mediated) creates and reifies health disparities (see Wilkin, Matsaganis, & Golden, Chapter 10). Both projects, informed by community-based participatory research principles (Minkler & Wallerstein, 2008), have sought ways to intervene to reduce such disparities. The project in Atlanta employed a concurrent nested and transformative mixed-­methods design that included surveys; community forum discussions; semistructured interviews with health care workers at local health care organizations; and PhotoVoice, a method that uses photos taken by members of disadvantaged communities to enable them to tell their stories and influence policy change (Wilkin, Cohen, & Tannebaum, 2012; Wilkin, Stringer, O’Quin, Montgomery, & Hunt, 2011). The second intervention project in a small urban community in New York relied on a similar mixed-methods design and involved surveys, semistructured interviews with residents and local health and human services organizations, and collection of field observations (Matsaganis & Golden, 2015; Matsaganis et al., 2014).4 Due to their nature as interventions, both of the aforementioned projects also speak to the problematic of community transformation.

Communication and Public Space in the City The fourth area of research focuses on the interplay between community communication dynamics and urban space. In one study, Matei and Ball-Rokeach (2005) examine the role of television and newspapers, as well as interpersonal communication, in the social construction of “spatial fear” among Los Angeles residents of specific areas of the city. While this study does not explicitly cite CIT, it was conducted as part of the Metamorphosis Project research in Los Angeles and offers a method to capture perceptions of public space, a psychological dimension of the communication action context that might enable or constrain connections among neighborhood storytellers. Matei and Ball-Rokeach pursue their questions through a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design. Survey data collected through telephone interviews with a random-digit-dial sample of residents are combined with mental maps drawn by subsamples of these residents in the context of focus groups and through a mail-out survey, as well as crime data obtained from law enforcement agencies. The authors show how Los Angeles residents’

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perceptions of Watts in South L.A. as the most dangerous part of the city were associated with media portrayals (especially television) of the community from the “Watts Riots” of 1965 onward, frequency of interpersonal communication among neighbors, but also with the presence of minority populations. In other words, communities across L.A., like Watts, that were more ethnically and racially diverse were more likely to be negatively stereotyped. Several studies included in this book examine the role of public spaces in communities. For instance, Zhang, Motta, and Georgiou use multiple methods— surveys, focus groups, socio-spatial mapping, and ethnographic observations—in two multiethnic communities, one in London and one in Los Angeles, to investigate how different dimensions of the local built environment shape inter-ethnic communication and relationships. The health projects cited in the previous section (Wilkin et al., Chapter 10) also explore, through mixed-methods designs, the potential use of community spaces—communication hotspots and comfort zones— for health intervention projects. Finally, Villanueva and Wenzel (­ Chapter 9) document two projects, in which Metamorphosis Project team members helped communities in South Los Angeles and in the Northeast Los Angeles River vicinity advocate to improve their built environment (thereby engaging the problematic of community change). Villanueva and Wenzel elaborate on how in these engaged scholarship projects, researchers and community members developed a concurrent transformative mixed-methods research design to accomplish their goals. This methodological approach entailed (with some variation across the two projects): participant-­observation, resident surveys, small business surveys, focus groups with residents and local organizational stakeholders, semi-structured interviews, communication asset mapping, multimedia work, media monitoring, and public community exhibits (see Chapter 9 for details).

Research Methods to Support Future Communication Infrastructure Theory-Based Research Research designed to further communication infrastructure theory (CIT) can go in several directions. Such endeavors will likely go hand in hand with the development of new research designs, building on the strengths of the research conducted to date. We will briefly discuss a short list of directions that could further diversify the array of research tools used, which are informed by key principles of the initial Metamorphosis Project approach: (1) research design is driven by theory, (2) methods are selected through a pragmatist or transformative approach, and (3) research design is impacted by social context particularities (e.g., population dynamics).

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From a CIT perspective, the more integrated a community’s actors are into a neighborhood-focused storytelling network, the more likely it is to be in a position to identify and address pressing issues and concerns. These stakeholders include individuals in their interpersonal networks (including families), community-based organizations, and geo-ethnic media. Thus far, a number of studies have demonstrated the utility of the Integrated Connection to the Storytelling Network (ICSN) as a measure of how integrated an individual is into his or her local community’s storytelling network (Kim, Chapter 3). However, there is very little work (cf. Matsaganis, 2008) that contributes to the development of similar measures assessing the integration of organizational-level actors in a community’s storytelling network. Building on substantial qualitative research, involving interviews with organizational staff and media producers, but also quantitative content analyses of media content, researchers could construct surveys that would enable the collection of data getting at local organizations’ “ICSN.” Such data would allow for establishing baselines to track the role of organizations in local storytelling networks and to determine if the organizational level of a community’s communication infrastructure can provide consistency in neighborhoods where populations are less stable. Central to CIT is the notion that it is the interaction of a community’s storytelling network (STN) and its communication action context (CAC) that impacts individuals’ everyday life. The CAC can constrain and enable the STN, which can have a variety of different effects (e.g., on health and civic engagement), but the pathways through which communities’ physical (natural and built) environment shapes communication dynamics remain elusive; as does how the environment’s effects manifest in the everyday life of residents. Matsaganis and Golden (2015) propose the notion of a field of health action to explain how a community’s built environment impacts individuals’ narratives about their community, and how, in turn, this effects healthcare utilization (see also Wilkin et al., Chapter 10). In a different study, Zhang et al. (Chapter 7) show how the built environment in ethnically diverse communities can affect intergroup communication. Future directions for the elaboration of research designs that facilitate the study of the interaction of built environment (as key feature of the CAC) and community communication dynamics, and their effects, can also be found outside the field of communication. For example, Townley, Kloos, and Wright (2009) discuss the value of combining participatory mapping (e.g., photographs and narratives by residents) and geographic information systems (in which survey, demographic data can be input) to better understand what types of resources and activities are most important to individuals’ daily functioning and well-being. This combination of methods could be adapted to address a number of issues discussed earlier, including “communication, urban communities, and health” or “communication and civic engagement.”

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How the ongoing emergence of new communication technologies enables and constrains the integration of local communities’ storytelling networks (and their larger storytelling systems), and with what effects, remain questions that will continue to inspire new research (see also Friedland, Chapter 2; Kim & Shin, 2016; Ognyanova & Jung, Chapter 8). Future studies would benefit from the incorporation of social network analysis (Monge & Contractor, 2003) into their research designs to investigate, for instance, what social structures at the individual and organizational level facilitate storytelling network integration in urban communities, and how technology enables or constrains the maintenance of these social structures. Technology has also ushered us into an era of “big data.” Therefore future studies based on CIT should explore the potential of analyzing such data with established and new methods to improve our understanding of local communication infrastructures (e.g., by examining large volumes of stories told by and about urban communities). Finally, researchers have recognized CIT’s potential as a framework to guide interventions, primarily intended to improve health- and civic engagement-­related outcomes in diverse communities. In several of these projects, CIT has been combined with a variety of participatory research approaches (see Villanueva & Wenzel, Chapter 9; Wilkin et al., Chapter 10), to allow for community residents and other local stakeholders to shape the research, so that it responds to actual, community-defined needs and in order for intervention gains to be preserved in the longer-term. Future intervention-oriented research based on CIT, should also incorporate methods to enable participatory evaluation (see Broad, Chapter 12, for a case study of “collaborative program evaluation”).

Notes 1. By 2017, the Metamorphosis Project research team had expanded its inquiry into 12 different Los Angeles area (Son & Ball-Rokeach, 2017). The expanded list included communities in (a) Glendale, (b) Southeast Los Angeles, (c) the South Figueroa Corridor, (d) Alhambra, and (e) Northeast L.A. 2. As Clagett et al. (2013) point out, in the 1990s random-digit dialing was found to be a reliable method for selecting an equal probability sample of landline numbers, particularly in areas where telephone ownership was high. As mobile phone ownership grew and landline ownership declined, researchers have had to consider alternatives to RDD or approaches that are complementary (employing, for example, address-based sampling). 3. The more local key storytellers, individual residents in their interpersonal networks, geo-ethnic media, and community organizations, and the relationships among them, make up a community’s storytelling network (STN). 4. For additional studies on a variety of health issues that are based on CIT, see Wilkin (2013) and Wilkin, Moran, Ball-Rokeach, Gonzalez, and Kim (2010).

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Minkler, M., & Wallerstein, N. (Eds.). (2008). Community-based participatory research for health: From process to outcomes (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Monge, P. R., & Contractor, N. (2003). Theories of communication networks. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Morgan, D. L. (2007). Paradigms lost and pragmatism regained: Methodological implications of combining qualitative and quantitative methods. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 1, 48–76. doi:10.1177/2345678906292462 Napoli, P. M., & Aslama, M. (2011). Communication research in action: Scholar-activist collaborations for a democratic public sphere. New York, NY: Fordham University Press. Reichardt, C. S., & Rallis, S. E. (1994). The relationship between the qualitative and quantitative research traditions. In C. S. Reichardt & S. D. Rallis (Eds.), The qualitative-­quantitative debate: New perspectives (pp. 5–11). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Son, M., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2016). The whole community communication infrastructure: The case of Los Angeles. In M. Lloyd & L. Friedland (Eds.), The communication crisis in America, and how to fix it (pp. 107–124). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Tashakkori, A., & Teddlie, C. (1998). Mixed methodology: Combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Townley, G., Kloos, B., & Wright, P. A. (2009). Understanding the experience of place: Expanding methods to conceptualize and measure community integration of persons with serious mental illness. Health & Place, 15, 520–531. doi:10.1016/j.healthplace.2008.08.011 Wilkin, H. A. (2013). Exploring the potential of communication infrastructure theory for informing efforts to reduce health disparities. Journal of Communication, 63, 181–200. doi:10.1111/jcom.12006 Wilkin, H. A., Ball-Rokeach, S., Matsaganis, M., & Cheong, P. (2007). Comparing the communication ecologies of geo-ethnic communities: How people stay on top of their community. Electronic Journal of Communication, 17(1–2). Retrieved from www.cios.org/ EJCPUBLIC/017/1/01711.HTML Wilkin, H. A., Cohen, E. L., & Tannebaum, M. A. (2012). How low-income residents decide between emergency and primary health care for non-urgent treatment. Howard Journal of Communications, 23(2), 157–174. doi:10.1080/10646175.2012.667725 Wilkin, H. A., Moran, M. B., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Gonzalez, C., & Kim, Y.-C. (2010). Applications of communication infrastructure theory. Health Communication, 25(6–7), 611–612. doi:10.1080/10410236.2010.496839 Wilkin, H. A., Stringer, K. A., O’Quin, K., Montgomery, S. A., & Hunt, K. (2011). Using communication infrastructure theory to formulate a strategy to locate “hard-to-reach” research participants. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 39, 201–213. doi:10.1080/00909 882.2011.556140 Wilson, M. E. (2001). Leading the community chorus: The role of organizations in society (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.

part t wo

Communication Infrastructure Theory in Different Contexts

chapter five

Overcoming Silence Through the Neighborhood Storytelling Network Facing Controversy Over the Restart of the Nuclear Power Plant in the City of Kashiwazaki, Japan* joo - young jung

Senior Associate Professor, International Christian University risa maeda

Doctoral Candidate, International Christian University

After the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident caused by an earthquake and tsunami, all nuclear power plants in Japan ceased operations. Since then, the restart of nuclear plants has been an intensely debated public issue both at a national and local level. The Nuclear Regulation Authority of the central government evaluates if a plant meets post-Fukushima safety regulations, but power companies also need approval from the local government and residents before a nuclear power plant can be restarted. This study examines circumstances in Kashiwazaki, a city that hosts a power plant with seven nuclear reactors, the largest number of reactors on a single site

*An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Annual Convention of the International Communication Association (Fukuoka, Japan), June 10–13, 2016.

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in Japan. A pilot study consisting of in-depth interviews indicated that residents in Kashiwazaki are hesitant to openly discuss their opinions concerning restarting or decommissioning the local nuclear reactors. Given the importance of open discussion and debate about whether to restart the nuclear plant in Kashiwazaki, the current study was initiated to investigate factors that are likely to influence people’s willingness to discuss the nuclear plant issue in their neighborhood. Based on a survey conducted with residents of Kashiwazaki in 2015, the study employs spiral of silence theory, which mainly focuses on social-psychological factors, and communication infrastructure theory (CIT), which focuses on communicative factors to investigate people’s willingness to talk about the future of nuclear plants and radiation-related issues in Japan.

The Debate Over Nuclear Energy Production in Japan Japan is the world’s third largest nuclear power plant operator in terms of capacity after the United States and France (The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan, 2012). It has 17 nuclear plants, located in nine different regions. The country’s first nuclear plant in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, started to produce energy for commercial use in 1966 (The Japan Atomic Power Company, 2015). In the face of the 1970s oil crises, resource-poor Japan introduced special subsidies for rural areas hosting nuclear plants, which helped to tame local protests. The nuclear power development moved forward despite such accidents as Three Mile Island (U.S.) in 1979 and Chernobyl (Ukraine) in 1986. Japan’s central government has long deemed the usage of nuclear power a national policy designed to address growing demands for electricity (Dawson, 2011). The Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011 caused unprecedented meltdowns of multiple nuclear reactors. More than 150,000 Fukushima residents had to leave their homes (Fukushima Revitalization, 2015). As a result, the government acted by first ceasing operation of a nuclear plant in Hamaoka, Shizuoka Prefecture due to its proximity to Tokyo. Within 14 months following the disaster Japan’s other plants also ceased operation for maintenance. A report by the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) stated that the Fukushima nuclear crisis, therein referred to as a “manmade disaster,” was due to a combination of organizational, institutional and human level failings, including a lack of regulatory independence of industry administration (The National Diet of Japan, 2012). In July 2013, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), a newly established committee after the Fukushima disaster, set regulations and started reviewing applications for restarting nuclear plants. After regulatory checks on Kyushu

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Electric Power Company’s Sendai plant in Kagoshima Prefecture, the plant restarted in August 2015. It was the first nuclear plant to clear the NRA’s regulation and reopen after the Fukushima nuclear accident (McCurry, 2015; Nuclear Regulation Authority, 2015). The movement by the government and the NRA to restart nuclear plants has faced opposition by citizen groups and organizations. Thousands of people participated in demonstrations against nuclear energy in front of the Prime Minister’s office in central Tokyo and appealed for a change in the country’s energy policy (Metropolitan Coalition Against Nukes, 2015). The movement also took place in local contexts. Local residents in Fukui Prefecture, for example, protested against a restart of two nuclear reactors, and the local court issued an injunction to prevent the restart of the reactors in April 2015 (Hamada, 2015). A national opinion poll in May 2015 showed that 57% of the respondents opposed the restart of nuclear plants ( Japan News Network, 2015).

Nuclear Issues in the City of Kashiwazaki The City of Kashiwazaki has a population of 86,000 and is located on the Western coast of Japan, about 220 km northwest of Tokyo. It hosts the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant, which has been in operation since 1985 and has the largest capacity to produce power at a single nuclear plant in the world. The plant currently generates about 15% of the city’s economy (Okada & Kawase, 2013). The Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant suffered significant damage in 2007 due to a 6.8 magnitude earthquake” (Niigata Nippo Special Group of Reporters, 2009). The earthquake caused radiation leaks, ruptured pipes, flooding and fires (Fackler, 2007). The No. 2, 3 and 4 reactors have since been offline due to prolonged repair and safety checks (Table 5.1 presents an event timeline of the nuclear plant). Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which provides electricity to Tokyo and surrounding areas, installed preventive facilities such as high tsunami walls surrounding the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant after the Fukushima disaster. Its application to the NRA to restart reactors No. 6 and 7 has been under scrutiny since November 2013. Upon NRA’s approval, representatives of the citizens in the neighborhood, namely the heads of the Niigata Prefecture, the city of Kashiwazaki and the village of Kariwa, as well as members of the three local assemblies, will decide whether or not to allow the restart. In 2012 Kashiwazaki started holding symposiums and workshops in a project called “Planning for tomorrow in Kashiwazaki” to encourage discussion among residents (“Kashiwazaki City ­Website,” 2015). However, citizens’ participation has been limited (City official, 2015).

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Table 5.1.  The Event Timeline of Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Plant. Time

Incident

Notes

Sept 1985

Reactor No.1 starts operation.

Other reactors follow suit. The newest No.7 starts operation in 1997.

July 2007

Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake All reactors shut down.

Dec 2009

Reactor No. 7 restarts.

Subsequently, reactors No. 1, 5, 6 restart. But due to prolonged repair, No.2, 3, 4 reactors remain offline.

March 2011

Great East Japan Earthquake, followed by the Fukushima nuclear accident

The four operating reactors shut down by March 2012.

July 2013

NRA’s new safety regulations in effect.

A 40-year operational time limit is introduced.

Nov 2013

TEPCO submitted an appli- Currently under review (as of June, cation to NRA to restart No. 2016) 6 and 7 reactors

A survey conducted in 2014 (Sugihara, Watanabe, Ito, & Matsui, 2014) found that about 30% of randomly selected respondents in Kashiwazaki were against the restart of the nuclear plant, while over 50% of the respondents supported a temporary restart but believed that the nuclear plant should eventually close. Another 20% of participants supported the continuation of the nuclear plant. About 40% of the respondents in Kashiwazaki said that they felt reluctant to talk about the nuclear plant critically with friends (Sugihara et al., 2014). Sugihara et al.’s survey results along with pilot interviews with residents in Kashiwazaki for this study indicate that many residents are reluctant to express their opinions on the nuclear plant issue in public. Based on these initial observations and findings, the authors saw a need to investigate residents’ willingness to talk about nuclear plant issues and factors that influence it.

Willingness to Talk About Controversial Issues Talking about issues related to politics, civic affairs or community have been found to be an important process for democratic practices. In particular, several studies have found that casual conversation, rather than formal debate or argumentation, plays an important role in bringing people together to engage in political and civic activities (McLeod, Scheufele, & Moy, 1999; Tarde, 1903; Walsh, 2003). Wyatt, Katz and Kim (2000) proposed a conversation model to emphasize the importance

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of informal conversations for political and civic participation. McClurg (2003) found that political conversation in people’s informal social interactions has a positive influence on political participation. Rojas (2008) and Eveland, Morey, and Hutchens (2011) also emphasized the importance of political conversation as an antecedent factor to political participation. Based on existing studies, the present study proposes that the willingness to engage in conversation about the nuclear plant and radiation related issues is an important initial step toward engaging in other actions related to a controversial issue, such as the future of nuclear plants in the Japanese context.

Spiral of Silence Theory Factors that influence willingness to talk have mostly been examined under the umbrella of spiral of silence theory (Noelle-Neumann, 1974). Spiral of silence is a theory of public opinion formation and expression. The main thesis is that people are likely to express their opinions on controversial issues if they believe that their opinions are shared by the majority of the public. On the other hand, people are less likely to speak out if they believe that their opinion is in the minority. In the process of speaking out or keeping silent, minority opinions fade out in a spiral of silence and a majority public opinion emerges. Past studies have examined people’s willingness to speak out about controversial issues, including racial (Moy, Domke, & Stamm, 2001), political (Wei-Kuo Lin & Pfau, 2007), scientific (Priest, 2006), and technological (Kim, Kim, & Oh, 2014) issues. Willingness to talk about controversial issues is influenced by a number of factors including perceptions of current and future opinion congruence with others, fear of isolation, and mass media exposure (Scheufele & Moy, 2000). Research has illustrated the impact of whether one perceives his or her opinion to be similar to the current majority opinion on willingness to talk, but also the influence of whether one expects his or her opinion to be consistent with future majority decisions, such as the outcome of an upcoming election (Ho & McLeod, 2008). Fear of isolation, or the pressure to conform to the majority in order not to be isolated from others, also influences one’s willingness to talk about controversial issues. Finally, mass media exposure, or how much people spend time with mass media (such as television or newspapers) is considered important because mass media are assumed to perform as windows for people to gauge social climate and form an assessment about the majority opinions in society. One of the criticisms of spiral of silence theory is that the theory mainly considers how individuals perceive a macro-level opinion climate. The theory does not clearly differentiate between people’s perceptions of general public opinion versus the opinion of those who are close to them (Glynn & Park, 1997). Several studies

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have pointed out that people are more likely to be conscious of their opinion congruence with their reference groups (e.g., family, friends, or coworkers) than with the general public (Oshagan, 1996). Oshagan (1996) found that when general public and reference group opinions are opposed, people are more willing to speak out if their opinion is congruent with that of the reference group. Moy et al. (2001) found that the current opinion climate of one’s reference group had a significant influence on one’s willingness to publicly speak out on issues related to affirmative action. These studies suggest that considering the reference group and social ties that matter to people is likely to add significant value to understanding people’s willingness to speak out on controversial issues.

Willingness to Talk in Local Contexts Thus far, spiral of silence research has focused on controversial issues that concern the general public such as racial, political, or science and technology issues (Scheufele & Moy, 2000). Not many studies have examined controversial issues in more specific contexts, such as a local neighborhood or an organization. In one of the few studies that examined the spiral of silence effect in a local community, Spinda (2014) investigated residents’ willingness to speak out on local alcohol policies in Murray, Kentucky. His analyses showed that perceived opinion congruence with their neighbors (i.e., if the respondents believed their opinions are similar to those of their neighbors’) influenced residents’ willingness to express their opinions on the issue. The study also found that opinion congruence with one’s family, friends and fellow church members (all considered as reference groups) had a positive effect on willingness to speak out. In the present study, we examine how typical spiral of silence-related factors shape willingness to speak out in a local context, but also introduce additional factors guided by communication infrastructure theory (Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a). We argue that individuals’ connectedness to community communication resources, such as local media or community organizations, and to interpersonal networks is likely to influence their willingness to speak out. Few studies examined the relationship between people’s neighborhood community connections and their willingness to express their opinion. Dalisay, Hmielowski, Kushin, and Yamamoto (2012) examined the relationship between social capital and willingness to express opinions. Social capital in a local context was specified as perceived trust, neighborliness, and level of civic engagement. The authors found that those who were engaged in civic activities were more willing to express their opinions. Those who had more interactions with their neighbors and had higher trust toward local people were more willing to express their opinions if

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they perceived support for their opinions from their family, friends and the majority of people in their local city.

Communication Infrastructure Theory To more fully account for the relationship between individuals’ connections to local communication resources and their willingness to express their views on a controversial issue, we employ communication infrastructure theory (CIT). In a geographically defined community setting, a communication infrastructure is defined as a storytelling network set in its communication action context (BallRokeach et al., 2001). This communication infrastructure is conceptualized as an essential building block for a viable community (and just as essential, in fact, as a political or financial infrastructure). Residents’ degree of connectedness to (or integration into) the local storytelling network is determined by the intensity of interpersonal communication with their neighbors about their local community, their participation in community organizations, and their dependency on local media (for more details about the theory, see Chapters 1 and 3). Research to date has shown that residents’ connectedness to their local storytelling network is associated with such outcomes as higher levels of belonging to one’s own community (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001), collective efficacy and civic engagement (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006b; Matsaganis & Wilkin, 2015), health benefits (Wilkin, 2013; Wilkin, Moran, Ball-Rokeach, Gonzalez, & Kim, 2010), and coping with disasters ( Jung, Toriumi, & Mizukoshi, 2013; Kim, Jung, Cohen, & Ball-Rokeach, 2004). The influence of connectedness to the storytelling network on the willingness to talk about specific stories (i.e., potentially controversial stories) has not been examined in past studies based on CIT.

Research Questions The present study examines factors that are likely to influence people’s willingness to talk with their neighbors about nuclear plant and radiation related issues through the lenses of two theoretical perspectives: spiral of silence theory and communication infrastructure theory. In addition to the social-­psychological factors identified by spiral of silence theory, the study widens the scope of investigation to include individuals’ connectedness to community communication resources by employing CIT. The CIT approach focuses on the connections individuals have created and maintained with available communication resources in their community, rather than people’s psychological motivations. The research also re-examines spiral of silence tenets in a local context, employing the

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community-grounded approach of CIT to examine the willingness to speak out about controversial issues. Research question 1 is proposed based on the theoretical framework and past studies of spiral of silence theory. RQ1: Do spiral of silence variables (media opinion congruence, perceived support for one’s opinion, and fear of isolation) have a significant influence on willingness to talk about nuclear plant and radiation related issues?

Research question 2 is proposed based on CIT, in which individuals are conceptualized as active agents who connect to different communication resources to achieve their goals. A communication infrastructure in a neighborhood is not visible when there are no pressing issues in the neighborhood (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001). However, when certain issues or events arise that require the activation of the communication infrastructure, such as conflicts or disasters, connectedness to the storytelling network becomes a factor that can make a difference in how people cope with and resolve problems. After the 2011 disaster, to live with or without nuclear power became a pressing concern in Kashiwazaki. In this context, we propose that those who were more connected to their local storytelling network (i.e., participation in community-organizations, stronger connections to local media and neighbors) were in a better position to express their opinions to their neighbors than others who were less connected to the local storytelling network. RQ2: Does individuals’ connectedness to their neighborhood’s storytelling network (consisting of neighbors, local media, and community organizations) have a positive influence on their willingness to talk about nuclear plant and radiation related issues?

Methods A survey was conducted in Kashiwazaki, Niigata in April, 2015. A limited research budget ruled out a random sampling method. Due to the time sensitive nature of the issue, as the discussion on the restart of the nuclear plant was underway, the researchers decided to collect data through a non-random sampling method. A pilot survey was conducted with seven Kashiwazaki residents. Pilot study respondents mentioned that they felt uncomfortable answering sensitive questions. Moreover, they were not happy that researchers from Tokyo (“outsiders”) were investigating issues in their community and were suspicious about the purpose of the study. They also commented on the length of the survey. Based on

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the comments received in the pilot study, the authors revised the survey to tone down the questions related to the nuclear plant and radiation, to shorten the survey significantly, and to revise the cover page with an expanded introduction and explanation of the study. A total of 213 surveys were distributed in public places in Kashiwazaki, such as a park, in front of the city hall, a library, and a mall on a weekend in April, 2015. These places are what CIT researchers refer to as communication hotspots and comfort zones (Wilkin, Stringer, O’Quin, Montgomery, & Hunt, 2011). Communication hotspots are places where residents naturally gather to talk, such as parks, and comfort zones are community institutions to which residents feel closely connected, such as the city hall or libraries (Matsaganis & Golden, 2015). The researcher approached people, showed a brief description of the survey, and handed over a survey packet. The survey packet included a survey questionnaire and a stamped return envelope. The researcher considered gender and age proportions when approaching people. Out of all people approached, about 80% accepted the survey packets. Within three weeks from the survey distribution, 110 surveys out of 213 were returned. The response rate was 51.6%, which was higher than what researchers initially expected based on the average response rate for mail-out surveys, which was estimated to be 10%-40% (­Wimmer & Dominick, 2006), and on the negative responses received during the pilot study.

Measures Willingness to talk about nuclear/radiation issues was constructed by asking respondents, “When people around you in your community are talking about the following issues, are you likely to express your opinion?” While our purpose was to ask people’s willingness to talk about the nuclear plant and radiation related issues, we embedded the issues with other types of issues so that respondents did not feel offended by being exclusively asked about nuclear issues. With seven other issues such as “about family or children” (yes = 57%), “about public facilities such as schools or hospitals” (yes = 53.3%), and “about medical and social welfare issues” (yes = 55.1%), four issues related to the nuclear plant and radiation were presented: “about Kashiwazaki nuclear plant” (yes = 49.1%), “about the influence of radiation on health” (yes = 34.3%), “about internally dislocated people from Fukushima” (yes = 26.4%),1 and “about local leaders and municipal members” (yes = 37.7%). The average percentage of “yes” among “other issues” was 53.5%, while it was 36.9% among the nuclear/ radiation issues. Respondents’ answers to the four issues were added (yes = 1, no /I don’t know = 0) to form a willingness to talk variable (M = 1.48, SD = 1.40, range = 4, reliability alpha = 0.711).

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Support for one’s opinion was measured by asking, “Do you think your opinion on the restart of the Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Plant belongs to the majority opinion or the minority opinion?” The answers were “minority opinion” (=1; 13.2%), “opinions are split” (=2; 44.3%), and “majority opinion” (=3; 30.2%). A scale of support for one’s opinion was derived by the three answer categories (M = 2.2, SD = 0.68). Media opinion climate for local and mainstream media was measured (separately) by asking, “What is the position of the [local media you often use / mainstream media you often use] on nuclear plant issues?” Responses given were “against the restart of the nuclear plant” (6.8%/41.6%), “neutral” (38.7%/22.8%), “support the restart of the nuclear plant” (20.8%/21.8%), and “I don’t know” (28.3%/13.9%). The media opinion climate was compared with respondents’ support for the restart of the nuclear plant (“restart and continue operating:”16%, “restart but eventually should close:” 42.5%, “close without restarting:” 33%, “I don’t have a particular opinion:” 3.8%, and “I don’t know:” 4.7%). Local media opinion congruency (“1” = 27.1%) and mainstream media opinion congruency (“1” = 22.4%) variables were constructed by assigning “1” to those whose opinions agreed with their assessment of the opinion of local and mainstream media, and “0” to those whose opinions were different from their assessment of media opinions. Fear of isolation was measured by two questions derived from Kim’s (2012) study: “I worry about being negatively evaluated when I express an opinion that is different from others” and “When I believe my opinion is correct, I tend to engage in an argument even when my counterpart has a different opinion” (reverse coded). Respondents answered on a five-point Likert type scale (M = 2.74, SD = 0.66). The integrated connectedness to a neighborhood storytelling network (ICSN) was measured using three variables: neighborhood interpersonal storytelling, local media connectedness, and community organizational membership (Kim & ­Ball-Rokeach, 2006b). Neighborhood interpersonal storytelling was measured by a question, “How much do you talk with your neighbors about what is happening in Kashiwazaki? Please indicate your position on a 1 to 10 point scale (1: do not talk at all, and 10: talk all the time)” (M = 5.89, SD = 2.17). Local media connectedness was measured by asking respondents to choose all the local media they used among ten types of local media (a list was provided). They were asked to circle (coded 1) all the media they used, and to put a double circle (coded 2) around the medium they used most frequently (M = 3.75, SD = 1.51, minimum = 0, maximum = 8). Community organizational membership was measured by asking respondents about their participation in three types of community organizations: local residents’ organizations and activities (68.9%), hobby organizations (40.6%), and volunteer and public activity organizations (28.3%). Respondents’ answers to

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the three questions were added to form a community organizational membership variable (M = 1.38, SD = 0.97, minimum = 0, maximum = 3). The integrated connectedness to a neighborhood storytelling network (ICSN) was calculated using the formula provided by Kim and Ball-Rokeach (2006b), which includes the three interaction terms between the three storytelling variables (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006b) (M = 9.14, SD = 3.86, range = 16.96). Age was measured by asking respondents to write down their year of birth (and converted to age: M = 49.52, SD = 15.46, minimum = 22, maximum = 83). Educational level was assessed by asking participants to place themselves in one of five categories: elementary/middle school graduate (2%), high school graduate (25.5%), technical college graduate (11.8%), university graduate (53.9%), and graduate school graduate (6.9%). The median was university graduate. Respondents were asked to choose one of two gender categories (male: 53.8%, female: 46.2%). Residential tenure was measured by asking respondents to write down the number of years they lived in Kashiwazaki (M = 35.52, SD = 22.01). Linear multiple regression analyses, in which we controlled for age, educational level, gender, and residential tenure, were conducted to investigate the research questions.

Results A correlation table of all variables is presented in Table 5.2. Table 5.2.  Zero-Order Correlations of All Variables. 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

  1. Age   2. Gender (male)   3. Education

.14 –.19

.02

  4. Residential tenure

.78** .14 –.33**

  5. Willingness to talk

.37** .13

.06

.19

–.09 –.12

.01

.07 –.18

  6. Fear of isolation   7. Support for one’s opinion

.20

.23* –.05

.25* .03 –.11

  8. Local media congruence

.24* .18

.10

.23* .17 –.10

.18

  9. Mainstream media congruence

.13

.05

.15

.01

.12

.15 .18

10. ICSN

.20* –.07

.02

.14

.48** –.26* .15 .06 –.09

*p < .05; **p < .01.

.09

10

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Spiral of Silence and Willingness to Talk (RQ1) A linear multiple regression analysis was performed to examine the influence of four spiral of silence variables (fear of isolation, support for one’s opinion, local media opinion congruency, and mainstream media opinion congruency) on the willingness to talk about nuclear plant/radiation issues (controlled for age, gender, education, and residential tenure). None of the spiral of silence variables were found to have a significant effect on the willingness to talk (Model 2 in Table 5.3). Among the variables entered, only age had a significant positive effect on willingness to talk (b = 0.659, p < 0.01).

Connectedness to the Storytelling Network and Willingness to Talk (RQ2) The influence of integrated connectedness to the storytelling network (ICSN) on willingness to talk about nuclear plant/radiation issues was examined through a linear multiple regression analysis. The results indicated that ICSN (b = 0.398, p < 0.01), in addition to age (b = 0.509, p < 0.01), had a significant effect on the willingness to talk (Model 3 in Table 5.3).

Table 5.3.  Linear Multiple Regressions for the Willingness to Express Opinions on the Nuclear Plant and Radiation Related Issues. Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Age

 .585**

 .659**

 .509**

Gender (male)

 .101

 .113

 .127

Education

 .108

 .093

 .057

Residential tenure

–.221

–.290

–.253

Fear of isolation

–.103

Support for one’s opinion

–.011

Local media congruence

–.002

Mainstream media congruence

–.004

ICSN

 .398**

Adjusted R-square

 .164

 .159

 .306

F

5.654**

2.872**

9.279**

*p < .05; **p < .01.

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Discussion This study focused on the issue of willingness to express one’s opinion on controversial issues facing Japanese society today—the risks implicated in producing nuclear energy and the reopening of nuclear plants. While this is largely considered to be a national-level issue, the present study examined it at a local level, in a city that hosts a large nuclear plant. A survey in Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture revealed that residents’ willingness to talk about nuclear plant and radiation related issues was influenced by their connectedness to their local neighborhood’s storytelling network. On the other hand, spiral of silence variables that have mainly been associated with willingness to talk about a controversial issue in past studies did not have significant influence.

Implications of the Results An unexpected finding of this study was that none of the variables that have traditionally been associated with willingness to talk about controversial issues were found to be significant. A reason why key spiral of silence variables did not emerge as significant factors for predicting residents’ willingness to talk about these controversial issues may have been that the residents lacked, in the theory’s terms, the necessary “quasi-statistical sense” (Noelle-Neumann, 1974). Quasi-­statistical sense refers to individuals’ capability to sense the opinion climate on certain public issues. According to the theory, mass media are agents of quasi-statistical sense, insofar as they help individuals assess the opinion climate. In this study, the results indicate that individuals may not have been able to assess how close or far their positions were compared to general public opinion, because of a lack of information and discussion of nuclear energy-related issues in the media. The majority of respondents felt the local media tended to be neutral about the nuclear plant or it was difficult to assess the media’s position. Interviews with managers of local media in Kashiwazaki (FM Pikkara, daily Kashiwazaki Nippo and weekly Hakushin Jiho) in March, 2015 found that the local media have not indicated their positions on the issue and none of them conducted a poll about the restart of the nuclear plant to show residents’ opinions. While further analysis of local media content is necessary, this study suggests that local media in Kashiwazaki may not have sufficiently reported on or facilitated the exchange of debates concerning nuclear plant issues. In such a context, it may have been difficult for residents who participated in the study to activate their quasi-statistical sense, which would have enabled them to relate their opinions to the general public opinion climate in Kashiwazaki.

