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The role of social media for community-based organizations focused on environmental justice in southeast Los Angeles

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The role of social media for community-based organizations focused on environmental justice in southeast Los Angeles

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Content THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR COMMUNITY-BASED ORGANIZATIONS
FOCUSED ON ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN SOUTHEAST LOS ANGELES
by
Jaime Israel López
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SOL PRICE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(URBAN PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT)
August 2023
Copyright 2023 Jaime Israel López

ii
Acknowledgements
As I sit here typing, ready to write these words of gratitude, I am filled with overwhelming
emotions. This journey has been nothing short of a life story, maybe even a couple of lives at this
point, each filled with challenges, triumphs, heartaches, and growth. Along the way, I was
fortunate to cross paths with incredible mentors, collaborators, friends, and family, all of whom
played a significant role in shaping the person I am today.

First and foremost, I owe a debt of gratitude to my esteemed advisor, Dr. Lisa Schwietzer. Your
unique ability to encourage my interdisciplinary interests and your intellectual support were
instrumental in guiding me through this doctoral journey. The valuable lessons you taught me
will remain with me throughout my academic and personal life.

I must also extend my sincere thanks to Dr. Juan de Lara, a member of my dissertation
committee and fellowship advisor. Your support for my research and advocacy for my place in
the academy are invaluable. Your constructive feedback at critical times pushed me to strive for
excellence.

To Dr. David Sloane, another member of my dissertation committee, thank you for providing
invaluable feedback during my qualifying exams, dissertation proposal, and defense stages. Your
guidance was pivotal in refining my research and making it better.

Dr. Lois Takahashi, your clear, constant, and reliable support sustained me during my PhD
journey, especially during the final year when I faced the devastating loss of my brother Oscar.
Your kindness, understanding and consistent support during these past years illuminated my path
and helped me solidify the strength to continue.

To Dr. Dowell Myers, your scholarly conversations are a source of inspiration, encouraging me
to see myself in academia and pushing me to reach new heights in my research.

Dr. Julie Slayton, your support in helping me get my dissertation off the ground is immensely
valuable. Your mentorship and guidance are deeply appreciated.

I must also express my gratitude to Dr. Cory Nelson, a writing instructor who is one of the
kindest and most supportive mentors I've ever had the pleasure of learning from. Your
encouragement was a driving force behind my growth as a scholar and writer.

The environmental justice movement holds a special place in my heart, and I am grateful to
everyone I've worked with in this field, especially those who showed a willingness to discuss and
clarify my research and goals. These interactions enriched my understanding and commitment to
this important cause, and I am particularly grateful to Moses Huerta, Lisa Lappin, Kaya
Sugarman, Dr. Jimena Diaz Leiva, Karina Gomez, Felipe Aguirre, and Elda Peralta, for being the
powerful humanistic environmental ambassadors that you are and for helping us all envision
what a better world we could have. Thank you to all the staff at CARB who also granted me the
opportunity to be part of a team that is currently working on a community engagement project in
my hometown of Paramount, CA.

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To my beloved brother Oscar, whose untimely death shattered my world as I entered my final
year of the PhD, I miss you every day. Your belief in me and your desire to see me achieve this
educational goal were my guiding light. I know you would be proud of how far we have come
together. You are with me at all times.

To Mandie, your unwavering support and love have been an important source of strength and
often the only beacon of light. Even during the toughest times you always believed in me, and I
am forever grateful for your grounding, uplifting, and loving presence in my life.

Moira O'Neill, your influence on my research experience cannot be overstated. Without you, I
may have never had the opportunity to pursue a doctorate. Thank you for your impact on my
academic journey.

To Jean Adelsman, Adrienne Peterson, and Marisa Asari, you are all not just incredible friends
but also the most wholesome and kindhearted people I know. Your unexpected friendships in my
life bring joy and warmth beyond words. I am forever indebted to you for sharing your talented
range of skills with me, for always making me feel that I had something worthwhile to say, and
for living lives that inspire me to be better. In a perfect world, all three of you would meet and
create the most magnetic of forces.

To my mentors and collaborators, including Dr. Anthony Orlando, Dr. Jill Johnston, Dr. Colin
Maclay, Dr. Francois Barr, Dr. Miriam Zuk, Dr. Karen Frick, Dr. Jason Corburn, Dr. Malo
Hutson, Cara Mullio, Dr. Dan Mazmanian, Dr. Juan Gomez Quinones and Dr. Thomas Hines,
thank you for sharing your wisdom and experience with me. I learned so much from each of you.
Dr. Ed Dimendberg, a special note of gratitude goes to you for being the first to suggest urban
planning as a field for me to pursue, for all your support, and for our many thought-provoking
conversations ever since. And Dr. Vicki Callahan, for being such a tremendous link to my days
as an undergrad film student at UCLA and then reconnecting with you as a PhD student almost
20 years later. You have been the most magnificent mentor and supporter of my development as
a scholar and filmmaker and that will forever mean the world to me. Similarly I owe tremendous
gratitude to the Arts and Climate community at USC for supporting me and my documentaries,
especially my great friends Dr. Colin Maclay, Hannah Findling, and William Warrener.

