Meaning-making as Empowerment: Technology Discourses in the Anti-fracking Movement in Bulgaria.

The anti-fracking movement in Bulgaria, 2011–2013, was a successful grassroots effort to influence national environmental policy. The study draws on discourse theory to explore and describe how citizens interpreted and presented a complex technology and legitimated their participation in the expert and political deliberations on fracking policies. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with activists and movement documents. Structured and open coding followed by qualitative analyses produced descriptions and explanations of technology discourses. The anti-fracking activists elaborated and engaged in three technology discourses: lateral, literal, and reflexive. Each discourse had specific elements, meaning-making mechanisms, and strategic benefits and implications. The discourses served different epistemological and political purposes at different phases of the movement and were instrumental in its eventual success. The study shows the importance of technological discourses for democratic participation in political decisions that concern the health and livelihood of communities. The technological discourse of issues can be an ostensibly apolitical barrier to citizen participation, rendering decisions arcane and restricted to experts. Therefore, citizens and communities must actively and strategically engage in a discursive politics of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]