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While spiral of silence variables were not found to be significant, residents’ connectedness to the neighborhood storytelling network was found to have a significant influence on their willingness to talk about nuclear and radiation related issues. The present study is one of the first studies that has found a relationship between a connectedness to the storytelling network and a willingness to talk about controversial issues in a local community context. Those who had been talking with their neighbors about Kashiwazaki, who had been involved in community organizations, and who had followed news on local media were more likely to express their opinions about the controversial but important issues that Kashiwazaki was facing. On the other hand, those who had not been connected to the storytelling network were less likely to express their opinions on the issue. The relationship between connectedness to the storytelling network and willingness to talk can be explained by the core proposition of CIT: while a storytelling network of a neighborhood is invisible in normal conditions, the storytelling network is activated when an unusual circumstance takes place, such as a disaster or a major problem in a community. The Fukushima nuclear accident and the subsequent closing of nuclear plants are major events that the Kashiwazaki community has been facing since March 2011. The results of this study highlight that connectedness to the storytelling network is an important step toward expressing one’s opinion on a controversial issue. For example, residents who talked frequently with their neighbors about what is going on in Kashiwazaki were more likely to exchange opinions on nuclear plant issues than residents who seldom talked with their neighbors about neighborhood affairs. Also, those who were members of community organizations could have been involved in discussions with organizational members due to the potential relevance of the restart of the nuclear plant to organizational affairs. Or they were likely to have had more opportunities to express their opinions on the controversial issue due to their interpersonal connections with people in the organizations who had shared similar concerns about the neighborhood. Even though local media in Kashiwazaki did not dedicate much time or space to present the debate surrounding the restart of the nuclear plant, those who had followed local media closely would have been informed about community affairs more than those who had not followed community media. Having this information could have enabled residents to speak out about important neighborhood affairs. Talking about controversial issues is a crucial step toward reaching a consensus and resolving problems in a community. Often times, people may talk about certain controversial issues within their own circle but not openly with others in the community. For example, in a community where there is conflict between different ethnic groups, people tend to talk about the conflict within their own ethnic

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group but refrain from talking about it with other ethnic groups (Dessel & Rogge, 2008). If people can engage in conversations about an emerging conflict with a diverse group of people, the conflict is less likely to intensify to the point that it is difficult to resolve. The difficulty, however, is how to get people to engage in conversations about controversial issues. The results of the present study suggest that being connected to the storytelling network in a community is an important way to lower the barrier to conversational engagement concerning a controversial issue. That is, rather than approaching individual residents and asking them to engage in a discussion about controversial issues, utilizing community organizations (e.g., organizing events) and community media (e.g., campaigns) to raise the issue and invite people to engage in discussion would be a more effective route to eventually open-up people’s minds to engage in the debate. The present study has several limitations. First, data are based on a non-­ probability sample in a particular local area. Caution should be applied in generalizing the result of the study. Second, individuals’ connectedness to the neighborhood storytelling network was analyzed as one factor (ICSN). Further studies and analyses should examine how each component of ICSN uniquely influences people’s willingness to talk about nuclear energy-related issues. Third, the study mainly focused on an individual-level connectedness to the communication infrastructure. It is important that further investigation examines the viability of meso-level storytellers—community organizations and community media in future studies. For example, examining types of communication and gatherings in community organizations will allow researchers to understand which types of organizations are providing the most dynamic forum for conversations about the nuclear plant issue. For community media, a content analysis could address the question of which media are addressing the issue most often and in ways that encourage consumers to talk about the issue. For example, if community media actively reflect diverse opinions about the restart of the nuclear plant, residents who follow the media are likely to be in a better position to talk about the controversy with their neighbors. On the other hand, if the community media avoid the controversial issue, it would be difficult for the residents to obtain information and grasp public opinion about the issue. The ways in which community organizations and media facilitate conversations about important issues in the community are likely to play an important role in residents’ willingness to express their opinions on controversial issues. A resolution to a seemingly complex and controversial issue, such as the nuclear energy issue in Japan, may begin from interpersonal dialogue in a local context. The present study indicates that people’s connectedness to the neighborhood storytelling network is likely to be a path to engaging in a conversation and expressing opinions on controversial issues.

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Note 1. The City of Kashiwazaki has offered temporary accommodations to more than 1,000 refugees from Fukushima Prefecture.

References Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Kim, Y.-C., & Matei, S. (2001). Storytelling neighborhood: Paths to belonging in diverse urban environments. Communication Research, 28(4), 392–428. http:// doi.org/10.1177/009365001028004003 City official. (2015, February). Interview with a city official. Dalisay, F., Hmielowski, J. D., Kushin, M. J., & Yamamoto, M. (2012). Social capital and the spiral of silence. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 24(3), 325–345. http://doi. org/10.1093/ijpor/eds023 Dawson, C. (2011, October 28). In Japan, provocative case for staying nuclear. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702036588045766 38392537430156 Dessel, A., & Rogge, M. E. (2008). Evaluation of intergroup dialogue: A review of the empirical literature. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 26(2), 199–238. http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.230 Eveland, W. P., Morey, A. C., & Hutchens, M. J. (2011). Beyond deliberation: New directions for the study of informal political conversation from a communication perspective. Journal of Communication, 61(6), 1082–1103. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01598.x Fackler, M. (2007, July 25). Japan’s quake-prone atomic plant prompts wider worry. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/world/asia/25japan. html?_r=2& Fukushima Revitalization. (2015). Status of evaluatio zone. Fukushima Prefecture. Retrieved from http://www.pref.fukushima.lg.jp.e.od.hp.transer.com/site/portal/list271.html Glynn, C. F., & Park, E. (1997). Reference groups, opinion intensity, and public opinion expression. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 9(3), 213–232. Hamada, K. (2015, April 14). Japan court halts restart of two reactors in blow to nuclear sector. Reuters. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/14/japan-nuclearidUSL4N0XB06920150414 Ho, S. S., & McLeod, D. M. (2008). Social-psychological influences on opinion expression in face-to-face and computer-mediated communication. Communication Research, 35(2), 190–207. Japan News Network. (2015). The support for the Abe administration. Retrieved from http://news. tbs.co.jp/newsi_sp/yoron/backnumber/20150509/q1-1.html Jung, J.-Y., Toriumi, K., & Mizukoshi, S. (2013). Neighborhood storytelling networks, internet connectedness, and civic participation after the great east Japan earthquake. Asian Journal of Communication, 23(6), 637–657. http://doi.org/10.1080/01292986.2013.819930 Kashiwazaki City Website. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.city.kashiwazaki.lg.jp/shise/ kekaku/asu/index.html

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Kim, S.-H. (2012). Testing fear of isolation as a causal mechanism: Spiral of silence and genetically modified (GM) foods in South Korea. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 24(3), 306–324. http://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/eds017 Kim, S.-H., Kim, H., & Oh, S.-H. (2014). Talking about genetically modified (GM) foods in South Korea: The role of the internet in the spiral of silence process. Mass Communication & Society, 17(5), 713–732. Kim, Y.-C., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006a). Civic engagement from a communication infrastructure perspective. Communication Theory, 16(2), 173–197. http://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1468-2885.2006.00267.x Kim, Y.-C., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006b). Community storytelling network, neighborhood context, and civic engagement: A multilevel approach. Human Communication Research, 32(4), 411–439. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2006.00282.x Kim, Y.-C., Jung, J.-Y., Cohen, E. L., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2004). Internet connectedness before and after September 11 2001. New Media & Society, 6(5), 611–631. http://doi. org/10.1177/146144804047083 Lin, W-K., & Pfau, M. (2007). Can inoculation work against the spiral of silence? A study of public opinion on the future of Taiwan. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 19(2), 155–172. Matsaganis, M. D., & Golden, A. G. (2015). Interventions to address reproductive health disparities among African-American women in a small urban community: The communicative construction of a “field of health action.” Journal of Applied Communication Research, 43(2), 163–184. http://doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2015.1019546 Matsaganis, M. D., & Wilkin, H. A. (2015). Communicative social capital and collective efficacy as determinants of access to health-enhancing resources in residential communities. Journal of Health Communication, 20(4), 377–386. http://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2014.927037 Mcclurg, S. D. (2003). Social networks and political participation: The role of social interaction in explaining political participation. Political Research Quarterly, 56(4), 449–464. http://doi. org/10.1177/106591290305600407 McCurry, J. (2015, August 11). Japan restarts first nuclear reactor since Fukushima disaster. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/11/ japan-restarts-first-nuclear-reactor-fukushima-disaster McLeod, J. M., Scheufele, D. A., & Moy, P. (1999). Community, communication, and participation: The role of mass media and interpersonal discussion in local political participation. Political Communication, 16(3), 315–336. http://doi.org/10.1080/105846099198659 Metropolitan Coalition Against Nukes. (2015). The number of participants joining in anti-­ nuclear demonstrations in front of Prime Minister’s office since 2012. Retrieved from http://coalitionagainstnukes.jp/?p=6199 Moy, P., Domke, D., & Stamm, K. (2001). The spiral of silence and public opinion on affirmative action. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 78(1), 7–25. Niigata Nippo Special Group of Reporters. (2009). Nuclear plant and earthquake: Kashiwazaki Kariwa. Kodansha. Noelle-Neumann, E. (1974). The spiral of silence a theory of public opinion. Journal of Communication, 24(2), 43–51. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1974.tb00367.x

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Nuclear Regulation Authority. (2015). Report on Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant 6, 7 reactors. Nuclear Regulation Authority. Retrieved from http://www.nsr.go.jp/disclosure/committee/yuushikisya/tekigousei/power_plants/kk67/committee/index.html Okada, T., & Kawase, M. (2013). Prospect of community without relying on nuclear plant: economy and fiscal policy in Kashiwazaki. Jichiken. Retrieved from http://www.jichi-ken.com/about/ Oshagan, H. (1996). Rererence group influence on opinion expression. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 8(4), 335–354. http://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/8.4.335 Priest, S. H. (2006). Public discourse and scientific controversy: A spiral-of-silence analysis of biotechnology opinion in the United States. Science Communication, 28(2), 195–215. Rojas, H. (2008). Strategy versus understanding: How orientations toward political conversation influence political engagement. Communication Research, 35(4), 452–480. http://doi. org/10.1177/0093650208315977 Scheufele, D. A., & Moy, P. (2000). Twenty-five years of the spiral of silence: A conceptual review and empirical outlook. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 12(1), 3–28. Spinda, J. S. W. (2014). Keep it local or keep it out? An examination of the spiral of silence and local alcohol option lawas in Kentucky. Kentucky Journal of Communication, 33(2), 44–65. Sugihara, N., Watanabe, N., Ito, M., & Matsui, K. (2014). Possibility of sustainable development of community in post-Fukushima period: Survey on residents on nuclear issues in Kashiwazaki city, Kariwa village. Presented at the Convention of Japan Sociological Society. Tarde, G. (1903). The laws of imitation. (E. Parsons, Trans.). New York, NY: Henry Holt. The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan. (2012). Current Status of the nuclear development in Japan. The Japan Atomic Power Company. (2015). The first nuclear power plant. Retrieved from http:// www.japc.co.jp/project/haishi/tokai.html The National Diet of Japan. (2012). The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission. The National Diet of Japan. Retrieved from http://warp.da.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/ pid/3856371/naiic.go.jp/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/NAIIC_report_lo_res10.pdf Walsh, K. C. (2003). Talking about politics: Informal groups and social identity in American life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wilkin, H. A. (2013). Exploring the potential of communication infrastructure theory for informing efforts to reduce health disparities. Journal of Communication, 63(1), 181–200. Wilkin, H. A., Moran, M. B., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Gonzalez, C., & Kim, Y.-C. (2010). Applications of communication infrastructure theory. Health Communication, 25(6–7), 611–612. http://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2010.496839 Wilkin, H. A., Stringer, K. A., O’Quin, K., Montgomery, S. A., & Hunt, K. (2011). Using Communication infrastructure theory to formulate a strategy to locate “hard-to-reach” research participants. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 39(2), 201–213. http:// doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2011.556140 Wimmer, R. D., & Dominick, J. R. (2006). Mass media research: An introduction. Belmont, CA: Thomson Higher Education. Wyatt, R., Katz, E., & Kim, J. (2000). Bridging the spheres: Political and personal conversation in public and private spaces. Journal of Communication, 50(1), 71–92. http://doi. org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2000.tb02834.x

chapter six

Examining the Links Between Church and Local Community Engagement The Case of Korean Immigrants in Los Angeles minhee son

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Southern California

Although religious participation can have various positive effects on individuals’ quality of life, the current literature presents mixed findings on the role of ethnic churches in bridging the ethnic community and the host society. Particularly lacking are empirical studies that identify the everyday practices of immigrants in their church contexts and how those practices, which I will call church engagement, influence immigrants’ community and civic experiences at the local level. In this chapter, I exemplify how communication infrastructure theory (CIT) can be adapted to develop a model for church engagement and empirically assess the relationship between Korean immigrants’ church engagement and their local community engagement. This study takes on the task of delineating some of the important communication challenges and opportunities that religious organizations face in 21st century multiethnic Los Angeles (Chávez & Ball-Rokeach, 2008; Wilson, 2001). Drawing upon relevant literature, I first present two competing views on the relationship between immigrants’ church engagement and local civic engagement. Second, I explain how this research problem can be addressed using CIT. Specifically, the theory is applied in the development of a model for church engagement

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that extends CIT’s measurements of community engagement (i.e., belonging, collective efficacy, and civic participation) to a religious organizational context. Third, I describe the study context of first-generation Korean immigrants attending E ­ ternal Church,1 a large megachurch in Los Angeles. Using survey data, I explore how church engagement is linked to local community engagement measured by integrated connectedness to the storytelling network (ICSN) and neighborhood civic engagement (see Kim & Jung, Chapter 1 for more details on these concepts). Suggestions on how CIT can continue to guide research on the role of religious organizations in urban immigrant communities will be proposed in light of the preliminary findings.

Ethnic Church Engagement: Facilitating or Hindering Community Engagement? In what ways does ethnic church engagement facilitate immigrants’ civic integration into the broader society, and in what ways does it slow down the process? Although religious participation can have various positive effects on new immigrants’ quality of life, research shows mixed findings on the role of the ethnic church in immigrant civic engagement. Findings from national surveys in the United States indicate that people show different levels of participation in the community and outreach activities depending on the Christian denomination to which they belong (Beyerlein & Hipp, 2006; McClure, 2014). Churches, like any other form of organization, have distinct group styles that shape how members “spiral out” into the broader community (Lichterman, 2005, 2009). Others point out that unless the ethnic churches themselves explicitly look beyond ethnicity in providing outreach and services (Ecklund, Davila, Emerson, Kye, & Chan, 2013), present a clear narrative that connects religion to civic life (­Ecklund, Shih, Emerson, & Kye, 2012), or foster an outward-looking focus (Ecklund & Park, 2005), any benefits obtained from church participation are likely to be contained within the boundaries of the specific ethnic group without spiraling out to the host society. For example, Wilson’s (2002) fieldwork suggests that Korean churches in Los Angeles’ Koreatown tend to focus on serving the “Korean community” rather than pursuing “place-based” or “neighborhood-specific” goals. Others point out that the political ideology or organizational hierarchy (López-Sanders, 2012) of religious organizations can also influence their members’ civic engagement activities. The literature suggests that relatively newer immigrants may face greater challenges to “spiraling out” than longer tenured residents. Linguistic and cultural barriers can pose challenges to understanding and navigating the social structures of mainstream US society. Immigrants’ perceived cultural differences between the host and home countries (Lee & Moon, 2011, p. 817), cultural orientations such

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as insularity and inclusivity (Kim & Wilcox, 2013, p. 31), or different ways of reacting to diversity (Eliasoph, 2011) may direct immigrants inwards so that they adhere mostly to their co-ethnic groups. More generally, studies on the social capital of immigrants acknowledge the challenges of linking bonding with bridging social capital in immigrant communities ( Jang & Kim, 2013; O’Brien, Phillips, & Patsiorkovsky, 2005). Some of the literature directs us to the more positive implications of ethnic church engagement for immigrant civic engagement (Ecklund & Park, 2005; Hurh & Kim, 1990; Lee & Moon, 2011). In examining multi-generational Korean immigrants, Seo and Moon (2013) point to a possible “spillover effect” from co-ethnic civic engagement to mainstream civic engagement among those with longer residential tenure. Such spillover effects have been observed among Asian Americans in general (Seo, 2011) as well as among Korean immigrants (Seo & Moon, 2013). Recent immigrants in particular may seek the comfort and familiarity that comes with co-ethnic bonding in order to take part in bridging activities in their local communities (Becker & Dhingra, 2001; Putnam, 2007; Weisinger & Salipante, 2005). Such results may suggest that bonding and bridging social capital may sometimes work in complementary ways.

Application of CIT in Developing a Model for Church Engagement According to CIT, the communication infrastructure consists of the neighborhood storytelling network (STN) set in the communication action context (CAC). The STN is made up of the following three storytelling agents: local media, community organizations, and residents. The three agents actively taking part in creating, disseminating, and sharing neighborhood stories contribute to neighborhood wellbeing and civic vitality (see Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a; Kim & Jung, C ­ hapter 1; Kim, Chapter 3). Past CIT research has suggested that churches and other religious organizations play critical roles in the everyday communication ecologies of various geo-­ ethnic groups in the Greater Los Angeles Area. Preliminary reports (­Ball-Rokeach, Moran, Hether, & Frank, 2010) based on the Metamorphosis Project survey data point to two trends. First, levels of participation in religious organizations tend to be higher than those in other types of organizations (e.g., sports or recreational, cultural or ethnic, educational or school-related, neighborhood-specific, or political organizations) across different geo-ethnic groups in the Greater Los Angeles Area. Second, open-ended responses often reveal residents of the same geo-­ethnic group (e.g., Koreans in Koreatown or Latinos in Alhambra) attending

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and belonging to a wide variety of churches, some located within the neighborhood and others located outside the neighborhood. Nevertheless, in-depth case studies of specific religious organizations are rare even among the research based on CIT, with two exceptions. Chávez and BallRokeach (2008) report that the Catholic parish helps Latino residents connect to other Latino community organizations and Hispanic ethnic media but oftentimes fails to provide routine opportunities for the congregation to tap into mainstream resources or the storytelling resources of other ethnic groups because of linguistic and cultural barriers. Wilson’s (2002) fieldwork with various church organizations in the Greater Los Angeles Area suggests that churches differ greatly in the extent to which they promote or hinder congregants’ local community activities. The extent to which civic opportunities trickle down to the wider congregant base, beyond church leaders and staff, is a fertile topic for future research. In the current case study, I identify individual-level variables of church engagement in the specific context of Eternal Church. I extend the three components of civic engagement examined in many CIT-based studies—belonging, collective efficacy, and participation (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006b)—to the Eternal Church context. As shown in Figure 6.1, the church is conceptualized as one of

Figure 6.1.  Model for Church Engagement and Local Community Engagement.

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the community storytellers that encourages Korean immigrants to practice and develop community-oriented perceptions and behaviors. The three individuallevel variables of church engagement are as follows:

• Church Belonging: Bonding with other church members • Church Collective Efficacy: Trusting in the collective “we”—that people can come together to solve shared problems in the church community • Church Participation: Practicing civic skills and roles through church-based and church-initiated activities These measurements of belonging, collective efficacy, and participation in the church context allow us to move beyond using a dichotomous measure of participation (i.e., participation vs. non-participation) or frequency of attendance (i.e., how often do you attend service?) as a proxy measure of church engagement. The three variables capture the nuanced individual differences in churchgoers’ growing interest in the more socially oriented functions of the church (growth in pro-social behavior) or in becoming invested in the collective wellbeing of the church community (collective identity) rather than in the more personally oriented and utilitarian functions of the church (e.g., finding a job, or dealing with a family problem). The three measures can be used to assess the differences in immigrants’ behavioral patterns (as indicated by church participation) and perceptions (captured by levels of church-based collective efficacy). I am interested in how these differences in church engagement are related to immigrants’ civic engagement in the larger community context.

Study Context: Korean Immigrants and Church Engagement According to the 2010 Census, there are 230,876 ethnic Koreans in Los Angeles County, the third largest Asian group after ethnic Chinese and Filipino. Despite high overall levels of education and economic success, Korean immigrants face large barriers to accessing mainstream public services and resources, score low on rates of health insurance, homeownership, and English proficiency (Asian ­Americans Advancing Justice, 2013), and are disengaged from civic and political life (Choi, Lim, & Mitchell, 2008). Asian Americans generally report lower levels of political participation compared to other racial groups. Koreans in particular score low on voting (Ramakrishnan & Ahmad, 2014). This side of the story is often hidden behind Korean immigrants’ model minority image, which practitioners and academics caution is a “myth” and “paradox” (Lee, 2012).

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One area in which Korean immigrants are active is the church. The rate of church attendance among Korean-Americans is very high, even compared to other immigrant groups and to the rate of church attendance in Korea; numbers have been reported to be around 70% (Kim, Ball-Rokeach, & Song, 2003; Pew Research Center, 2013). Scholars in immigration, religion, and race and ethnicity studies have examined the importance of religion for immigrants and new settlers in the United States (Handlin, 1973; Hirschman; 2004; Kim, 2011; Smith, 1978).

Case Study: A Church for Koreans from “All Walks of Life” Eternal Church was founded in 1999, and it has been in its current location on the border of Koreatown and downtown Los Angeles since 2006. Considering the size of its congregation and budget, Eternal Church is one of the Korean megachurches in Greater Los Angeles. Unlike some of the other megachurches in Los Angeles, Eternal Church did not branch off from a church in Korea but was founded independently. The church identifies itself as a “Los Angeles church” in flyers and booklets made for new visitors. Although the church does not specifically identify itself as Korean (as some churches do by identifying themselves as such in their official name), it is nonetheless primarily attended and staffed by first- and second-generation Korean-Americans. The church draws people from as far as Torrance and Harbor City, but the majority of the congregation resides in the City of Los Angeles. Immigrant churches in multiethnic urban cities often adhere to an open-door policy while providing social support and catering to members’ most basic everyday needs in culturally sensitive ways. In fact, scholars have noted the relative equalizing role of church participation in terms of the opportunities to engage and access key resources in the church community across socioeconomic lines (Ecklund & Park, 2005; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995). While speaking to various informants during the initial stages of this study, I was able to learn that Eternal Church is known to have low threshold requirements for participation and a large, regularly attending congregation of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. It is a church with an open-door policy that welcomes people of “all walks of life,” spiritually, financially, and socially. However, the majority of the attendees are first-generation, having migrated to the US during their lifetime. This chapter presents a case study demonstrating how CIT is applied to investigate the relationship between church engagement variables and local community engagement variables among the first-generation Korean-American members of Eternal Church. The following research question is proposed based on CIT: does

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Eternal Church facilitate or hinder Korean immigrants’ ICSN and civic engagement in their residential communities?

Method Research Procedure The data used for this study were collected from 272 Korean immigrants attending Eternal Church in the summer of 2015. The church consists of 17 different parish groups. A convenience sampling method was used to recruit participants across the parish groups identified by Eternal Church as consisting mostly of City of Los Angeles residents. Individual survey packets were created and provided to church staff members who then distributed them to 10 different parish groups consisting of members who resided within Los Angeles. The survey was introduced as a “Korean immigrant community participation survey” conducted by the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC. The participants were also informed that the survey did not ask about their religious opinions nor contain any questions on their evaluations of the church. The participants completed the surveys in their own time and returned them to church staff in sealed envelopes. The survey participants received a $25 gift certificate by mail after they returned the surveys. A total of 272 participants were included in the final analysis (see Table 6.1 for demographic characteristics of survey participants).

Measures of Church Engagement Church belonging The respondents’ church belonging was measured by adapting the eight-item “Neighborhood Belonging Index” developed by Ball-Rokeach, Kim, and Matei (2001) to the church context. The four questions that get at the subjective dimension are as follows: “being interested in knowing what your fellow churchgoers are like” (29.6% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed), “enjoying meeting and talking with people at church” (45.5% agreed or strongly agreed), “finding it easy to become friends with people at church” (41.5% agreed or strongly agreed), and “exchanging gifts with people at church” (30.6% agreed or strongly agreed). Respondents used a five-point Likert scale to answer each question: “strongly disagree (=1),” “disagree (=2),” “neutral (=3),” “agree (=4),” and “strongly agree (=5).” To capture the objective dimensions of church belonging, respondents were asked to write the number of people at church they know well enough to do the following things: “ask to go out for lunch or dinner outside of church’ (M = 2.82,

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Table 6.1.  Demographic Characteristics of Survey Participants. Study Participant Demographics Sample Size Gender

N = 272 Male (40.2%) Female (59.8%) 19–29 (12.2%) 30–39 (19.1%)

Age

40–49 (21.4%) 50–59 (18.7%) 60 and older (28.6%) High school degree or less (34.9%)

Education

Undergraduate degree (52.1%) Graduate degree (12.9%) Full-time (40.5%) Part-time (9.5%) Self-employed (16.4%)

Occupation

Laid off/unemployed (4.6%) Student (5.3%) Homemaker (9.2%) Retired (13.0%) Other (1.5%)

Residential Tenure in the U.S.

Less than 5 years (6.1%) 5-10 years (7.7%) 10-20 years (34.9%) 20 years or more (51.3%)

SD = 1.70), “ask for a ride” (M = 2.00, SD = 1.56), “talk with them about a personal problem” (M = 1.84, SD = 1.45), and “ask for their assistance in filling out a form” (M = 1.64, SD = 1.50). The open-ended responses ranged between 0 and 75. To deal with the effect of positive skew in the number of people, the maximum possible value was set to 10. To bring subjective and objective dimensions of belonging to a common metric, the open-ended responses were further divided by two (­Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001). The scores for the eight items were added to create a church belonging composite variable that ranged between 0 and 40. The mean value was 21.00 (SD = 7.18). The Cronbach’s alpha score for index scalability was 0.84.

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Church collective efficacy According to CIT, perceived collective efficacy is a community-level belief that “we” can come together to solve shared problems (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006b). Similar to church belonging, this measure again takes collective efficacy to the level of the church and the local community surrounding it. It asks the respondents about the possibility of counting on other church members to do something if there is a problem that needs to be taken care of in the church or the surrounding area. The question asks how many people at church they think can be counted on if things need to be taken care of on a community level. Church collective efficacy was measured as a composite variable containing five items about respondents’ confidence in their fellow churchgoers’ willingness to participate in neighborhood problem-solving processes (Sampson, Morenoff, & Earls, 1999). The five items asked were as follows: How many of your fellow churchgoers do you feel could be counted on to do something if “a stop sign or speed bump was needed to prevent people from driving too fast around church” (M = 3.47, SD = 0.81), “a church facility has become unsafe due to poor maintenance” (M = 3.66, SD = 0.69), “you asked them to help you organize a holiday block party” (M = 3.41, SD = 0.69), “a fellow churchgoer is showing clear evidence of being in trouble or getting into big trouble” (M = 3.46, SD = 0.72), and “homelessness is becoming a problem around the church” (M = 3.33, SD = .81). Respondents used a five-point Likert scale to answer the questions: “none (=1),” “few (=2),” “some (=3),” “most (=4),” and “all (=5).” The average score of the five items was used to assess respondents’ perceived collective efficacy (range 1–5, M = 3.46, SD = 0.60). The Cronbach’s alpha score for index scalability was 0.84. Church participation In CIT, civic participation measures “actual ‘behavior’ implicated in local policy-making and community opinion-making processes” (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006b, p. 416). Church participation also measures the more active forms of participation—beyond attending service on Sunday—specific to the church context. Respondents’ scope of participation in church was measured by adding the number of community-oriented activities in which individuals have participated. The respondents were asked about eight different activities. Specifically, they were asked whether they had attended a meeting discussing issues related to the church (outside of the regular parish group meetings); written a letter, sent an email, or talked to their parish leader, pastor, or deacon about a problem at church; posted their thoughts or opinions on the church website; helped organize an event or program at church; volunteered to help with cleaning or doing the dishes at church or did volunteer work related to service or worship; volunteered to help in the

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surrounding community around the church; donated money to a political, social, or charitable cause that was specifically supported by the church or the pastor; or participated in missionary work organized by the church. For each, respondents answered either “yes (value = 1)” or “no (value = 0).” The sum of the responses for the eight items was created as a synthetic variable assessing respondents’ scope of participation in the church context (range 0–8, M = 3.69, SD = 2.43).

Measures of Local Community Engagement Neighborhood belonging The respondents’ neighborhood belonging was measured with the same eightitem “Belonging Index” (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001) adapted for measuring church belonging. The scores for the eight items were added to create a neighborhood belonging composite variable that ranged between 8 and 37. The mean value was 20.79 (SD = 6.57). The Cronbach’s alpha score for index scalability was 0.84. Perceived collective efficacy The same collective efficacy measure (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006b) used for church collective efficacy was employed to measure residents’ confidence in their neighbors’ willingness to participate in neighborhood problem-solving processes. Respondents used a five-point Likert scale to answer the questions: “none (=1),” “few (=2),” “some (=3),” “most (=4),” and “all (=5).” The average score of the five items was used to assess respondents’ perceived collective efficacy (range 1–5, M = 2.88, SD = 0.75). The Cronbach’s alpha score for index scalability was 0.87. Civic participation Respondents’ scope of civic participation was measured by adding the number of civic and community-oriented activities they had participated in the past two years (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006b). The respondents were asked about nine different activities focused on addressing neighborhood problems and change. For each activity, respondents answered either “yes (value = 1)” or “no (value = 0).’’ The sum of the responses for the nine items was created as a synthetic variable assessing respondents’ scope of civic participation (range 0–9, M = 1.96, SD = 1.98). ICSN The ICSN score was calculated by summing the three interaction terms between local media connectedness, scope of connections to community organizations, and intensity of interpersonal neighborhood storytelling (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006b; Kim & Jung, Chapter 1; Kim, Chapter 3) (range = 2.00–18.14, M = 7.64, SD = 3.79).

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Findings and Implications This chapter applied CIT to investigate the relationship between church engagement variables and local community engagement variables among the first-­ generation Korean immigrant members of Eternal Church. Descriptive statistics and zero-order correlation results show how the three church engagement variables—church belonging, church collective efficacy, and church participation—are related to the locally based ICSN and neighborhood civic engagement variables.

Finding 1: Church Engagement and Neighborhood Civic Engagement The zero-order correlations in Table 6.2 point to a significant positive relationship between Korean immigrants’ church engagement and neighborhood civic engagement. In other words, the higher the levels of church belonging, collective efficacy, and participation, the higher the levels of neighborhood belonging, collective efficacy, and participation. Hence, this study presents a case where co-ethnic and church-­ specific engagement does not go against broader community engagement in the host society. This is somewhat surprising considering evidence supporting the difficulties of bridging ethnic and local connections for ethnic minorities and immigrants. For Korean immigrants attending Eternal Church, a growing commitment to the church community parallels a growing commitment to other social contexts—the residential neighborhood. The finding corroborates literature reporting a complementary relationship between co-ethnic and mainstream civic engagement (Lee & Moon, 2011; Seo, 2011; Seo & Moon, 2013). Table 6.2. Zero-order Correlations between Church Engagement and Community Engagement. 1 Church Engagement 1. Belonging 2. Collective Efficacy 3. Participation Community Engagement 4. ICSN 5. Belonging 6. Collective Efficacy 7. Civic Participation **p < .01; *p < .05.

2

1.0 .334** 1.0 .499** .099 .093 .265** .275** .246**

.048 .127* .328** .190**

3

4

5

6

7

1.0 .177** 1.0 .211** .317** 1.0 .048 .187** .261** 1.0 .281** .419** .386** .211** 1.0

M (SD) 21.00 (7.18)   3.46 (0.60)   3.69 (2.43)   7.64 (3.79) 20.79 (6.57)   2.88 (0.75)   1.96 (1.98)

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Although causality cannot be established with the findings, a few speculations can be made on how church engagement facilitates Korean immigrants’ civic engagement in their local communities. One possibility is that the church helps individuals become more embedded in the local STN, which facilitates neighborhood-level civic engagement. Eternal Church could have developed significant connections to the local STN (the local media or other community organizations), and individual church members may have taken advantage of the network (e.g., meeting and interacting with different groups of people with various backgrounds and connecting to other organizations, services, and professionals, even those outside the church). Thus, the type of church new immigrants belong to—its size, organizational structure, and relationship with the larger local community—is important. Some churches may more easily facilitate members’ access to the community STN, thus increasing their active engagement in their local community that goes beyond the church and ethnic community boundaries.

Finding 2: Church Participation and ICSN Among the three church engagement variables, church participation was the only one that had a significant positive link to ICSN (see Table 6.2). The more perceptual measures of church belonging and church collective efficacy were not significantly associated with ICSN. These results seem to indicate that members’ actual participation in the church community (e.g., helping to organize an event or program at church, communicating to church staff about a problem at church, or participating in missionary work) may be the most effective pathway to community-based storytelling resources (ICSN). When church participation is linked to ICSN, it may be the case that members learn how to come together in the church context and this experience and efficacy can be transferred to their own residential neighborhoods. We might imagine a spillover effect that through time gradually directs people to parts of their own neighborhood STN. The immigrant church provides an important organizational context in which newcomers meaningfully take part in group activities in the church and become engaged members of the community outside of it.

Theoretical and Practical Implications Implications for the study of immigrant pathways to civic engagement The extension of CIT measurements of engagement in a church context moves us a step closer to research that acknowledges multiple pathways to civic

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engagement. In addition to the church, other organizations (school or workplace) may provide new immigrants opportunities for community engagement in ways that are similar (or different) from the church. The results of the current study confirm that the church is one of the key organizational contexts in which newer Korean immigrants in Los Angeles gain access to communication resources for civic engagement. Co-ethnic forms of engagement did not slow down the process of social integration into the broader society. While co-ethnic forms of organizational participation may consume a significant amount of time and resources, they nonetheless help immigrants to develop a sense of belonging, perceived efficacy, and capacities to participate and orient toward more mainstream and neighborhood-based civic engagement. Practical implications for the Korean immigrant community The work of non-profit organizations such as Korean Churches for Community Development (KCCD) indicates a growing recognition among Korean churches and religious leaders of the need to embrace the surrounding community and develop partnerships with other organizations and groups in such efforts. ­Studies have reported cases of Korean churches supporting community development (Choi, 2010) or reaching out to the broader community beyond the immigrant enclave, especially among second-generation Korean-American churches (Kim, 2010). Such ongoing community-wide efforts of the churches will be necessary to continue assisting newer Korean immigrants settle in and adjust to the local host society. In addition, media stories that highlight the individual members’ volunteer work and participation in community projects will help increase the visibility of the church in the local community. Contrary to concerns about the difficulties of transferring skills obtained in the organizational context to address broader local issues (Eliasoph, 2011), the findings of this study linking church participation with ICSN and community engagement show that church-based activities provide pathways to engaging in the broader local society. While members may become more socially oriented as they develop feelings of belonging and trust in others in the church community, further action must take place to reach a tipping point. The findings of this case study suggest that the tipping point lies in church participation—taking action to address collective issues and improve the overall church community. With active participation in various activities in the church, first-generation Korean immigrants of Eternal Church become exposed to key communication resources on a more regular basis. As the Korean immigrant church community and its leadership continue to partner with organizations such as KCCD and others, it will be important for individual churches to develop programs that are accessible to the wider congregation.

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Application of CIT and assessing the civic role of ethnic organizations This study exemplified how CIT was extended to achieve a more grounded and multidimensional assessment of individuals’ everyday organizational experiences in the immigrant church context. While scholars examining faith-based organizations have specifically pointed to the need to improve the ways we assess “participation” (Driskell, Lyon, & Embry, 2008; Ecklund & Park, 2005), other types of ethnic organizations can also benefit from the engagement model proposed in this chapter. First, organizational participation can be assessed in terms of behavioral and perceptual variables: members’ feelings of belonging to the organization, a sense of collective efficacy that the organization can come together to solve problems, and taking part in activities to improve the organization. The organization-specific variables can be compared to the residential neighborhood-specific variables of engagement to understand the relationships between co-ethnic vs. mainstream, bonding vs. bridging activities of a specific immigrant/ethnic group. Second, the organization can be assessed in the degree to which it allows members to connect to local communication resources. Especially if employed in longitudinal studies of organizations, individuals’ ICSN levels can provide an evaluation of the degree to which the organization is helping its members adjust to the broader society.

Conclusion This chapter contributes to this edited volume by extending CIT variables of civic engagement to engagement in a religious organizational context. The study examined the Los Angeles Korean immigrant community as a specific context and the unique role of a church as a community organization. The goal was to disentangle the relationships between ethnic church participation and community engagement. Specifically, the study presents the case of a reinforcing relationship between ethnic church participation and residentially based community engagement among first-generation Korean immigrants attending Eternal Church. There are a few limitations of the study. First, this is a case study of a specific community in Los Angeles, and the results may not be generalized to all immigrant groups or churches. Future research on comparable cases may reveal whether Eternal Church is a unique case or similar outcomes can be found in other churches. In addition to varying degrees of connections to the local STN, the congregants in other churches may or may not share similar characteristics with those of Eternal Church. Second, the analysis includes zero-order correlations to describe the significant relationships among the variables. In order to clearly identify pathways

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and relationships among the variables, further statistical analyses will need to be conducted. Such analyses can identify communication patterns of immigrants who are more actively engaged in both the church and neighborhood contexts. In addition to comparative case studies, more efforts should be made to explore and empirically test whether and to what extent ICSN facilitates the link between church engagement and neighborhood civic engagement.

Note 1. Eternal Church is a pseudonym for the research site used throughout this chapter.

References Asian Americans Advancing Justice. (2013). A community of contrasts: Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders in Los Angeles County. Los Angeles, CA: Asian Americans Advancing Justice. Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Kim, Y.-C., & Matei, S. (2001). Storytelling neighborhood: Paths to belonging in diverse urban environments. Communication Research, 28(4), 392–428. http:// doi.org/10.1177/009365001028004003 Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Moran, M., Hether, H., & Frank, L. (May 31, 2010). Telling the South L.A. storytelling network: A report presented to the California endowment. Los Angeles, CA: ­University of Southern California. Becker, P., & Dhingra, P. (2001). Religious involvement and volunteering: Implications for civil society. Sociology of Religion, 62(3), 315–335. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.libproxy1.usc.edu/stable/3712353 Beyerlein, K., & Hipp, J. R. (2006). From pews to participation: The effect of congregation activity and context on bridging civic engagement. Social Problems, 53(1), 97–117. http:// doi.org/10.1525/sp.2006.53.1.97 Chávez, C., & Ball-Rokeach, S. (2008). Catholic parishes as neighborhood storytellers. Paper presented at the National Communication Association Conference, San Diego, CA. Choi, B., Lim, D., & Mitchell, J. (2008). The K factor: Korean-American attitudes toward and impact on U.S.-Korea policy: A report of the CSIS International Security Program. Center for Strategic & International Studies. Choi, H. (2010). Religious institutions and ethnic entrepreneurship: The Korean ethnic church as a small business incubator. Economic Development Quarterly, 24(4), 372–383. Driskell, R. L., Lyon, L., & Embry, E. (2008). Civic engagement and religious activities: Examining the influence of religious tradition and participation. Sociological Spectrum, 28(5), 578–601. http://doi.org/10.1080/02732170802206229 Ecklund, E. H., Davila, C., Emerson, M. O., Kye, S., & Chan, E. (2013). Motivating civic engagement: In-group versus out-group service orientations among Mexican Americans in religious and nonreligious organizations. Sociology of Religion, 74(3), 370–391.