To all my graduate school friends and collaborators as well, especially those from my MCP
experience at Berkeley and my fellow classmates at USC, thank you for teaching me all that you
have and blessing me with your treasured friendships. Our many zoom work sessions during the
Covid-19 pandemic meant the world to me and I look forward to many more regardless of where
we all end up. Thank you to Clemens, Robert, David, Eli, Soyoon, Ronna, Cerrianne, Kurt, and
many others who shared their amazing presence with me while working in solidarity. Thank you
also to my friend, Dr. Abby Cochran, for always showing up with such brilliance and humanity.
Thank you for seeing me as someone worthy of being your colleague. And to my friend Dr.
Somjita Mitra, we met as undergrads and you would forever challenge me to be better and debate
just about everything there is to debate.

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Finally, to the teachers who ignited my intellectual fire going back to my earliest years,
especially my 5th-grade teacher, Mrs. Strawther, thank you for planting the seeds of curiosity
and nurturing my passion for learning. Thank you for always reminding me that I was an
intellectual whenever I doubted myself.

To my mom, Henry, and my siblings, you have shown me love in the ways that you know how,
and I intend to never take that for granted. This doctorate belongs to our family now, and I hope
it can set a bright path for our future generations. To my dad, who despite not raising me, planted
the earliest seeds of my intellectual curiosities. This is also for you, my grandmother and my
grandfather, Felix Lopez, who I know would have been proud to see his last name lifted up so
high today.

This journey was more challenging than I can articulate here, but my journey has also been like a
tapestry woven with the threads of support, guidance, and love from countless individuals. Each
person mentioned here left an indelible mark on my life, and I am forever grateful for the role
they played in shaping the person I have become. There are many more hearts and minds who
made me into the person I am today. While I do not name them on these pages, I hold a deep
appreciation for their kindness and support. As I move forward into the next chapter of my life, I
carry with me the lessons and experiences each of you shared. Thank you from the bottom of my
heart.

Sincerely,

Jaime

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... ii
List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... viii
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ xi
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... xii
Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................................1
My Embodied Introduction to Environmental Justice ...............................................................1
Southeast Los Angeles as a Cultural Space ...............................................................................7
Southeast Los Angeles as a Research Site .................................................................................8
Situating Southeast Los Angeles CBOs ...................................................................................10
Research Overview ..................................................................................................................12
Main Research Question ..........................................................................................................14
Policy Implications ..................................................................................................................14
Chapter 2: Environmental Justice, Storytelling, and Social Media ...............................................16
What Is Environmental Justice?...............................................................................................16
Distributive Paradigm of Justice ..............................................................................................16
Beyond the Distributive Paradigm of Justice...........................................................................17
The Role of Technocratic Knowledge In Community-Based Storytelling ..............................25
Framing as a Fundamental Component of Planning and Storytelling .....................................28
Theoretical Considerations of Storytelling as a Model “Of” and “For” Planning ...................31
Why Social Media Is Valuable for Storytelling in Planning ...................................................36
Why Social Media? ..................................................................................................................37
Social Media as a Form of Community Engagement Outside of State Processes ...................38
Notable Gaps in Environmental Justice Literature ..................................................................40
Significance of Studying Social Media and Community-Based Storytelling ..........................40

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Chapter 3: Study Design and Methods ..........................................................................................43
Research Questions ..................................................................................................................43
Why Facebook Is the Social Platform of Choice for This Study .............................................48
Why Social Media for This Study ...........................................................................................54
Coding Categories for This Study............................................................................................56
Chapter 4: Findings, Descriptive Results, and Analysis ................................................................63
Original or Shared Post ............................................................................................................63
Hashtags ...................................................................................................................................65
Link Active or Dead.................................................................................................................73
Language of Post......................................................................................................................75
Intention ...................................................................................................................................76
Geographic Area of Focus .......................................................................................................85
Descriptive Results for General Topics of Interest ..................................................................91
Descriptive Results for Specific Topics of Interest .................................................................99
Industrial Stakeholders Mentioned ........................................................................................114
Organizations Mentioned (Not CBE) ....................................................................................119
Government Agencies Mentioned .........................................................................................124
Policymakers Mentioned .......................................................................................................130
Type of Content Shared .........................................................................................................136
Facebook Reactions, Shares and Comments .........................................................................139
Chapter 5: Analysis of Results .....................................................................................................146
Original or Shared ..................................................................................................................147
Hashtags .................................................................................................................................148
Link Active or Dead...............................................................................................................153
Language of Post....................................................................................................................154

vii
Intention .................................................................................................................................155
Geographic Area of Focus .....................................................................................................162
General Topics of Interest ......................................................................................................165
Specific Topics of Interest .....................................................................................................170
Industrial Stakeholders Mentioned ........................................................................................175
Organizations Mentioned (Not CBE) ....................................................................................183
Government Agencies Mentioned .........................................................................................186
Policymakers Mentioned .......................................................................................................191
Type of Content Shared .........................................................................................................196
Facebook Reactions, Shares and Comments .........................................................................197
Chapter 6: Conclusion..................................................................................................................203
Original or Shared ..................................................................................................................205
Hashtags .................................................................................................................................205
Link Active or Dead and Language of Post ...........................................................................208
Intention and Geographic Area of Focus ...............................................................................208
General Topics of Interest ......................................................................................................209
Specific Topics of Interest .....................................................................................................211
Industrial Stakeholders Mentioned ........................................................................................214
Organizations Mentioned .......................................................................................................215
Government Agencies Mentioned .........................................................................................216
Policymakers Mentioned .......................................................................................................217
Type of Content Shared .........................................................................................................217
Facebook Reactions, Shares, and Comments ........................................................................218
References ....................................................................................................................................220

