There is an oil boom occurring in the United States reminiscent of the production booms of the early 20th century. As the use of unconventional gas and oil extraction practices explode across the US, understanding how the affected public perceives this development is vital. As a major influence on public opinion, understanding the way this development is being framed by interest groups and the news media is an important step in understanding public perceptions. This study utilizes framing theory as a method for investigating how online and print media coverage of this development utilizes the frames promoted by actors on either side of this issue. Content analysis is used to examine national level industry and opposition websites to inductively uncover the thematic frames used by these actors in the public debate surrounding unconventional development. These frames are subsequently used to analyze newspaper articles published in metropolitan cities of Eagle Ford Shale region to discover how these or other frames are utilized in their coverage of the unconventional development occurring in the Eagle Ford Shale. I found that the pro-development frames used by proponent interest groups matched very closely with the pro-development frames used in the news media. Conversely, the way opposition frames are used by the opponent interest groups and in the news media display much more variance. These findings have implications for several theories seeking to explain the influence of interest groups on news coverage. And are important for fully understanding how the perceptions of residents regarding oil and gas activity are formed. While this research did not take the step to compare the news media frames used to the individual frames residents use to understand this activity, it does address a lacuna in the research on unconventional development by examining the way interest groups and the media frame their communications pertaining to the issue.

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This dissertation aims to explain the conditions under which expertise can undermine democratic decision making. I argue that the root of the conflict between expertise and democracy lies in what I call insufficiently “representative” expertise – that is forms of scientific research that are not relevant to the policy questions at hand and that fail to make visible their hidden values dimensions. I claim that the scholarly literature on the problem of expertise fails to recognize and address the issue correctly, because it does not open the black box of scientific methodologies. I maintain that only by making sense of the methodological choices of experts in the context of policy making can we determine the relevance of research and reveal the hidden socio-political values and consequences. Using the case of natural gas fracking, I demonstrate how expert contributions – even though epistemically sound – can muddle democratic policy processes. I present four case studies from controversies about fracking to show how to contextualize scientific methodologies in the pertinent political process. I argue that the common problem across all case studies is the failure of expertise to sufficiently represent stakeholders’ problems and concerns. In this context, “representation” has three criteria: (1) the operational research questions on which the qualified experts work are relevant to stakeholders’ problems and concerns; (2) the non-epistemic values and consequences of epistemic choices of experts are compatible with social and political values and priorities; and (3) hidden values attached to facts are fully transparent and openly debated. In the conclusion, I propose a normative version of this representation theory that can be used to evaluate the appropriateness of expertise for democratic policy making. Instead of the value-free science ideal, I propose a new ideal to legitimately allow non-epistemic values in scientific reasoning without compromising the soundness of research.

This thesis looks at the current fracking debate on a national scale, before focusing specifically on how this debate is playing out in the landscape of Central Arkansas. Focusing on the lack of national regulation, the unique array of state regulations that have popped up are assessed in their effectiveness on the ground through speaking with residents of the area. The demographics of these residents are analyzed within an assessment of environmental injustice vulnerability. This ethnographic approach also compares the de jure v. de facto outcomes of these regulations through the narratives of residents working with organizations across the political spectrum, and specifically seeks to gauge their own personal stories and experiences with regulators and the fracking industry. Other key actors are identified. This thesis concludes that agency capture is a reality for these residents, and their perceived powerlessness drastically increases the power of the gas companies that monopolize the political agenda in the region.

In this thesis, I examine how claims regarding the environmental and health impacts of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” are constructed by industry advocates who promote the practice and environmental and social justice groups who reject it. More specifically, I examine the cultural underpinnings of the debate over fracking, and the prominence of gender as a central framing device in that debate. While the controversy over fracking is often presented as scientific or technical in nature, I maintain that it is as much a culture war as it is a science war. I demonstrate this by showing how both pro-fracking and anti-fracking groups mobilize cultural symbols and identities—motherhood, environmentalism, family farming, family values, individualism, and patriotism among them—in order to persuade the public and advocate for their positions. I contend that engagement with the cultural and ideological dimensions of those debates, including their gendered dimensions, is as important as engagement with its scientific and technical dimensions. Ultimately, I argue that a greater focus on gender contributes to our understanding of environmental risk more broadly, and to the field of environmental sociology as a whole. As such, gender deserves more scholarly attention within the field than it is currently receiving.