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Ecklund, E. H., & Park, J. (2005). Asian American community participation and religion. ­Journal of Asian American Studies, 8, 1–21. Ecklund, E. H., Shih, Y.-P., Emerson, M. O., & Kye, S. H. (2012). Rethinking the connections between religion and civic life for immigrants: The case of the Chinese diaspora. Review of Religious Research, 55(2), 209–229. http://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-012-0095-9 Eliasoph, N. (2011). Making volunteers: Civic life after welfare’s end. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Handlin, O. (1973). The uprooted (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. Hirschman, C. (2004). The role of religion in the origins and adaptation of immigrant groups in the United States. The International Migration Review, 38(3), 1206–1233. Hurh, W., & Kim, K. (1990). Religious participation of Korean Immigrants in the United States. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 29(1), 19–34. Retrieved from http://www. jstor.org.libproxy1.usc.edu/stable/1387028 Jang, A., & Kim, H. (2013). Cultural identity, social capital and social control of young Korean Americans: Extending the intercultural theory of public relations. Journal of Public Relations Research, 25, 225–245. Kim, R. Y. (2011). Religion and ethnicity: Theoretical connections. Religions, 2(3), 312–329. Kim, S. (2010). A faith of our own. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kim, Y.-C., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006a). Civic engagement from a communication infrastructure perspective. Communication Theory, 16(2), 173–197. Kim, Y.-C., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006b). Community storytelling network, neighborhood context, and civic engagement: A multilevel approach. Human Communication Research, 32(4), 411–439. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2006.00282.x Kim, Y.-C., Ball-Rokeach, S., & Song, H. (Eds.). (2003). Community and market: A survey of Korean-Americans in Southern California (Available from the Korea Daily, 690 Wilshire Place, Los Angeles, CA 90005). Kim, Y.-I., & Wilcox, W. B. (2013). Bonding alone: Familism, religion, and secular civic participation. Social Science Research, 42, 31–45. Lee, T. (2012). Koreans in America: A demographic and political portrait of pattern and paradox. Asia Policy, 13(1), 39–60. Lee, Y.-J., & Moon, S. G. (2011). Mainstream and ethnic volunteering by Korean immigrants in the United States. Voluntas, 22, 811–830. Lichterman, P. (2005). Elusive togetherness: Church groups trying to bridge America’s divisions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lichterman, P. (2009). Social capacity and the styles of group life: Some inconvenient wellsprings of democracy. American Behavioral Scientist, 52, 846–866. López-Sanders, L. (2012). Bible Belt immigrants: Latino religious incorporation in new immigrant destinations. Latino Studies, 10(1–2), 128–154. http://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org.libproxy.usc.edu/10.1057/lst.2012.9 McClure, J. M. (2014). Religious tradition and involvement in congregational activities that focus on the community. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, 10, n/a. O’Brien D. J., Phillips J. L., & Patsiorkovsky V. V. (2005). Linking indigenous bonding and bridging social capital. Regional Studies, 39, 1041–1051.

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Pew Research Center. (April 4, 2013). The rise of Asian Americans. Washington DC: Pew Research Center. Putnam, R. D. (2007). E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and community in the twenty-first century. Scandinavian Political Studies, 3(2), 137–174. Ramakrishnan, K., & Ahmad, F. Z. (2014). State of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Series: A multifaceted portrait of a growing population. Washington DC: Center for American Progress. Sampson, R. J., Morenoff, J. D., & Earls, F. (1999). Beyond social capital: Spatial dynamics of collective efficacy for children. American Sociological Review, 64, 633–660. Seo, M., & Moon, S.-G. (2013). Ethnic identity, acculturative stress, news uses, and two domains of civic engagement: A case of Korean immigrants in the United States. Mass Communication & Society, 16(2), 245–267. Seo, M. (2011). Beyond coethnic boundaries: Coethnic residential context, communication, and Asian Americans’ political participation. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 23 (3), 338–360. Smith, T. (1978). Religion and ethnicity in America. The American Historical Review, 83, 1155–1185. Verba, S., Schlozman, K. L., & Brady, H. E. (1995). Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weisinger, J. Y., & Salipante, P. F. (2005). A grounded theory for building ethnically bridging social capital in voluntary organizations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 34(1), 29–55. http://doi.org/10.1177/0899764004270069 Wilson, M. (2001). Leading the community chorus: The role of organizations in society. (Doctoral Disseration), University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

chapter seven

The Enacted Communication Action Context of Ethnically Diverse Neighborhoods and Its Implications for Intergroup Communication chi zhang

Doctoral Candidate, University of Southern California wallis motta

LSE Fellow, London School of Economics myria georgiou

Associate Professor, London School of Economics

Global cities are sites of cultural and demographic transformations as a result of ongoing migration. Ethnic diversity, encountered in both embodied and mediated forms (Georgiou, 2013; Motta & Georgiou, 2017), has become a structuring condition of urban life (Clark, Anderson, Osth, & Malmberg, 2015; Vertovec, 2010). While each city’s demography and culture is distinct and particular, critical patterns of change are shared across many cities of the global North—not least metropoles like Los Angeles and London, which are at the core of our present analysis. As individuals and groups from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds come into close proximity, encounters with differences become opportunities

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for achieving conviviality and mutual understanding in the city (­Allport, 1954; ­Vertovec, 2007). At the same time, withdrawal from such encounters and assertion of boundaries can become fault lines of tension and urban anomie (Amin, 2002; Valentine, 2008). As the culturally diverse city is a site of opportunities and challenges, it is critical to understand if and under what circumstances different modes of engagement with others become possible. In the move towards understanding the nature of “everyday multiculture” (Neal, Bennet, Cochrane, & Mohan, 2013), studies have explored specific multiethnic communities, offering rich and grounded description of the everyday negotiations of difference and the ambivalent potentials of intergroup contact (Hall, 2012, 2013; Wessendorf, 2013; Wise, 2005). Yet, very few studies take up multisited research design (see Wise & Velayutham, 2014 as one exception), or consider spatial conditions to explain the observed outcomes regarding communication in multiethnic locales, as we do in this chapter. In communication studies, interethnic relations are often conceived as an outcome of contact among discrete social groups and their connection with discursive resources (e.g. websites, newspapers or organizations), whilst the spatial environment is rendered as a contextual, and largely undertheorized, condition. We build on the communication infrastructure theory (CIT), a framework which provides a theoretical linkage between features of the spatial environment and communicative processes by highlighting the role of communication action context (CAC), the social geography of a place, in facilitating or constraining the opportunity of coming together for integrated storytelling (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a; 2006b). We focus on the spatial dimension of CAC and develop the concept of enacted communication action context. This concept illuminates the mechanisms at work in shaping the spatial dimensions of CAC and subsequently the modes of interethnic communication, and operationalizes the analysis of the relationship between the built environment and (inter)ethnic communication. In this chapter, we take a further step towards developing CIT’s dynamic and contextualized understanding of ethnic diversity as experienced and constructed by communicative processes situated in a physical environment. We define enacted CAC as outcome of the interaction between features of the built environment and the way they are used, appropriated, and interpreted by ethnic groups in the process of navigating social life in the shared locale. Enacted CAC in turn bears implications for the opportunities and nature of interethnic communication taking place within the locale. The emphasis on enactment, borrowing from the concept of “enacted environment” (Rojas, 1999), highlights the agency of users and cultures in shaping their social and physical space. We see the built environment functioning as another form of media (Motta & Fatah gen. Schieck, 2015), enabling mediation opportunities for the configuration of relationships, as

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well as formulating a context that is shaped by various ethnic groups. Our empirical and analytical insights derive from a year-long comparative study conducted at the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, and the Metamorphosis Project, University of Southern California. The study examined the communication processes and contexts in two ethnically diverse locales in London and the wider Los Angeles (Chen et al., 2013; Chen et al., 2015; Georgiou, Motta, & Livingstone, 2016; Motta & Georgiou, 2017). Based on comparative analysis and empirical work, we distill inductively three components of the enacted CAC—spatial morphology, ethnic inscription, and spatial practice—which variously capture the structural features of the built environment and the conditions created by different ethnic groups in interaction with each other and with the built environment. Our main contribution to CIT is to provide a model that brings the spatial to the forefront within the CIT theoretical framework, and to clarify dimensions of the community context that can be deployed to analyze different spatial conditions influencing intergroup communication in an ethnically diverse area, as well as to guide efforts towards alternative modes of relating to and understanding unfamiliar others.

Theoretical Underpinning While the role of place has been discussed extensively in urban sociology and geography, communication studies—in particular communication studies of interethnic relations—has largely overlooked the built environment. Communication infrastructure theory (CIT) (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006b) provides an ecological theoretical framework that situates communication processes happening across multiple levels within a communication action context (CAC). According to CIT, features of the built and social environment, such as street safety, availability of public spaces, and institutional context, constitute components of CAC that are significant for shaping opportunities for community storytelling (Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a; Matsaganis, 2007), which in turn has implications for different outcomes such as civic engagement, risk management, and health. Following this line of theorization, the CAC becomes a relevant dimension of the overall communicative environment and capacity of any given community, since it shapes the opportunities and nature of communication. CAC comprises various area-level contextual factors, such as residential stability and socioeconomic characteristics of the neighborhood, as well as features of the built environment, such as transportation and availability of public spaces. To date, empirical research on CAC has primarily focused on the availability of communication hotspots and comfort zones (Wilkin, Stringer, O’Quin, Montgomery,

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& Hunt, 2011; Wilkin, Matsaganis, & Golden, Chapter 10). Hotspots are places where residents go to find vital information for them in the locale (e.g. like access to health care or schools), whilst comfort zones are places residents feel comfortable spending time in and connected with. Examples of hotspots and comfort zones include coffee shops, community centers, and public spaces, where residents engage in interpersonal interaction, share information, and develop relationships with local institutions. These are relevant in strengthening or subduing the local storytelling network (Wilkin et al., 2011; Wilkin et al., Chapter 10). Some have examined other features of the material environment, such as transportation (Matsaganis & Golden, 2015) and vacant houses (Wilkin et al., 2011), applied to a health context. However, when the outcome of interest is interethnic communication, these general features must be accompanied by a deeper look into the spatial dimensions of the CAC. For instance, it may be of interest to consider which spatial distributions of comfort zones can aid or hinder ethnic communication and the formation of storytelling networks, in addition to their aggregate number. Ethnic heterogeneity has been examined in CIT as a component of the CAC that may constrain formation of social networks and flow of stories, albeit as an area-level structural characteristic captured in a single index (e.g. Kim & ­Ball-Rokeach, 2006b). This chapter analyzes some of the ways in which ethnic diversity affects the CAC by becoming a constitutive element of everyday life and of interactions with people and their built environments. In this effort, we aim to illuminate different dimensions and configurations of ethnic diversity as an experienced and enacted context that has implications for intergroup communication. In doing so, we take several premises derived from urban studies, geography, and immigration studies. Firstly, the built environment plays an important role in structuring opportunities for contact and affective sensibility toward difference (Amin, 2008; Hillier & Hanson, 1984; Lofland, 1973). At the same time, the built environment serves as a medium of communication in itself that symbolically establishes boundaries of belonging and inclusion, working through multisensory channels of mediation, including visual, sound and smell, as well as signifiers of history and identity (Hayden, 1995; Wise, 2010). While the built environment bears certain foundational characteristics (Koch & Latham, 2013), it is not completely static and is unmistakably reshaped by the presence and actions of various actors, which, in the case of an ethnically diverse area, takes the form of different combinations of ethnic groups acting on and interpreting the built environment (Loukaitou-Sideris, 2002). Thus, in our broad conceptualization, enacted CAC is the outcome of dynamic interaction between the built environment and ethnic groups creating, navigating and contesting this built environment, which condition different possibilities of interethnic communication. Specific dimensions of

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the enacted CAC emerged inductively out of comparative analysis from empirical research of two multiethnic locales, which we detail below.

Methods Two research projects, one based in the city of Alhambra located in the wider Los Angeles area and one based in the neighborhood of Harringay in London, provide the material for our analysis. Both areas are intensely multiethnic and chosen as appropriate locations for the study of communication infrastructure as part of the social foundation of a community. Alhambra is a suburban city in the San Gabriel Valley, east of downtown Los Angeles. An area that has once been known as the “Taiwanese Beverly Hills” for its promise of affluence, and has continued to see sustained Chinese immigration in the past decades, Alhambra has also drawn upwardly mobile Latinos from nearby working class Latino neighborhoods. Its current ethnic composition—about 60% Asian, 30% Latino, and 10% Anglo (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015)—reflects the historical layers of population movement. The neighborhood of Harringay is one of the most ethnically diverse in ­London with 65.3% of its residents self-identifying as non-white British (­Haringey Council, 2015). Amongst the most prominent ethnic groups are the Turkish, who in some statistics are masked with other Europeans under the category White Other (36.5%), and the White British (23%) and the Black Caribbean (7.1%) (ONS, 2011). Harringay is famous for its Turkish restaurants and shops, being often referred to as “Little Turkey”. Both Alhambra and Harringay are adjacent to areas with a similar ethnic and immigration profile, making them recognizable centers of civic and commercial activities for the Asian (primarily Chinese) and Turkish communities respectively. Both projects employed a multi-method approach (Matsaganis & Wilkin, Chapter 4) to understanding the contextualized features and dynamics of interethnic communication. To the extent possible, the two locales pursued a similar research design, guided by the same set of concepts and terminologies, to maximize comparability in method and data. In particular, we conducted focus groups with the primary ethnic groups in each locale—four in Alhambra and five in ­Harringay1—to explore their use of space, perceptions of place and community change, sense of belonging, and relationship with each other. A mapping exercise was also conducted during all focus groups to explore residents’ relationship with different places in the locale. In Alhambra, participants were instructed to use different colors to indicate areas where they feel familiar and comfortable, uncomfortable, as well as unknown areas (Matei, Ball-Rokeach, & Qiu, 2001). In ­Harringay, participants were shown pictures of a wide range of places in the

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vicinity, asked to classify them as hotspots, comfort zones, and no-go areas, and to provide additional relevant places, which were not in the original set, and to classify in the same way. Based on the mapping exercises, focus group participants discussed their use of spaces and sense of place. A total of 31 individuals participated in focus groups in Alhambra and 26 individuals in Harringay. In Alhambra, a tri-lingual telephone survey conducted in 2011 with 100 Anglo, 150 Latino and 150 Chinese residents2 asked about hotspots and comfort zones, and this data is used to supplement the mapping exercise in the focus groups. In Harringay we asked 45 residents during a public festival at a local school to map their hotspots and comfort zones; we obtained a data set of 400 entries that supplements the focus group exercises. We also conducted ethnographic observations of streets, parks, restaurants, grocery stores, barbershops, and other places in Alhambra and ­Harringay seeking to understand residents’ use of community spaces and the dynamics of interaction (or the lack thereof ) within them. On a first glance, reminiscent of many multiethnic locales, diversity has become commonplace in both Alhambra and Harringay. We find physical spaces shared by residents from different ethnic backgrounds, in which each group becomes aware of the presence and cultural practices of others, as well as instances of meaningful cross-cultural engagement that transcends mere co-presence. Data from the two locales were examined jointly by researchers from both teams, with an eye toward unpacking and explaining the similarities and differences in residents’ relationship with space and in interethnic dynamics observed. Such comparative analysis brings into relief several features of the experience of diversity that conditions the social and communicative opportunities available for intergroup engagement. In what follows, we distill three dimensions of the enacted CAC that shape the sense of place and opportunities for convivial engagement: density and spatial morphology, the form and layout of the environment which directly affects the possibility for interpersonal and intergroup contact; ethnic inscription, the inscription of ethnic character on the material environment; and spatial practice, the specific relationship that each ethnic group bears with spaces.

The Enacted Communication Action Context Density and Spatial Morphology As repositories of public culture, the form and layout of urban space provide base conditions for interpersonal interaction and encounters with difference. The spatiality of the two study areas reflects the contrast between an urban paradigm of “throwntogetherness” (Massey, 2005), partially as a result of higher density, and the

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suburban proclivity towards dispersion and separation. Harringay houses approximately 27,000 residents within 0.77 square miles. It is organized as a grid of residential streets, which include Victorian terraced single-family homes, expanding on the two sides of a long vibrant high street—Green Lanes. The businesses are overwhelmingly concentrated along high street, oriented around two metro stations that deliver commuter traffic. Suburban Alhambra, on the other hand, is dotted with single-family homes, totaling 85,000 residents in 7.6 square miles, roughly one-third of the density of Harringay. It has wide streets constructed for automobile traffic, mini malls or strip malls with their own parking lots spread across a wider distance, and sparse foot traffic on the sidewalks. These basic differences in morphology between the two areas are companied by corresponding differences in their enacted CAC. The higher density in Harringay, compared with Alhambra, suggests that a different “social experience of multiplicity,” in the words of Amin (2008), may be at play. Such experiences, often working through pre-­cognitive rather than conscious or rationalized processes, serve as the foundation for the inculcation of habits of interpersonal association. The sociality of Harringay, with its layering of people in the high street and a constant, diffuse exposure to the stranger, implies and requires an ethos of living together that may make for higher readiness to negotiate difference and to recognize places as shared. Streets are quintessential public spaces for fleeting and serendipitous encounters that habituate the bodies for “multicultural attunement” (Wise & Velayutham, 2014) and cumulate into a sense of togetherness. In Alhambra, while co-presence of different ethnic groups may be observed in discrete places, the public sidewalks connecting them are more often than not unoccupied. These discrete places— shops, parks, cinemas and the like—are private or semi-private territories individuals enter into with existing contacts and with a specific purpose. Independent of the characteristics of groups (e.g. language barriers or cultural distance) and presence of discrete sites for interaction (e.g. multicultural events or community centers), the density and spatial morphology of a place may produce different “ethos of mixing” (Wessendorf, 2013) by ordering the mode of interaction and sociality. In addition, while not inevitable, the abundance of space in Alhambra creates the possibility for territorialization, and at the same time mitigates the necessity of coming into close contact with each other. As shown in Figure 7.1, significant spatial divide—and correspondingly, ethnic divide—exists between the two major commercial streets in Alhambra. Main Street is a carefully regulated space, where the city in recent years has explicitly encouraged and aided more “mainstream” businesses to replace ethnic ones in an effort to generate a “diverse” mix of businesses (Cheng, 2010). In contrast, the long stretch of Valley Boulevard, approximately 1.5 miles south of Main Street and extending beyond the boundaries of Alhambra itself, has become a corridor for Asian businesses. That is to say,

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Figure 7.1.  Business Ownership by Ethnicity in Alhambra: Main Street versus Valley Boulevard.3

the ethnic demarcation is both sufficiently distinct in character and separated in space that life in the community can be orchestrated to bypass the encounter with ethnically coded areas. In the particular configuration of Alhambra, it creates a spatial and social order where intense encounter with the Other can be avoided, and difficult difference can be left out of sight rather than engaged with. As will become clear later in the discussion around spatial practices, this is indeed the case, as focus group participants explain preference and avoidance of certain places with an acknowledgement of ethnic differences. In contrast, the Green Lanes high street, as the only high street at the center of Harringay, is busy with people almost 24/7. Metro and rail stations deliver

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foot traffic onto this linear businesse district surrounded by terraced houses on either side. Businesses are predominately Turkish-owned, though there are also White British, Greek, Black Caribbean, Asian and Polish owned establishments, as well as a range of ethnic community centers. In a sense, Green Lanes is similar to ­Valley Boulevard in Alhambra, displaying at times a primarily Turkish quarter character. However, in other sections of the high street, it becomes more like Main Street in Alhambra, cosmopolitan, trendy and displaying greater ethnic diversity. The higher density and greater centralization in Harringay compress the two types of commercial streets seen in Alhambra into the same area, making it in the end equally popular and cherished with all ethnic groups. This is exemplified in ­Figure 7.2 by the fact that in addition to parks in various parts of the local area, which are a commonly observed type of comfort zone, Green Lanes high street emerged as a disproportionately concentrated area in the neighborhood that draws together Harringay residents from all ethnic groups.4 While this does not dictate the extent or nature of actual interaction across ethnic groups, in contrast with Alhambra, there is less dispersal across space (Figure 7.3). Given these contrasting spatial morphologies, different modes of interethnic communication become possible, with the daily co-presence and mingling of different ethnic groups

Figure 7.2.  Concentration of Comfort Zones Around Green Lanes High Street.5

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Figure 7.3.  Dispersal of Comfort Zones in Alhambra.6

giving rise to everyday conditions for familiarity and engagement, while spatial separation and territorialization may predispose residents to disconnection across ethnic lines.

Inscription of Ethnicity Despite the contrast in spatial form, the presence of ethnic diversity is unmistakably felt in the material and visual landscapes of both Alhambra and H ­ arringay. Ethnic and migrant groups bring with them a set of “ethnic infrastructure” (Logan, Zhang, & Alba, 2002), consisting of businesses, cultural and religious institutions, as well as visual and symbolic components that together encode urban spaces with markers of identity. With signs, architectural styles, and commercial activities, different ethnic groups inscribe their identities and needs onto urban neighborhood spaces beyond traditional migrant enclaves, variously altering and reproducing them (Loukaitou-Sideris, 2002; Rojas, 2013). It is these inscriptions, rendered through negotiations among different ethnic groups, that we posit are key for the construction of an enacted CAC. Different patterns of migration and settlement

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shape the built environment and its affordances for different identities and varying degrees of inclusion. Different forms of ethnic inscription also generate content for local storytelling that shapes perceptions of the various ethnic groups and their relationship with the local community. The intensity of ethnic inscription in the built environment constitutes one vector in the experience of diversity. Clustering accentuates the ethnic character and reputation of the neighborhoods by aggregating more members of the same ethnic group in a defined and delimited space (Logan et al., 2002), thereby amplifying the perceived degree of dominance. For example, on and around ­Valley Boulevard in Alhambra, businesses with signages in Asian languages create a particularly distinct visual ecology that aligns with the demarcation of racialized groups in the United States. In addition, while most instances of ethnic inscription in Harringay are superimposed on preexisting Victorian architectural forms, development in suburban Alhambra has led to the demolition of entire structures, buildings and lots, a process that tends to be associated with, although not always correctly, overseas Chinese capital. For example, the Latino supermarket on the Main Street of Alhambra, Super A, terminated its contract in 2013 after a 32-year tenure in the community, and its single-story store space with a large parking lot has since been replaced by mixed-use, multi-story condominiums (Figure 7.4). This not only generates a more generic space by displacing Latino ethnic inscription, but also constitutes a drastic transformation in the very facade and size of buildings that becomes attributed to a particular ethnic group. Given the intensity of ethnic inscription by one ethnic group, tension has been demonstrably high, as seen through our focus groups as well as online discussions on local media and social media. Debates over architectural styles and signage have recurred over time, often directed towards containing the visible Chinese character of the place (Cheng, 2010; Saito, 1998). Recognizing the agents implicated in the process of inscribing ethnicity is critical to understanding the nature of changes in the built environment and its implications. Unlike Alhambra, the current changes to Harringay are driven by the entry of more affluent White British families who are drawn to the diversity offered, good transport links and Victorian houses. Within this process of gentrification, businesses seek to cater for affluent cosmopolitan newcomers. Even one of the oldest establishments on the high street—a very traditional Turkish bakery loved by everyone we interviewed—has been refurbished on its outside to look more like other shops associated with the incoming White British residents (Figure 7.5). Changes on the diversity composition of the high street, a hot topic of discussion for White British residents in a grassroots hyperlocal website called Harringay Online, have produced concerns about achieving “the right kind of diversity” for Harringay, which some participants felt was becoming “too ­Turkish”.

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Figure 7.4.  Same Location on Main Street, Alhambra in 2007 (Top) and 2014 (Bottom).

In these online conversations, the mix of Turkish, other ethnic, youth and cosmopolitan oriented venues has been favorably received. The Harringay Business Community Association, a predominantly Turkish entity, has successfully bid for 2 million pounds of government funding to refurbish the high street, in the process maintaining its British character but equally enabling the Turkish outlook of the street, appealing to the wealthier and younger White British residents and Turkish visitors alike. Rather than the complete erasure of ethnic markers, the appropriation of ethnic differences has generated a bricolage of mixed identifications, which does not evade contestation, but may circumvent outright resistance or alienation. In addition, anxiety about a “takeover” intertwined with migration, expressed among established ethnic groups is also different to anxieties about gentrification, where concerns about demographic change relate both to ethnicity and to class, creating possibility for engagement and alliance across ethnic lines. Both Alhambra and Harringay show ethnic inscription is a contentious issue, where the negotiation for the right mix of housing, variety of shops, aesthetic representation and language use in signage become the basis for lobbying, mobilization and discussion in the mundane micropolitics of everyday life. These processes fuel the community storytelling networks (local media and institutions)

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Figure 7.5.  Change in Signage and Design of Turkish Patisserie on Green Lanes.7

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(Kim & Jung, Chapter 1) with topics of discussion and action that subsequently shape the nature of intergroup perception, interaction and politics. For example, in ­Alhambra, the replacement of an American supermarket chain by an Asian one in 2015 became the focal point of local debates, as a source of alienation for nonAsian residents and a sign of substantial change. The issue generated the highest number of shares and comments ever observed on the Facebook page of a local news website. A similar case around the potential entry of a Turkish kebab place at the expense of a Turkish-owned traditional English diner has generated heated discussion on Harringay Online, producing 3,754 views and 43 comments as well as offline action. These become critical instances of local storytelling that could define the nature of interethnic communication.

Spatial Practices So far, we have focused on how the built environment and its furnishings are shaped by the presence of ethnic diversity, configuring not only the experience and nature of interethnic encounters, but also the stories circulating in the local area. The built environment spaces, such as parks, plazas, grocery stores, and sports facilities acquire capacity for bridging communication as they are used across difference. Previous research on multicultural and multiethnic locales revealed that, within the same locale, meaningful networks of discourse and storytelling are often fragmented along ethnic lines (Broad, Gonzalez, & Ball-Rokeach, 2013; Chen et al., 2013; Georgiou, 2016; Motta & Georgiou 2017). Similarly, physical spaces are not uniformly utilized or perceived by all groups sharing the same locale. Here, we examine the relationship residents have developed with different places that constitute social and communicative venues in their locale. Analyzing the distribution of spatial practice by ethnic groups allows us to explore the extent to which physical and communicative convergence occurs, as well as the extent to which social-spatial perceptions differ across ethnic groups. Following concepts employed in CIT, we assessed spatial practice as the presence and usage of communication hotspots, comfort zones and no-go areas (Matsaganis & Golden, 2015; Wilkin et al., 2011; Wilkin et al., Chapter 10). In both Alhambra and Harringay, preference for different types of places as core communication resources emerged (Figure 7.6). In the focus group mapping exercise in Harringay, Black Caribbean respondents mostly identified with sports and entertainment venues, such as Tottenham Leisure Centre and Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. White British respondents predominantly referred to restaurants, cafés and pubs as key socialization venues. Turkish respondents primarily pointed to ethnic community centers such as Turkish Cypriot Women’s Project, the ­Turkish Cypriot Community Association, and the mosque, as their

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Figure 7.6.  Preference for Different Types of Spaces in Harringay and Alhambra.8

core communication places, since they depend on them for social support and advice to access services for immigrants. While clearly marked ethnic differences exist in the use of community centers or community spaces in Harringay, which remain mostly ethnically separated, and in the preference over different types of

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spaces, many of these spaces are concentrated along or around the Green Lanes high street, as seen earlier. Therefore, residents can both converge and diverge in their communication practices, but remain constantly in co-presence. At the same time, all groups mark parks as equally relevant for social activities. In comparison, community centers and community spaces play a much more minor role for all residents in Alhambra. Commercial venues such as restaurants, grocery stores and cinemas feature prominently in the conduct of everyday life for all three ethnic groups. However, both survey results and focus group participants suggested that preference for restaurants and grocery stores corresponds with cultural practices, with Chinese residents, who are newer immigrants, taking advantage of the authenticity and abundance of Chinese food options available, while Anglo and Latino residents opt for a more “cosmopolitan” mix of traditional American, Latin, Korean and Persian, and even travel outside the area to the historic Chinatown for what they perceive to be more familiar Chinese food and style of service. While cross-cultural eating places are available in Alhambra (Wenzel, 2016) and parks are favored by all ethnicities, divergence in spatial practice manifests in a more explicit and conscious process of ethnic demarcation. When we asked informants to indicate places that they are not familiar with or do not feel uncomfortable in, another picture of ethnic boundedness emerged (Figure 7.7). In these maps, ethnically Chinese focus group discussants pointed to areas of Alhambra with more Hispanic populations as places to be avoided. In turn, Anglo and Latino discussants tend to avoid Valley Boulevard, the commercial street populated by Asian businesses, citing reasons such as language barrier, concentration of Asian culture, and a general feeling of “standing out”, in part echoing Alhambra’s spatial morphology and the clustering of ethnically marked businesses. Overt sentiment of foreignness and avoidance is less apparent in Harringay. As is the case in Alhambra, perceived lack of safety surfaced as a common reason for avoiding an area across all groups, but in Harringay focus groups there was no explicit attribution of crime and anxiety to a particular ethnic group. Proximity to difference supports everyday encounters that mitigate feelings of alienation amongst other ethnicities. This highlights the importance of uncovering reasons behind spatial practices, as more trenchant spatial biases associated with inter-­ ethnic perceptions could lead to patterns of spatial use that are more systemically bounded along ethnic lines. Even though our research in Alhambra demonstrates that hotpots and comfort zones that cut across ethnic lines do exist in discrete places, such as movie theatres, parks, and a neighborhood grocery store known for cheap produce, such convergence needs to be purposefully mobilized and amplified to counter the more diffuse sense of indifference and separation. While spatial segregation in residential patterns has been the focus of much U.S.-based research on multiethnic relations, the mapping of physical

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Figure 7.7.  Areas Focus Group Participants Tend to Avoid in Alhambra (Left: Latino Discussants. Right: Chinese discussants).

communication resources and socio-spatial perceptions reveals patterns in how residents from different ethnic groups navigate and interpret the local area. The preference and avoidance of places both arise from instrumental-personal orientation goals, such as entertainment, social support, and acquisition of goods, and cultural meaning places acquire, such as fear, foreignness, and belonging (Matei et al., 2001). Spatial divergence and residents’ diverse sense of place can explain why communication across groups may become disrupted or imbued with tension.

Conclusion The three components of the enacted CAC—spatial morphology, inscription of ethnic character, and spatial practices—demonstrate that different spatial, architectural and communication resource arrangements enable or restrict conviviality across ethnic lines. These components provide a basic framework to elucidate how diversity is perceived and lived, as well as how intergroup interactions and politics are actually enacted. As seen through the cases of Harringay and Alhambra, these components bear dynamic relations with each other. Spatial morphology

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and ethnic inscription could both condition spatial practices, but do not determine them. Spatial practices, arising out of residents’ routines through the local area, may produce patterns of convergence or divergence among ethnic groups that counteract the furnishings of the built environment. Table 7.1 summarizes the key questions that may be asked of each dimension. These questions are not meant to be exhaustive, but rather direct attention to the variables and mechanisms that may influence the outcome of interethnic communication. Enacted community context configured by the three components suggests different possibilities for, as well as pathways to, more bridging interactions directed towards the inculcation of shared understanding and an ethos of participation. Understanding the process and nature of ethnic inscription, for example, helps trace the relationship different groups have with each other by proxy of place, and the content of communication about a locale. Different place-based strategies may be conceived in view of the specific features of the diversity context. A tactical urban intervention that leverages dense pedestrian traffic may be better suited to a place like Harringay. For the diffused, suburban spatial and social order of ­Alhambra, conscious efforts towards turning specific places into hotspots and comfort zones for bridging communication may yield more drastic results given the relative absence of such places at present. It should be emphasized that while the materiality of the enacted environment is often overlooked and deserves analysis on its own terms, it should not be the exclusive locus of examination within communication studies. The relationship different ethnic groups bear with place is at once material, social and imaginative (Lynch, 1960; Matei et al., 2001). The enacted community context is also imagined and discursively constructed in different platforms and media. Therefore, Table 7.1.  Key Analytical Questions in Three Dimensions of Enacted CAC. Dimension

Key analytical questions

Spatial morphology

How dense and centralized is the area? What is the layout of the commercial areas relative to residential areas? How is the flow of people conducted?

Ethnic inscription

Who are seen as behind the process of ethnic inscription? How intense (spatially and temporally) are these processes? What kind of competition over space and territorialization How inclusive are ethnic inscriptions of different identities and cultures?

Spatial practice

How much and what kind of convergence or divergence are there in use of space? What happens in places of convergence? Why do these convergence or divergence exist?

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approaches such as fear and comfort mapping, as deployed in our research above, alongside textual analysis of stories and talk being circulated about place in both physical and mediated domains, could be illuminating in painting a picture of the enacted community context. In addition, the enacted community context does not capture the entirety of intergroup communication in a multiethnic locale and its possible orientations. The presence and integration of discursive resources and storytelling agents across ethnic groups constitutes another layer of the community that plays a definitive role in the outcome of living with difference. With more comparative work, we could begin to create typologies and further specify how the enacted community context relates to the storytelling network, as well as the social, cognitive and affective impact it may have on urban dwellers.

Notes 1. The four focus groups in Alhambra were: Anglo, English-speaking Hispanic, English-­ speaking Chinese, and Mandarin-speaking Chinese. English was used for the Hispanic group as the area’s Hispanic population is predominantly second generation and above. In Harringay, the five focus groups were: male White British, female White British, male Black Caribbean, male Turkish, and female Turkish. 2. Survey participants were recruited by a combination of random digit dialing and postcard mailing to include those without a listed telephone number. 3. Business ownership information was obtained from Reference USA database and mapped in ArcGIS. 4. The size of the circle in the map indicates the number of residents in mapping exercises who expressed a sense of ownership and belonging to their neighborhood for this particular place. 5. This image is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 (Motta 2017). 6. Based on Alhambra survey data (N = 400). 7. The image on the top is reproduced under the creative commons license: Holt (2011). The authors took the image on the bottom in 2016. 8. Community centers and community spaces refer to organizations, churches or mosques, and recreational spaces. Entertainment venues and shops primarily include cinemas, grocery stores, and retail stores. Classification of hotspot and comfort zones in Harringay further included online spaces and local press, which we excluded for the present analysis.

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chapter eight

Digital Connections Tracing the Evolving Role of Technology in Local Storytelling Networks katherine ognyanova

Assistant Professor, Rutgers University joo - young jung

Senior Associate Professor, International Christian University

In the late 1990s and early 2000s when personal computers and Internet access became widely available in the United States, unrealistic hopes and misplaced fears about the role they would play in society were fairly common (Ball-Rokeach & Hoyt, 2001; Matei, Ball-Rokeach, Wilson, Gibbs, & Hoyt, 2001; Sturken, Thomas, & Ball-Rokeach, 2004). This was by no means unusual, as new technologies of any nature are frequently met with exaggerated expectations, both positive and negative, when they are first introduced (Marvin, 1997). Optimistic views emphasized the potential of the Internet to narrow social inequality by giving more opportunities to those who lacked resources (US Department of Commerce, 1999). Pessimistic predictions suggested that the Internet would inhibit social contacts and relationships (Nie, Hillygus, & Erbring, 2002). Research grounded in media system dependency theory (MSD) and communication infrastructure theory (CIT) adopted a more careful and nuanced position informed by history and sociology. It noted that new communication technologies necessarily operate within a sociocultural context, and can both influence and be influenced by existing social structures (Matei & Ball-Rokeach, 2001). Works in those theoretical frameworks posited that our relationships with technology are shaped by individual goals, interpersonal networks, media activities, social system

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dependencies, and social environments. The introduction of a new technology into that complex web of interdependent relations was unlikely to bring about an immediate drastic change in social and communication dynamics. This notion was consistent with the premises of social shaping of technology (Williams & Edge, 1996), a tradition which examines the constraints and opportunities of new technologies, and their ability to catalyze, accelerate, or impede various social processes (Baym, 2015). While digital platforms, services, and devices have changed considerably since the early days of the Internet, MSD and CIT continue to provide insights into the interplay of technology and community. This chapter examines the evolving role of the Internet in the structures and processes described by the two theories, providing historical context and exploring the way online connections are conceptualized and measured. Tracing the evolution of key constructs and claims over time, we offer a comparative examination of two approaches to understanding the function of the Internet within the communication infrastructure framework. The first approach sees technology as facilitating, the second as catalyzing social processes. The chapter concludes with a discussion of key social and research dynamics likely to drive the direction of future research in this area.

Media System Dependency Theory Media system dependency theory provides an important theoretical framework capable of capturing the social implications of new information and communication technologies. The theory development started in the 1970s and aimed to examine the power relations between individuals and social systems, with a particular focus on the media system (Ball-Rokeach, 1985, 1988; Ball-Rokeach & Jung, 2009). The power of the media system in a society is defined by its relations to individuals, organizations, and social systems. One of the ways in which media organizations gain power is through their control of scarce information resources, grounded in the institutional capacity to gather, filter, process, and spread news (Ball-Rokeach, 1998). With regard to individuals’ dependency relations to media, MSD theory suggests going beyond demographic and psychological characteristics to explain how and why people connect to news outlets. The framework focuses on understanding the goals attained by individuals through their connections to media sources (Loges & Ball-Rokeach, 1993). MSD relations are expected to determine both media use and its effects on consequent behavior. Heavier depencency … on a source to fulfill personal goals results in greater effects, even when exposure is more limited.