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List of Tables
Table 1: Coding Categories ...........................................................................................................57
Table 2: Original or Shared ............................................................................................................64
Table 3: Top 10 Hashtags Used .....................................................................................................66
Table 4: Second Subset of Hashtags ..............................................................................................67
Table 5: Third Subset of Hashtags .................................................................................................69
Table 6: Fourth Subset of Hashtags ...............................................................................................70
Table 7: Fifth Subset of Hashtags ..................................................................................................71
Table 8: East Yard’s Hashtags .......................................................................................................73
Table 9: Web Links ........................................................................................................................74
Table 10: Posts’ Language .............................................................................................................76
Table 11: CBE’s Top 11 Intentions ...............................................................................................77
Table 12: CBE’s Next Nine Intentions ..........................................................................................80
Table 13: CBE’s Next Top 13 Intentions ......................................................................................82
Table 14: East Yard’s 12 Intentions...............................................................................................84
Table 15: Top 13 Geographies Among CBE’s Posts.....................................................................87
Table 16: Remaining Geographic Areas of Interest ......................................................................89
Table 17: East Yard’s Geographic Areas of Focus ........................................................................91
Table 18: CBE Assigned General Topics of Interest .....................................................................93
Table 19: Results for Other CBE Consolidated General Topics of Interest ..................................95
Table 20: Excluded Unconsolidated General Topics .....................................................................97
Table 21: East Yard General Topics of Interest .............................................................................99
Table 22: General Topics of Interest Associated With Each Post ...............................................100
Table 23: Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Housing ............................................101
Table 24: Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Environmental Justice ....102

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Table 25: Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest for Environmental Justice .........103
Table 26: Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest under Consolidated Air Topic ...104
Table 27: Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Consolidated Utilities
Topic ............................................................................................................................................105
Table 28: Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Consolidated Economic
Assistance Topic ..........................................................................................................................106
Table 29: Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Consolidated Education
Topic ............................................................................................................................................107
Table 30: Examples of Topics of Interest Under “Racial Justice” ..............................................108
Table 31: Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Consolidated Gas Topic .110
Table 32: Additional Examples of Topics of Interest Under Public Hearing (Not Including
AQMD) Topic ..............................................................................................................................110
Table 33: Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Consolidated Fossil
Fuels (General) Topic ..................................................................................................................111
Table 34: East Yards Posts’ Specific Topics of Interest ..............................................................112
Table 35: Industrial Stakeholders Mentioned ..............................................................................116
Table 36: Industrial Stakeholders Mentioned in CBE’s Posts .....................................................117
Table 37: Industrial Stakeholders Mentioned in East Yard’s Posts .............................................118
Table 38: Top 12 Organizations and Foundations Mentioned .....................................................120
Table 39: Next 17 Ranked Organizations and Foundations ........................................................121
Table 40: Remaining 51 Ranked Organizations and Foundations...............................................122
Table 41: Organizations and Foundations Mentioned In CBE’s Posts........................................123
Table 42: Government Agencies Mentioned in CBE Posts .........................................................126
Table 43: Government Agencies Mentioned in CBE’s Posts ......................................................128
Table 44: Government Agencies Mentioned ...............................................................................129
Table 45: Top Twenty Policymakers Mentioned.........................................................................131
Table 46: Next 17 Ranked Policymakers Mentioned ..................................................................133

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Table 47: Remaining 38 Policymakers Mentioned ......................................................................134
Table 48: Policymakers................................................................................................................135
Table 49: Type of Content Shared ...............................................................................................136
Table 50: East Yard’s Content .....................................................................................................138
Table 51: Facebook Engagement Metrics for CBE’s Posts .........................................................140
Table 52: CBE Top 20 Posts by Reactions ..................................................................................142
Table 53: East Yard’s Top 20 Posts by Reactions .......................................................................144
Table 54: Timeline of Significant Events Related to Exide ........................................................180
Table 55: Comparison of General Topics of Interest...................................................................210

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List of Figures
Figure 1: Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) ............................45
Figure 2: Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice
(EYCEJ/East Yard) ........................................................................................................................46
Figure 3: Who Is Using Social Media? ..........................................................................................53
Figure 4: Why Social Media ..........................................................................................................56
Figure 5: Top 25 Hashtags .............................................................................................................68
Figure 6: Posts and Reactions ......................................................................................................141
Figure 7: Residents’ Response to Exide’s Bankruptcy ................................................................176
Figure 8: Image of Exide Plant ....................................................................................................181
Figure 9: Example of CBE Post About Community Resources ..................................................199

