Abstract
The construction of offshore wind farms in New Jersey has been contested since 2019, when the first contracts for exploration and development were signed. While polls indicated that the vast majority of state residents favored the development of offshore wind, many Jersey Shore residents vehemently opposed the project. There was little organized opposition until a January 2023 press conference, where five organizations alleged without proof or scientific documentation a connection between the deaths of marine mammals and wind energy companies’ exploration of the ocean floor. The conference received widespread media attention, and misinformation about marine mammal deaths caused a dramatic shift in public support for offshore wind. Although it might be expected that the success of the press conference would galvanize organizing efforts to oppose offshore wind, this did not happen. The five organizations did not continue to collaborate, nor was there a groundswell of community organizational efforts for collective action.
This dissertation looks at the failure of community-based collaboration or collective action through the multiple lens of organizational communication and misinformation theories. Collaboration theories suggest several reasons that organizations seek to partner with others, but the size, governance, or capacities of smaller organizations may constrain their choices. Theories of interorganizational collaboration in collective action suggest that patterns of interaction and engagement among organizations determine how they will come together to resolve common issues. Communicative Constitution of Organization (CCO) theories suggest that organization occurs through a communicative process where representatives find commonalities in conversations that are then codified into texts and discourses that define the collaboration. Failure results from communicative breakdown at any of these points. Climate denial and anti- wind misinformation is widely circulated among the anti-wind organizations on the Jersey Shore; this dissertation investigated whether these commonly accepted messages affected organizational efforts within these groups even as they impacted the wider stakeholder network.
This study used a mixed-methods approach that combined open-ended interviews, content analysis of documents and websites, and computational analysis of a Facebook network of local anti-wind organizations. The results indicate that the dominance of one group in both the informant and Facebook networks was sufficient to inhibit collaboration or collective action among the smaller groups. In a highly charged, political environment, the group’s political ties and ability to draw resources from the national climate denial, anti-wind network small groups were constrained either by circumstance or choice. Thus, organizations need to consider whether an organization that offers outsized resources that can assure short-term wins are a good fit for long-term collaboration. Additionally, misinformation about marine mammals resulted in increased interaction within the Facebook network, but did not increase engagement among the organizations. However, the content spilled into the wider discussion, increasing discussion among other stakeholders and affecting public opinion about offshore wind.