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Key media dependency goals include understanding oneself and one’s social environment, getting oriented in order to decide on a meaningful and effective course of action and communication, and solitary or social forms of play (­Ball-Rokeach, Rokeach, & Grube, 1984). Dependency measures (e.g. newspaper dependency, television dependency, or Internet dependency) typically evaluate the extent to which an individual relies on a media type or technology to accomplish each of those goals. The relationship between the mass media and individuals is assumed to be asymmetrical because the mass media are much more likely than individuals to have access to scarce resources. Digital technologies, however, allow citizens to assume the role of content creators, potentially mitigating the power differential between media and audience and making individual dependency relations more diverse (Loges & Jung, 2001). Dependency relations have been shown to predict a variety of attitudes and behaviors, including selective exposure (Ball-Rokeach et al., 1984), newspaper readership (Loges & Ball-Rokeach, 1993), product purchases (Grant, Guthrie, & Ball-Rokeach, 1991; Skumanich & Kintsfather, 1998), participation in public deliberation (De Boer & Velthuijsen, 2001), political perceptions (Halpern, 1994), and voting (Davies, 2009). Similar effects are observed with Internet dependency and the use of online sources, shown to be associated with outcomes including news consumption and political efficacy (Ognyanova & Ball-Rokeach, 2015; ­Patwardhan & Yang, 2003). Dependency on social network platforms likewise predicts a variety of outcomes related to community engagement (Kim et al., 2015).

Communication Infrastructure Theory Communication infrastructure theory (Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a, 2006b) provides a multilevel ecological approach to the study of communication within urban communities. While it is rooted in the MSD perspective, CIT places less emphasis on mainstream mass media and pays more attention to alternatives such as local and ethnic media. Communication infrastructure theory also takes a more grounded approach that considers interpersonal networks and connections to different types of media within a particular context. People’s interactions on the Internet are studied as part of their individual communication ecology, which includes micro-level interpersonal communications, meso-level connections to groups, organizations, and local/ethnic media, and macro-level connections to mass media. A central concept in CIT research is the neighborhood storytelling network: a system encompassing residents, local media and organizations, as well as

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the connections among them (Kim, Jung, & Ball-Rokeach, 2006). That social structure allows micro-level agents (residents) and meso-level agents (local news media and organizations) to exchange and spread information about the community. A strong, well-connected storytelling network is also found to enhance a number of civic outcomes. Those include neighborhood belonging, or the attachment of residents to their local community; civic participation, or the extent to which individuals are involved in community activities; and perceived collective efficacy, or resident perception about the ability of the community to come together and solve local problems. CIT research has developed measures based on survey data that capture the scope of connections between community members and their neighbors, local media, and organizations (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a). The exchange of information among residents, media, and local organizations is in the core of the communication infrastructure of a community. CIT defines communication infrastructure as the combination of a neighborhood storytelling network and its surrounding communication action context. That context includes various community resources that promote or hinder communication (e.g. school system, libraries, parks, streets, etc.). The composition, structure, and resilience of a local communication infrastructure may vary depending on geographic location and local population demographics. Research has established the relevance of geo-ethnicity, a term referring to the distinctive properties of an ethnic group placed in a given cultural, spatial and temporal context (Kim et al., 2006). Geo-ethnic information sources produce content covering a geographic area, and/or focusing on issues relevant to residents of a particular ethnicity. These sources can play an important role in the storytelling networks, providing relevant and accessible information about the community. In its take on technology, the CIT framework borrows many of its premises from media system dependency theory. The goal-based understanding of local information seeking is one important aspect of MSD adopted by communication infrastructure theory. Individuals are seen as purposefully constructing their communication ecologies, defined as networks of information resources (interpersonal, media, organizational, expert, and others) selected with a specific goal in mind within a particular communication environment (Ball-Rokeach, Gonzalez, Son, & Kligler-Vilenchik, 2012). This also suggests that communication ecologies cannot be studied in the abstract, but only in the context of specific thematic domains. For instance, digital tools and information sources used to learn about health will be different from the ones residents rely on in the domain of political information. Both of those may also differ from the general information and entertainment sources that people report using.

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The Beginning: Conceptualizing and Measuring Internet Connectedness Early works in the CIT tradition investigated a series of questions prompted by the emergence and spread of new communication technologies ( Jung et al., 2001; Matei & Ball-Rokeach, 2001). Researchers examined who connected to the Internet and why, what people did online, and looked for differences in patterns of use across social groups. Building on measures of media dependency, these early studies defined and operationalized new constructs describing the relationship between individuals and digital technology. One important construct developed at that time was the Internet connectedness index (ICI), a multidimensional measure aimed at capturing people’s objective behavior and subjective perceptions, goals, and orientations related to Internet use ( Jung, Qiu, & Kim, 2001). The initial version of that index had nine items, including participants’ duration of computer ownership at home; the number of tasks (personal, school, or work-related) they accomplished through Internet use; the number of locations where they could access the Internet; the number of online activities they participated in, as well as the goals those activities served; the time they spent on interactive online activities; the respondents’ evaluation of the positive or negative effect of the Internet on their personal life, and the extent to which individuals would miss computers and the Internet if they became unavailable. The index has since been revisited and modified several times to streamline the items and strengthen the theoretical rationale for their inclusion. The duration of computer ownership, number of access locations, and goals served by online activities were excluded from the operationalization and reframed as antecedents of ICI ( Jung, 2008). More recently, the measure was narrowed down to four variables examining the intensity and scope of activities individuals took part in through their personal computers and mobile phones ( Jung, Toriumi, & Mizukoshi, 2013). The Internet connectedness index emerged in response to a series of studies employing a conceptualization of Internet use as a unidimensional single-item exposure measure (e.g., as frequency of access or as time spent online). One major weakness of such metrics was that two people with identical exposure scores could still have vastly different patterns of use; they could be using different services, have different skill and participation levels, or seek to accomplish different goals. Because of those differences, similar levels of exposure could potentially result in different individual and social outcomes. The Internet can be used for entertainment, or to advance one’s education, career, and financial status; to accrue economic, social, and cultural capital (van Deursen & van Dijk, 2014). Research has confirmed that individuals with lower income and education have a narrower scope

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of online activities that involve primarily entertainment and socializing (Büchi, Just, & Latzer, 2015; Wei, 2012). Applying the Internet connectedness index, Jung et al. (2001) found that income and education had linear relationships with individual ICI scores. On average, more affluent and better educated people had a higher ICI. Those disparities disappeared, however, when the only thing taken into account was the time individuals spent online. Jung et al. (2001)’s study demonstrated that a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of Internet connectedness was particularly important in the context of early studies of the digital divide: a term describing individual and community-level disparities in access to information and communication technologies. Media system dependency and communication infrastructure research have been instrumental in expanding the conversation around digital inequality. Those works explored the multifaceted relationship of society and technology and the way Internet connections are incorporated into people’s everyday lives and the communication infrastructure of communities (Hayden & Ball-Rokeach, 2007; Jung et al., 2001; Matei et al., 2001). This more nuanced take on the digital divide exposed flaws in the previously dominant notion that information and participation inequalities could be resolved by tackling the gap in access to devices and connectivity (Kim, Jung, & Ball-Rokeach, 2007). Today that gap is narrower, though Internet penetration is still lower in rural communities, among the elderly, people with disabilities, certain ethnic groups (Katz & Gonzalez, 2016), and for those in the lowest income and education bracket (Rainie, 2015). Larger disparities persist with regard to the quality of access and technology used across groups (Council of Economic Advisers, 2015). Further inequalities remain in the areas of digital literacy, skills, and participation ( Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robinson, & Weigel, 2006). Initial works using the ICI in the early 2000s focused on establishing the validity of the measure, demonstrating its advantages over traditional digital divide metrics, and comparing the connectedness of various social groups. In addition to Jung et al. (2001)’s work in introducing ICI and comparing it with the time spent online measure, Loges and Jung (2001) examined differences across age groups and found that older people were not only less likely to have Internet access, but also were interested in a narrower range of goals and activities when going online. Jung, Kim, Lin, and Cheong (2005) found that connectedness levels varied among young people in East Asia based on their social environments (family and friendship ties and support). Kim et al. (2007) uncovered significant differences in ICI among ethnic groups after controlling for other relevant demographic and socioeconomic variables. These studies focus more on the factors that shape people’s disparities in connecting to the Internet (ICI) rather than the effects of Internet connectedness.

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Theory Evolution: Two Approaches to Understanding Technology Moving beyond the initial focus on constructing measures that can capture individual relationships with a new technology, the following sections discuss how CIT research (building on key premises of media system dependency theory) addresses the impact of the Internet on community life. An examination of the communication infrastructure literature reveals that two main approaches are used to conceptualize the role of digital technologies. The Internet is seen as either a facilitator, or as a catalyst of social processes (Figure 8.1). In its role as a facilitator, technology provides a new way to complete familiar tasks (e.g., reading the news online or communicating with community members online). As a catalyst, technology enables processes and events to unfold at a scale and speed that may not have been feasible without it (e.g., organizing global diaspora networks).

Figure 8.1.  Facilitating and Catalyzing Approach to Integrating the Internet into the CIT Framework.

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The Role of the Internet as a Facilitator Studies that focus on the facilitating function of digital technologies have examined the role of the Internet in the local communication infrastructure, as well as the individual, organizational, and social factors known to shape that role. With regard to the former, research within communication infrastructure theory has explored how digital sources were integrated in individual and collective communication ecologies. Consistent with studies that found the Internet tends to complement rather than displace offline media consumption (Dutta-Bergman, 2006; Ksiazek, Malthouse, & Webster, 2010), Matei and Ball-Rokeach (2003) compared the ways in which the Internet was being incorporated into the communication infrastructure in different geo-ethnic communities. In dominantly Caucasian neighborhoods in Los Angeles, individual Internet connections were positively related to the community organizational membership that facilitated community engagement and belonging. On the other hand, in predominantly Asian and Latino neighborhoods, Internet connections were not related to community organizational membership or interpersonal storytelling, and were thus disconnected from the neighborhood storytelling network. Examining differences in the facilitating role of the Internet across social groups, CIT scholarship also mapped the online and offline communication resources mobilized by geo-ethnic populations (Wilkin, Ball-Rokeach, ­Matsaganis, & Cheong, 2007), as well as those community organizers and practitioners relied on (Broad et al., 2013). Wilkin and colleagues found that the reliance on the Internet differed among eleven geo-ethnic communities. Residents from the same ethnic group living in different neighborhoods had different connectedness to the Internet and other communication resources. Broad and colleagues found that community organizers relied heavily on interpersonal resources, and used the Internet for information but not for communication with residents or other local organizations. Another line of research has explored a variety of factors that shape the facilitating role the Internet plays in the communication infrastructure. The factors include individual goals, meso-level actors, resources implicated in the communication action context, and social environment. With regard to individual goals and preferences, analyses conducted by Jung et al. (2012) found that personal goals shaped the combination of traditional and Internet communication resources selected by individuals. In an international comparative study, Song et al. (2016) concluded that South Korean and Hong Kong residents preferred experience-based information on social media and blogs for health information, while respondents in the United States preferred expert-based sources on the Internet.

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In addition to individual characteristics and goals, meso-level actors (local organizations and media) have the capacity to support or inhibit the connectivity and online activities of residents. Katz, Matsaganis, and Ball-Rokeach (2012) demonstrated the ways in which ethnic media, in collaboration with local anchor institutions, can promote the adoption of high-speed Internet access and help increase digital literacy in diverse communities with low broadband penetration. Another local actor with an important impact on Internet adoption is the community technology center. It is a crucial part of the communication infrastructure in urban communities (Hayden & Ball-Rokeach, 2007). Technology centers can serve as “communication hotspots” where residents gather to use technology and to interact with one another (Wilkin, Stringer, O’Quin, Montgomery, & Hunt, 2011). The perceived importance of different local and other actors providing digital and traditional communication resources for residents can also be influenced by the social environment that individuals are embedded in. For example, studies have found differences in the roles of Internet and traditional outlets in times of high uncertainty in the social environment, during and after a crisis such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York (Kim, Jung, Cohen, & Ball-Rokeach, 2004) and 3/11 earthquake in Japan ( Jung, 2012).

The Role of the Internet as a Catalyst Works that focus on the catalyzing role of the Internet emphasize the capacity of technology to foster social change at a scale or speed that might otherwise not be possible. Studies under the communication infrastructure framework have explored the capacity of the Internet to strengthen the neighborhood storytelling networks. Building on previous research detailing the antecedents and patterns of Internet connectedness, CIT-based works have investigated how online behavior influences key civic outcomes. The Internet connectedness index, for instance, was shown to have a positive association with civic engagement in one’s community among younger residents after a natural disaster ( Jung et al., 2013). While the older generation was more likely to engage in civic activities by connecting to the neighborhood storytelling network, young people’s civic engagement was associated with their ICI. The study conducted by Jung et al. (2013) reveals new possibilities for the Internet to catalyze civic engagement among those who have not been active before. Online platforms provide a space for civic communication and participation accessible to individuals who may not be easily mobilized through offline channels (Hampton, Livio, & Sessions, 2010).

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A related construct, Internet dependency, has been found to be associated with higher levels of online political efficacy, defined as a person’s perceived ability of using online tools to participate meaningfully in the political process (Ognyanova & Ball-Rokeach, 2015). Similar to ICI, the Internet dependency index measures the importance of technology in accomplishing personal goals. Studies conceptualizing technology as a catalyst have also identified specific types of online behavior particularly likely to affect key civic outcomes. Researchers examined the effects of community-oriented online activities such as seeking local information, discussing neighborhood problems and staying in touch with local organizations on the Web (Ognyanova et al., 2013). An index including those activities was found to positively predict civic engagement in a multiethnic neighborhood in Los Angeles, CA. Higher levels of online participation were also associated with more interaction across ethnic groups, consistent with previous research suggesting that digital platforms may have the capacity to facilitate inter-ethnic conversations and collaborations towards shared community goals (Amichai-Hamburger & McKenna, 2006). Nationally representative survey research has found similar associations between Internet use and having a larger and more heterogeneous social network (Hampton, Sessions, Her, & Rainie, 2010). Exploring the impact of digital platforms on civic engagement was also a key part of several Internet-based CIT projects aiming to support positive social change (Broad et al., 2013; Chen, Dong, Ball-Rokeach, Parks, & Huang, 2012). One of these projects, a research-driven participatory local news website covering an underserved multi-ethnic community (Chen et al., 2012; Chen et al., 2013), has sought to strengthen the neighborhood’s storytelling network, increase civic engagement, and enhance intergroup interaction (see also, Chen et al., Chapter 11). Another engaged CIT project developed a website and mailing list designed to support community organizers by providing relevant information about local communication ecologies, and forging stronger connections within and across practitioners, local media, and residents (Broad et al., 2013). Focusing on one important type of online platform, recent studies have uncovered a positive relationship between the use of social network services (SNS) like Facebook or Twitter, and behavioral outcomes including engagement in civic and political activities (Kim & Jung, 2016; Kim et al., 2015). The main explanatory variable, SNS dependency, was based on items measuring how useful online social networks might be in achieving personal goals defined in the media system dependency literature. Those included understanding yourself and your social environment; getting oriented in order to decide on a meaningful and effective course of action and communication; solitary and social forms of play (Ball-Rokeach, 1998). One additional new dimension of the SNS index was based on a goal that would

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be difficult to achieve through connecting to mass media: expressing yourself, sharing thoughts and opinions with others. Rather than considering social media in general, respondents were asked to evaluate the helpfulness of the particular social network service they had reported using most often in their daily life. In a study conducted in Seoul, South Korea, SNS dependency positively predicted engagement with political content on social media, as well as discussing politics offline (Kim & Jung, 2016). It was also positively associated with a variety of local community engagement outcomes, including neighborhood belonging, collective efficacy, and participating in community activities (Kim et al., 2015).

Key Trends and Directions for Future Research Thus far, we have reviewed the evolving role of digital technology from the perspective of communication infrastructure theory (CIT) and media system dependency (MSD) theory. We outlined and discussed two approaches to conceptualizing the ways in which the Internet has been incorporated into existing social and communication processes: facilitating and catalyzing roles. The first approach focuses on the processes in which the Internet becomes part of the existing ways of engaging in familiar tasks. The second approach emphasizes the catalyzing role of digital technology and the ways in which Internet connections or dependencies bring about new outcomes such as engaging the young generation in civic activities, or evoking collective action. Based on the preceding overview of Internet research in the CIT tradition, we derive several key tendencies salient for current and future work. In particular, we highlight three major trends characterizing the field’s trajectory and discuss their implications. The first trend reflects a shift from exploring general patterns of technology use to a focus on specific platforms and activities. The second trend refers to the move from early works examining Internet adoption levels across social groups to studies exploring the individual and community-level effects of Internet use. The final trend involves the integration of online activities into a variety of existing constructs and measures. The first trend we discuss is the predictable but important transition from general to more specific constructs and objects of study. This is part of a larger trend in communication research. We are seeing fewer works exploring the Internet as a whole, and more studies focusing on specific platforms and activities— such as, for instance, the informational or political uses of social media (de Zuniga, Molyneux, & Zheng, 2014; Miller, Bobkowski, Maliniak, & Rapoport, 2015; Xenos, ­Macafee, & Pole, 2015).

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Works grounded in media system dependency and communication infrastructure theory were among the first to highlight the importance of studying goals and activities rather than focusing exclusively on access and exposure levels. The civic outcomes of technology were seen as a product of the affordances of devices and online services, but also the intentions and actions of their users. In accordance with those assumptions, a number of CIT studies have focused on specific types of online behavior, such as the use of Internet for community participation (Ognyanova et al., 2013) or civic information sharing ( Jung et al., 2013). Instead of the Web in general, studies have also begun examining specific types of digital platforms, such as local news sites (Chen et al., 2012) or social network services ( Jung & Moro, 2014; Kim & Jung, 2016; Kim et al., 2015). This narrower focus will likely persist as it is also driven by grounded community research allowing scholars to identify the devices and platforms which play a particularly important role in the local communication infrastructure. For instance, research may reveal that residents in a community rely primarily on Facebook to interact with each other, as well as to connect to local media and organizations. In that case, studies that examine the facilitating role of Facebook in the community may be more relevant than ones with a broader focus on Internet use. As services and platforms on the Internet and devices connecting to the Internet continue to diversify, this trend is likely to become more prominent. A second key trend involves the changing nature of research exploring the social relevance of new communication technologies. We have observed a shift from early works identifying key Internet activities and functions, through comparisons of online with offline activities and users with non-users, to building on the previously generated knowledge to gain a deeper understanding of the individual and community-level effects of the new technologies. In other words, early research asked how and by whom the technology was used, while more recent work examines the outcomes of that use at multiple levels of analysis (Humphreys, Von Pape & Karnowski, 2013; Loader & Dutton, 2012). We can track a similar trajectory in communication infrastructure research. The initial focus there was on patterns of information inequality and the role of the Internet in local communication ecologies. More recently, there is a stronger emphasis on evaluating the effects of technological connectedness on civic engagement. This stronger focus on civic outcomes is partly driven by a series of engaged scholarship initiatives using online tools to promote social change. Ongoing projects of this kind include the development of digital platforms providing information and engagement opportunities to local residents and community organizers (Broad et al., 2013; Chen et al., 2012; also see Chapters 11 and 12 in this book). Because the design, features, and content of the Web-based platforms

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are informed by research, understanding the impact of online affordances on community outcomes is essential to the success of the projects. Across theoretical traditions, the increased emphasis on civic outcomes will likely promote new research that examines the role of technology as a catalyst of engagement. The capacity of the Internet to accelerate or amplify social processes came to the forefront after a series of recent events in which digital tools were used to support large-scale citizen mobilization efforts (Steinert-Threlkeld, Mocanu, Vespignani, & Fowler, 2015). The Arab Spring (Tufekci & Wilson, 2012), the Occupy movement (Barberá et al., 2015), and the Ferguson protests ( Jackson & Foucault Welles, 2016), for example, have each generated hundreds of academic works and news articles discussing the use of social media for collective action. The volume of research focusing on the facilitating role of technology is also expected to grow, though those works will likely be situated in a different context. The Internet is increasingly incorporated into many aspects of our day to day life. One example of this is the Internet of things, a phrase that refers to the embedding of electronics and network connectivity in everyday objects and devices (cars, appliances, furniture, etc.). Individuals’ increased connectedness to mobile devices, such as smart phones, provides another context for studying the role of the Internet as a facilitator of social practices. As our relationship with technology continues to change, researchers will also need to dedicate more effort to exploring the new ways in which the Internet, as well as specific services and applications, are incorporated into the daily routines of individuals and communities. Third and perhaps most important, technology is becoming an increasingly central part of many theoretical constructs and measures at the micro (individual), meso (local institution), and macro (social system) levels. Much of the research discussed in this chapter has connectivity or online behavior as its main or explanatory variable. Communication technology, however, should also be integrated in a variety of other measures examining the connections among residents, organizations, media sources, local government, political actors, and others. For instance, integrated connection to the storytelling network (ICSN) is a key communication infrastructure index that incorporates interpersonal discussions, connections to local organizations, and geo-ethnic media (Kim et al., 2006). ­Traditionally, measures tracking the scope of media connections have been based on items asking participants to identify the print, radio, and television sources they used to stay on top of their community. In recent analyses, online news outlets, blogs, and social media sites have been added to that list (Chen et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2015; Wilkin, 2013). Items evaluating the other two parts of ICSN (interpersonal discussion and connection to community organizations) remain unchanged from their pre-Internet forms, and present a more serious challenge. People may have face to face or mediated conversations about their community,

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with neighbors they personally know or have only met online (e.g. exchanging comments in a Facebook group or on a news website). Similarly, residents could join a local organization by visiting its office—or they may have an online relationship with it (e.g. by joining a social media group). The current measures do not distinguish between those scenarios, and could potentially be capturing any or all of them. How the questions are interpreted by study participants likely depends on characteristics of the respondent. Research tackling methodological issues of this nature with regard to key communication infrastructure constructs is both necessary and timely. Many of the key outcome variables examined by CIT (civic participation, belonging, individual and collective efficacy, etc.) were also traditionally evaluated based on offline activities. Those constructs have been reexamined in an online format ( Jung et al., 2013; Matei & Ball-Rokeach, 2002; Ognyanova & Ball-Rokeach, 2015; Ognyanova et al., 2013). Still, we see a need for a larger and more cohesive effort to develop online versions of the constructs, and/or integrate Internet-based activities into existing measures. More importantly, as technology changes rapidly, we also need a long-term strategy for generating construct measurement instruments that can capture new forms of relevant behavior while also allowing for comparisons with earlier research. This is a common concern that crosses disciplinary boundaries, and we would argue that communication infrastructure theory and media system dependency are well positioned to address it. One reason for that is that both theories examine the role of technology in the context of personal goals and social structures, rather than focusing on specific features or uses of technology which might change over time. We believe that our review of Internet research within the media system dependency theory and communication infrastructure theory framework, and the identification of facilitating and catalyzing approaches, will serve as a useful resource in designing and developing variables and measures that reflect evolving communication ecologies.

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part three

Communication Infrastructure TheoryBased Community Interventions

chapter nine

The Engaged Communication Scholar Designing CIT-Informed Engaged Research in Diverse Communities george villanueva

Assistant Professor, Loyola University Chicago andrea wenzel

Assistant Professor, Temple University

In 1952 Kurt Lewin wrote, “There is nothing more practical than a good theory” (as cited in Vansteenkiste & Sheldon, 2006, p. 63). According to Lewin, theorists and practitioners should be linked in a symbiotic cycle—theorists developing concepts to understand social problems, and practitioners providing grounded data to validate or rework theory. Such an ethos is relevant today with the revival of “engaged scholarship”—understood as the application of research to society’s most pressing problems (Boyer, 1996; Burawoy, 2005). “Good theory” is needed more than ever as scholars strategize how to engage with urban communities grappling with issues such as poverty, immigrant integration, and equitable urban development. Because the engagement of diverse urban communities is dependent on good communication acts, it is appropriate that engaged scholarship projects are grounded in communication theory that values the complex dynamics of local community actors and geographies. This chapter will offer an illustration of how one good communication theory can provide a strong conceptual foundation for designing engaged research projects. In particular, we reflect on how communication infrastructure theory (CIT) (Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006) and its

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community storytelling network and communication action context concepts informed the design criteria of two engaged research projects. While both projects invited urban community members to positively re-imagine and improve their local neighborhood spaces—the geographic context (South L.A. and the Northeast L.A. riverfront area) and the involved participants dictated variation in how the criteria were applied and the success of their implementation. Based on our findings, we outline implications for the future design of engaged research projects informed by CIT and the role of the communication scholar as an actor in the storytelling networks of urban communities.

Engaged Scholarship’s Renewal The cases of engaged scholarship we explore can best be understood by situating them in the historical arc of the university’s role vis-à-vis communities and social change. One of the most vocal advocates for engaged scholarship, Ernest Boyer, offered a stinging critique of universities that failed to apply their research and resources toward society’s “most pressing social, civic, economic, and moral problems” (Boyer, 1996, p. 11). In Scholarship Reconsidered (1990), Boyer came to the conclusion that universities had evolved into institutions that created irrelevant scholarship and had become a private benefit rather than a public good. In response, Boyer encouraged professors to become “reflective practitioners” concerned with “moving from theory to practice, and from practice back to theory” in order to make theory more “authentic” (Boyer, 1996, p. 17). Engaged scholarship proponents have pointed to a prior time, in the early and mid 20th century, when universities were more concerned with the pressing problems of society (Boyer, 1990; Stoecker, 1999). Then, professors were encouraged by university administrations to contribute to public discourse on social problems such as the application of the New Deal in the 1930’s or the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. They also acknowledged the history of applied and participatory action research in the social sciences, but argued that this form of research has lost favor in the contemporary climate that privileges “pure science” research and abstract theorizing over real-world empiricism and application (Burawoy, 2005; Chevalier & Buckles, 2013). In recent years, there has been an increase of discourse surrounding engaged scholarship methods and design in academic research. Primarily the discussion has strong roots in the literature of public sociology, education studies, social work, community development and planning (Barker, 2004; Burawoy, 2005; ­ ossfeld, ­Chevalier & Buckles, 2013; Fitzgerald, Burack, & Seifer, 2010; Nyden, H & Nyden, 2011; Van De Ven, 2007). Communication theory and research is

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often absent within these volumes. In recognition of this dearth, academics in the area of organizational communication have addressed the need for communication researchers to align their work with the transformative ethos of engaged scholarship (Barge, Simpson, & Shockley-Zalabak, 2008; Frey 2009; Simpson & ­Shockley-Zalabak, 2005). These scholars point to the fruitful exchange between theory and practice when communication scholars immerse themselves within practitioner groups and organizations. This chapter aims to expand upon the potential role of communication in engaged scholarship. In particular, it explores the unique contribution communication infrastructure theory offers for design criteria in engaged communication research in diverse urban communities.

Communication Infrastructure Theory For over a decade, the USC Metamorphosis project has been exploring local communication infrastructures and the dynamics of urban communities in the Los Angeles region of California. The research is grounded in CIT, which states that within a place-based community a communication infrastructure is comprised of two components—the community storytelling network and communication action context (see Kim & Jung, Chapter 1). The community storytelling network consists of three nodes: residents and families, community organizations, and geo-ethnic media (ethnic or local media aimed at particular geographies or ethnicities). Previous CIT interventions have demonstrated the value of strengthening community storytelling networks. For example, after CIT researchers conducted a community survey that showed residents of Alhambra, California had low levels of civic engagement and ethnically-bounded storytelling networks (Chinese, Latino, and White), the project’s journalism arm created the Alhambra Source, a hyperlocal news website (Chen, Dong, ­Ball-Rokeach, Parks, & Huang, 2012). By providing independent local news in three languages, and working with dozens of community contributors to produce stories, the Alhambra Source offered a bridging space for residents from different ethnic backgrounds to engage with each other and community issues— and in some ways helped to shape the agenda of city politics and regional media (see Chen, Liu, Ognyanova, & Moreno, Chapter 11). In CIT terms, the site worked towards strengthening connections between geo-ethnic media, residents, and community organizations. In another project, communication researchers created MetaConnects, a “translational” website that made academic research accessible for community practitioners (Broad et al., 2013). Website content was informed by focus groups with

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practitioners from community organizations who reflected upon what communitybased research tools would have practical value for them. Guided by CIT, the site sought to strengthen storytelling network links between community organizations and residents by giving organizers tools to assess residents’ needs, and to strengthen links between organizations and researchers, who were also contributing to community storytelling networks. The site has assisted organizations and researchers from as close as its home city of Los Angeles and as far as Greenwich, England1 to use research tools such as communication asset mapping in ­community-based projects. CIT’s communication action context allows the theory to account for the workings of space and place. It is comprised of physical and psychological features of the environment that affect communication. These environmental aspects include working conditions, schools, parks, public safety, and other factors that promote or inhibit connecting to storytelling networks (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006). With respect to research on psychological aspects, the concept of the communication action context has been applied to previous community research that created a mental mapping exercise to examine Los Angeles residents’ perceptions of fear and comfort in different areas of the city based on their racial backgrounds and areas of residence (Matei & Ball-Rokeach, 2005). It has also been applied to identify community spaces where public health campaigns can more effectively reach minority communities (Matsaganis & Golden, 2015; Wilkin, Stringer, O’Quin, Montgomery, & Hunt, 2011), and to identify communication assets or spaces with the potential to be harnessed for social change initiatives in low-income communities (Villanueva, Broad, Gonzalez, Ball-Rokeach, & Murphy, 2016; Stokes, Villanueva, Bar, & Ball-Rokeach, 2015). A key aspect of CIT that connects previous studies and the projects described in this chapter is its focus on “storytelling” as a pathway to building stronger and more cohesive communities and neighborhoods (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001). Emphasizing storytelling draws attention to critical symbolic resources such as a local communication infrastructure. All too often, these are overlooked by projects and actors focusing on political, economic, and physical infrastructures. The emphasis on storytelling is consistent with arguments that symbolic and media power (Couldry & Curran, 2003) are key features of contemporary society—with narratives playing a critical role in human struggles over politics, land, identity, and other social issues. In the projects examined in this study, storytelling was central to the objective of positively re-imagining community spaces. Storytelling itself was an outcome and part of the knowledge and community materials produced. While research and data collection were priorities of the engaged research methodological designs, the projects also highlighted the presentation of public-facing storytelling narratives.

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Engaged Scholars as Community Storytelling Actors As hinted by past CIT projects such as MetaConnects (Broad et al., 2013), communication scholars themselves play a role in the community storytelling network. The theorization of CIT is extended by accounting for engaged scholarship’s integration of communication scholars within a storytelling network actively seeking to promote social change in communities. This observation is consistent with Matsaganis, Golden, and Scott’s (2014) study that described their role as university researchers as being “interstitial actors” within a storytelling network advocating to reduce minority disparities in a reproductive health project in an East Coast community. In their project the interstitial work consisted of connecting individual residents within the study area to community organizations looking to deliver health services to appropriate communities of need (see also Wilkin, Matsaganis, & Golden, Chapter 10). Our experiences as engaged scholars in the two projects described in this chapter reflect similar roles as “interstitial actors” aiming to connect different community storytelling network actors within the study areas. In our case, this interstitial work also involved leadership roles within the projects. Oftentimes, there is a temptation in community research projects to avoid discussing the role of the researcher, positioning them as an invisible if not objective actor. The role researchers play in shaping the direction of engaged projects is often muted in order to claim that community members did all the work themselves, when the reality was a collaboration (Fitzgerald et al., 2010). In our experience, it is more honest and more productive to acknowledge that researchers can play important and constructive roles as interstitial actors within community storytelling networks. At the same time, we acknowledge that communication scholars that insert themselves in the community storytelling network of engaged research projects face challenges that have historically faced scholars from other disciplines that engage in participatory research (Fitzgerald et al., 2010; Minkler, 2000; Strand, Marullo, Cutforth, Stoecker, & Donohue, 2003). For engaged scholars to insert themselves in the community storytelling network, trust-building is required, which in turn takes time. The engaged scholar must strike a difficult balance of expectations between teaching, advising, university committees and service, reviewing colleagues’ manuscripts submitted for publication consideration, research, publishing, writing grants, etc.—and being actively engaged in communities. Even once trust is established with communities, relationships must be maintained, skills must be built, and findings must be shared in ways that are useful for the communities engaged (Fitzgerald et al. 2010; Minkler, 2000).

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Project Backgrounds and Methods The setting for both cases were areas of Los Angeles—South L.A. and Northeast L.A. (NELA). Residents of both areas collectively perceived the areas as regional neighborhoods of the city, and both were designated “community plan areas” by Los Angeles’ Department of City Planning. Public recognition of neighborhood boundaries was important to ensure that the research team shared a geographic justification for their work with community stakeholders. Both areas were for the most part low-income, ethnically diverse, and have historically been stigmatized in media and other public discourse (Gottlieb, 2007; Ong, Firestine, Pfeiffer, Poon, & Tran, 2008). The first project, South L.A. Democratic Spaces,2 involved working with community organizers from 15 different social change focused community organizations in South L.A. (see Table 9.1). The goal of this project was to uncover spaces of community-building that challenged the mainstream narrative that South L.A. lacked positive spaces for local democracy in action and turn discourse towards the positive re-imagination of stigmatized urban spaces. Negative storytelling about South L.A. focused on its persistent poverty and widely held perceptions that it was an area characterized by social disorder (Ong et al., 2008). The second project, the NELA Riverfront Collaborative3 was a multi-sector partnership between L.A. City government agencies, non-profit organizations, private development and design firms, university research centers, and public media (see Table 9.2). At the heart of this project was what had become an environmental and land-use development asset for NELA, the L.A. River (Gottlieb, 2007). The project built upon interest in revitalizing the L.A. River by engaging the local neighborhoods in the creation of a community-informed Vision Plan policy document for a NELA Riverfront District. NELA was subject to intense neighborhood change discussions due to real estate speculation on and around the river. Therefore, our engaged research project focused on informing the NELA Riverfront Collaborative’s policy goals through community-based research, workshops, and events that brought community concerns and visions for development into the fold. This meant working with the Collaborative’s partners on ­community-based research that collected community input on the future revitalization of the River and the adjacent neighborhoods in NELA. CIT and community-based participatory research principles (Minkler, 2000; Minkler, Vásquez, Tajik, & Petersen, 2008) informed the design of the two projects. First, we ensured the projects were place-based by paying attention to the geographic boundaries generally accepted by the residents and the local everyday experiences they collectively lived. Second, the projects were change-oriented, taking the position that community itself can be constructed through local storytelling

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Table 9.1.  Community Organizer Gender, Organizations, and their Identified D ­ emocratic Spaces in South Los Angeles. Democratic Space Identified

Organizer Organization

Organization Focus

Female

Peace Over Violence

Domestic and Commu- South L.A. Youth Council nity Violence Reduction

Male

Los Angeles Community Action Network

Poverty Elimination, Housing Rights, and Poor People Empowerment

Los Angeles Community Action Network

Female

Children’s Nature Institute

Urban Nature Advocacy for Youth and Families

Marine Tank at Children’s Nature Institute

Male

24th Street Theatre

Arts Education and Engagement

24th Street Theatre

Female

CD Tech

Equitable Community L.A. Trade Tech CommuEconomic Development nity Planning Class

Male

T.R.U.S.T. South L.A.

Equitable Economic Development and Mobility Justice

The Streets/ South L.A. CicLAvia Hub

Female

Strategic Actions for a Just Economy

Economic Justice and Affordable Housing

Strategic Actions for a Just Economy Headquarters

Female

Esperanza Housing Corporation

Equitable Community Mercado La Paloma Economic Development

Female

Community Services Unlimited

Food Justice and Urban Agriculture

Earth Day South L.A.

Male

Strategic Concepts for Organizing and Policy Education

Policy Advocacy and Grassroots Base Building

William & Carol Ouchi High School

Male

Community Financial Financial Community Financial Resource and Small Business Center (Now RISE) Empowerment

Mobile Street Food Vendors

Female

L.A. Black Workers Center

L.A. Black Workers Center

Female

Community Coalition Social and Economic Policy Advocacy

Community Coalition Headquarters

Female

Advancement Project Civil and Racial Justice

Watts Mafundi Mural

Female

Trust for Public Land Parks Advocacy and Development

Monitor Avenue Park

Economic and Racial Justice for African-American Workers

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Table 9.2.  Organizations that Made Up the Northeast Los Angeles Riverfront Collaborative. Organization

Sector

Collaborative Role

L.A. City Economic and Workforce Development Department

Public Government

Economic and workforce development

L.A. City Department of City Planning

Public Government

Land-use and transportation planning

L.A. City Bureau of Engineering

Public Government

Public works and civil engineering

National Park Service

Federal Government

Public parks and environment

Los Angeles Conservation Corps

Non-Profit

Environment and youth workforce development

Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation

Non-Profit

Economic development and market studies

Los Angeles River Revitalization Corporation (Now River LA)

Non-Profit

Economic development and community engagement

LA-Más

Non-Profit

Urban design and placemaking

Tierra West Advisors

Private

Economic development

The Robert Group

Private

Public affairs and outreach

Mia Lehrer & Associates

Private

Urban design and placemaking

Dake + Luna Consultants

Private

Urban design and placemaking

KCET Departures

Public Media

Local media storytelling and engagement

Urban Environmental Policy Institute, Occidental College

University

Food policy research

Metamorphosis Project, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

University

Community engagement research

and discourses of community change. Third, we made the projects collaborative and considered the participatory inclusion of local stakeholders within the storytelling network. This was done through partnerships that sought to revitalize the identified project areas. Fourth, projects were designed to be translational—that is they aimed to share knowledge in ways that were accessible to their audiences.