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Abstract
Environmental justice is the notion that all people have the same degree of protection from
environmental harm and access to participation in environmental decision-making and amenities
(US EPA, 2017). Governments and regulators rely on scientific terminology when addressing
environmental injustices, often ignoring residents’ embodied experiences. One possible solution
for capturing community narratives about environmental harms involves using social media as
tools that help engage important storytelling from a bottom-up perspective. Social media content
created by community-based organizations (CBOs) can function as a mechanism for social justice
or as an extended form of public participation. Social media might allow planners and
policymakers to understand such narratives more inclusively by authentically capturing how
residents experience and respond to such injustices. Additionally, CBOs’ social media engagement
might bridge knowledge gaps between community members and policymakers and scientists. As
such, this work can play an important role in adjudicating environmental controversies when
scientific knowledge and the politics of social justice clash.
Testimony shared via social media can counter or inform government narratives that frame
environments and injustices. Since disadvantaged communities often lack access to experts of their
own, I focus on CBOs that prioritize marginalized residents’ lived experiences and use video and
social media to amplify their voices. In addition to framing, this study is heavily focused on
storytelling and how it relates to environmental justice communities. This research aligns with an
anti-positivist environmental justice research framework. In this light, social media content can be
critical for ensuring the democratization of expert knowledge. By adding such work to the larger
body of evidence used by planners and policymakers, community-based social media content
could be considered extended forms of public participation and important platforms for

xiii
marginalized and racialized communities to garner and disseminate evidence of environmental
harm.
This study focuses on two social media case studies in which two CBOs attempt to engage
their followers with varying forms of environmental information. Among the injustices that these
social media accounts engage with include the Exide Battery Plant in the city of Vernon, the
multiple railyards affecting the city of Commerce, the metal forging companies and refineries
located throughout Southeast Los Angeles, and the air pollution impacts from diesel truck activity
along the 710 freeway. While these examples are not an exhaustive list of environmental concerns
for Southeast Los Angeles, these local hot spots represent the region’s environmental problems.
Considering that the boundaries of SELA are a matter of some debate, as the region
includes the nine cities that comprise the 40th congressional state district, this study ends with a
discussion of Southeast Los Angeles as a spatial imaginary in addition to the findings drawn from
the aforementioned social media case studies that function as the core of this research.

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Chapter 1: Introduction
My Embodied Introduction to Environmental Justice
Environmental justice is the notion that all people, regardless of their identity, have the
same degree of protection from environmental harm and access to participation in environmental
decision-making and amenities (U.S. EPA, 2017). Indigenous leaders have indicated that
environmental injustice refers to a collection of circumstances that impede or limit the capacity of
individuals and communities to operate at their full potential —circumstances that jeopardize their
well-being, disrupt economic and cultural sustenance, or pose broader environmental risks
(Mendez, 2020). Despite the preferred definition, air pollution from fossil fuel combustion
disproportionately affects communities of color and low-income neighborhoods compared to the
overall population (Cole & Foster, 2001). A recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study
noted that particulate matter disproportionately affects communities differentiated by race and
income (Mendez, 2020).
My embodied experience is a primary motivation for pursuing this research. In 2016, I
started the Regional Planning Master’s Program at the University of California at Berkeley. I had
studied film production as an undergraduate at the University of California at Los Angeles, but
given my financial insecurity upon graduating, I was unable to work at film production companies.
I had always meant to pursue higher education, so I pivoted and worked on that aspect of my
broader ambitions while I decided on my filmmaking goals. I had a high interest in telling stories
set in marginalized communities, and this motivated me to reconcile my love of filmmaking with
my academic pursuits. Either through film or academic research, but ideally through both, I was
determined to uncover answers to my questions about communities like mine. The subject of
environmental justice provided an opportunity for this type of reconciliation.

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I grew up in the city of Paramount in southeast Los Angeles County in the 1980s and 1990s.
When I began graduate study and became versed in the environmental justice literature, I came to
understand that my community did not enjoy the same protection from environmental harm as
more affluent communities. I also had not previously realized that my neighbors did not have much
access to participation in environmental decision-making and amenities. The people I knew in my
community were mostly preoccupied with basic needs and financial stability. Very few had the
luxury of planning far into the future or becoming involved in civic affairs. Given my lack of
awareness about our local industrial conditions, I had never heard the term “environmental justice”
prior to pursuing a graduate degree, despite having been very conscious of social justice and
economic inequalities. I was intimately familiar with the fact that I had grown up in extreme
poverty, but I did not fully grasp the extent to which my family and I had been disproportionately
exposed to environmental harm as a function of our poverty and race until I reached graduate
school. Our neighborhood in Southeast Los Angeles was composed mostly of low-income Latinx
immigrants. My parents were undocumented during my entire upbringing. Even my diagnosis of
a benign tumor as a young teen never raised questions in my family about the quality of the air we
breathed. We simply took it as an unfortunate and inexplicable circumstance.
I was focusing on transportation equity issues when everything changed early in my
graduate studies. I entered graduate school in 2016 to expand my knowledge of urban planning
and uncover the planning and policy decisions resulting in the marginalized conditions I had
always known. That year, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) detected
hexavalent chromium, a dangerous carcinogen compound, in my hometown of Paramount at levels
that were 350 times higher than typical background levels (Barboza, 2016). This news drew
widespread attention and resonated deeply with me as I reflected on my health challenges and

