DDRIG: Networked Infrastructures in Vulnerable Coastal Communities: A Historical and Ethnographic Inquiry

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This Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant supports a research project that examines the impact of increasingly severe storms and rising sea levels on network infrastructures, such as the Internet and other digital communication channels. The research study is located in south Louisiana, where efforts to expand and maintain network connectivity are happening against the backdrop of sea level rise and increased intensity of storms. In particular, the researchers will study how recent federal and state policy initiatives that aim to broaden broadband access play out in a place shaped by environmental and social inequality. The research aims to connect issues of environmental and digital inequality as a way to understand how to create more equitable and sustainable network infrastructures. The study addresses the following research questions. How and to what extent are histories of extraction and regional infrastructural development reflected in current network infrastructures? How are practices of maintaining and expanding network infrastructures in vulnerable coastal communities shifting to respond to the impact of drastic environmental changes? What are alternative approaches to maintaining and expanding network infrastructures in vulnerable coastal communities? To address these questions, the researchers use historical, ethnographic, and design research methods to understand and map out historical connections between environmental inequality and digital inequality, to understand practices that maintain and develop network infrastructures within vulnerable coastal communities, to develop approaches and practices for STS and computing research scholars that re-envision network infrastructures. The research will contribute to building new understandings of the impact of such changes on network infrastructures among policy makers, computing practitioners, and local communities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.