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This meant creating materials for stakeholders to circulate within their community storytelling networks. The South L.A. Democratic Spaces project primarily employed the methods of participant-observation, semi-structured interviews, communication asset mapping, multimedia work, and public community exhibits (see Table 9.3). The NELA Riverfront Collaborative project used participant observation, resident surveys, small business surveys, communication asset mapping, media-monitoring and focus groups with residents, small businesses, local media, and Collaborative partners (see Table 9.4). For this chapter, we primarily draw from our own participant-observation as members of the Metamorphosis project that served as the university research center lead for two projects implemented in two different study areas (Villanueva, 2017; Table 9.3.  South L.A. Democratic Spaces Data Collection with Community Organizers. Data Collection Method

Purpose

Semi-structured interviews (n = 15)

Gather data on organizers’ social justice work and how they connect urban space in South L.A. to their work.

Communication asset mapping

Create a print and multimedia map of organizer-­identified spaces that highlighted communicative aspects and illustrated how spaces were sites of community-building, democratic activity, and social change campaigns in South L.A.

Multimedia work

Collaborative work with multimedia journalist partner to produce video and photographs of organizers speaking about their South L.A. Democratic Spaces. The videos were edited into short pieces to be shared with community networks.

Public community exhibit

A public exhibit that showcased the print map, videos, and photographs in the lobby of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism located in South L.A. Community organizers were featured during the opening night of the exhibit at an event with South L.A. community members and the university community. The exhibit was open to the public for 18 months. Additionally, the multimedia work was shared on the MetaConnects translational research website, where it still lives today.

Participant observation

Researchers were participant observers at various community sites that community organizers highlighted and at different community events throughout the project. This helped contextualize the findings that researchers were gathering through the other methods.

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Table 9.4.  NELA Riverfront Collaborative Project Data Collection Sources and Purposes. Subject of Study Data Collection Methods Purpose Residents

Survey (n = 666) and two Gather data on residents’ visions and focus groups (n = 14). concerns for the revitalization of their neighborhoods and the L.A. River.

Small Businesses Survey (n = 75) and focus Gather data on small business’ visions and group (n = 6). concerns for revitalization of the NELA neighborhoods and the L.A. River. Local Media

Media monitoring and local media focus group (n = 6).

Media monitoring of online news sources was conducted to monitor the discussion of urban development in NELA and the L.A. River during the life of the project. A focus group was held with local media producers to further examine whether the media coverage was building a sense of community in the study area.

Collaborative Partners

Participant observation and focus group (n = 10).

Participant observation as a university partner was conducted throughout the project as we helped write the grant, develop project goals, and implement the project. A follow up focus group was held with the partners to specifically assess lessons learned from the cross-sector collaboration and the engaged communication research contribution to the project’s community engagement objectives.

Urban Environment

Communication asset mapping and participant observation.

Mapped spaces in the study area to indicate communicative aspects of community-building and potential for social change activity to take place. Participant observation at various community events throughout the project’s life span was conducted to further contextualize the research team’s analysis of the data sources.

Villanueva, Gonzalez, Son, Moreno, Liu, and Ball-Rokeach, 2017). Hereon, we reflect on how CIT guided both projects in identifying key neighborhood story­ tellers and how we accessed the existing storytelling network to collect data and disseminate findings within the communities targeted for revitalization. Lastly, we conclude with implications that CIT has for future engaged research projects and lessons learned.

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Connecting to Key Neighborhood Storytellers The South L.A. project built off the research team’s previous knowledge that South L.A. was comprised of community-building initiatives that demonstrated everyday spaces of democracy in action. Because CIT posits that community organizations occupy a key node of the community storytelling network, the project focused on working with community organizers and social change oriented organizations in South L.A. Showcasing the range of social and economic justice work these organizations were doing in South L.A. demonstrated the high concentration of community-building taking place, even when compared to other areas of Los Angeles with more resources (Ong et al., 2008). Community organizers also had a wealth of knowledge and experience connecting with the other important nodes of the South L.A. community storytelling network. As part of their efforts on social change campaigns in the area, these organizers often worked to build capacity among local residents and served as spokespersons when local media reported on their organization’s advocacy issues. For example, many organizers were involved in leadership building programs that sought to empower everyday residents with the knowledge and tactics needed to advocate for resources in their neighborhoods. Organizers understood how to connect with residents and could identify spaces within South L.A. that were effective sites for organizing work. For example one organizer selected Mercado La Paloma, a market space that served as a hub for local business entrepreneurship, but also offered facilities so community organizations could host meetings with residents to learn about social change campaigns. Regarding local media, many of these community organizers had experience pitching stories and being interviewed about their advocacy campaigns. Many of the organizers, for example, participated in a coalition called UNIDAD (United Neighbors in Defense Against Displacement). The coalition lobbied the local university (USC) to consider how low-income residents living around the university would be affected by their revitalization and expansion plans. Many of these organizers received media training so that they could more effectively advocate for mutually beneficial redevelopment policies. CIT also guided the NELA Riverfront Collaborative project in identifying neighborhood storytellers that we researched as part of the community engagement goals of the project. The theory helped to guide our selection of residents, small businesses, and local media that we engaged from the five different neighborhoods within NELA. Hence, the work attempted to connect the different community storytelling networks in the regional study area through the various methods we used to research the actors within the neighborhoods of study.

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Additionally, the Collaborative project itself formed a kind of storytelling network by bringing together partners coming from different storytelling nodes (community organizations, local media, etc.). As a federally grant funded collaboration put together by the City of Los Angeles’s Economic Workforce ­Development Department—project partners came from multiple sectors, including community organizations, private firms, local media, university researchers, and local government. Many actors came from sectors entrenched in practices and language that were principally used within their own fields. For example, private economic developers and public media had little experience being at the same table when working on issues related to neighborhoods and urban development. Likewise, university research centers and individual academics were rarely publically engaged with practitioners and the community. Instituting collaboration for this project became a significant aspect of our work. We built in several strategic meetings and working sessions to bring partners into the design, administration, and analysis stages of the community-based research work. Our research team engaged the partners in the design and collaborative administration of the community-based research. Since this particular project was policy-focused, our research methods and questions were aimed at gathering community concerns and visions about future development of the River and the adjacent NELA neighborhoods. Through our meetings with the Collaborative partners, we agreed that as part of the community engagement goals of the planning project, community-based research was needed in order to gather input on revitalization visions for the NELA neighborhoods and L.A. River. The primary storytellers that we all agreed to research in the community were residents, businesses, community organizations interested in river revitalization, and other local media producers. In essence, a common language and working relationship needed to be built among all partners involved in the multi-sector collaborative. This led to the development of resident and business surveys that we administered in the community, community workshops where we invited residents and community organizations to give input on future riverfront development, and a focus group with local media producers to understand how the area and development was being discussed by media.

Telling Community Stories Both of our case projects included a focus on translating research by working with a combination of existing and new community storytellers. Storytelling efforts aimed to use the research collected in each case to contribute to the positive re-imagination of both areas. In some instances, projects attempted to strengthen

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ties between actors in local storytelling networks (for example between residents and community organizations). At other moments, projects focused on building the capacity of storytelling actors—like working with community organizations to make their stories more visible. Because of the different actors involved and different goals of the projects, the translational work took different forms in terms of the final materials produced for the public. Recognizing the important role that local media play within a community storytelling network, for the South L.A. Democratic Spaces project, we collaborated with media production partners—the hyper-local news website Intersections South L.A., website developers, and print map designers. We created multimedia videos, online photos, and print and digital maps that highlighted community organizer identified democratic spaces in which community-building and social change activities were taking place. This content was then distributed within the community storytelling network through various media and interpersonal communication platforms. These included Intersections South L.A.’s website, our translational research website MetaConnects, print maps to be distributed through interpersonal networks, and a public exhibit launching the project on our university campus in South L.A. The free public exhibit provided a venue for community organizers to share their knowledge of social change work in South L.A. with the university community and local residents. Given USC’s location within the South L.A. geography, much of the project’s storytelling and translation work focused on bridging the gap between the university community and the cadre of community organizations working to create a better South L.A. This included sharing research and stories about local South L.A. spaces that could be accessed for outreach and social change work by practitioners, community-based researchers, and university and non-university affiliated community members. This follows our previous discussion on the importance of engaged research and universities embedding themselves within local community storytelling networks in order to influence local actors and potentially shift discourse surrounding stigmatized neighborhoods. Because the NELA Riverfront Collaborative project was led by the City’s Economic and Workforce Development Department, the translational work of the Collaborative focused on policy documents that could be distributed within storytelling networks interested in public policy implications. Through the combined efforts of project partners, the Collaborative produced a NELA Riverfront Vision Plan. This Vision Plan was informed by the community-based research overseen by our research group. The research shared community concerns and visions for development of the riverfront neighborhoods. These informed the policy recommendations for a proposed riverfront district. The Vision Plan was presented through multiple media formats to the public that included print versions handed out at public government and community meetings. Throughout the two

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year project our local media partner KCET Departures had also maintained an online multimedia website for the NELA Riverfront Collaborative project—documenting and reporting the work of the collaborative. Once the Vision Plan was finished, it was also digitally distributed through this public media website for the community to further comment on and discuss online. Similar to the South L.A. project, our engaged work with the NELA Riverfront Collaborative placed an emphasis on the significance of local media outlets and interpersonal communication networks as valuable platforms to translate the research into local stories. Lastly, in addition to local media outreach, the NELA Riverfront Collaborative produced a publication called NELA Riverfront Collaborative Lessons Learned and Community Engagement Toolkit.4 The document aimed to offer similar multi-sector urban planning initiatives guidance on engaging and bridging multiple community stakeholders in planning initiatives. The toolkit demonstrated how such community engagement objectives could be accomplished through the approaches to community-based research that we implemented for the project.

Discussion and Conclusions The cases we have explored in this chapter illustrate the value of using communication theory, and CIT in particular, to develop engaged research projects (see Wilkin et al., Chapter 10 and Broad, Chapter 12). Beyond strengthening the design of specific projects, we believe there are implications for the broader field of engaged scholarship. In particular, we explore implications regarding the pathway CIT offers communication scholars seeking to promote social change. Returning to Lewin’s earlier statement, we argue that CIT is an accessible “good theory” that can be applied to communication research in, and with, diverse urban communities. One of the theory’s strengths is that it values the knowledge and experiences of existing storytelling actors—e.g., residents and organizations— as the true experts of their communities. As a theory that pays attention to local community storytelling networks and the urban communication environment, CIT offers a solid foundation for a research framework and methods. CIT also provides a jumping off point to engage in critical discourse with fellow researchers and a wider community of practitioners. This allows communication scholars and university research centers the opportunity to use an existing theoretical platform to extend communication’s role in engaged scholarship work. Community organization and collaborative participants in the two case studies offered testimonials of how participating in the engaged research projects was beneficial to their work. In individual post-project interviews, participating organizers of the South L.A. Democratic Spaces project said the project allowed them

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to see themselves within a broader cadre of community organizations advocating for a better South L.A. This illustrates that CIT informed projects can strengthen connections between community organizers and organizations that make up the local community storytelling networks of lower-income neighborhoods. In the case of the NELA Riverfront Collaborative, the research team conducted a post-­ evaluation focus group with the collaborative partners to assess their impressions of the community-based research conducted for the project. City staff and private economic development firms expressed appreciation for the gathering of community-sourced visions of redevelopment for the L.A. River and the surrounding neighborhoods. Such research was rarely a priority for the city or private firms because of the time, money, and the robust outreach required to incorporate community-based research with residents, small businesses, community organizations, and local media. Here, CIT informed research activities strengthened connections between the community storytelling networks of the collaborative project. Both studies also offer a major lesson for communication researchers about their role within the local community storytelling networks of engaged research projects. In both projects there was a need not only to produce research but also to manage collaborations amongst different community organizations and partners. As active participants in storytelling networks, communication researchers may be required to take more active leadership roles in applying CIT and other relevant communication theories to issues of community change. In other words, communication scholars who wish to be relevant to social and community change discourses must not stop at being researchers only. They will need to take on active leadership roles that require them to be present in the communities in which they seek to effect positive change. This also requires substantial relationship-­building work. Relationships create opportunities for listening and the development of trust with community practitioners in storytelling networks oriented towards social change in their respective localities. A final implication for the communication researcher is the transformative personal outcomes that come from participating in engaged scholarship. Just as researchers shape the storytelling network, so does the storytelling network influence the researcher. This experience can yield a more robust reflexivity about the intersections of theory and practice. In our cases, community-based scholarly practice grounded in CIT fostered more grounded understandings of the theory’s relationship to real-world phenomenon. This is important because it prompts the scholar to reflect empirically on how we apply what we know, and what is the relationship between theoretical knowledge and who we are. The two projects allowed us to put CIT into action within two different engaged scholarship projects. From this we could see how our methods and practices needed to be adapted to adhere to the communication theory and be responsive to the varied

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storytelling network actors and communication action contexts of each project. This in turn allowed us to reflect back on CIT, now with more empirical flesh on its theoretical bones. Ultimately, comparing these two engaged research projects that sought to reimagine urban space for positive social change has solidified our belief that communication scholars and CIT-based research and interventions can contribute to the robust field of engaged scholarship. These case studies applying CIT sparked broader interactions between academic researchers, community organizations, and policymakers in the study areas. For communication scholars interested in engaged research in communities, the theory offered valuable approaches to engage communities in the production of knowledge that was later reported in translational materials. CIT advises scholars to design engaged research projects that are responsive to place-based storytelling networks and the discursive practices of multiple stakeholders in order to transform local communication action contexts for the better.

Notes 1. Greenwich, England Media & Communications department application of “communication asset mapping”: http://blogs.gre.ac.uk/media/2016/02/20/communication-assetmapping-in-practice/ 2. South L.A. Democratic Spaces was funded by a Cal Humanities’ ‘Community Stories grant’. 3. The NELA Riverfront Collaborative was funded by a Federal HUD-DOT-EPA Partnership for Sustainable ‘community challenge grant’ that the L.A. City Economic and Workforce Development Department served as the local lead applicant agency for the project’s administration locally. 4. Find both the NELA RC Vision Plan and Community Engagement Toolkit here: http:// www.metaconnects.org/findings/northeast-los-angeles-riverfront-collaborative-2

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Stoecker, R. (1999). Are academics irrelevant? American Behavioral Scientist, 42(5), 840–854. Stokes, B., Villanueva, G., Bar, F., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2015). Mobile design as neighborhood accupuncture: Activating the storytelling networks of South L.A. Journal of Urban Technology, 22(3), 55–77. Strand, K., Marullo, S., Cutforth, N., Stoecker, R., & Donohue, P. (2003). Community-based research and higher education: Principles and practices. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley and Sons. Van De Ven, A. (2007). Engaged scholarship: A guide for organizational and social research. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vansteenkiste, M., & Sheldon, K. M. (2006). There’s nothing more practical than a good theory: Integrating motivational interviewing and self-determination theory. The British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 45(Pt 1), 63–82. Villanueva, G. (2017) Embodying democratic spaces: Community organizer alternative narratives that challenge the mainstream negative stigma of South Los Angeles. In J. Banh & M. King (Eds.), Anthropology of Los Angeles: City, image, and politics. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Villanueva, G., Broad, G., Gonzalez, C., Ball-Rokeach, S., & Murphy, S. (2016). Communication asset mapping: An ecological field application toward building healthy communities. International Journal of Communication, 10, 2704–2724. Villanueva, G., Gonzalez, C., Son, M., Moreno, E., Liu, W., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2017). Bringing local voices into community revitalization: Engaged communication research in urban planning. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 45(5), 474–494. Wilkin, H. A., Stringer, K. A., O’Quin, K., Montgomery, S. A., & Hunt, K. (2011). Using communication infrastructure theory to formulate a strategy to locate “hard-to-reach” research participants. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 39(2), 201–213.

chapter ten

Implementing Communication Infrastructure TheoryBased Strategies in Community Health Access Interventions Lessons Learned from Two Projects in Two Cities holley a . wilkin

Associate Professor, Georgia State University matthew d . matsaganis

Associate Professor, Rutgers University annis golden

Associate Professor, University at Albany, State University of New York

Health disparities are intractable problems, but there is evidence that communitybased health interventions can help reduce such inequalities. For example, community-based interventions carried out by community-based organizations or by academic research teams in collaboration with such organizations and other community stakeholders have been successful in improving access to and utilization of resources at the local level (e.g., Anderson, 2004; Stephens, Rimal, & Flora, 2004). Community-based organizations1 (CBOs) can bring resources

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into communities in the form of health services, transportation assistance for accessing health services, health education, and facilitation of enrollment in programs to pay for healthcare. However, one of the challenges that especially local health and human service organizations identify as most challenging in fulfilling their mission is connecting with the very populations they seek to serve (Golden, 2014; Wilkin, Stringer, O’Quinn, Hunt, & Montgomery, 2011). This lack of consistent connection between community residents and CBOs can be construed as a problem of communication between two different levels of a community: the meso-level of the local health and human service organizations and the micro-level of the residents (Baffour & Chonody, 2009; Lounsbury & Mitchell, 2009). In this chapter, we analyze and compare two multiyear and multimethod research-driven interventions that were designed to address healthcare access disparities in two different urban communities. In both cases, a communicative disjuncture between the local system of CBOs, at the meso-level, and residents, at the micro-level, was identified as a significant determinant of health disparities and, therefore, repairing this disjuncture was a key goal for both interventions. One of these projects took place in a large Southeastern U.S. city and aimed to redirect non-emergency patients to a primary healthcare clinic in their community. The other project unfolded in a small Northeastern U.S. city and was designed to increase utilization of reproductive healthcare services among African American women. Both interventions were guided by communication infrastructure theory (CIT) and principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR). A distinctive feature of CBPR is that community members play an active role in the design and implementation of research projects and interventions (Minkler & Wallerstein, 2008). Our goal here is to discuss the unique lessons learned from each intervention, but also to take advantage of the opportunity to compare two interventions, which had key characteristics in common (a focus on health disparities and urban communities, informed by the same theory), even though they were developed independently. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for future, research-driven health communication interventions aimed at reducing health disparities in urban settings, but also for the application of CIT in different urban community contexts.

Communication Infrastructure Theory and Health Every urban community has a communication infrastructure. According to CIT, this infrastructure comprises two elements: the storytelling system and the

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communication action context (i.e., factors that enable or constrain connections between storytelling agents). The storytelling system includes macro- (social system), meso- (local/community), and micro- (individual) level stakeholders. Macro-level stakeholders include, for instance, national media and government agencies whose work and stories go beyond the local community or city (e.g., to the region or country). However, research suggests that within place-based communities, the role of residents in their individual social networks (micro-level), local community organizations, and local/ethnic media (meso-level) that tell stories about the local community are of particular importance (­Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001). Together they comprise the local storytelling network. Previous research has demonstrated that individuals’ integrated connection to the storytelling network (ICSN)—i.e., the extent to which “critical neighborhood storytellers, such as local media, community organizations, and talking with other neighbors, are integrated in individuals’ everyday lives”—is positively associated with civic engagement outcomes (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006, p. 412; see also Kim & Jung, Chapter 1; Kim, Chapter 3). When conducting interventions, there is a natural connection between CIT and CBPR methods, which involves partnering with community members who tend to be highly civically engaged, and thus, have more established connections with local storytellers. A distinctive feature of CBPR is that community members play an active role in the design and implementation of research projects and interventions (­Minkler & Wallerstein, 2008). CBPR is compatible with CIT in part because CBPR emphasizes partnerships between research teams, residents, and community organizations; in effect, it supports the notion of building and leveraging a storytelling network to achieve a project’s goals. However, it also adds to existing CIT work in the sense that it guides researchers to actually take advantage of the storytelling network relationships that exist and allows residents and organizations to shape the intervention itself.

Integrated Connection to the Storytelling Network and Health Health-focused research based on CIT has found a positive relationship between ICSN and likelihood to perform emergency preparedness behaviors (Kim & Kang, 2010), knowledge about preventing and detecting breast cancer and diabetes (Kim, Moran, Wilkin, & Ball-Rokeach, 2011), and amount of exercise (Wilkin, Katz, Ball-Rokeach, & Hether, 2015). These findings suggest that health interventions designed to strengthen the connections between residents and other neighborhood storytellers—e.g., with meso-level community actors like local media and CBOs that provide health information and resources—could

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help improve health outcomes (Wilkin, 2013). Matsaganis, Golden, and Scott (2014) show how links between community actors can be strengthened (or communication disjunctures repaired) by fostering the development of bridging agents between the micro- and meso-levels; they refer to these agents as “interstitial” actors. Interstitial actors may perform their bridging activities while functioning primarily as meso-level actors, as is the case, for example, with university research projects, which have a clear organizational identity. But interstitial actors may also have both micro- and meso-level characteristics, as is the case with community health workers (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, 2015), when they are residents of the community where an intervention is implemented and members of an organized initiative with a recognizable identity. Matsaganis et al. (2014) refer to these agents as “liminal” interstitial actors and note that they can be particularly effective as storytelling network bridging agents as they help connect neighborhood storytellers at the micro- and meso-levels. However, it is important to note that the relationship between ICSN and health is more complex than the abovementioned studies might suggest. This is apparent in a line of research based on CIT that has focused on access to health resources in urban communities. Wilkin and Ball-Rokeach (2011), for example, found a positive relationship between ICSN and perceived ease of receiving medical care living in one area of Los Angeles. However, in a study of another community, Matsaganis and Wilkin (2014) found that a negative relationship between ICSN and perceived access to health-enhancing resources emerged when health insurance and health status were included as covariates. This latter study was situated in South Los Angeles neighborhoods where Latino-origin and African American residents made up 88% of the population, and where residents had witnessed, over several years, the closing of several local healthcare facilities. These closures were featured prominently in the local media and community protests aimed to keeping facilities open. From a CIT perspective, residents with higher ICSN scores would have been the ones most likely to have heard the news and be aware of the problems the community was facing with regard to healthcare resource access. For those who were most likely to be affected by the healthcare closures—i.e., residents in poorer health and those that lacked health insurance—stronger connections to the storytelling network may have made them recognize that access to health-enhancing resources would become an even greater problem. This line of work on access to health resources illustrates the importance of the types of stories told through the storytelling network and highlights other factors (in this case health insurance and poor health status) that may influence health outcomes.

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The Role of the Communication Action Context in Health CIT tells us that health outcomes do not only depend on ICSN, but also on the local communication action context (CAC). In the CAC we find a host of factors that are either directly implicated in health (e.g., the presence or absence of adequate health and human service providers) or play a role indirectly by influencing the storytelling network (e.g., fewer health and human service organizations could mean that less health information that is relevant to the local community is available through the local storytelling network). The ongoing interplay between storytelling network and CAC leads to the emergence of what Matsaganis and Golden (2015) refer to as a field of health action; that is, a socio-material context, comprising a place-specific set of structural conditions and interpretive resources, within which residents may be more or less inclined to seek particular kinds of healthcare services and more or less inclined to respond favorably to a health promotion intervention. (p. 168)

Important features of this field of health action include communication hotspots and comfort zones (Wilkin et al., 2011). Communication hotspots are places where residents naturally gather to talk (e.g., parks, bus stops), whereas comfort zones are community institutions and organizations (e.g., churches, schools, community centers, health centers) to which residents feel closely connected. Both of these are elements of the field of health action, as they have a material presence in the community (as elements of the local communication action context) and they are socially constructed (in the storytelling network) as places where residents feel comfortable being in and interacting with others. These two features of the field of health action are important from an intervention perspective because they represent spaces that facilitate interaction between researchers and community actors, but also among community actors. The following sections describe how each health intervention project drew upon CIT-based research in efforts to improve healthcare access.

Intervention Project #1: 9-1-1 Project, Atlanta, GA The city of Atlanta is divided into Neighborhood Planning Units (NPUs) that act as citizen advisory councils to the city government. In 2005 a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project, Accountable Communities, Healthy Together (ACHT), held community listening sessions in an NPU south of downtown

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Atlanta where residents were disproportionately affected by a variety of chronic health issues (e.g., diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and cholesterol, physical and mental disabilities, and obesity [Dopkins & Torian, 2004]). While the residents decided to focus on mental health issues and making improvements to the built environment, researchers also noted that several community members indicated relying on 9-1-1 for medical care, despite the presence of a federally qualified health center located within the area. A look at the hospital call data indicated that the NPU, and those surrounding it, contributed to the highest percentage of calls to 9-1-1 for non-emergencies. Community leaders agreed that primary healthcare access was a concern that needed to be addressed. The 9-1-1 Project formed as a subproject of the larger ACHT project. The project’s primary goal was to identify and address the barriers residents faced to using primary healthcare services located in their community. The intervention area had approximately 16,000 residents; with 92% African Americans and 54% women. There was a high unemployment rate (20% compared to 14% city-wide) and 68% of the household incomes were lower than $25,000. Residents were also less likely to own homes (21%) and high school graduation rates (28%) were lower than in other parts of Atlanta (Dopkins & Torian, 2004). While healthcare access was a problem for the majority of residents, the research project initially sought to identify those residents who were using 9-1-1 for medical care to interview about their healthcare seeking knowledge and practices, to identify ways to reduce the barriers to seeking primary healthcare, and to enroll them in a healthcare assistance program at the health center. CIT-based strategies, described below, were used to identify residents that were using the hospital for non-emergency healthcare instead of the health center (for more details see: Wilkin et al., 2011). Additionally, the project aimed to strengthen ties between the health center and other community actors; i.e., for the health center to become part of the local storytelling network. Figure 10.1 illustrates the different phases of the project.

Strengthening Storytelling Network Connections and Leveraging Them for Outreach The 9-1-1 Project hired local residents to work part time on the project as community health workers2 (CHWs) and as a videographer.3 The CHWs identified key neighborhood storytellers and helped identify communication hotspots and comfort zones for our outreach efforts. One of the primary goals of the CHWs was to strengthen the ties between the health center and residents. Using Matsaganis et al.’s (2014) terminology, the CHWs served as liminal interstitial actors;

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Figure 10.1.  The 9-1-1 Project in Atlanta, GA: Progression of Storytelling Network Integration.

i.e., as bridging agents between the micro- and meso-levels, with characteristics of both levels. The CHWs worked out of office space at the health center. They collaborated with the health center’s marketing and communication department on strategies to become part of the local storytelling network, including participation in community meetings, providing health screenings at community events and health fairs, hosting a health fair, advertising the immunization drive before the school year began, and reaching out through the CHWs’ social networks to discuss the services offered at the health center. CHWs also worked with the health center to make changes based upon feedback received from community forum discussions conducted by the research project.4 For example, while the doctors and medical services were generally viewed positively, some residents indicated that they stopped using the health center due to poor interactions with intake workers (Wilkin, Cohen, & Tannebaum, 2012). As a result, the health center implemented training programs and reassigned intake workers as needed within each of the clinics.

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In addition to helping the health center become an active part of the local storytelling network, the CHWs prompted discussion about the 9-1-1 Project through existing storytellers (e.g., community newsletter, community phone tree, local newspaper and through the neighborhood meetings, the churches, and schools). The CHWs were also involved with strengthening connections between local storytellers to prompt more neighborhood discussion about our project. For example, the 9-1-1 Project CHWs shared information with CHWs working on other health projects and/or working with community organizations in order to coordinate their respective outreach efforts. As a result, when the 9-1-1 Project CHWs were enrolling residents into the healthcare assistance program and learned a family member had asthma, the CHW would provide information about ZapAsthma project. The CHWs also provided information about other community resources (e.g., to help find employment) as appropriate. Likewise, the people working for the other health projects and organizations would tell the people they were working with about the 9-1-1 Project. If someone were to stop in for an appointment with one of the community organizations (for example, there is one that focuses on black women’s health issues) then they would also learn about the 9-1-1 Project and the healthcare assistance program at the health center.

Using Communication Hotspots and Comfort Zones The CHWs identified comfort zones and communication hotspots within the neighborhoods. With the permission of owners/managers, project information was distributed through parks, recreation centers, libraries, hair dressers, convenience stores and other shops, and the local YMCA. In addition, mini health fairs were held at places within the community in which there was high foot traffic. Residents received free blood pressure screenings, water and snacks, health educational materials, information about the health center, and were asked to complete a brief survey to determine if they qualified for the 9-1-1 Project research. These strategies proved to be an effective way to identify residents who had the most health access difficulties, but who were not connected to the local storytelling network actors who were helping distribute information about the project (Wilkin et al., 2011).

Intervention Project #2: Women’s Health Project, Riverton, NY The Women’s Health Project’s (WHP) overarching goal was to identify strategies for bridging a communicative divide that health and human service organizations

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had identified in Riverton, a small city in upstate New York, and to improve the reproductive health of underserved, low-income African American women in the community by increasing their utilization of locally available health services. Preliminary research from interviews and focus groups suggested that underutilization of the local publicly funded reproductive healthcare provider (referred to here as Women’s Health Services) by African American women residents was due to misperceptions about the nature of the services provided by Women’s Health Services, and a structural barrier caused by lack of public transportation (for more information, see: Golden, 2014). At the outset, the WHP assembled a community advisory board to help bridge the communicative divide between local health and human service organizations and residents. With the advice of its initial community partner, Women’s Health ­Services, the research team identified other organizations whose missions intersected with the aims of the project and contacted them to invite them to participate in the project. The 10 organizations that came to constitute the Community Advisory Board advised the research team in tailoring the content and format of intervention activities for community members, formed strategies for recruiting participants for activities, and tabled at health education events in neighborhood settings. The WHP established a field office in the city’s public housing complex where the greatest concentration of low-income African American women resided in order to build relationships with community residents. The field office was staffed by a community outreach associate, who was an African American woman with ties to the area, and served as a base for her interactions with residents. The WHP held bimonthly events in the community room of the public housing complex and other neighborhood locations where women and their families could meet faceto-face with organization representatives, learn more about their services, and sign up for appointments, and also receive taxi vouchers for transportation to services. Events featured participatory entertainment by a local culture and arts organization, including African dancing. Building on the spontaneous involvement of residents who encouraged their friends and neighbors to connect with the outreach efforts, seven women joined the project as part of a peer health advocate initiative. The peers were trained on outreach techniques and reproductive health knowledge, and then took over the weekly outreach, assisted with promoting and carrying out the community health education events, and were instrumental in implementing reproductive-health screening events. Peers were compensated on an hourly basis. In the first full year of the initiative, the peers made 806 contacts with residents during weekly outreach sessions (distributing information about reproductive health and safer sex supplies). Peers also led “ladies nights,” events in which residents obtained health screenings (mammograms and annual gynecologic exams) as part of a group. For

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these events, the peers extended personal invitations to women in the community, and the research team followed up to set up the appointments with Women’s Health Services and the local imaging center. Group transportation was provided, with the peers acting as escorts. Over 22 months, 6 interventions were conducted, resulting in a total of 43 screenings: 22 for gynecological services and 21 for mammograms. The reproductive health screening events were another means through which the peer health advocates helped connect their fellow residents to services. Figure 10.2 diagrams the phases of the intervention.

Building and Strengthening Storytelling Network Connections through Interstitial and Liminal Actors From a summative evaluation perspective, by the end of its fourth year, the Women’s Health Project (WHP) achieved its goal of increasing African American women’s utilization of the local publicly funded reproductive healthcare provider by 25%.

Figure 10.2.  The Women’s Health Project in Riverton, NY: Progression of Storytelling Network Integration. Source: Matsaganis, M. D., Golden, A. G., & Scott, M. (2014). Communication infrastructure theory and reproductive health disparities: Enhancing storytelling network integration by developing interstitial actors. International Journal of Communication, 8, 1495–1515.

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But for the purposes of this chapter, we focus on processes through which this outcome was achieved, as well as factors that facilitated or made achieving this goal more challenging. Women’s Health Project as Interstitial Actor. The research team constituted the first building block in a bridge between individual and organizational community actors. It effectively functioned as an interstitial storytelling network actor (­Matsaganis et al., 2014), which had primarily meso-level characteristics because of its ties to a university. To succeed, the project’s research team had to first establish strong connections of its own to residents and CBOs, earn their trust, and achieve buy-in to the WHP’s goals (i.e., to effectively bridge the communication disjuncture between residents and local health and human service organizations, in order to increase service utilization). To accomplish these goals, the WHP (a) embedded itself into the community’s CAC (e.g., by establishing a field office), (b) created, through community health events, opportunities for CBOs and residents to interact with one another in communication hotspots (e.g., a community room where many events took place), and (c) instigated storytelling around WHP’s goals, but also about the community stakeholders involved in the project. The production of these stories was critical for success because it is through them that storytelling network integration was achieved. The Peer Initiative as Interstitial and Liminal Actor. The WHP peer health advocate initiative emerged as an additional bridge between residents and organizations. However, the emergence and development of the initiative would not have been possible, if the WHP had not already developed, in earlier phases of the intervention, relationships to both local residents and organizations. Matsaganis et al. (2014) document how peers connected to both residents and organizations, and how they effectively brokered relationships between these micro- and mesolevel actors. The peer group, just like the WHP research team, performed as an interstitial actor. But the peer health advocates group, unlike the WHP, also operated at liminal level in the local storytelling network; it exhibited qualities of both micro-level and meso-level actors. Group members were residents with friends and family networks in the community (micro-level). At the same time, though, they were part of an organized initiative with a recognizable identity (a name, with an office in the community, a phone number) and a particular organizational structure (which included the community outreach associate and the directors of the research project). The peer group’s success in connecting residents with local health and human service organizations and the resources these organizations offered was enabled by their fellow residents seeing them as trusted neighbors serving the community; e.g., as health information sources, resources for getting safer sex supplies. Their success can also be attributed, though, to the fact that they persuaded local

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organizations that they were reliable, trustworthy, knowledgeable community allies.

Features of the CAC as Intervention-Enabling and Constraining Factors Efforts to strengthen connections between actors in the local storytelling network were not free of challenges, which were conceived as constraining factors that were characteristic of the local field of health action. The relative absence of communication hotspots and comfort zones in the community was one of these characteristics. The community included multiple low-income housing complexes, but only two had community rooms where events could be held. Moreover, while one complex’s community room constituted a communication hotspot for its tenants, it was not a hotspot for tenants of buildings nearby. For the WHP to overcome this field of health action-related constraint, establishing the project’s field office proved key. It was a space that, over time and from the residents’ perspective, became a comfort zone, and therefore a feature of the local field of health action that facilitated intervention success.

Cross-Site Comparisons: Lessons Learned and Questions for Future Research Both of the research-driven intervention projects we report on here share a similar conceptual framework, in which communication infrastructure theory (CIT) and community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles play a central role. Therefore, despite the different types of health access disparities each was designed to address, both interventions approached health disparities as outcomes of multilevel processes. They also see solutions to such disparities as efforts that need to involve multiple community actors, at the individual and organizational level, which act within a particular set of environmental constraints (i.e., constraints in the physical and social environment of community). In line with CIT, both projects invested and/or relied on building connections among local storytelling network actors (i.e., fostering integration),5 across levels of analysis, to accomplish their goals. And, in line with CBPR practices, research teams in both cities sought out and collaborated with community stakeholders, including both residents and CBOs. The two projects, however, were also different in several ways. These differences can be attributed to the particularities of the communities in which the interventions were developed and the different health issues they focused on. In

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Atlanta, all stakeholders agreed that previous changes in the healthcare center’s management and policy contributed to the medical center no longer being considered a community health asset. Therefore, the project’s primary focus was on reintegrating the clinic into the local storytelling network and rebuild community trust. Creating office space for the CHWs at the health center allowed them to work directly with clinic staff on strategies to build and strengthen connections, while also helping re-establish the clinic as a comfort zone. In Riverton, there was no previous relationship between health services and residents to rebuild. The project had to work to build connections between the project and community first, and then help establish connections between residents and healthcare services. Thus, they sought out and ultimately had created communication hotspots and comfort zones. Differences between the two projects notwithstanding, findings from both point to the very important role that interstitial actors can play in interventions situated in communities facing healthcare access related disparities. Moreover, although interventions would be well-served to search for and connect with existing interstitial actors in a community, the 9-1-1 Project and the WHP illustrate how such actors could be developed. Additionally, media played a role in the context of the 9-1-1 Project (e.g., residents identified local radio and TV programs where they learned about health issues relevant to their community); however, the nature of the community in New York as a small media market meant that there was a lack of truly locally produced media, except for one newspaper, which residents (especially residents with lower incomes) deemed too expensive. Residents also indicated that this newspaper did not truly address their concerns and needs (Matsaganis & Golden, 2015). Therefore, local media did not play a central role in the storytelling network in the case of the project in New York. In both projects, the role of community health workers (in the 9-1-1 Project) and peer health advocates (in the WHP) was critical for identifying communication hotspots and comfort zones. In the case of the project in New York, the smaller size of the community made it difficult to identify such spaces and, in effect, part of the project’s efforts (as well as the efforts of the peer health advocates and the local health and human service organizations) were directed towards creating communication hotspots (e.g., the community room in a local apartment building) and comfort zones (e.g., the offices of the Women’s Health Services organization). These differences between communities suggests, first of all, that CAC features like the size of a community and its geographic position within, near, or far from a larger metropolitan area may be significant factors that influences the outcome of health communication and public health interventions in a variety of ways. For instance, the size of community is related to number of local media resources,

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but also to the sheer number of available communication hotspots and comfort zones. Moreover, though, the example of the WHP in New York highlights that these community spaces can be created over time through the sustained efforts of storytelling network actors.