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thought about all the families in my community who were likely not fully informed about these
injustices. I shifted my focus in graduate school and have spent the past 7 years following
environmental justice issues. This single incident was technically not the first time that SCAQMD
had detected hexavalent chromium in Paramount, but the unprecedented levels sparked community
engagement and wider discussions about city leadership and its relationship to the metal-related
companies that have long operated within city boundaries.
From the outset, the city placed most of its faith in SCAQMD, noting that its members had
the scientific expertise to help navigate this challenge. As part of a promotional video the city
produced, Wayne Nastri, an executive officer for SCAQMD, stated, “The SCAQMD is a regional
government agency whose sole focus is to address the regional air quality challenges set forth by
the federal government” (City of Paramount, 2018, 1:07). In the video, the city’s mayor and other
city council members spoke about the city’s reliance on SCAQMD as an oversight agency that
could help identify the source of the toxin, create solutions to protect residents, and hold polluters
accountable. Nonetheless, I discovered other polluting violations in Paramount prior to 2016
(Barboza & Garrison, 2014).
The events since 2016 brought to light the storytelling tensions between city governments
intent on addressing an environmental challenge and protecting their image and residents trying to
draw attention to environmental harms while lacking the education or credentials that easily
legitimize their narratives. After graduating from Berkeley, I returned to Los Angeles to pursue a
PhD at the University of Southern California, allowing me to move back to Paramount to monitor
environmental injustices up close. I was soon appointed to serve as a planning commissioner, an
experience that gave me additional insight into the creation and dissemination of environmental
crisis narratives. Local governments, for instance, frame their communities in certain ways when

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applying for grants, creating official media communications, and working with public relations
firms to co-create narratives that serve particular goals and agendas. I witnessed cities frame
proposed legislation based on their desire to control land-use decisions. I conversed with city
officials after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. I observed how racial justice narratives were framed
based on the city’s pro-law enforcement agenda (Warfield, 2020). I wondered whether residents
had the resources to ensure their narratives were heard, especially considering city governments
possess many more resources than residents to disseminate their own narratives. For example,
those in the planning noted, “staff members control most of the information that goes to a city
council or planning commission, and they nearly always have the last word in a debate at a public
hearing” (Fulton & Shigley, 2018, p. 76). In light of these challenges, I sought inclusive narratives
to better understand the complexity of embodied experiences in a marginalized city, and I
wondered what entities and platforms would provide access to such stories.
In a 2016 publication focusing on several ways environmental justice (EJ) scholarship can
improve further, I was drawn to the author’s articulation of “EJ 1.0,” an established body of
scholarship that overly relies on census data and conventional data sources (Carter, 2016). The
danger of such an over-reliance was that it risked painting a generic picture of EJ communities.
The author wrote about the prior generation of EJ research and its use of racial categories to
describe marginalized communities disproportionately hurt by environmental harms (Carter,
2016). It was clear to me, from both personal and professional experience, that census categories
and many of the conventional forms of evidence urban planners use to understand their
communities left much to be desired in terms of exploring their complexity.
If planners’ and policymakers’ real goal is to obtain a more inclusive narrative of
marginalized communities, it is worthwhile to consider all narratives available for them to learn

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from. However, this would require these communities’ residents to have a platform to share such
narratives. Planners and policymakers’ formal participatory processes, as the EJ 2.0 article
suggests, are significantly limited in their ability to capture a grassroots perspective. Historically,
public participation has been viewed through the scope of policymakers’ storytelling. Traditional
planning engagement theories offer a narrow conception of participatory planning, mostly
recognizing only formal processes since their introduction in the mid-20th century and failing to
recognize informal contributions (Davidoff, 1965; Thorpe, 2017). If formal processes are not
enough, planners and policymakers would be wise to expand their criteria for the types of evidence
with which they are open to engagement. After all, participation and planning have histories that
extend well beyond conventional methods, yet there is still no consensus on the definition of
planning itself (Healey, 2011; Thorpe, 2017). Therefore, if planning can be said to be undefined,
then the types of evidence planners and policymakers use to understand a community still have
room for growth.
This research aligns with an “anti-positivist” research framework, seeking to break through
the “high entry barriers set by professional scientists and disciplines,” some of which exclude
valuable alternative kinds of evidence and knowledge (Corburn, 2017, p. 63). For instance,
community-based social media content can aid in democratizing expert knowledge. By adding
such work to the larger body of evidence planners and policymakers use, I make the case that
community-based social media is an extended form of public participation and an important
platform for marginalized and racialized communities to garner and disseminate evidence of
environmental harm. Accordingly, one of the most consequential determinations concerning
residents’ health in marginalized communities facing environmental injustices is identifying what

6
evidence is deemed appropriate when assessing the harm’s extent and solutions to be pursued. I
argue that social media provides evidence that can be useful to planners and policymakers.
Despite their inherent biases and limitations, social media platforms can illuminate the
multifaceted and multilayered forces that create disadvantaged communities’ environmental
realities. In addition, social media platforms provide a medium representing the embodied
experience of environmental harms through the life stories and environmental challenges they
feature. As scholars have pointed out, stories could also provide “a methodological tool to
overcome hegemonic academic practices that limit who and what is valued” (De Lara, 2018, p.
74). Community narratives present the opportunity to offer new identity and spatial
conceptualizations that lay the foundations for how we might identify, analyze, and approach
geographies outside of elite interests. Newly minted participatory storytelling via social media
content from EJ CBOs can be help achieve democratized representation by allowing marginalized
voices an opportunity to shape community narratives.
In this study, I examine Facebook content produced by CBOs creating narratives about
environmental injustices in Southeast Los Angeles. I focus on this work for three practical reasons.
First, Facebook is perhaps the most accessible platform for residents in marginalized communities
to share their narratives and perspectives, notwithstanding its limitations, which will be discussed
in Chapter 2. Second, accessibility means that Facebook content is a readily available source of
evidence for planners and policymakers to consider when attempting to comprehensively
understand a community. Third, I focus on CBOs since they are a mechanism through which to
understand community narratives about environmental issues. Since formal participatory
processes are significantly limited, as previously mentioned, CBOs’ social media accounts provide
an opportunity for planners and policymakers to expand the evidence they consider as part of their

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work. In Southeast Los Angeles, two prominent CBOs focus on local EJ issues: Communities for
a Better Environment and East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice. Chapter 2 will
present these CBOs and how this study evaluated their Facebook accounts. First, the following
sections provide additional context to underscore why these two CBOs are particularly important
for understanding environmental narratives in Southeast Los Angeles.
Southeast Los Angeles as a Cultural Space
Nestled within the vibrant expanse of Southern California, Southeast Los Angeles (SELA)
is a culturally significant space with profound importance in its residents’ spatial imaginary. The
realization of its cultural significance unfolded gradually, as the region was once considered a part
of Los Angeles without distinct recognition. However, as the term “SELA” gained prominence, it
has taken on a new meaning for many of its residents. For decades, the identity of SELA was
overshadowed by more renowned cultural centers like East LA and Boyle Heights. Nonetheless,
this acronym’s emergence has allowed individuals like me to re-examine what this space is and
represents. By thinking more intentionally about this region as a space with a more evolved
identity, I forged a deeper recognition of and connection with its many particularities, many of
which are influenced by its racial demographics.
The cluster of single-race small cities in SELA plays a significant role in the region’s
cultural and demographic composition. The Lakewood Plan of 1954 was a form of spatial racism
that facilitated the shift from unincorporated county areas to newly formed cities. This plan
allowed these cities to avail services from Los Angeles County, resulting in a rapid succession of
five additional SELA cities to be incorporated shortly after 1954. White residents predominantly
inhabited these newly developed suburbs, consequently enabling a suburban lifestyle for White
working-class residents. These cities gradually transitioned into becoming largely Latinx during

8
the postwar decades. The racial transition from White to Latinx began, in part, as a result of White
flight but was also due to the influx of new residents stemming from changing immigration laws
in 1965. As with all immigrant groups, Latinx immigrants found housing in neighborhoods where
other Latinx residents lived, eventually shifting the demographics of some formerly Black cities
in South Los Angeles (Hondagneu-Sotelo &Pastor, 2023, p. 206).
As an aspiring filmmaker, I was also drawn to SELA’s artistic allure, particularly its
captivating murals and panoramic views. The essence of SELA provided an inspiring backdrop
for my creative endeavors, revealing its cultural richness and significance despite not exhibiting
much racial diversity. Moreover, SELA recently experienced a transformative awakening, with its
identity gaining traction on social media platforms. This newfound recognition sparked a renewed
interest in the region’s history and conceptualization, fostering a strong sense of communal
belonging and pride.
SELA’s cultural space is not confined to its geographical boundaries; it transcends into a
realm of collective memory, heritage, and shared experiences. Through the lens of history and
cultural expression, SELA can enrich our understanding of ourselves and our place in the broader
tapestry of Southern California’s diverse communities. By embracing SELA as a cultural space,
we uncover a treasure of untold stories, untapped potential, and a vibrant heritage that deserves
recognition and celebration. Its significance as a cultural space lies in its ability to illuminate often
overlooked narratives, thereby strengthening the bond between its residents and creating a sense
of identity and pride.
Southeast Los Angeles as a Research Site
California is at the forefront of environmental protections in the United States (Mazmanian
et al., 2020). As early as 1999, California became the first state to “codify a definition of

9
environmental justice in law” (Mendez, 2020, p. 12). Despite its notable status among states,
California remains the setting for many environmental injustices, and Los Angeles has some of
the country’s worst air pollution (Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, n.d.). This is
especially true in SELA, with disproportionate levels of ozone pollution, smog, respiratory
problems, and cancer. SELA has some of LA County’s most densely populated and under-
resourced communities and is one of its largest industrial zones. For decades, this zone has been a
dumping ground and sacrifice zone for heavy industry (Carter, 2016). From a policy perspective,
scholars have raised the need to direct more attention to industrial zones and pollution clusters
rather than just the siting process and individual facilities (Pulido, 2000). While EJ cases seem
mostly like local affairs that have been addressed at both the national and federal levels, scholars
have called for a region-by-region approach for study, focusing on cumulative impacts and
multiple sources of pollution that lead to a more accurate reflection of realities and embodied
experiences (Pastor, 2014).
Located in a heavily industrialized corridor, this SELA region was severely impacted by a
decline in manufacturing during the postwar era, a downward trend that took place as Latinx and
Black populations increased in the larger region (Turner & Allen, 1997). The landscape changed
as former industrial spaces were devalued, Whites fled to newer suburbs, newly arrived Latinx
residents filled the vacated housing left behind, and the manufacturing sector no longer provided
wages affording middle-class lifestyles (De Lara, 2018). Southeast Los Angeles, in many respects,
has less “social capital to expend, lacks a history of activism, and has fewer resources to organize
and develop knowledge frameworks” that would strengthen its ability to fight environmental
injustices (Mendez, 2020, p. 113). In addition to these major shifts and the defense industry’s