Advantages and Limitations of CIT-Based Intervention Approaches As illustrated above, the projects had varying levels of success with different CITbased strategies due to differences in community composition, the availability of local storytellers, and aspects of the communication action context (CAC). This highlights a couple of important factors with regard to implementing CITbased intervention approaches as well as the importance of using CBPR methods. Although researchers have argued that each community has its own unique communication infrastructure (e.g., Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001), the focus of most research employing CIT has been on the local storytelling network, consisting of the residents in their own personal social networks, the community organizations and the local and ethnic media (e.g., Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001). Previous studies related to health have shown some advantages to residents being integrated into this type of storytelling network, which has led to the premise that strengthening the connections between neighborhood storytellers and helping residents become integrated into the storytelling network is an important step in a health intervention (Wilkin & Ball-Rokeach, 2006). More recently, researchers have proposed starting community health interventions by considering all actors within the storytelling system that are employed by residents to reach health goals (Wilkin, 2013) rather than presuming that local/ethnic media, community organizations, and other residents are going to be the most important storytellers. For example, while neither project employed strategies involving macro-level storytellers (e.g., national media outlets, national health organizations, websites like WebMD), they may be trusted sources of health information that influence health knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Community-based health intervention projects could build upon residents’ and local organizations’ trust of such macro-level storytellers by adapting health materials such trusted organizations make available to local community needs and priorities. Social media, particularly those with a neighborhood focus like Nextdoor, may also prove to be important local storytellers (see Ognyanova & Jung, Chapter 8, regarding the role of social media in local community storytelling processes). One of the important elements of community-based participatory research (CBPR) is the inclusion of community members as part of the research team and

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at every stage of research and intervention development. A valuable lesson learned from the community research partners was that the relative importance of local storytelling network actors varies by community. For example, as discussed above, local media were less important in Riverton, NY. Likewise, they aid in identifying communication hotspots and comfort zones, which proved to be important outreach locations when trying to identify medically underserved individuals for the project in Atlanta, GA. Employing CIT-based strategies enabled each of the projects to take advantage of the aspects of the micro- and meso-level actors who were most important to the residents in the communities, work to integrate the academic research projects and local health and human service organizations into the local storytelling network, while working within the constraints of each respective CAC. Finally, both projects discovered structural constraints present in the communities that prevented residents from seeking the desired healthcare behaviors. By both taking a socio-ecological approach and exploring the field of health action, which takes account of the material environment and the meanings that residents attach to it, the projects were able to identify factors that are not typically addressed in health communication campaigns that aim to promote health behaviors (Dutta-Bergman, 2005). For example, both projects found transportation to be a barrier to using healthcare services; cost of care was a barrier only among 9-1-1 Project participants (Matsaganis et al., 2014; Matsaganis & Golden, 2015; Tannebaum, Wilkin, & Keys, 2014; Wilkin, Cohen, et al., 2012). These barriers cannot be addressed adequately through efforts focused on integrating the local storytelling network alone (although community mobilization to urge policymakers to make changes could certainly have positive effects in this direction). Some participants in the 9-1-1 Project reported that it could take them over an hour to reach the health center via public transportation from where they live (often within just a couple miles from the health center) due to having to transfer multiple times; however, there were direct bus lines to the public hospital (a trusted source of healthcare), where residents were utilizing emergency care services in lieu of primary care (Wilkin, Cohen, et al., 2012). This led the project to explore two different strategies to increase use of primary healthcare services: (1) Work with the health center to make their non-emergency transport option more accessible and raise awareness of its existence (Wilkin, Cohen, et al., 2012). This transportation option was only available for patients with appointments, for which there was typically a three month wait; thus, it was not an option for many residents who opted for or had to wait for “walk-in” appointments; and

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(2) Promote the primary care clinics associated with the hospital that many of the residents could access easier through public transportation (Wilkin, Tannebaum, et al., 2012). While we were unable to directly impact these structural constraints, the exploration of the field of health action enabled the 9-1-1 Project to identify and work within the confines of these structural constraints, thus highlighting another advantage of CIT-based research and interventions.

Notes 1. In this chapter we use community-based organizations as an umbrella term that includes Health and Human Service Organizations, non-profit organizations, local government agencies, and other organizations that serve the communities of interest. 2. “Community health workers” were members of the community who were trained to help educate other residents about health in an effort to improve health outcomes. The same role description was not used in both projects. In the Riverton-based project in New York, the term used was “peer health advocates.” However, in both cases, the community members involved in the project performed similar roles. 3. A recent film/video graduate who lived in the neighborhoods documented community discussions (for research) and conducted interviews within the neighborhoods and health care system (to create an educational video). 4. In keeping with CBPR methods, the CHWs were integral in every stage of the research project, collaborating with the researchers to create discussion guides, recruit participants, lead discussions, etc. 5. Here we refer to the various strategies used by both projects to build and strengthen connections between storytelling actors. For example, the 9-1-1 Project in Atlanta built and/ or strengthened ties between the CHWs, the health center, other community-based organizations and projects, and the residents. The peer health advocates of the Women’s Health Project in New York similarly worked to build ties between the project, health and human service organizations, and the residents.

References Anderson, C. M. (2004). The delivery of health care in faith-based organizations: Parish nurses as promoters of health. Health Communication, 16, 117–128. Baffour, T. D., & Chonody, J. M. (2009). African-American women’s conceptualizations of health disparities: A community-based participatory research approach. American Journal of Community Psychology, 44, 374–381. Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Kim, Y. C., & Matei, S. (2001). Storytelling neighborhood: Paths to belonging in diverse urban environments. Communication Research, 28(4), 392–428.

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Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (2015). Addressing chronic disease through community health workers: A policy and systems-level approach. Retrieved from http://www.cdc. gov/dhdsp/docs/chw_brief.pdf Dopkins, L., & Torian, S. (2004). Neighborhoods count: A look at NPU-V in 2004. Annie E, Casey Foundation. www.aecf.org/ Dutta-Bergman, M. J. (2005). Theory and practice in health communication campaigns: A critical interrogation. Health Communication, 18(2), 103–122. Golden, A. G. (2014). Permeability of public and private spaces in reproductive healthcare seeking: Barriers to uptake of services among low income African American women in a smaller urban setting. Social Science & Medicine, 108, 137–146. Kim, Y. C., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006). Community storytelling network, neighborhood context, and civic engagement: A multilevel approach. Human Communication Research, 32, 411–439. Kim, Y. C., & Kang, J. (2010). Communication, neighborhood engagement, and household hurricane preparedness. Disasters: The Journal of Disaster Studies, Policy & Management, 34(2), 470–488. Kim, Y. C., Moran, M. B., Wilkin, H. A., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2011). Integrated connection to a neighborhood storytelling network (ICSN), education, and chronic disease knowledge among African Americans and Latinos in Los Angeles. Journal of Health Communication, 16(4), 393–415. Lounsbury, D. W., & Mitchell, S. G. (2009). Introduction to special issue on social ecological approaches to community health research and action. American Journal of Community ­Psychology, 44, 213–220. Matsaganis, M. D., & Golden, A. G. (2015). Interventions to address reproductive health disparities among African American women in a small urban community: The communicative construction of a “field of health action.” Journal of Applied Communication Research, 43(2), 163–184. Matsaganis, M. D., Golden, A. G., & Scott, M. (2014). Communication infrastructure theory and reproductive health disparities: Enhancing storytelling network integration by developing interstitial actors. International Journal of Communication, 8, 1495–1515. Matsaganis, M. D., & Wilkin, H. A. (2014). Communicative social capital and collective efficacy as determinants of access to health-enhancing resources in residential communities. Journal of Health Communication, 20(4), 377–386. Minkler, M., & Wallerstein, N. (Eds.). (2008).Community-based participatory research for health: From process to outcomes (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Stephens, K. K., Rimal, R. N., & Flora, J. A. (2004). Expanding the reach of health campaigns: Community organizations as meta-channels for the dissemination of health information. Journal of Health Communication, 9(Suppl. 1), 97–111. Tannebaum, M., Wilkin, H. A., & Keys, J. (2014; online 2013). Education in the wake of healthcare reform: Increasing primary care usage by individuals currently reliant upon emergency departments for care. Health Education Journal, 73(2), 209–216. Wilkin, H. A. (2013). Exploring the potential of communication infrastructure theory for informing efforts to reduce health disparities. Journal of Communication, 63(1), 181–200.

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Wilkin, H. A., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006). Reaching at risk groups: The importance of health storytelling in Los Angeles Latino media. Journalism: Theory, Practice, Criticism, 7(3), 299–320. Wilkin, H. A., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2011). Hard-to-reach? Using health access status as a way to more effectively target segments of the Latino audience. Health Education Research, 26(2), 239–253. Wilkin, H. A., Cohen, E. L., & Tannebaum, M. A. (2012). How low-income residents decide between emergency and primary healthcare for non-urgent treatment. The Howard Journal of Communications, 23(2), 157–174. Wilkin, H. A., Katz, V. S., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., & Hether, H. J. (2015). Communication resources for obesity prevention behaviors among Latinos and African Americans. Journal of Health Communication, 20, 710–719. Wilkin, H. A., Stringer, K. A., O’Quinn, K., Hunt, K., & Montgomery, S. (2011). Using communication infrastructure theory to formulate a strategy to locate “hard-to-reach” research participants. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 39(2), 201–213. Wilkin, H. A., Tannebaum, M., Cohen, E. L., Leslie, T., Williams, N., & Haley, L. L. (2012). Comparing low-income residents’ and medical professionals’ medical emergency definitions to create a campaign to reduce non-urgent use of emergency services. Health Education Research, 27(6), 1031–1042.

chapter eleven

The Alhambra Project A Prototype for Using Communication Infrastructure Theory to Construct and Evaluate a Community News Site nien - tsu nancy chen

Assistant Professor, California State University Channel Islands wenlin liu

Assistant Professor, University of Houston katherine ognyanova

Assistant Professor, Rutgers University evelyn moreno

Project Manager of Metamorphosis Project, University of Southern California

Introduction Local communities across the United States have experienced a recent decline in civic life due to social changes that diminish the opportunities and motivation for individuals to have face-to-face interaction with neighbors (Putnam, 2000). For example, rising ethnic heterogeneity in many neighborhoods may hinder civic engagement because residents need to make a greater effort to see beyond their differences to identify shared interests (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006b). Timely circulation of local news that enables informed participation in collective ­decision-making has also become increasingly rare, as many legacy media scale back their local coverage due to changing financial realities brought about by the Internet (The Pew Research Center, 2013; Waldman, 2011). These contemporary

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forces call for innovative approaches to reinvigorate local civic vitality. It was against this backdrop that scholars from the Metamorphosis Project and Local News Initiative at the University of Southern California began their quest to address two interrelated questions: Can communication theory and research guide the revitalization of local news to meet the challenges to democracy posed by increasing population diversity? If so, how? This chapter describes a theory-driven online community news website, the Alhambra Source, which shows promise in promoting civic engagement in a multiethnic community. Following a brief overview of the residential area served by this website, we demonstrate how communication infrastructure theory guided the development of the Alhambra Source, and how formative research and multistage evaluation have shaped production and outreach practices. We conclude by summarizing the lessons learned and presenting a model that can be adapted for enhancing participation in collective life in other diverse communities.

The City of Alhambra: Demographics and Media Landscape Alhambra is an incorporated city located in the San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles (L.A.) County. By Californian standards, it is a medium size, medium income community (Espinoza, 2012). Reflective of the minority-majority status of L.A. County and the state of California (Southern California Association of Governments, 2012), Alhambra’s population consists of 10% Whites, 34% Latinos and 53% Asians (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). Once a predominantly White suburb, Alhambra’s demographics began to shift with Mexican immigrants moving into the area in the 1960s, followed by Asian settlers in the 1980s (­Southern California Association of Governments, 2012). Given the different immigration histories of Alhambra’s residents, most of its Latino population is native born, whereas the majority of its Asian population is foreign born (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). As the ethnic composition of Alhambra changed, so did its media landscape. In the 1970s, the Alhambra Post Advocate, the only news outlet dedicated to covering the city on a daily basis, ceased operation. While Alhambra is within the areas covered by various legacy news media (e.g., the Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Times, KTLA TV, KPCC public radio), the city rarely receives attention from these regional or metropolitan outlets. Research indicates that among the established media, Chinese-language ethnic newspapers provide the highest volume of information about Alhambra on a daily basis (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2009). However, the linguistic and cultural orientations of these publications limit their readership. These newspapers also tend to focus on issues important to their

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ethnic community (e.g., immigration regulations) but not necessarily issues that are place-based (e.g., building local parks) (Chen et al., 2017). While there exists in Alhambra a monthly English language newspaper delivered to all residents and local businesses for free, this paper is published by the local Chamber of Commerce. Consequently, it functions more as a cheerleader of the local government and an advertising mechanism rather than an independent journalistic enterprise (Chen, Dong, Ball-Rokeach, Parks, & Huang, 2012; Chen et al., 2017). In other words, there has been a scarcity of media outlets that tell locally relevant stories, provide critical perspectives, and at the same time bridge across diverse residents in Alhambra. This scarcity presents a barrier to informed citizenship and civic life in Alhambra, as illustrated by research findings on the city’s relatively low levels of neighborhood belonging (Ball-Rokeach, 2001) and civic participation (Chen et al., 2013).

Communication Infrastructure Theory The barriers to civic engagement confronting Alhambra are not unique. In fact, research conducted in diverse urban communities in the United States since the late 1990s has revealed similar patterns and shed light on potential resources that can be utilized to tackle this challenge (Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001; see also, Ball-Rokeach, Prologue). Such research has given rise to communication infrastructure theory (CIT), which considers the neighborhood storytelling network (STN) as a hub of resources for enabling resident participation in collective life (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a, 2006b; Kim & Jung, Chapter 1). The STN consists of the storytelling agents of residents, community organizations, and geo-ethnic media (i.e., media outlets tailored for a geographical area and/or certain ethnic groups within it). Compared to other social actors (e.g., metropolitan media, federal government agencies), these agents have the greatest capabilities and interest in telling local stories on a regular basis. These stories, in turn, provide individuals with the resources necessary to develop a community identity, understand and interpret collective issues, and construct appropriate action strategies (Ball-Rokeach et al., 2001). CIT research has found that civic engagement is most likely to be sustained in an area where residents have a high level of integrated connectedness to the storytelling network (ICSN), meaning that they simultaneously link up with neighbors, community organizations, and geo-ethnic media (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006b; Kim, Chapter 3). Greater ICSN among individuals is an indication that the key storytelling agents may be interconnected in such a way that the local stories told by one storyteller can be picked up and retold by the others. As a corollary,

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organizational outreach to the residents by community groups and geo-ethnic media may be effective strategies to strengthen residents’ ICSN (Wilkin, 2013; Wilkin & Ball-Rokeach, 2006). As the latter half of this chapter will illustrate, these strategies have been deployed in the development of the Alhambra Source, a local news website that actively invites residents, community organizations, and legacy media to share community stories and connect with one another through the online and offline resources it offers (see Ognyanova & Jung, Chapter 8, for more about the role of new media within CIT research). Recent work by Matsaganis, Golden, and Scott (2014) shows that an additional avenue to facilitate integration among local storytellers is to identify and foster the activity of “interstitial actors.” These actors are “residents with friends and family networks in the community (micro level), but at the same time, these residents were members of an organized initiative with a recognizable identity and an official point of contact” (Matsaganis et al., 2014, p. 1510). For example, they could be peer educators recruited by a local health organization or content contributors trained by a local news outlet to serve their own residential community. As such, these interstitial agents are well positioned to broker relationships between the micro-level storytellers (residents) and meso-level storytellers (community organizations or geo-ethnic media). These findings from CIT research have informed the design and evaluation of a number of interventions aimed at enhancing individual and community health (Wilkin, 2013; Wilkin, Matsaganis, & Golden, Chapter 10). Such insights are also translatable for interventions aimed at promoting civic engagement in multiethnic communities by highlighting the importance of: (1) strengthening the information-sharing capabilities of individual storytellers; (2) developing connections among storytellers where such connections are missing or weak; (3) capitalizing upon interstitial actors to bridge across key storytellers. With these guiding principles in mind, we discuss how the CIT framework has informed the formative research, the community intervention model, and the outreach evaluation of a local news website launched to promote civic engagement in Alhambra.

Multilevel and Multimethod Formative Research Guided by CIT, mixed methods formative research was carried out between March 2008 and May 2009 (see Table 11.1) to assess:

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(1) existing communication practices by micro- and meso-level storytellers in Alhambra; (2) connections among these storytellers; (3) levels of and barriers to civic engagement among residents. Table 11.1.  Summary of Formative Research Components. Residents

Geo-ethnic Media

Community Organizations Phone interviews

Research Method(s)

Focus groups in English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese

Fear and comfort mapping of Alhambra

Media census

Media monitoring and content analysis

Research Period

May 2009

May 2009

March 2008

October 2008– November 2008 March 2009

Sample Size

n = 91 (residents)

n = 91 (residents)

n = 102 (media outlets)

n = 252 (stories)

n = 11 (organizations)

Given the diverse population of Alhambra, the formative research team consisted of individuals proficient in English, Mandarin-Chinese, and Spanish so that various research components, including interviews, focus groups, and community surveys, could be conducted in the three primary languages of Alhambra residents (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). In addition, field trips and informal meetings with local politicians took place throughout 2008 so that the research team could learn more about the physical, social, and institutional conditions that facilitated or constrained civic engagement in Alhambra. Key findings from these research activities have been summarized in various publications. While a comprehensive recount of these findings is beyond the scope of the current chapter, it is important to note the following observations, as they informed our intervention design: (1) There were multiple ethnically bounded STNs in Alhambra, meaning that residents tended to turn to neighbors of similar cultural backgrounds, media that speak their language, and community organizations serving their ethnic group when seeking local news and information (Chen et al., 2012). (2) Integration into an ethnically bounded STN did not necessarily enhance civic engagement, as stories circulating within such a network might

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strengthen identification with an ethnic group, but not the local community (An et al., 2014; Chen et al., 2013; Ognyanova et al., 2013). (3) The lack of regular access to local news and information was a major barrier to civic engagement (Chen et al., 2012). (4) The Internet was considered a preferred channel for residents to obtain local information (Chen et al., 2012). Interviews with community organizations and a “media census”1 highlighted the linguistic diversity of the city and the importance of multilingual capabilities in any effort to communicate with the public. Furthermore, focus group discussions provided insights into community concerns shared by residents from diverse backgrounds, suggesting a foundation for building collective identity and action.

Participatory Online News Website as Community Intervention The formative research demonstrated a pressing need for more regular and critical local coverage in Alhambra that would reach its multiethnic residents. ­Furthermore, it appeared crucial to ensure that there was a mechanism for bridging the ethnically bounded STNs in Alhambra, so that residents would have the resources necessary to develop a collective “Alhambran” identity and participate in community decision-making that influences everyone. This offered the impetus for the creation of a multilingual local news website, the Alhambra Source (alhambrasource. org), as a hub for connecting the separate STNs and as a way of promoting civic dialogue. In addition to the main website, the Alhambra Source was supplemented with an e-newsletter that provided weekly summaries of key community stories as well as presence on Facebook and Twitter. To optimize the bridging capacity of the Alhambra Source, care was taken to present all static information on the website in English, Chinese, and Spanish, the three major languages of the community (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). Google Translate plugins for Chinese and Spanish were incorporated into the homepage of the Alhambra Source. For major news and feature stories, human translation was performed regularly by community volunteers. In addition, collaboration with existing regional and ethnic media outlets was established from the get-go. Launched in September 2010, the Alhambra Source has been supplying daily roundups of news pertaining to Alhambra from a range of metropolitan, regional, and ethnic media by electronically aggregating Alhambra-related headlines from these media and summarizing in English stories deemed relevant to local residents by the website editor. Based on informal feedback from city officials, these daily

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English roundups have enabled them to understand the concerns of their Chinese constituency for the first time, as the officials now have regular access to translated information from the Chinese-language media through the Alhambra Source. In terms of content, attention is focused on issues identified by diverse residents as shared concerns during formative research (e.g., education, redevelopment). Furthermore, the website relies on residents and community organizations as contributors for the majority of its content. Utilizing a hybrid professional-­ citizen journalism model in content production and community outreach, a professional journalist serves as the editor of the website and oversees the aggregation of news from other media outlets. The editor plays an especially important role in connecting various storytellers in the community. The editor is also in charge of recruiting and training a diverse group of community members to generate original content for the website. This hybrid professional-citizen journalism model thus facilitates the building of interpersonal connections between residents, which would have been hard to develop otherwise. Additionally, the editor takes an active role in outreach to local organizations and schools, which further strengthens the connection between individual residents and meso-level organizations in the community. Building on a reciprocal partnership, community contributors are able to receive professional journalism training and institutional support in producing stories on topics that they are passionate about. These contributors are invited to attend a series of workshops and biweekly meetings, during which the editor works with each contributor to develop story ideas, craft their stories according to the conventions of professional writing, and create a multimedia version of the story when appropriate. While the stories created by the community contributors tend to be longer feature stories, the editor also works with youth interns from the local area to cover breaking news mainly pertaining to crime and safety. In the first five years following the website’s launch, more than 100 community members—ranging from high school students, through retired professionals, to community activists—had been recruited to cover local stories and participate in the website’s outreach events. Coming from different walks of life, these contributors represented a group of individuals who had relatively long residential tenure, were personally invested in the betterment of community, and tended to exhibit a high level of interest in local affairs. The ethnic composition of the group was largely reflective of the local demographics: around 20% White, 30% Latino, and 50% Asian. Overall, the purpose of utilizing the hybrid journalism model consisting of a professional editor and community contributors is two-fold: First, residents constitute a reliable group of content producers who are not only familiar with the community, but are genuinely motivated to advance the well-being of the community.

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Second, in terms of promoting website readership and civic engagement, both the editor and community contributors play the role of “interstitial actors.” With the editor and community contributors being the “early adaptors” of the website, and through “word-of-mouth” and various diffusion mechanisms associated with these individuals’ social networks (Valente, 1995), they have become the key intermediaries in connecting diverse residents with the Alhambra Source. By leveraging their existing networks in the community, both online via social media connections and offline through their family, friends, and neighbors, the editor and community contributors serve to not only diffuse a new media innovation, but also bridge between micro- and meso-level local storytellers (i.e., residents and their community organizations and media).

Evaluation of Reader Engagement and Website Outreach As part of the evaluation plan to assess outreach effectiveness and reader engagement, we launched a tri-lingual web-based survey in April 2014. We emailed invitations in English, Chinese, and Spanish to 1,409 individuals who had signed up to receive the Alhambra Source’s weekly e-newsletters. In the survey, we asked about respondents’ involvement with the website, including the average time they spent on each visit, and if and how they have contributed to the website. Out of the 214 responses received, the average frequency of website visits was “once a week,” and the average time spent on the website per week was “one to two hours.” These findings suggested that the e-newsletters containing headlines of major weekly stories might function as an effective tool to remind residents to regularly check back with the Alhambra Source. In addition, respondents indicated that they also accessed stories through the Alhambra Source’s Facebook and Twitter feeds. With its presence on Twitter and Facebook, the Alhambra Source promotes stories on these platforms about twice a week, and these social media provide hyperlinks for interested readers to visit the main website. The average frequency for readers accessing stories through the Alhambra Source’s Facebook and Twitter feeds was similar at about “once a week.” Going beyond website visits, about 22% of the respondents indicated that they had commented on a story on the Alhambra Source. Eighteen percent had contributed to the website’s content through writing a story, submitting a photo, sending a news tip, or providing event calendar announcements. Regarding offline engagement, 18% of the respondents indicated that they had taken part in a community event hosted or sponsored by the Alhambra Source. These responses suggested that cyberspace in this case might provide an arena to initially establish

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social ties online, and these ties are subsequently fortified through physical interactions among residents during community outreach events. As a matter of fact, the research team has more systematically explored the connection between online and offline civic engagement by using the baseline community survey data collected in 2011 (Ognyanova et al., 2013). Consistent with how respondents are engaged both online and offline with the Alhambra Source, Ognyanova et al. found that online civic participation can further stimulate offline civic participation among Alhambra residents. To identify the most effective ways of website outreach, the 2014 survey further asked respondents to identify how they first learned about the Alhambra Source (see Figure 11.1). Out of a variety of outreach channels, one noteworthy finding was that interpersonal networks, including family, friends, and neighbors, acted as the most effective channel in spreading the word about the Alhambra Source. In terms of the role of meso-level storytellers, while community organizations were a widely identified source facilitating website outreach, only 3% of the respondents indicated that they connected with the Alhambra Source through geo-ethnic media. Finally, in parallel with the website’s success in using offline social connections, social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, stood out as a promising channel to get the website on residents’ radar. Altogether, the results of the survey reaffirmed the potential of utilizing existing connections within the STN, especially community contributors’ personal networks and community organizations, to promote reader engagement and community outreach for a novel local news initiative.

Figure 11.1.  Channels through which Residents Heard about the Alhambra Source.

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Multistage Evaluation Besides being a tri-lingual local news website informed by communication theory, the Alhambra Source stands out in that it has been systematically evaluated since its beginning. In addition to tracking its web and social media analytics, researchers affiliated with the website have sought to investigate its reception by and influence on residents, geo-ethnic media, and community organizations (see Table 11.2). One important evaluation component that extends beyond the traditional CIT framework is the face-to-face interviews conducted with city officials to understand the political elite’s perception of and response to this new media venture. In terms of how the Alhambra Source has shifted the power-dependency relationship2 between local residents and the political elite, these interviews revealed that the website has enabled residents’ voices to be heard by politicians, thereby challenging the top-down approach of decision-making that has long been adopted by the city council (Chen et al., 2017). Evaluation research has also illuminated the agenda-setting function of the Alhambra Source, such that the website’s content is associated with the topics of interpersonal conversations between neighbors and the agenda of the established geo-ethnic media (An et al., 2014). Furthermore, readers of the Alhambra Source are found to be more connected with other micro- and meso-level storytellers and more civically engaged. In other words, these individuals may bring in already established social connections, thereby helping integrate the Alhambra Source into the existing neighborhood storytelling network. It is also possible that connection with the Alhambra Source has provided residents access to existing organizational and media resources in their community, as this website was designed to bridge and strengthen links among key local storytellers. Either of these explanations should lead to the same outcome according to CIT—individuals connected with the Alhambra Source are more likely to be civically engaged because they are more integrated into their STN. To empirically confirm this, one of the evaluation studies used structural equation modeling and identified a mutual influence between residents’ civic participation level and their connection to the local news website (Liu, Chen, Ognyanova, Ball-Rokeach, & Parks, 2016). That is, individuals with higher levels of civic interest and involvement are more likely to seek out traditional and new media sources of local information and connect with community organizations, and these connections in turn facilitate even greater levels of participation. This reciprocal influence suggests that the Alhambra Source has forged a virtuous cycle and contributed to civic vitality in this multiethnic community.

Community Contributors

November– March 2015 December, 2010; February–April, 2014

n = 405; n = 400 (residents)

Research Period(s)

Sample Size(s)

n = 31 (residents)

Two waves of tri-lingual phone surveys

Research Method(s)

n = 214 (residents)

April–May, 2014

Online survey Focus groups with memin English bers of the and Mandawebsite’s rin Chinese; fear and com- listserv fort mapping

Residents

Table 11.2.  Summary of Multistage Evaluation.

n = 8 (media producers)

June 2013– March 2014

Interviews with media producers

n = 279 (stories)

June–August 2011

Media monitoring and content analysis

Geo-ethnic Media

Face-to-face interviews

n = 10 (organi- n = 5 zations) (officials)

February–May, August– 2011 September, 2013

Face-to-face interviews

Community City Organizations Officials

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Conclusion In this chapter, we have presented a framework informed by CIT to develop, operate, and evaluate a community news website. Guided by this framework, the Alhambra Source has developed as a hybrid professional-citizen journalism platform that combines indigenous storytelling practices and theory-driven research to enhance community vitality. It takes a bottom-up approach from inception, with both website operation and its surrounding program of research directly informed by community input. At each step of the way, our effort has focused on understanding and strengthening the communication capabilities of micro- and meso-level storytellers in Alhambra, as well as bridging between storytellers and across ethnically bounded STNs. Through multilevel and multilingual storytelling, the Alhambra Source project provides a model for developing communication-based interventions to address the decline of civic engagement in communities with growing ethnocultural diversity, which are increasingly common in urban and suburban places around the United States and beyond (Putnam, 2007). Building on a hybrid model of news production, the Alhambra Source has evolved to become integrated into the city’s local communication infrastructure. Its impact has manifested in a number of areas. First, as a geo-ethnic media outlet that aims to target a broad spectrum of community members, its focus on Alhambra as the primary storytelling referent has successfully engaged certain segments of the community and become one of residents’ main sources of local information. With a penetration rate at 16%,3 the Alhambra Source has reached a readership level comparable with the digital versions of national print media, as well as hyperlocal media of similar forms (Chyi & Lasorsa, 2002).4 The steady website traffic also suggests that the Alhambra Source has retained a sizable community of readers. Second, as an alternative civic space, the Alhambra Source empowers local residents through citizen journalism practices. By producing stories of local salience and relevance, the website has begun to influence the agenda of the legacy media (An et al., 2014), shift the power-dependency relation between the average resident and the local political elite (Chen et al., 2017), and afford a discursive space for the local citizenry to express alternative viewpoints. In addition, by regularly translating ethnic media news into English, the website has introduced the issues and concerns of local ethnic groups into the mainstream media and public agenda, which would not have been possible without such effort. Next, our evaluation has identified a positive association between residents’ connection with the Alhambra Source and civic engagement. However, statistical modeling has revealed some causal relation questions that call for further scholarly attention. While CIT posits that greater connection with local storytelling agents

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would motivate and enable civic engagement, we found that reciprocal influence— the mutually reinforcing effect between one’s connection to the Alhambra Source and his or her civic outlook—is also likely. Under such circumstances, the presence of a local news website might contribute to a virtuous cycle where engaged residents’ civic interest and connection with local storytelling agents are already feeding into each other. However, this new media outlet might also widen the gap between the engaged and disengaged, conforming to the “knowledge gap hypothesis” in the sense that the information rich get richer (Kim, Moran, Wilkin, & Ball-Rokeach, 2011; Wei & Hindman, 2011; Wilkin & Ball-Rokeach, 2006). The theoretical and practical implications of this research finding are many, and more inquiries are warranted to tease them out. Although the Alhambra Source was dedicated to engaging the diverse spectrum of community members through its tri-lingual operation, the evaluation suggests that its reach is more limited within the Asian population, who constitutes over a half of Alhambra’s residents but barely 22% of the readership of the Alhambra Source. What hinders the website’s outreach effort could be the long-term presence of Chinese-language media in the local area. Our two waves of resident surveys reveal that Chinese-language ethnic media outlets, especially TV channels (e.g., LA18 KSCI-TV) and daily newspapers (e.g., World Journal), are preferred by most Chinese immigrant residents as their primary source of local information. While ethnic media play a critical role in informing people with limited English proficiency, they also tend to steer the audience’s gaze away from their local community and instead focus attention on news within a particular ethnic group or from the home country, thus insulating immigrants from more general participation outside of their ethnic community ( Jeffres, 2000; Lin & Song, 2006; Seo, 2011). This could in turn have negative consequences when it comes to the health of local democracy. In order to better promote connection with the Alhambra Source among Chinese residents, especially the newer immigrants, the website needs to create more linguistically accessible and culturally relevant content in addition to raising awareness about the Chinese content that already exists on the platform. To accomplish this, and true to the participatory nature of the Alhambra Source, would mean involving more first-generation immigrant residents as content contributors so that their language and perspectives are visible on the website. Furthermore, they will serve as the “innovators,” “early adopters” or “interstitial actors” who can capitalize upon their organizational and interpersonal networks to introduce this media initiative to others in their ethnic community and create buy-in for the website’s vision of promoting civic engagement across diversity. As revealed by our research, tapping into these contributors’ social networks, both online and offline, is one of the most effective ways to enhance the website’s outreach to potential

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readers and content contributors. This insight can inform other communication interventions seeking to promote civic vitality in diverse communities. Last but not the least, collaboration with ethnic media would be a viable strategy to better reach and serve the immigrant population. The current outreach evaluation identified a weak linkage between the Alhambra Source and major ethnic media outlets in the area, both in terms of shared readership (Chen et al., 2013) and the degree to which they influence one another in news content (An et al., 2014). While the research and editorial teams behind the Alhambra Source have arranged meetings with ethnic producers from the get-go to express a strong desire to partner with them, these conversations seem to have led to limited collaboration. At present, the Alhambra Source serves as a source of local news leads for ethnic media producers—even though these producers often do not credit the local news website in their work—whereas ethnic media offer a regular supply of stories about Alhambra that are summarized in one line or two in English in the daily news roundup on the Alhambra Source (Chen et al., 2017). These summaries no doubt represent progress in the way that ethnic and general audience local media collaborate with each other rather than functioning as isolated entities. However, more substantive partnership is needed. For example, there have been a few instances where ethnic media reporters and community contributors of the Alhambra Source worked together to produce a bi-lingual feature story that was subsequently published both on the website and by an ethnic media outlet. These stories focused on issues that were relevant to both the local and the ethnic community and were thus conducive to strengthening the local knowledge and involvement of new immigrants. More of this type of stories are needed. In order for this to happen, the Alhambra Source should strengthen its outreach to ethnic media outlets and develop strategies for more substantive partnerships while being mindful of the limited production resources they each have. Furthermore, more research should take place to understand any hesitation that ethnic media might have in developing a substantive partnership with the Alhambra Source. Although the majority of ethnic media serving the neighborhood are part of a larger media enterprise headquartered overseas, local partnership can still benefit both parties. However, for that to happen, it should be clearly communicated to ethnic media that the website is not their competitor. Rather, it seeks to complement and collaborate with the legacy media, through initiatives such as ­ undamentally, the Alhambra Source and ethnic content and readership sharing. F media share the goal of facilitating immigrant participation in American society. However, this participatory website is built upon the conviction that locally-based participation is essential to ensuring that the everyday interests of diverse populations are taken into consideration in collective decision-making.

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Acknowledgements This chapter documents an ongoing project, the Alhambra Project, conducted under the auspices of the Metamorphosis Project and Local News Initiative funded by the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Additional funds have been provided by the McCormick Foundation, Southern California Edison and Shannon Foundation to support the operation of the Alhambra Source website. Since July 2017, Alhambra Source has registered as an independent nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization under the fiscal sponsor called Community Partners. It is currently testing multiple sustainable funding models, such as membership, underwriting, sponsorship, and grant writing.

Notes 1. This is a research method that involves visiting public and commercial spaces in a local area and collecting copies of print media targeted to residents, and potentially residents of a particular ethnicity, within this area. This method provides a fuller picture of the media to which residents in a particular area have access, compared to information in media directories that tends to focus on larger media outlets only. For more information, see http://www. metamorph.org/research/geo_ethnic_media_print_and_electronic. 2. The power-dependency relationship refers to the relational dependence of one party (e.g., individual citizens) on another (e.g., government, news sources) in order to obtain resources and achieve goals. The term originates from media system dependency theory (for details, see Ball-Rokeach, 1998), which focuses on the dynamic dependence relationship forged between individuals and the media system. 3. This rate was calculated as the percentage of individuals reported having connected to the Alhambra Source among the 400 respondents to the second wave survey conducted in 2014. 4. According to Chyi and Lasorsa’s (2002) survey of 818 residents in Austin, Texas, the online penetration rate of national newspapers, such as the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, ranged from 10% to 14%. The online penetration rate of a local newspaper, Austin ­American-Statesman, was at 18%.