10
heavy influence on this region, the mid-20th century also witnessed the Balkanization of these
gateway cities, with many of them incorporated as new cities during that time.
Situating Southeast Los Angeles CBOs
A significant portion of southeast Los Angeles County consists of cities with a
predominantly Latinx population. This racially homogenous region has historically witnessed the
exclusion of Black residents. Northern cities include the cities of Bell, Huntington Park, Lynwood,
Maywood and Vernon, all of which were among the first suburbs in this region to incorporate
between 1906 and 1927, often featuring racial covenants, which a California Supreme Court ruling
legalized in 1919 (Slater, 2021). Remaining mostly White for several decades, these cities
gradually transitioned into becoming largely Latinx during the postwar decades. By the 1970s,
school segregation was more prevalent in Los Angeles than in any southern city and most states
(Nicolaides, 2002). In 2020, Black residents in seven of this region’s cities accounted for
approximately 1% of the population (Data USA, n.d.). If planners and policymakers acknowledge
the spatiality of racism, we must also acknowledge the various forms of racism contributing to it
(Pulido, 2000). These forms are multidimensional, requiring a comprehensive understanding of
how political, economic and social forces create and maintain racial exclusion.
One of the two most significant forms of spatial racism was the Lakewood Plan of 1954, a
policy that helped ease the transition from unincorporated county areas into incorporated cities,
allowing newly minted cities to contract with Los Angeles County for services (Schiesl, 1982).
Five Southeast cities incorporated shortly after 1954. Soon after, the Bradley-Burns Act further
incentivized the fragmentation of SELA. This act remitted 1% of sales tax returns to incorporated
cities, providing considerable financial motivation for cities to incorporate (Sankus, 2023). These
were newer suburbs with mostly White residents, just as the first wave of incorporated Southeast

11
cities had been decades earlier. The ability to contract basic services made suburban lifestyles for
White working-class residents possible. As a consequence, this fragmented region evolved without
cultivating a strong culture of community organization or grassroots infrastructure.
These cities’ fragmentation created a regional culture in which a larger need for services
such as police protection and other countywide public services would overshadow the motivation
to encourage grassroots efforts. Fragmented cities have become more focused on providing a good
business climate, and pursuing economic development deemed appealing to prospective capital
interests will likely come at the expense of local community needs (Harvey, 1989). Partially due
to this history, SELA developed as a region lacking the collective efficacy to challenge political
and economic structures. This region’s relatively weak history of community-based efforts reflects
past policies and places more importance on CBOs focused on empowering residents to share their
narratives and perspectives. This region’s communities are far from monolithic, and uncovering a
more polyphonic set of voices can lead to new and more sophisticated ways of understanding the
embodied experiences that shape our understanding of them.
A more concerted effort by CBOs to engage communities via social media can help
residents achieve a more complex and nuanced understanding of their neighbors and contribute to
the EJ movement’s organizing potential in SELA, where such communities can perhaps avoid the
severe limitations of fixed ethnic/racial categories that hardly acknowledge individual differences
(Young, 1990). Social media engagement between CBOs and marginalized residents, especially
during the COVID-19 pandemic, helped uncover subaltern identities that leveraged shared forms
of subjection by reflecting on “how shared memories, wariness, experiences, and desires often
bond subaltern groups across those racial, ethnic, and even national boundaries that the state and
its legal apparatuses have erected to exert control over how race is politicized” (Marquez, 2013, p.

12
16). If we understand environmental injustices as manifestations of state-sanctioned violence and
consider the long history of racial expendability that has subjugated Black and Brown bodies to
the overt and slow forms of violence associated with environmental harms, we can achieve a more
complex understanding of marginalized communities. This understanding could move residents,
planners, and policymakers closer to challenging dualistic conceptions of categories of existence
as separate and arranged in oppositional hierarchies, such as culture/nature, man/woman,
European/non-European, human/animal, White/Black, heterosexual/homosexual, when these
categories are constantly blurred, transgressed, socially constructed, and highly fluid and malleable
(Pellow, 2018; Marquez, 2013).
Research Overview
This research examines the social media content produced by two of the most prominent
CBOs in SELA actively combating local environmental injustices during the first year of the
COVID-19 pandemic. This study lays a foundation to answer questions about whether these CBOs
are strategic about how they engage in storytelling and if the work has an impact in terms of
community participation and/or local decision-making. By examining these CBOs’ Facebook
activity in these terms, this study delivers an archive of their social media content that may help
us further understand (a) the local polluting sources targeted in their social media communications,
(b) the types of information they share, (c) the framing and narratives of the social media they
disseminate, (d) the perceived strategies and prioritizations behind their communication efforts,
and (e) these efforts’ potential impact based on social media metrics indicating types and levels of
engagement with its content. I aim for CBOs to better understand how their work relates to the
framing of issues and how such framings help determine the solutions pursued.