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presented at the the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, Fukuoka, Japan. Matsaganis, M. D., Golden, A. G., & Scott, M. E. (2014). Communication infrastructure theory and reproductive health disparities: Enhancing storytelling network integration by developing interstitial actors. International Journal of Communication, 8(21). http://ijoc.org/ index.php/ijoc/article/view/2566 Ognyanova, K., Chen, N. T. N., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., An, Z., Son, M., Parks, M., & Gerson, D. (2013). Online participation in a community context: Civic engagement and connections to local communication resources. International Journal of Communication, 7, 2433–2456. http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/2287/1018 Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Putnam, R. D. (2007). E pluribus unum: Diversity and community in the twenty-first century. Scandinavian Political Studies, 30(2), 137–174. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x Seo, M. (2011). Beyond coethnic boundaries: Coethnic residential context, communication, and Asian Americans’ political participation. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 23(3), 338–360. doi:10.1093/ijpor/edr019 Southern California Association of Governments. (2012). City of Alhambra community profile. Retrieved from http://sustain.scag.ca.gov/Documents/Alhambra%20Community%20Profile%20FINAL.pdf The Pew Research Center. (2013). The state of the news media 2013: An annual report on American journalism. Retrieved from http://stateofthemedia.org/ U.S. Census Bureau. (2010). United States Census 2010. http://www.census.gov/2010census/ Valente, T. W. (1995). Network models of the diffusion of innovations. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Waldman, Steven. (2011). The information needs of communities: The changing media landscape in a broadband age. Washington, DC: Federal Communications Commission. Wei, L., & Hindman, D. B. (2011). Does the digital divide matter more? Comparing the effects of new media and old media use on the education-based knowledge gap. Mass Communication and Society, 14(2), 216–235. doi:10.1080/15205431003642707 Wilkin, H. A. (2013). Exploring the potential of communication infrastructure theory for informing efforts to reduce health disparities. Journal of Communication, 63(1), 181–200. doi:10.1111/jcom.12006 Wilkin, H. A., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006). Reaching at risk groups: The importance of health storytelling in Los Angeles Latino media. Journalism, 7(3), 299–320. doi:10.1177/ 1464884906065513

chapter t welve

Communication Infrastructure Theory and Community-Based Program Evaluation The Case of Media Mobilizing Project and the CAP Comcast Campaign garrett m . broad

Assistant Professor, Fordham University

Introduction A number of researchers have employed communication infrastructure theory (CIT) as a guide to develop and evaluate community-based programs and interventions. In these scholarly contexts, CIT has provided both a theoretical and empirical framework to investigate the communicative strengths and weaknesses of community change initiatives, those that aim to increase civic engagement, improve community health, bolster vital service delivery, and advance social change at the local level (Broad et al., 2013; Chen et al., 2012; Wilkin, 2013). This CIT-driven approach has often been integrated into broader processes of participatory action research, with researchers using the framework to help collaborating organizations build internal capacity to contextualize, document, assess, and refine their own organizing and implementation strategies (Matsaganis, Golden, & Scott, 2014). The aim of this chapter is to examine the connections between CIT and what Donaldson (2007) has termed “program theory-driven evaluation.” P ­ rogram theory-driven evaluation is a research perspective that uses existing social science

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theory, in conjunction with the implicit theory of collaborating organizational stakeholders, to produce knowledge, provide feedback, determine the value of social programs, and improve their overall functioning. CIT offers a valuable social science framework that can be incorporated into program theory-driven evaluation, particularly when applied to programs that take a multi-level, communication and media-oriented approach to the improvement of community health and well-being. With this in mind, this chapter first reviews central theoretical debates in the field of program evaluation research, highlighting the value of participatory and program theory-driven research approaches. It then provides an overview of CIT-informed research focused on community interventions and program evaluation, demonstrating the theory’s compatibility with existing evaluation frameworks and exploring its unique empirical and analytical contributions. From there, the work offers findings from a CIT-driven program evaluation of the Media Mobilizing Project (MMP), a Philadelphia-based organization that uses media production, training, and organizing as a tool for mobilizing local community members on issues related to health, education, and communication rights. Specifically, the chapter focuses on the organization’s CAP Comcast Campaign, a corporate accountability organizing project focused on securing a variety of demands from the Comcast Corporation as it negotiated a 15-year franchise agreement with MMP’s hometown city of Philadelphia. The paper concludes with a discussion of how CIT can be extended through its application as a framework for intervention and evaluation research across diverse community contexts.

Evaluation Research The field of evaluation research is notorious for its lack of theoretical and methodological consistency. As Glass and Ellett (1980) once declared, “Evaluation— more than any science—is what people say it is; and people currently are saying it is many different things” (p. 211). While various forms of social evaluation have taken place for hundreds and even thousands of years, the roots of modern evaluation research are generally traced back to several key educational, social psychological, and sociological thinkers from the early-to-mid 20th century (Shadish, Cook, & Leviton 1991). It was in the 1960s, with the rise of the Great Society social programs in the United States, that evaluation research came into prominence as an applied social science endeavor. In this period, systematic evaluation of congressionally authorized programs—focused on education, poverty, employment and other topics—was centrally concerned with assessing their net effects and investment worthiness. Methodologically, the work was dominated by quantitative, randomized field experiments and other largely positivist approaches (Rossi & Wright,

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1984). Since that time, however, the field has undergone significant evolution, as a host of other methods and theories of evaluation were developed and deployed by researchers and practitioners. In a review of the theories that guide evaluation research, Alkin (2013) likened the field to a tree with three primary roots. He termed the central portion of that tree the “social inquiry” root, as theorists have branched off to introduce multiple types of research methodology into the practice of evaluation. The second portion was titled the “social accountability” root, as evaluation scholars have considered a variety of questions related to the optimal use of evaluation processes and findings for programs and organizations under study. The final portion he named the “epistemology” root, with researchers branching off to include different strategies for valuing the subjects and products of evaluation. Importantly, Alkin suggested, the three branches should be viewed as interrelated rather than distinctly independent. The case study described in this chapter aims to demonstrate the value that CIT can bring to the practical and theoretical field of program evaluation. In so doing, it engages directly with several existing branches across the evaluation tree. First, from the perspective of methodology, like many other CIT-influenced projects, this work takes a multi-method approach—it is grounded primarily in qualitative data analysis and ethnographic participant observation, but also incorporated the collection of “countable” data points and descriptive quantitative analysis into the process (Stoecker, 2005). With respect to the social accountability component, the research is committed to a participatory evaluation process. This pragmatic approach is concerned with producing results that not only provide insight into the effectiveness of a particular program, but that also actively aims to build capacity within organizations to improve programming and evaluation procedures into the future. Participatory evaluation is relational and dialogic in nature, includes the active involvement of multiple participants, and forges a relationship between an engaged evaluator and the evaluation stakeholders. This perspective also encourages evaluators to collect data related not only to the ultimate outcomes of a program, but also to process-oriented components, all with an eye toward empowering collaborators to enhance their effectiveness (Cousins & Chouinard, 2012). Finally, in terms of the epistemological component, the case study builds upon a program theory-driven approach to the evaluation process. As Shadish, Cook, and Leviton (1991) have described, while the history of evaluation research has included a great deal of theorizing related to how evaluation should be conducted, significantly less energy has been directed toward theorizing “how programs worked, about the nature and causes of social problems, or about the kinds of educational, social, health, or economic concepts and techniques that compose social interventions” (p. 384). This atheoretical, “black-box” approach has been

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challenged by program theory-driven evaluation perspectives, what Donaldson (2007) defined as the “systematic use of substantive knowledge about the phenomena under investigation and scientific methods to improve, to produce knowledge and feedback about, and to determine the merit, worth, and significance” of the social programs under study (p. 9). This existing “substantive knowledge” emerges from two potential places—one, the theory of program stakeholders themselves, which is often implicit and must be drawn out through collaborative interactions with the evaluator, generally culminating in the production of a “theory of change” and a visual “logic model” of inputs and expected outcomes; or two, explicit and validated theory from the social sciences (Chen, 2005). While some evaluation scholars have suggested an either-or choice should be made between using stakeholder program theory or existing social science theory as a guide for evaluation, this research agrees with those who believe that a mutually-reinforcing blend between these bodies of knowledge is possible (Donaldson, 2007). This chapter looks to CIT, in conjunction with the stakeholder theory of Media Mobilizing Project and its CAP Comcast campaign, as a guide for this strategy of c­ ommunity-based evaluation research.

Communication Infrastructure Theory and Community Interventions Previous work in this volume has already explicated the central tenets of CIT in depth (see, for example, Kim & Jung, Chapter 1; Kim, Chapter 3). As a brief review, the theoretical framework asserts that a storytelling system operates across multiple levels of analysis, and it identifies the neighborhood storytelling network as a key player at the meso- and micro-levels. The neighborhood storytelling network is composed of local residents in their interpersonal networks, local ­community-based organizations, and community-based and ethnic media (referred to as geo-ethnic media). It is nested within the communication action context, which is composed of any element of the built or social environment that shapes the dynamics of neighborhood communication. Fundamentally, CIT argues that a strong storytelling network, one in which the three nodes of community storytelling actors are linked through discursive interaction, can contribute to positive community outcomes for local residents, including high levels of neighborhood belonging, civic participation, collective efficacy, and health promoting behaviors (Ball-Rokeach, Kim, & Matei, 2001; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006; Wilkin, Moran, Ball-Rokeach, Gonzalez, & Kim, 2010). With this research foundation in place, recent years have seen scholars associated with the Metamorphosis Project, as well as others informed by the CIT

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framework, use the theory as a way to make recommendations about the development of community intervention projects (Literat & Chen, 2014; Wilkin, 2013; see also Chen, Liu, Ognyanova, & Moreno, Chapter 11; Villanueva & ­Wenzel, Chapter 9; Wilkin, Matsaganis, & Golden, Chapter 10). For instance, both Wilkin and Ball-Rokeach (2006) and Katz, Matsaganis, and Ball-Rokeach (2012) evaluated the capacity of geo-ethnic media to serve as important purveyors of vital news and information within the storytelling network. The former study used survey data to argue that Spanish-language media could improve the dissemination of health information to local community members, while the latter drew from survey results to show how ethnic media in general could help increase broadband adoption within immigrant communities. Elsewhere, focusing on the communication action context, Hayden and Ball-Rokeach (2007) assessed the potential of community technology centers to serve as “digital hubs” that could facilitate connectivity and communicative capacity in urban localities. Further research endeavors have been integrated into participatory projects that aim to embed the strategic perspectives of CIT into the practices of local health promotion and community-building organizations. Broad et al. (2013) drew from interviews with South Los Angeles-based community organizers to identify key elements of their “communication ecologies”—the networks of communication connections that they constructed in order to achieve their community organizing goals. The research process led to the development of an interactive website and in-person events intended to improve the organizers’ local communicative capacities. Villanueva, Broad, Gonzalez, Ball-Rokeach, and Murphy (2016) partnered with community health workers to map “communication assets” within the local community—composed of communication hotspots and communication comfort zones, these local sites of positive discursive interaction could then be leveraged for health promotion and community building purposes. Still other CIT-informed projects have offered the possibility to evaluate interventions that were initially designed through the lens of CIT. After identifying gaps in the local news and information environment of an ethnically heterogeneous Los Angeles County city, Chen et al. (2012) used CIT and feedback from community stakeholders to create a hyperlocal news website, aiming to strengthen the quality of the neighborhood storytelling network. While no evaluation of this platform’s impact has been published to date, a baseline survey that measured residents’ civic engagement and communication practices would allow the researchers to assess the intervention’s effectiveness in the future. The work of Wilkin, Stringer, O’Quin, Montgomery, and Hunt (2011) used CIT to both design and evaluate strategies for locating residents who use 911 for healthcare. The research concluded that, by promoting interaction

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between neighborhood storytellers—including resident networks, community organizations, and geo-ethnic media—and by locating residents who were not connected to neighborhood storytellers through communication hotspots and comfort zones located within the community, the intervention was able to reach more people within the target population. Matsaganis et al. (2014) used CIT to develop a participatory intervention related to African American women’s use of public reproductive health-care services in a small city. By reducing the communicative disjuncture between individual and organizational community actors, the intervention was able to improve utilization by 25% over the course of a four-year period. And in the context of rural Senegal, Abril et al. (2015) used CIT to design an intervention to disseminate information related to the need for cervical cancer screening, finding that women who lived in areas in which this strategy was deployed had greater awareness of cervical cancer and screening recommendations than those in areas where the storytelling network was not activated. This literature review demonstrates that CIT has been used in a variety of settings as a tool for reflecting upon, developing, and evaluating health interventions and community-building programs. Given its ecological orientation, the CIT framework has shown itself to be particularly valuable for the assessment of community initiatives that take a multi-level approach to improving health and well-being at individual, institutional, and community levels. Across these diverse applications, CIT has helped scholars and practitioners work from a set of common assumptions about the nature of community change, assumptions which have led researchers to related sets of research questions and data sources that can help guide intervention and assessment. From the CIT perspective, it can be argued that interventions and associated evaluations should be able to respond to at least three primary research questions: –  Does an intervention or program strengthen the neighborhood storytelling network by building networked connections between and among local residents, geo-ethnic media, and community-based organizations? – Does an intervention or program successfully disseminate a story that motivates change at the individual and/or community level? –  Does an intervention or program enhance the ability of the communication action context to promote discursive interaction between and among community storytellers? This chapter aims to extend previous CIT scholarship into the domain of program theory-driven evaluation research, using these foundational research questions as a guide.

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Case Study Media Mobilizing Project: A Movement Media Model for Community Change The Media Mobilizing Project (MMP) uses media, education, and organizing to advance an agenda for social and economic justice in Philadelphia and other communities across the United States. Through collaborative media-making, advocacy, and coalition-building, the organization works to transform the cultural narratives and institutional structures that have long marginalized low-income and working class members of society. MMP leverages the power of storytelling to promote health, equity, and community capacity, identifying and cultivating leadership from within local neighborhoods to achieve progressive social change. The organization was officially founded in 2005 as a project within the Philadelphia Independent Media Center, brought to fruition during a local campaign against Wal-Mart when activists identified a need for greater media and communications capacity. Its founders had their roots in antipoverty and poor-peoples’ organizing, as well as in the participatory media making practices of the indymedia movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s. As Wolfson and Funke (2014) described, MMP aimed to “merge these two dimensions in an effort to join classbased social movement-building work with a focus on the role of media and communications in binding across points of struggles”, aiming specifically to “create professional media as well as train people to tell their own story, in an attempt to build a narrative about poor and working people that is both polished and comes from the voices of those in struggle” (p. 369). Through its philosophy and action, MMP has developed what it terms a “movement media model.” At its foundations, this perspective integrates scholarly knowledge related to class struggle and media power with insights from multiple stakeholder groups involved in the organization’s network—including community organizers, local residents, labor leaders, educators, academic researchers, communication activists, media practitioners, and others. Declaring that, “Movements begin with the telling of untold stories,” the organization’s driving program theory argues that poverty and social injustice can be challenged by equipping affected communities with the framework and skills to (1) make collaborative media, (2) advocate for human and communications rights, and (3) organize in a way that illuminates the common threads of fragmented community struggles (Media Mobilizing Project, 2014). While consistently guided by these movement media principles, the specific programming of MMP has evolved and changed significantly over time. The evaluation of the CAP Comcast Campaign featured in this chapter was part of a larger

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participatory research process—undertaken by the author in conjunction with MMP staff, board members, volunteers, and partners—that initially highlighted four active MMP programs. In line with the program theory-driven approach to evaluation, a logic model was created to visually represent the participants, activities, and goals of these projects (Chen, 2005). The logic model was created by the author after conversation and consultation with MMP, serving as an artifact to guide evaluation of the organization’s operations as a whole. For the purposes of this chapter, an adapted logic model (see Figure 12.1) was created to highlight the CAP Comcast Campaign, specifically. In this context, inputs are considered the human, organizational, and financial resources required for the campaign; activities are what the campaign does with those resources to achieve its aims; outcomes are the specific changes that the campaign aims to achieve; and impacts are the fundamental social and community-level shifts that the campaign works to promote (W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 2004). The

Figure 12.1.  Logic Model for Media Mobilizing Project’s CAP Comcast Campaign.

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logic model also documents external constraints on the program and features key considerations of CIT as a way to highlight the social science and stakeholder program theory concepts that were integrated into the evaluation process. The external factors and constraints represent the foundational issues that motivate individuals and organizations to participate in the campaigns and activities of MMP, while the principles of CIT offer a framework for understanding the pathway through which that participation might lead to community-level social change. Situating the principles of CIT in parallel with those of the CAP Comcast Campaign also demonstrates their commonalities, particularly with respect to shared concern for building networked connections across the neighborhood storytelling network while using narratives to promote community change. As subsequent sections of this chapter describe, this congruence suggests that CIT offers a useful social science framework for evaluating the efforts of the campaign, while an analysis of the campaign’s organizing strategy can help validate and/or refine assumptions of CIT.

The CAP Comcast Campaign: Theory-Driven Evaluation Findings A cable franchise sets the terms for the provision of services between a cable provider and a municipality, giving the company permission to use public “rights-of-way” to operate its cable system and deliver cable service. The Comcast Corporation is the largest media company in the world and the primary provider of both cable and Internet services in its hometown city of Philadelphia. Comcast’s 15-year “franchise agreement” with Philadelphia had an expiration date set for 2015—MMP’s CAP Comcast campaign aimed to reshape the local communication environment of Philadelphia by pressuring city leaders and Comcast executives to use that franchise negotiation as a tool for securing a host of community benefits. “What we’re talking about is what we truly deserve,” MMP Policy Director Hannah Jane Sassaman described. “It’s about communications as a human right.” Spearheaded by MMP and backed by a diverse collection of community groups, unions, media practitioners, and thousands of local residents, the goals that the CAP Comcast campaign set were ambitious and direct from the start. Citing a history of poor service, high consumer costs, low rates of broadband connectivity among low-­ income residents, corporate tax abatements, and an overall lack of investment in its hometown, CAP Comcast offered six primary points of intervention: –  Fund education. –  Expand affordable Internet. –  Boost innovation. –  Increase accountability and competition.

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–  Protect workers’ rights. –  Support diverse, community media, especially public, educational, and government (PEG) access television. It is important to note that the campaign represented the first ever concerted effort in the nation to tie a municipal franchise agreement to such an expansive set of demands that extended beyond the basics of cable television. The effort depended upon the leadership of MMP Policy Director Sassaman, Campaign Organizers Jeff Rousset and Candace Chewning, and Executive Director Bryan Mercer, as well as support from MMP staffers, volunteer contributions from a student activist “field team,” and participation from a host of other partners and allies. Fundamentally, the CAP Comcast campaign aimed to challenge an entrenched power and gain unprecedented community benefits. In order to do so, the initiative listened to the stories of affected community members, educated activists and leaders about the franchise process, amplified a vision for equitable communication rights, and connected a diverse coalition of organizations and individuals in common cause. By the end of the 2015 calendar year, the agreement had been signed, with many of CAP Comcast’s central demands enshrined in the text (although, at the time of this writing, it remains to be seen the extent to which these agreements will be fully or partially upheld through long-term implementation). First passed by the Philadelphia City Council’s Public Property Committee, then by the full Philadelphia City Council, and finally signed by outgoing Mayor Michael Nutter in late-2015, the 15-year franchise agreement with Comcast was universally hailed as the strongest in American municipal history. The agreement expanded affordable and free Internet access, increased customer service commitments, boosted funding of Public Educational and Government television, pledged support for a variety of infrastructure improvements, and provided more substantive protections for cable and Internet workers. Provisions related to the expansion of Comcast’s Internet Essentials program; funding for Career and Technology Education at the Philadelphia Public Schools; and living wages for all Comcast workers, contractors, and subcontractors were all pushed forth by the CAP Comcast campaign. While there were undoubtedly some elements of the franchise that stopped short of the ambitious goals of the CAP Comcast campaign, the agreement could only be described as a success for the initiative. “Before, the public had no relationship with Comcast,” Campaign Organizer Chewning suggested. “The public does now.” And, it must also be noted, the ripple effects of these successes could be felt beyond the Philadelphia area—in the cities of Baltimore and Seattle, for instance, new and stronger demands were immediately being placed on Comcast

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as those municipalities began to engage in their own franchise renewal talks with the corporation. The CAP Comcast campaign pursued organizing strategies both inside ­Philadelphia City Hall and at the grassroots level to achieve its goals. From the earliest points in the process, staffers engaged with local residents in order to develop a set of demands that reflected their complaints, concerns, needs, and desires—comments which were also channeled through official city platforms. Notably, the CAP Comcast campaign was responsible for encouraging hundreds of public contributions in a “needs assessment and technical review”—conducted for the City of Philadelphia by a third-party research firm, this report documented Philadelphia residents’ perceptions of their Comcast service (Robinson, Nielsen, Ledoux Book, & Hamlin, 2014). In addition, through the life of the campaign, CAP Comcast turned out hundreds of local residents and organizational allies for pivotal public hearings and protest events, as the initiative’s key demand that Comcast must “pay its fair share” became a central narrative within the franchise negotiation process. Building this momentum required a significant dedication to educate local residents and public officials about the nature of the franchise agreement and the potential to leverage the process for social good. Members of the field team, composed largely of local college students and other engaged activists, were trained by the Campaign Organizers to become advocates for the initiative, able to ensure turnout at events and collaborate with residents to prepare public testimony. Sassaman led the process of informing and applying pressure on the Philadelphia City Council, several of whose members became passionate and influential mouthpieces for key elements of the campaign. Councilman Bobby Henon was perhaps the most outspoken, as a statement on his website that announced a set of joint hearings to discuss the franchise agreement suggested: The world today is much different today than it was 15 years ago … Now, the world economy is driven by internet access while too many in our low-income communities remain disconnected. The possibility of expanding broadband access while securing much-needed benefit for the school district, recreation centers and other public spaces are within our reach with this agreement. (Henon, 2015)

In a battle with the largest media company in the world, one might expect that CAP Comcast would have struggled to gain control of the dominant media narratives that characterized its campaign. Yet, CAP Comcast demonstrated a remarkable ability to effectively articulate its vision to the broader public in diverse media platforms. Digital and social media outreach played a role in circulating petitions and gaining local support; positive coverage from local, national, and special interest media outlets—including, but not limited to, The Philadelphia

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Inquirer, Generocity, Consumerist, The Guardian and CNN—amplified their theory of change well beyond the local organizing context. As Sassaman argued, the process had been able to “move the needle” with respect to the story of the franchise agreement and its potential for effecting community change. The success of the initiative relied heavily, as well, upon the campaign’s ability to activate connections with key organizational partners across the education, labor, social justice, and media policy sectors. Several of the usual suspects proved important allies—including student activists and national media policy groups like Free Press. But the CAP Comcast campaign was particularly effective in bringing in groups who might not be seen as natural advocates for a communication rights campaign. Despite rarely engaging on issues related to media reform, endorsements and vocal participation from major labor groups—including the AFLCIO, the service workers of UNITE Here!, and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers—as well as from membership-based advocacy organizations—including Action United and PA Working Families—proved central in broadening the campaign’s reach and appeal. Together with CAP Comcast staff, engaged residents and public officials, these groups stood together as the campaign’s goals came to be realized.

Discussion and Extensions of Communication Infrastructure Theory Following a “program theory-driven evaluation” approach (Donaldson, 2007), this section aims to evaluate the work of the CAP Comcast campaign based on both its implicit program theory and the principles of CIT. By surveying the CAP Comcast campaign’s logic model, above, it becomes clear that several campaign activities led directly to the accomplishment of key campaign outcomes, as the implicit theory of the campaign would suggest. Guided by the power of an energized and networked coalition—working both inside and outside official structures of power—the CAP Comcast campaign shifted public consciousness regarding the nature of the franchise agreement and its potential to promote the interests of Philadelphia consumers, workers, students, and media producers. The end result was an agreement that (if properly implemented) will make material improvements to the quality of the digital communications infrastructure, educational, and labor landscapes in the city of Philadelphia. The successes of the CAP Comcast campaign also contributed to MMP’s long-term intended impacts, demonstrating the organization’s relevance within a broader movement for social justice and making some progress toward equitable communication rights for all. All of this emerged from a topic—the franchise agreement—that has historically

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been overlooked as a potential point of activism, and about which even interested community media activists knew little prior to the campaign. The tenets of CIT lend further credence to the approach undertaken by the CAP Comcast Campaign. As has been previously discussed, a theory-driven evaluation informed by CIT should be able to answer three primary questions— whether an intervention strengthens the neighborhood storytelling network by building networked connections between and among local residents, geo-ethnic media, and community-based organizations; whether an intervention successfully disseminates a story that motivates change at the individual and/or community level; and whether an intervention enhances the ability of the communication action context to promote discursive interaction between and among community storytellers. On all three counts, the work of CAP Comcast can be evaluated affirmatively. The campaign’s strength was grounded in its ability to connect a group of loosely linked but often disconnected actors from across the local storytelling network. CAP Comcast’s educational and advocacy efforts led hundreds of local residents, dozens of non-profit and public sector actors, as well as key local media producers to engage in shared storytelling. Together, they critiqued the flawed services of Comcast, crystallized a set of concrete community demands, and focused upon the franchise agreement as a point of intervention to force Comcast to “pay its fair share.” From the perspective of CIT, the success of the CAP Comcast campaign can largely be attributed to its strategy of integrating the storytelling network through shared storytelling and advocacy. The campaign also reshaped the nature of the communication action context, first through the dynamic process of building bridges between nodes in the storytelling network, and second through the franchise agreement itself. Notably, the agreement’s commitment to improve digital infrastructure, Internet affordability, and customer service; to bolster public and educational television programming; to fund technology education in Philadelphia public schools; and to ensure living wage and worker safety standards for all Comcast-affiliated workers should together strengthen the basic communicative foundation of the local community. These multi-level improvements tackle what Ball-Rokeach and Jung (2008) have referred to as the plural “digital divides” that characterize technological inequality in the 21st century. In Philadelphia as elsewhere in urban America, low-income and immigrant residents face digital divides across individual and neighborhood contexts, constraining their ability to obtain resources and navigate institutions that shape their prospects for health, education, and employment. Further, material improvements that respond to the communication rights of residents and workers increase the capacity for individuals and communities to participate in shared storytelling that reflects their needs and interests, advancing the possibility for multi-level community engagement on social and political issues.

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Derived through multi-method fieldwork, these theory-guided assessments of merit offer positive conclusions regarding the activities and outcomes of the CAP Comcast campaign in the short-term. The findings also suggests that the intervention has made progress toward its long-term intended impacts, as well as in support of MMP’s general mission to build a media, education, and organizing infrastructure that amplifies movements for social justice. In addition, the findings also points to several key avenues through which the integration of CIT into the program evaluation process offers benefits to the intervention and organization under study. The CAP Comcast Campaign’s ability to respond directly to the three primary research questions from CIT enhances the credibility of the intervention. Not only was the program deemed successful on the basis of implicitly derived stakeholder theory, but also from the perspective of externally validated social science. Considered more generally, the CIT framework also helps draw the attention of collaborating researchers and practitioners to sets of key questions and potential metrics in data collection that might otherwise be overlooked, even if also embedded within the stakeholders’ theory of change. CIT encourages participatory evaluation projects of community initiatives to collect quantitative and qualitative data related to the number and type of connections that exist between and among the studied organization and its collaborators in the residential, inter-­organizational, and media production communities. CIT also calls upon evaluators to focus upon elements of the communication environment that have been impacted by organizational activities to promote more substantive neighborhood communication, whether it be through enhanced technological or digital infrastructure, the improvement of public space to facilitate communicative activity, or the bridging of social connections across aspects of difference. In addition, the framework pushes evaluators to document and track the ability of the organization to successfully express and disseminate its narrative of community change through multiple mediums of neighborhood communication. In the case of the CAP Comcast Campaign, many of these concerns were indeed embedded into the initial intervention plans, but the process of evaluation, informed by the CIT perspective, pushed for them to be explicitly named and monitored over time. There are also extensions that can be made to the CIT framework itself in light of program theory-driven evaluation findings. In this instance, at least two key ideas stand out—one pragmatic, the other more conceptual. The pragmatic extension concerns the role that elected officials and public policymakers play within the neighborhood storytelling network. Indeed, CIT research to date might be critiqued for not paying adequate attention to the role played by these actors in motivating community change. In the initial formulations

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of CIT, public policy actors were generally conceptualized as operating within a macro-level storytelling system that influences the neighborhood communication infrastructure but does not directly participate in meso-level neighborhood storytelling (Ball-Rokeach, Kim & Matei, 2001). However, given its focus on city-level policymakers, the CAP Comcast campaign offers an example in which public officials were actually central players within the neighborhood storytelling network. The incorporation of several key elected officials into the organizing process was vital for residents’ ability to build connections with local media producers and allied public sector organizations, thereby amplifying the campaign’s narrative in local neighborhoods and shaping the negotiation process citywide. From the conceptual perspective, existing CIT scholarship could also be critiqued for being less than thorough in exploring the social and economic foundations of contemporary inequality. While researchers employing CIT have developed interventions in the name of promoting community health and equity, the work has generally been less than explicit in naming and condemning the power dynamics that are often at the root of these disparities. Community-driven solutions that emerge based on the recommendations of CIT might therefore be seen as placing too much pressure on local activists to overcome challenges that actually emanate from areas that are well beyond their community of practice (Broad, 2016). MMP, as a counterpoint, explicitly argues that national and international neoliberal policy in media, education, and labor markets have marginalized the rights and interests of everyday people; the CAP Comcast campaign actively engaged one of these neoliberal power-players as a direct target of agitative, conflictual advocacy. Campaigns like CAP Comcast demonstrate that community-based programs that seek justice and equity are often connected to broader struggles against inequitable political and economic forces that stretch well beyond the local community. This perspective should push CIT researchers to incorporate these political economic critiques into their analysis, and to question the extent to which community-based victories can be sustained absent connections to national or international social justice networks that promote cultural and policy change. Collaborating with a group like MMP and its CAP Comcast Campaign brings these pragmatic and conceptual considerations to the fore. Evaluation-­ oriented research can improve the way CIT researchers understand the process and challenges of community-based social change moving forward. Concurrently, future evaluation-oriented research can continue to bolster the claim that CIT offers a viable guide for program theory-driven evaluation projects, as well as refine CIT’s relevance as a framework for understanding social change in diverse community contexts.

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References Abril, E. P., Kupczyk, M., Zwicke, G. L., Mastarone, G. L., Irwin, T., & Dykens, A. (2015). Mapping the health communication infrastructure in rural Senegal: An assessment to support cervical cancer screening. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 43(2), 242–262. Alkin, M. C. (Ed.) (2013). Evaluation roots: A wider perspective of theorists’ views and influences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Ball-Rokeach, S. J., & Jung, Y. J. (2008). Digital divide. In W. Donsbach (Ed.) The International Encyclopedia of Communication. Blackwell Publishing. Blackwell Reference Online. Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Kim, Y. C., & Matei, S. (2001). Storytelling neighborhood paths to belonging in diverse urban environments. Communication Research, 28(4), 392–428. Broad, G. M. (2016). More than just food: food justice and community change. Oakland, CA: ­University of California Press. Broad, G. M., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Ognyanova, K., Stokes, B., Picasso, T., & Villanueva, G. (2013). Understanding communication ecologies to bridge communication research and community action. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 41(4), 325–345. Chen, H. T. (2005). Practical program evaluation: Assessing and improving planning, implementation, and effectiveness. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Chen, N. T. N., Dong, F., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Parks, M., & Huang, J. (2012). Building a new media platform for local storytelling and civic engagement in ethnically diverse neighborhoods. New Media & Society, 14(6), 931–950. Cousins, J. B., & Chouinard, J. A. (Eds.). (2012). Participatory evaluation up close: An integration of research-based knowledge. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Donaldson, S. I. (2007). Program theory-driven evaluation science: Strategies and applications. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis. Glass, G. V., & Ellett Jr, F. S. (1980). Evaluation research. Annual Review of Psychology, 31(1), 211–228. Hayden, C., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2007). Maintaining the digital hub: Locating the community technology center in a communication infrastructure. New Media & Society, 9(2), 235–257. Henon, B. (2015). Councilman Henon seeks more input on franchise agreement. Retrieved from http:// www.bobbyhenon.com/councilman_henon_seeks_more_input_on_franchise_agreement. Katz, V. S., Matsaganis, M. D., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2012). Ethnic media as partners for increasing broadband adoption and social inclusion. Journal of Information Policy, 2, 79–102. Kim, Y. C., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006). Community storytelling network, neighborhood context, and civic engagement: A multilevel approach. Human Communication Research, 32(4), 411–439. Literat, I., & Chen, N. T. N. (2014). Communication infrastructure theory and entertainment-education: An integrative model for health communication. Communication ­Theory, 24(1), 83–103. Matsaganis, M. D., Golden, A. G., & Scott, M. E. (2014). Communication infrastructure theory and reproductive health disparities: Enhancing storytelling network integration by developing interstitial actors. International Journal of Communication, 8, 21.

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Media Mobilizing Project (2014). Unpublished Project Rationale. Internal Document. Robinson, T., Nielsen, D., Ledoux Book, C., & Hamlin, C. (2014). Report on cable television-­ related needs and interests, and system technical review in the Comcast franchise areas of The City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. CBG Communications, Inc. Retrieved from http://www. phila.gov/newsletters/finalNAR4615.pdf Rossi, P. H., & Wright, J. D. (1984). Evaluation research: An assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 10(1), 331–352. Shadish, W. R., Cook, T. D., & Leviton, L. C. (1991). Foundations of program evaluation: Theories of practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Stoecker, R. (2005). Research methods for community change: A project-based approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Villanueva, G., Broad, G. M., Gonzalez, C., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., & Murphy, S. (2016). Communication asset mapping: An ecological field application toward building healthy communities. International Journal of Communication, 10, 2704–2724. W. K. Kellogg Foundation. (2004). Logic model development guide: Using logic models to bring together planning, evaluation, & action. Retrieved from https://www.wkkf.org/ resource-directory/resource/2006/02/wk-kellogg-foundation-logic-model-developmentguide Wilkin, H. A. (2013). Exploring the potential of communication infrastructure theory for informing efforts to reduce health disparities. Journal of Communication, 63(1), 181–200. Wilkin, H. A., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006). Reaching at risk groups: The importance of health storytelling in Los Angeles Latino media. Journalism, 7(3), 299–320. Wilkin, H. A., Moran, M. B., Ball-Rokeach, S. J., Gonzalez, C., & Kim, Y. C. (2010). Applications of communication infrastructure theory. Health Communication, 25(6–7), 611–612. Wilkin, H. A., Stringer, K. A., O’Quin, K., Montgomery, S. A., & Hunt, K. (2011). Using communication infrastructure theory to formulate a strategy to locate “hard-to-reach” research participants. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 39(2), 201–213. Wolfson, T., & Funke, P. N. (2014). Communication, class and concentric media practices: Developing a contemporary rubric. New Media & Society, 16(3), 363–380.

Epilogue Emerging Issues and Future Directions matthew d . matsaganis , holley a . wilkin , joo - young jung ,

& yong-chan kim

In the Prologue, Sandra Ball-Rokeach challenged communication researchers by asking, “How do we mobilize communication forces to create grounded bridges or structures that bring racial/ethnic communities together in common cause while maintaining their unique socio-cultural forms (the classical part/whole challenge)?” The research in this book begins to provide answers to this pressing question, but also others salient to urban dwellers today. A trend toward urbanization is forecasted to remain strong for at least 50 more years. How the places we inhabit—and especially cities—impact our lives, and how, in turn, humans shape the urban environment has intensified across the social sciences, and in the field of communication more specifically. Increasingly, policymakers are seeking solutions to cities’ problems that are informed by research. And the good news is that methodological innovations have made it easier to study and understand our inherently complex urban ecosystems. This volume adds to the growing body of evidence that supports the argument that communication research has and can continue to contribute to our understanding of how cities evolve, how urban communities come together to define and solve common problems, and what opportunities and challenges stakeholders in urban communities face in attempting to do so.

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Key Contributions of the Volume We can identify at least four important contributions of the 12 chapters in this volume to the field of urban communication. First, the works of this volume show how CIT has evolved and will continue to do so by investigating new questions related to life in cities around the world. Second, the chapters contribute to our discussion about research methodology by demonstrating the importance of mixed and multi-method approaches. Third, the works of this volume provide cases showing how CIT has facilitated community-based intervention research, and how that intervention research has helped advance theory and research design. Last but certainly not least, this edited volume contributes to CIT based discussions about how the on-going evolution of new communication technologies has impacted communication in urban communities. We elaborate on each of the foregoing contributions next. Communication infrastructure theory (CIT) emerged in the early 2000s as a communication-centered approach to understanding the forces that were changing urban communities and that shaped civic engagement. It can be considered a theoretical approach to understanding how communities transform and change, how they collectively identify or define common problems, and how they (can) go about solving them (Kim & Jung, Chapter 1; Kim, Chapter 3). An example of collective problem identification is provided by Jung and Maeda (Chapter 5) who explore CIT within and the context of a natural disaster. Wilkin, Matsaganis, and Golden (Chapter 10) provide examples of collective problem solving around health disparities. Thereby, CIT is a theory that enables the study and even the design and orchestration of efforts to effect community change. One of the contributions of this volume is that collectively authors document the evolution of CIT as a theory. The relationship between the storytelling network (STN) of urban communities and their communication action context (CAC) is examined in more detail. Initially, primarily quantitative research provided evidence of how several factors in the CAC impact STN dynamics. For example, Kim and Ball-Rokeach (2006) found that the extent to which individuals were well connected to other community actors (or storytellers) in the local STN was a stronger indicator of civic engagement in ethnically heterogeneous communities compared to homogeneous ones. Work in this book (and studies referenced in chapters) shows how features of local CACs impact STN dynamics, how negative effects can be countered and how barriers that prevent connections between neighborhood storytellers can be overcome (for examples, see Zhang, Motta, & Georgiou, Chapter 7; Wilkin et al., Chapter 10). From a research design perspective, the collection of studies included in this volume reflects some of the key principles that informed the formative research

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through which CIT was initially articulated, but also introduces innovations adopted over time to address both theoretical and practical concerns. For instance, the broader use of qualitative methods enabled a deeper analysis of how the integration of the storytelling network (STN) occurs. Moreover, because CIT is a grounded approach that forces you to listen to community agents, applying the theory in interventions required the adoption of community-based or communityengaged research principles. And this meant that research methods were not always determined a priori, but identified through the partnership of research teams and community stakeholders (e.g., residents, community organizations). These methodological innovations are discussed in more detail by Matsaganis and Wilkin in Chapter 4. New methods could be further incorporated into research designs in CIT-based studies, including, for example social network analysis and “big data” analysis. Doing so could shed light on specific social structures, at the individual and organizational level, that facilitate STN integration. One of the biggest developments documented in this book is the application of CIT in intervention research. This is in line with the Metamorphosis Project’s mission from the very beginning to conduct research that would inform practitioner and policymaker decisions and actions. To date CIT has guided the development, implementation, and/or evaluation of interventions to build civic engagement (see Chen, Liu, Ognyanova, & Moreno, Chapter 11) and address health disparities (see Wilkin et al., Chapter 10). It has also guided efforts to mobilize communities to advocate for the changes they wanted to see in their built environment (see Villanueva & Wenzel, Chapter 9). Finally, CIT has been utilized to evaluate and improve the efficacy of community-based organizing and programming (see Broad, Chapter 12). Extending our understanding of the role of community storytellers within interventions, Wilkin et al. (Chapter 10) elaborate on the notion of a “field of health action” (Matsaganis & Golden, 2015) by showing how peer health advocate groups of residents, fostered in the context of two health communication interventions in two different cities, act as interstitial actors that contribute to the integration of a community’s STN, across levels of analysis (individual/micro and organizational/meso). The research by Chen et al. (Chapter 9) shows how a hyperlocal, digital media organization can serve as a platform that fosters understanding and discussion among residents of three different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds in a Los Angeles community. Contributors to this book also elaborate the role of technology in the communication infrastructure of communities. Ognyanova and Jung (Chapter 8) outline how CIT has evolved to further consider the role of technology within communication infrastructures. An example of a key question raised in CIT-based research that continues to be salient is articulated by Kim (Chapter 3): Are the effects of

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individuals’ new media connections on civic engagement moderated by how well connected these urban residents are to local communication resources – individual, media, and organizational (see also: Kim & Shin, 2016; Kim et al., 2015)? We discuss issues related to use of communication technologies in local community contexts in the following section on future research directions, with the help of the authors whose work appears in this volume.

Future Directions for Communication Research in Urban Communities The chapters in this book suggest several different directions in which future research on communication and urban communities should move. Here we elaborate on four areas for new CIT research: (1) Influences of macro-level factors on the local storytelling network (STN), the communication action context (CAC), their interaction, and the effects of this interplay; (2) CIT-based intervention research; (3) the role of communication technologies in urban communities; and, (4) comparative research. Communities are not islands. They are embedded in larger environments that they shape and by which they are influenced. Local STN actors are part of a larger storytelling system (STS) that includes macro-level storytellers, whose referent is not the neighborhood, but it may be the city, a region, a country as a whole, or even the globe. The narratives produced and distributed by these macro-level storytellers may influence the content of communication in local communities by filtering through local STNs. For example, after the 2016 elections in the U.S., reforming immigration and health insurance policy became primary goals of the new administration. Mainstream news coverage of these issues affected local discourse, particularly in ethnically diverse communities that would be impacted by stricter immigration enforcement and/or travel bans, or in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities more likely to be affected by changes in how individuals access, purchase, and use health insurance. In different national contexts, mainstream media coverage of “Brexit” in the United Kingdom likely shaped local storytelling in London’s diverse communities, and coverage of the 2015 outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in South Korea—a major public health crisis—affected local discourse in local communities in Seoul. Similarly, CAC factors are influenced by macro-level policies and resources. For instance, the distribution of institutional resources (e.g., schools, information technology infrastructure, cultural institutions, healthcare services, media) may be shaped by policies made at the larger city, prefecture, county, province, state or federal/central government, regional or even at the global level. Such policies have a

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significant impact on the resources residents have access to in their neighborhoods, but also on the potential configuration and dynamics among local STN actors. For example, if there are no libraries or local media in a neighborhood, then promoting the integration of the STN in that community will likely be more difficult than if these community resources existed. Or if public schools are replaced (in part) by a voucher system for charter and/or private schools, students (and parents) may end up traveling outside their neighborhoods, losing opportunities to interact at local schools event with other individual actors in their local STN. Second, research in this volume speaks to the potential of CIT as a theory to guide action and intervention research in a variety of different contexts. Various chapters in the book show how CIT has guided interventions designed to address health disparities, boost civic engagement, and organize community mobilization efforts. In these studies, authors have begun to elaborate the processes through which the storytelling network can be integrated and the ways in which characteristics of local community CACs shape these processes. New work could build on these findings through research focused on process analysis ( Judd & Kenny, 1981). In this type of work, researchers seek to understand what the processes at work are within a community. In a health communication intervention project, for example, Matsaganis, Golden, and Scott (2014) showed how an academic research team working with local organizations fostered a group of local women, which evolved into a group of peer health advocates. In time, this group acted as a bridging agent, connecting local residents and local community organizations and health providers, thereby strengthening the indigenous STN. A critical outcome of this process of integration was increased utilization of health services by women with low income and of minority background living in the community. New research building on Broad’s work (Chapter 12) could also contribute to the development of approaches to systematically evaluate interventions based on CIT. Additionally, intervention research could further earlier work based on CIT on strengthening inter-group relationships, particularly among groups of residents with different racial, ethnic, linguistic, and immigration generation characteristics. In this volume, Son’s (Chapter 6) work demonstrates that new migrants can be both actively engaged in local civic activities in the society of settlement, but also involved in ethnic organizations such as churches. Chen et al.’s work (Chapter 11), which describes the development of an online community media platform to distribute stories about concerns shared by different ethnic groups living in the same small city outside of Los Angeles, offers a model for new intervention research in this area. Third, the role of new communication technologies in communities has been a focus of research based on CIT from the early days of the Metamorphosis ­Project. Ognyanova and Jung (Chapter 8) unfold the trajectory of the research on communication technologies based on CIT and the relevant work developed in

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the context of other theoretical traditions. They aptly highlight two approaches to studying communication technologies: one according to which they facilitate pre-existing communication processes in residential communities (e.g., seeking information through the online versions of local media to stay on top of local community affairs) and the other based on which new media can play a catalyzing role and produce effects not documented previously. Ognyanova and Jung also identify several new directions that researchers should explore, whether they are working with CIT or are just interested in the role of the Internet and related technologies in communities. They discuss, for instance, the tendency for research to no longer focus on the Internet as a whole, but on specific platforms and activities (e.g., the use of the Web or social media for information seeking, political or health-related uses). This trend has been combined with increased interest in the effects of new communication technology use on individuals and communities (as opposed to focusing solely on who is using one type of technology or another). Future research will need to “disaggregate” what we refer to as the Internet and examine how different technologies or devices (e.g., Internet-connected tablets, smartphones) and services (e.g., websites and social media) shape communities’ STNs, individuals’ integration into their community’s communication networks, and with what effects. As one recent example, Kim et al. (2015) reported that individuals who placed higher importance on social networking sites (SNS) to achieve everyday goals and who were better integrated into their community’s local STN, were also more likely to report that their community could come together to address shared concerns (i.e., indicated higher perceived collective efficacy). Relevant methods and measures will also have to be revised or updated (and new ones will have to be created). Among other possible contributions, such CIT-driven research on the role of technology in urban communities has the potential to inform design and evaluation frameworks for “smart city” projects that are expected to continue to grow in number in the coming years (Caragliu, Bo, Kourtit, & Nijkamp, 2015). On a related note, more research (informed by CIT) should be conducted to investigate the social implications of various smart city projects that take advantage of technological innovations, such as those we associate with the evolution of the “internet of things” and “big data.” What is the impact, for example, of living in communities where residents’ activities are under constant surveillance in the interest of fewer traffic jams and lower incidence of crime, when such monitoring also means increasing lack of privacy? Finally, if predictions are right and the future does in fact belong to cities, then the interest in understanding the problems urban communities face and developing solutions is likely to be sustained. And given the continued if not increasingly significant role of new communication technologies and population

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diversity in city life, communication researchers, in collaboration with community practitioners and policymakers, are well-positioned to have an impact in shaping the urban future. To do so, though, more comparative research is needed; that is, scholarship that seeks to compare or even replicate results from one city or community in others. Only such research will strengthen the power of our theoretical and methodological tools. This book represents an important first step to test, elaborate, and fine tune CIT. Villanueva and Wenzel (Chapter 9) present two cases studies of engaged research involving academic research teams and two communities in different parts of larger Los Angeles interested in revitalizing their neighborhoods. Moreover, Wilkin et al. (Chapter 10) examine two communication-centered interventions to address health disparities in two very different urban communities in the U.S., while Zhang et al. (Chapter 7) study how the distinct features of the CAC in two communities, one in Los Angeles and one in London, shape inter-group communication. There should be more research comparing cities (and their communities) cross national and cultural boundaries. Zhang et al.’s (Chapter 7) piece provides an example of how factors in the CAC, in this case neighborhood ethnic composition, may lead to changes in the communication infrastructure of a community. Other factors in urban environments may also contribute to changes in the communication infrastructure that are worth further study in comparative research. For example, development projects or neighborhood revitalization projects within cities, such as those observed in Seoul, Korea in the last about 10 years (e.g., Ryu & Kwon, 2016) may alter the CAC in ways that offer more (or fewer) opportunities for residents to interact. It may also contribute to gentrification and the shifting of populations within communities. Longitudinal research projects in urban communities that would collect data on neighborhoods’ communication infrastructures over time would be helpful, particularly if these data could be compared against data from neighborhoods not subjected to redevelopment. Comparative research would also enable more in-depth studies of culture as a factor that affects everyday life in urban communities. In insightful health-related research based on the culture-centered approach (Dutta, 2008), several studies have foregrounded the role of culture (as reflected in interrelated beliefs, values, and behaviors) as a particular structure that is constituted through communication in urban communities. Dutta and Jamil (2013), for instance, have documented how culture interacts with other structures (enabling or constraining, such as individuals’ and communities’ socio-economic position) to impact individuals’ health. If communication is the key process through which culture is constructed within communities, future research based on CIT could investigate how a community’s endogenous culture (or cultures in diverse or hyperdiverse communities) is

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implicated in residents’ definitions, for example, of a health-enhancing neighborhood environment, their understanding of collective efficacy, but also of structural constraints on their capacity to utilize health resources. Many of these structures exist in what in CIT is referred to as a community’s CAC. In fact, as ­Matsaganis (2015) has argued, endogenous community culture is also shaped by the interaction of the community/neighborhood level and the macro-social level. ­Immigration, for example, can change the community’s social environment and affect local culture. Such a definition and focus on culture would enable researchers to address an important challenge identified by Ball-Rokeach earlier in this volume (see ­Prologue); that is, in 21st century urban communities, what are the ways in which the intersection of multiple forms of inequality and racial/ethnic differences make it difficult for residents to construct narratives about the city as a whole and of a shared future?

References Caragliu, A., Bo, C. D., Kourtit, K., & Nijkamp, P. (2015). Smart cities. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.), 113–117. Dutta, M. J. (2008). Communicating health: A culture-centered approach. Malden, MA: Polity. Dutta, M. J., & Jamil, R. (2013). Health at the margins of migration: Culture-centered co-­ constructions among Bangladeshi immigrants. Health Communication, 28, 170–182. doi:1 0.1080/10410236.2012.666956 Judd, C. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1981). Process analysis: Evaluating mediation in treatment evaluations. Evaluation Review, 5(5), 602–619. Kim, Y.-C., & Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (2006). Community storytelling network, neighborhood context, and civic engagement: A multilevel approach. Human Communication Research, 32, 602–619. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2958.2006.00282.x Kim, Y.-C., & Shin, E. (2016). Localized use of information and communication technologies in Seoul’s urban neighborhoods. American Behavioral Scientist, 60, 81–100. Kim, Y.-C., Shin, E., Cho, A., Jung, E., Shon, K., & Shim, H. (2015). SNS dependency and community engagement in urban neighborhoods: The moderating role of integrated connectedness to a community storytelling network. Communication Research. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/0093650215588786 Matsaganis, M. D. (2015). How do the places we live in impact our health? Challenges for, and insights from, communication research. In E. L. Cohen (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 39 (pp. 33–65). New York, NY: Routledge. Matsaganis, M. D., & Golden, A. G. (2015). The communicative construction of a field of health action: Interventions to address reproductive health disparities among African American women in a smaller urban community. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 43, 163–184. doi:10.1080/00909882.2015.1019546

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Matsaganis, M. D., Golden, A. G., & Scott, M. (2014). Communication infrastructure theory and reproductive health disparities: Enhancing storytelling network integration by developing interstitial actors. International Journal of Communication, 8, 1495–1515. Ryu, C., & Kwon, Y. (2016). How do mega projects alter the city to be more sustainable? Spatial changes following the Seoul Cheonggyecheon restoration project in South Korea. Sustainability, 8(1), 1–17.

Contributor Biographies

Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach is Professor of Communication and Sociology in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern ­California. She is the founder of the Metamorphosis Project and a Fellow of The International Communication Association, The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the Rockefeller Bellagio Study Center, and a Fulbright Fellow. Sandra is the recipient of multiple mentorship awards, and Principal Investigator of numerous research grants for inquiries into the communication dynamics of diverse urban communities. Garrett M. Broad is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City and the author of More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change (2016). His research investigates how media and storytelling shape contemporary communities and networked movements for social and environmental justice. An engaged scholar, he also develops collaborative research projects in conjunction with community-based organizations. Nien-Tsu Nancy Chen (PhD, University of Southern California) is ­Assistant Professor of Communication at California State University Channel Islands. Her teaching and research focus on the effects of multilevel communication on civic engagement and health promotion. In May 2016, Dr. Chen received the annual Outstanding Community Engaged Faculty Award from CSUCI

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for her dedication to fostering student engagement with grassroots organizations and local communities. Lewis A. Friedland is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-­ Madison where he is affiliated with the Departments of Sociology and Educational ­Psychology and directs the Center for Communication and Democracy. He conducts research on the public sphere and civil society, changing communication ecologies, and networks. He wrote Civic Innovation in America with Carmen Sirianni (2001) and co-edited The Communication Crisis in America with Mark Lloyd (2016). Myria Georgiou is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. She has a PhD in Sociology (LSE), an MSc in Journalism (Boston University), and a BA in Sociology (­Panteion University, Athens). Her research focuses on media and the city; urban technologies and politics of connection; and the ways in which migration and diaspora are politically, culturally and morally constituted in the context of mediation. Her publications include Diaspora, Identity and the Media: Diaspora Transnationalism and Mediated Spatialities (2006); Gender, Migration and the Media (2013); and Media and the City: Cosmopolitanism and Difference (2013). Annis Golden is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Her research is concerned with how individuals navigate their relationships with organizations in the context of particular community settings, with an emphasis on how these relationships impact individuals’ health and well-being. Her interests include employer-­ employee relationships, as well as healthcare provider–recipient relationships. Her research has appeared in Health Communication, Communication Monographs, and Human Relations. *Joo-Young Jung is Senior Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Communication, and Culture at International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. Her research has focused on social implications of new communication technologies in different spatial and social contexts, such as urban and rural communities in different countries, as well as disaster and post-disaster situations. She holds a PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Her research has been published in many journals and books, such as Communication Research, New Media & Society, and The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies. *Yong-Chan Kim is Professor at the College of Communication at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. He is leading two research units at Yonsei: Urban

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Socio-Spatial Informatics Center and Urban Communication Lab. Before joining the faculty at Yonsei, he was on the faculty at the University of Iowa and the University of Alabama. For the last 15 years, his research program has been built around three key areas: urban communication, new media technology, and public health/risk. Wenlin Liu is Assistant Professor at the Valenti School of Communication, University of Houston. She received PhD in 2016 from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, and was an active member of the Metamorphosis Project between 2010 and 2016. Her research focuses on nonprofit and volunteer organizations, immigrant community building, and organizational collaboration. Risa Maeda is a doctoral student in the School of Arts and Sciences at International Christian University. Her research focuses on the impact of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster on the speech and action of residents in the city of Kashiwazaki, Niigata prefecture, Japan, which hosts the world’s biggest nuclear power plant by capacity. To better understand the local context, she investigates how social and cultural constraints have made individuals reluctant to speak in public about the risk of the neighboring nuclear plant. Previously, she was a correspondent at Reuters Tokyo bureau, covering economic news. *Matthew D. Matsaganis (PhD, University of Southern California) is Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers ­University. His research focuses on the role of communication as a determinant of health disparities in urban communities, but also on how the well-­ being of neighborhoods can be transformed through communication-centered interventions. In this context, he also investigates how ethnic media can serve critical information needs—including health needs—of immigrant and ethnic communities in the digital age. Evelyn Moreno has been the Project Administrator for the Metamorphosis ­Project for over a decade. She has a BA in Urban Applied Anthropology, a minor in Business Administration, and a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Southern California. With interest in civic engagement and social justice, she extends her role by being involved in her city government as a volunteer commissioner, and as an appointed commissioner in her local public school district. Wallis Motta is a Fellow at the Department of Media and Communications in the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is an anthropologist and communication scholar studying socio-cultural change and the use of alternative media practices to support it, as well as urban communication processes. She is currently developing her own theoretical concept “symbolic heterarchy”, which explains the combination of multiple conflicting values

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and evaluative principles to foster innovative socio-cultural organisation processes. She works on developing new interdisciplinary and participatory social research methodologies and forms of inquiry, in particular related to mapping communication practices and infrastructure. She has published on human computer interaction and social entrepreneurship. Katherine Ognyanova is Assistant Professor in the Communication Department at the School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University. She works in the areas of computational social science and network analysis. Her research has a broad focus on the impact of technology on social structures, political and civic engagement, and the media system. Minhee Son’s scholarship focuses on international and intercultural communication, immigrant integration, and mobile communication. She currently serves as a postdoctoral scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC, and has recently published work on the contemporary challenges of diversity and civic engagement. After receiving her BA in communication at USC and MA in visual communication at Yonsei University, she obtained a PhD in communication at USC. George Villanueva is Assistant Professor of Advocacy and Social Change in the School of Communication, Loyola University Chicago. He studies the changing global context of community, civic engagement, sustainable urban development, democracy, the city, public culture, and visual communication. He is particularly interested in theories, methods, and practices that develop engaged scholarship for positive social change between universities and urban communities. He received a PhD in Communication with a ­Graduate Certificate in Visual Anthropology from the University of ­Southern California. Andrea Wenzel is Assistant Professor of Journalism at Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication and a fellow with Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Her research focuses on how residents of changing multiethnic communities negotiate difference through media, culture, and everyday interaction—as well as journalism and community engagement interventions. Andrea holds a PhD from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where she worked with the Metamorphosis research group. *Holley A. Wilkin (PhD, University of Southern California) is Associate Professor of Communication and Public Health at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA, where she is affiliated with the Partnership for Urban Health Research. Her applied health communication research program revolves around reducing health disparities in diverse urban environments. Her work approaches health communication from an ecological framework—exploring individual,

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community, and societal level factors influencing health knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Chi Zhang is a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She works extensively with the Metamorphosis research group on projects that investigate the communication dynamics and conditions for civic life in multiethnic communities. Her own research expertise is on ethnic media and immigrant integration, with a recent focus on the first-generation Chinese immigrant information environment and its implications for political discourse and participation in post-Trump America. *Volume editors

chapter two

Index

Boldface indicates tables, italics indicates figures.

A abductive reasoning, 69 Abril, E. P., 225 Accountable Communities, Healthy Together (ACHT), 189–192, 191 Action United, 231 Adorno, T. W., 31 Alhambra, California communication infrastructure theory applied to, 205–206 demographics and media landscape of, 204–205 enacted communication action context in (See enacted communication action context) multilevel and multimethod formative research on, 206–208, 207 participatory online news website as community intervention in, 208–210

prototype for using CIT to construct and evaluated community news site in, 203–216 Alhambra Post Advocate, 204 Alhambra Source, 204 conclusion on, 214–216 evaluation of reader engagement and website outreach with, 210–211, 211 multistage evaluation, 212–213 as participatory online news website, 208–210 Alkin, M. C., 222 American Behavioral Scientist, 41 Amin, A., 130 Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, 2, 9 area-level contextual factors, 126 authoritarian personality, 31

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B Ball-Rokeach, Sandra J., 2, 9, 43, 50, 76, 224, 237, 244 on CAC factors, 59 on changing media system and decline of democracy, 36–37 CIT as ecological theory and, 16, 20, 22–23 on ethnic media and Internet access, 154 on ethnic media talking only about their country-of-origin news, 55 foundations of program of, 29–33 on ICSN’s effect on community engagement, 60 on individuals’ integrated connection to ICSN, 58 on Internet effects in different neighborhoods, 62, 153 on media power, 35–36 media system dependency theory, 33–35 on social construction of spatial fear, 79 on storytelling as agentic process, 75 study of religious organizations by, 110 urban sociology and communication intersection and, 28–29 big data, 82 “black-box” approach, 222–223 Boje, D. M., 14 Boyer, Ernest, 168 Broad, G. M., 78, 224 built and social environment, 126–127 ethnic inscription in, 133–137, 135–136 spatial practices in, 137–140, 138, 140

C CAC. See communication action context (CAC) CAP Comcast Campaign. See Media Mobilizing Project (MMP) Castells, Manuel, 39 catalyst, Internet as, 152, 154–156

Chavez, C., 110 Chen, N.-T. N., 20, 57, 76, 224 Cheong, P. H., 20 Chewning, Candace, 229 Chicago School, 51, 55 church engagement, 107–108 application of CIT in developing model for, 109–111, 110 conclusions on, 120–121 Eternal Church case study, 112–120 facilitating or hindering community engagement, 108–109 levels of, 111 research findings and implications, 117, 117–120 research method, 113–116, 114 study context of Korean immigrants and, 111–112 CIT. See communication infrastructure theory (CIT) collective problem recognition and problem-solving, 50–51, 62 axiomatic assumptions in, 52–56, 54, 63 core beliefs about urban local communities and, 51–52 ICSN moderation of, 60–61 individual connectedness to ICSN and, 56–59 propositions in, 56–62, 63 relative importance of ICSN as factor in, 60 comfort zones, 59, 189, 192 communication action context (CAC), 3, 17–20, 19, 109 enacted, 125–142 engaged scholarship and, 170 in ethnically diverse neighborhoods, 124–142 facilitating or constraining individuals’ connectedness to ICSN, 59 illustrative example of CIT guided research, 22 role in health, 189, 196 spatial dimension of, 125, 127 storytelling system and, 11–20, 12

index

communication ecologies, 77–78 communication hotspots, 59, 154, 189, 192 communication infrastructure theory (CIT), 2–3 changing media system and decline of democracy and, 36–38 church engagement and, 107–121 for collective problem recognition and problem solving, 50–62, 63 community-based program evaluation and, 220–234 community interventions and, 223–225 constructing and evaluating a community news site using, 203–216 core beliefs about urban local communities and, 51–52 digital technologies and, 146, 148–149 as ecological theory, 11, 44–45, 74–75, 77–78 emerging issues and future directions in, 240–244 enacted communication action context and, 125–142 engaged scholarship and, 169–170, 180–1812 health and, 79, 185–200 illustrative example of guided research in, 20–23, 21 integrated community storytelling network and, 15–16 introduction to, 9–11 key contributions of the volume, 238–240 placing storytellers into three groups, 13–14 public space and, 79–80 research methods to support future research based on, 80–82 themes, problematics, and methods in research based on, 76–80 willingness to talk about controversial issues and, 95–103 communication perspective, 1 community-based news production, 43

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community-based organizations (CBOs), 185–186 community-based participatory research (CBPR), 69, 186–187, 189 lessons learned and questions for future research, 196–200 9-1-1 Project, Atlanta, Georgia, 189–192, 191 community-based program evaluation CIT and community interventions, 223–225 discussion and extensions of CIT in, 231–234 evaluation research methods and, 221–223 introduction to, 220–221 Media Mobilizing Project (MMP), 221, 223, 226–234, 227 community engagement and religious participation. See church engagement community news sites. See Alhambra, California community storytelling, 2–3, 10–11, 12–15, 54–55. See also integrated community storytelling network (ICSN) engaged scholars as actors in, 171, 178–180 concurrent designs, 69–70 concurrent transformative design, 70 concurrent triangulation design, 69 connectedness to integrated community storytelling network, 17, 56–59 to the Internet, 150–151 Cook, T. D., 222 core beliefs about urban local communities, 51–52 Couldry, Nick, 42, 45 Cowan, Geoff, 37 Crenson, M. A., 16

D Dalisay, F., 94

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density and spatial morphology in cities, 129–133, 131–133 “Dependency Model of Mass Media Effects, A,” 33 Dewey, John, 35, 51 digital citizenship, 43 digital divide, 151 digital storytelling, 43, 45 digital technologies, 146–147 Alhambra Source (See Alhambra Source) as catalyst, 152, 154–156 communication infrastructure theory and, 146, 148–149 conceptualizing and measuring connectedness to, 150–151 as facilitator, 152–154 key trends and directions for future research, 156–159 media system dependency theory and, 146–148 two approaches to understanding, 152 Division of Labor, 33 Donaldson, S. I., 220–221, 223 Dong, F., 20, 76 Durkheim, Emile, 31, 33 Dutta, M. J., 243

E ecological theory, CIT as, 11, 44–45, 74–75, 77–78. See also communication infrastructure theory (CIT) Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, 33 Ellett, F. S., Jr., 221 email, 15 Emerson, Richard, 31, 43 enacted communication action context, 125–128 conclusion on, 140–142, 141 density and spatial morphology in, 129–133, 131–133 inscription of ethnicity in, 133–137, 135–136

research methods, 128–129 spatial practices and, 137–140, 138, 140 engaged scholarship, 69, 167–168 communication infrastructure theory and, 169–170 connecting to key neighborhood storytellers, 177–178 discussion and conclusions on, 180–182 project backgrounds and methods, 172–176, 173–176 renewal of, 168–169 scholars as community storytelling actors, 171, 178–180 telling community stories, 178–180 Engels, Friedrich, 33 Eternal Church, 108, 110, 112–120. See also church engagement ethnic inscription, 133–137, 135–136 evaluation research. See community-based program evaluation Eveland, W. P., 93 Evers, Medgar, 32

F Facebook, 13, 15, 159, 210 facilitator, Internet as, 152–154 “felt difficulty,” 35 field of health action, 189 Fisher, Walter, 13 focus groups, 72 Friedland, Lewis, 4, 41 Fukushima nuclear accident, 89–91, 102. See also nuclear energy production in Japan Funke, P. N., 226

G geo-ethnic media, 14, 149, 158–159 Geographic Information Systems (GIS), 74 Georgiou, Myria, 80–81 geo-spatial mapping, 72–73

index

Glass, G. V., 221 global North, 124 Golden, A. G., 20, 59, 171, 189, 241 Gonzalez, C., 16, 224 Great American City, 40 Great Society, 221

H Habermas, Jurgen, 12–13 Hampton, Keith, 41–42 Hardyk, B., 78 Harringay, England. See enacted communication action context Hayden, C., 20, 224 health and CIT, 79, 185–189 disparities in, 185 lessons learned and questions for future research, 196–200 9-1-1 Project, Atlanta, Georgia, 189–192, 191 role of communication action context in, 189 Women’s Health Project (WHP), Riverton, New York, 192–196 Henon, Bobby, 230 hierarchy maintenance, 40 Hmielowski, J. D., 94 Horkheimer, M., 31 hotspots, communication, 59, 154, 189, 192 Huang, J., 20, 76 Hunt, K., 224 Hutchens, M. J., 93

I inscription of ethnicity, 133–137, 135–136 integrated community storytelling network (ICSN), 15–16, 20–23, 21, 56, 81 in Alhambra, California, 205–206 church engagement and, 117, 117–120 health and, 187–188

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illustrative example of CIT guided research, 20–23, 21 individuals’ connectedness to, 17, 56–59 Internet technology and, 158 new media use as positive or negative factor in community engagement moderated by, 61–62 relation between problem recognition and participating in problem-solving activities moderated by, 60–61 relative importance in community problem solving, 60 telephone surveys and, 72 willingness to talk and connectedness to, 100 Internet connectedness index (ICI), 150–156 Internet of things, 158 Internet technology. See digital technologies interpretive research approaches, 68 interviews, 74

J Jamil, R., 243 Japan. See nuclear energy production in Japan Johnson, Lyndon, 31 Jung, J.-Y., 62, 151, 153–154

K Kashiwazaki, Japan, nuclear power plant. See nuclear energy production in Japan Katz, E., 29–30, 35, 43 Katz, V. S., 58, 76, 154, 224 Kennedy, Robert, 32 Kim, K. S., 58 Kim, Y. C., 20, 22–23, 58–61, 151, 242 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 32 King, Rodney, 36 Kloos, B., 81

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Knut, L., 16 Korean Churches for Community Development (KCCD), 119–120 Korean immigrants, church engagement of. See church engagement Kushin, M. J., 94

L Lazarsfeld, P. F., 29 Leviton, L. C., 222 Lewin, Kurt, 167, 180 Lin, W.-Y., 16, 55, 78 Literat, I., 57 Living the Wired Life in the Wired Suburb, 41 Lloyd, M., 41 Loges, W. E., 151 Los Angeles. See also Metamorphosis Project ethnic communities of, 39–40, 44, 71 as prototypical 21st century cosmopolis, 70, 124–125

M macro storytelling agents, 13–14 mail-out surveys, 74 Malcolm X, 32 Marx, Karl, 33 Matei, S., 62, 79, 153 Matsaganis, M. D., 20, 59, 154, 171, 224, 241, 244 on health and CIT, 188–189, 195 on participatory intervention, 225 Mcclurg, S. D., 93 McLeod, J. M., 41 Mead, G. H., 33 Media Mobilizing Project (MMP), 221, 223, 226–228, 227 CAP Comcast Campaign, 221, 223, 228–234 media power, 35–36

media system dependency (MSD) theory, 33–35, 146–148 Mercer, Bryan, 229 meso storytelling agents, 13–14 scaffolding and, 16 MetaConnects, 169–171, 179 Metamorphosis Project, 2–3, 37–38, 50, 68, 109, 204 background and initial research design, 70–74, 73 communities of Los Angeles and, 39–40 engaged scholarship and, 169–170 findings of, 10, 38 focus groups, 72 geo-spatial mapping, 72–73 interviews, 74 mail-out surveys, 74 neighborhood areas in, 71–72 other project parallel to, 42–43 researchers on team of, 9–10 telephone surveys, 72–73 themes, problematics, and methods in CIT-based research by, 76–80 theory-driven and multilevel research design, 74–75 urban sociology communication and, 43–46 micro storytelling agents, 13–15 scaffolding and, 16 mixed-methods research designs, 68–70 Montgomery, S. A., 224 Moon, S.-G., 109 Morey, A. C., 93 Moro, M., 62 Motta, Wallis, 80–81 MSD. See media system dependency (MSD) theory multilevel and multimethod formative research on community news sites, 206–208, 207 Mumford, Lewis, 52 Murphy, S., 224

index

N Napoli, Phillip, 42 narrative paradigm, 13 National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, 31–32 neighborhood belonging, 149 Neighborhood Planning Units (NPUs), Atlanta, 189–192, 191 neighborhoods, perceptions of, 40–41, 44 NELA Riverfront Collaborative, 172–176, 173–176 connecting to key neighborhood storytellers, 177–178 discussion and conclusions, 180–182 telling community stories, 179–180 nested concurrent designs, 69 network, storytelling. See storytelling network (STN) networked individualism, 38–39 new media, 61–62 News Measures Research Project, 42 new technologies. See digital technologies Nextdoor, 13, 15 9-1-1 Project, Atlanta, Georgia, 189–192, 191 lessons learned and questions for future research, 196–200 nuclear energy production in Japan, 89–90 city of Kashiwazaki and, 91–92, 92 debate over, 90–91 discussion of findings on, 101–103 research methods on, 96–99 research questions on, 95–96 research results, 99–100, 100 willingness to talk about controversial issues regarding, 92–95

O Ognyanova, K., 62 O’Quin, K., 224

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“Origin of Individual Media-System Dependency: A Sociological Framework, The,” 34

P Parks, M., 20, 76 participatory evaluation process, 222 PA Working Families, 231 perceived collective efficacy, 149 perceptual psychology, 29 persistent-pervasive community, 42 Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, 231 Philadelphia Independent Media Center, 226 postpositive research approach, 68 power-dependence relations, 31 pragmatist perspective, 69 program theory-driven evaluation, 220–221, 222–223, 231 public space and communication, 79–80

R religious participation. See church engagement research designs, 67–68 Metamorphosis Project background and initial, 70–74, 73 mixed-methods, 68–70 to support future CIT-based research, 80–82 themes, problematics, and methods in CIT-based, 76–80 theory-driven and multilevel, 74–75 Rojas, H., 93 Rousset, Jeff, 229

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index

S Sampson, Robert, 18, 37, 40–41, 44–45 Sassaman, Hannah Jane, 228–230 scaffolding, 16 Scholarship Reconsidered, 168 Scott, M., 171, 188, 241 Seo, M., 109 sequential explanatory design, 69 sequential exploratory design, 69 sequential transformative design, 70 Shadish, W. R., 222 Shibutani, Tamotsu, 30 Shin, E., 61 Simmel, Georg, 43 smart city projects, 242 SNS, 62, 156 social constructivist research approaches, 68 Social Problems, 32 social shaping of technology, 147 Song, H., 16, 55, 153 South L.A. Democratic Spaces, 172–176, 173–176 connecting to key neighborhood storytellers, 177–178 discussion and conclusions, 180–182 telling community stories, 179–180 space of flows, 39 space of places, 39, 44 spatial practices in the built environment, 137–140, 138, 140 spillover effects, 109 Spinda, J. S. W., 94 spiral of silence theory, 93–94, 100 STN. See storytelling network (STN) storytelling, community, 2–3, 10–15, 54–55. See also integrated community storytelling network (ICSN) storytelling, digital, 43, 45 storytelling neighborhood, 45, 148–149 storytelling network (STN), 2, 81, 109 in Alhambra, California (See Alhambra, California) collective, 14–15

communication action context of urban communities and, 11–20, 12 connectedness to, 17 evolving role of technology in local, 146–159 future directions in, 238–240 health and, 187–188 illustrative example of CIT guided research on, 20–23, 21 integrated, 15–17, 20–23, 21 Kashiwazaki, Japan, nuclear power plant and, 89–103 macro, meso, and micro storytelling agents in, 13–16 storytelling organization, 14–15 storytelling systems, 75 Stringer, K. A., 224 structural dependency, 34 Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), 37

T Tannebaum, M., 16 technologies, new. See digital technologies telephone surveys, 72–73 theory-driven and multilevel research design, 74–75 “Theory of Media Power, A,” 35–36 Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), 91, 92 Townley, G., 81 transformative perspective, 69 Twitter, 15, 210

U UNIDAD (United Neighbors in Defense Against Displacement), 177 UNITE Here!, 231 urban communication, 41–43 urbanization, 1 urban local communities, core beliefs about, 51–52

index

urban sociology, 38–41 urban sociology of communication conclusion on, 43–46 emergence of urban sociology and, 38–41 foundations of Ball-Rokeach program and, 29–33 introduction to, 28–29 media power and, 35–36 media system dependency theory in, 33–35 urban communication ecological research and, 41–43 Uses and Gratifications (U&G) school, 30, 35, 43–44 U.S. Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, 68

V Villaneuva, G., 80, 224 violence, 31–32, 80

W Watts Riots, 1965, 80 Wellman, B., 38–41 Wenzel, Andrea, 80 Wilkin, H. A., 16, 20, 57, 153, 188, 224 willingness to talk, 93–95 discussion of findings on, 101–103 research methods, 96–99 research questions, 95–96 research results, 99–100, 100 Wilson, M., 15, 74, 108, 110 Wolfson, T., 226 Women’s Health Project (WHP), Riverton, New York, 192–196, 196–200 Wright, P. A., 81

Y Yamamoto, M., 94

Z Zhang, Chi, 80–81

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Gary Gumpert, General Editor 

Cities are inherently places of communication, meeting spaces for interaction and/ or  observation.  The  nature  of  any  communication  venue  is  altered  by  social  and  technological  circumstances  and  the  urban  environment  is  altered,  in  turn,  by  changes  in  communication  patterns.  We  need  to  understand  relationships  among  these  significant forces—communication, technology, and the urban, suburban, ru‐ ral  environment—as  they  shape  each  other.  Communication  systems  and  urban  social systems can be examined at multiple levels as scholars and planners examine  interaction in public spaces, neighborhood communication patterns, and urban sys‐ tems of transport.     The focus of this series is on social relationships in a swiftly changing communica‐ tion environment. Media coverage of urban issues, conflict resolution and contested  urban space, visual communication, rhetorical dimensions of urban life, film and the  city, journalism, the ethnic press, local media and public policy are just some areas  of relevance. Volumes in this series provide a forum to explore and discuss the chal‐ lenges  created  by  the  intersection  of  communication  and  urban  life,  focusing  on  what communication scholarship has to offer for enhanced understanding of cities  and  for  the  development  of  a  public  policy  that  takes into account communication  needs and practices.    For  additional  information  about  this  series  or  the  submission  of  manuscripts,  please contact the series editor, Gary Gumpert, at [email protected].    To order other books in this series, please contact our Customer Service Department:  (800) 770‐LANG (within the U.S.)   (212) 647‐7706  (outside the U.S.)  (212) 647‐7707  FAX   

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