13
In Chapter 3, I describe the study design for this research. I explain my rationale for each
aspect of this study while providing definitions for each coding category that dictated the data
collection. In Chapter 4, I share the data collected for this study, describing how each coding
category relates to each CBO’s Facebook posts. With the insights drawn from this study, I seek to
contribute to the strategic use of storytelling to help CBOs focus their social media efforts more
strategically. The literature on social media impacts related to EJ is sparse, leaving policymakers
without a clear sense of how decision-making processes should incorporate community narratives.
More generally, this research seeks to contribute to CBOs’ understanding of how planners might
incorporate community-based knowledge into their decision-making. This work is inspired by a
more expansive conceptualization of public participation to encourage the incorporation of social
media as a source of storytelling to inform planners and policymakers about community narratives
and perspectives related to EJ.
The purpose of this in-depth, qualitative case study is to examine how CBOs in SELA
engage with their audiences about local environmental injustices through Facebook. Such
examination includes issues and topics that engage with a mixture of local, state, and federal
location-specific policies, participatory processes, and marginalized residents’ lived experiences.
The analysis made a case study approach possible as a way to understand how CBOs engage with
their audiences. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to view this case study approach as an
opportunity for planners to “redress economic and social inequities, promote environmental
sustainability and develop communities that are economically prosperous as well as healthy places
for a diverse population to live” (Sloane, 2006, p. 15).

14
Main Research Question
As further described in Chapter 3, this study fundamentally addresses a critical need for
planners and policymakers to regard community members as experts who can actively participate
in framing local environmental problems and co-producing knowledge about their communities.
Specifically, this study aims to answer the following research question:
1a. Do community-based organizations (CBOs) focused on environmental justice
issues in Southeast Los Angeles use Facebook strategically to get community
perspectives heard, and if so, how?
To answer this question, this study collected Facebook posts for a 15-month period from the two
most prominent CBOs in SELA, which will be more thoroughly described in Chapter 3.
Policy Implications
My research interests aim to make several contributions. First, I will provide an in-depth
view of the CBOs working in SELA using social media to address local EJ issues. Second, this
work will provide insights into whether these CBOs use social media strategically to share
community narratives and perspectives that can inform how policymakers plan for the mitigation,
remediation, and ultimate elimination of local environmental threats. Third, this work can help
refine and expand how planners and policymakers conceptualize public participation processes
and community engagement. Ultimately, I study CBO social media content in SELA and examine
how this region’s planners and policymakers might better understand their communities and the
local environmental injustices they face by considering unconventional sources of evidence in
community-based social media content. I seek to understand local knowledge creation via CBOs’
Facebook content and its potential impact on local environmental decision-making by (a)
collecting data on these CBOs’ Facebook posts and (b) analyzing their content to assess how they

15
might provide opportunities for local planners and policymakers to refine their understanding of
the marginalized communities they serve and the topics and issues that gain the most engagement.
This qualitative study analyzes how planners and policymakers may incorporate community
storytelling via social media content into their decision-making.

16
Chapter 2: Environmental Justice, Storytelling, and Social Media
What Is Environmental Justice?
As the EJ movement evolved, some of its other tributaries were the anti-toxins movement
of the 1970s, the labor movement, and Native American activism (Cole & Foster, 2001, pp. 20–
18). One additional tributary has been academia, which has produced various scholars, studies,
theories, and interpretations focused on EJ (Cole & Foster, 2001, pp. 23–25). Many EJ scholars
point out that merely focusing on equal protection from environmental harm and access to
participation is not enough (Carter, 2016; Corburn, 2017; Mendez, 2020; Schlosberg, 2013; Sze,
2020). Over the last few decades, the literature has included a vast multi-scalar analysis of the field
(Kojola & Pellow, 2021). The following paragraphs provide a broad explanation of the field’s
evolution, paving the way for the focus of this study.
Distributive Paradigm of Justice
Early EJ scholars and activists contested the environmental planning and policy approach
of an almost exclusive adherence to a distributive paradigm of justice. Perhaps Iris Marion Young
best stressed why this paradigm is detrimental and why the EJ community pushed back against it.
While she acknowledges the importance of distributive issues, she argues that “the concept of
distribution should be limited to material goods, and that other important aspects of justice include
decision-making procedures, the social division of labor, and culture” (Young, 1990, p. 8). During
much of the 1980s and 1990s and even into the 21st century, EJ literature heavily focused on
matters of distribution. Numerous quantitative studies laid the groundwork regarding
environmental pollution and other harms that disproportionately afflict minority populations (Boer
et al., 1997; Boone & Modarres, 1999; Bullard, 1994; Mennis, 2005; Pastor et al., 2002; Pulido,
2000; Schweitzer & Valenzuela, 2004).

17
In one such study, scholars pointed out that “minority students, especially Latinos, were
more likely to attend schools near hazardous facilities and face higher health risks associated with
outdoor air toxics exposure” (Pastor et al., 2002, p. 263). Another study focused on the distributive
paradigm, the spatial distribution and enforcement of air-polluting facilities in New Jersey,
concluding that “a high percentage of minority populations showed a weaker record of
environmental enforcement as compared to other facilities” (Mennis, 2005, p. 420). Such studies
established that minority populations were disproportionately harmed. However, the distribution
paradigm made it difficult for environmental planning institutions and policymakers to expand
their understanding of EJ, including how planners understood knowledge and narratives about the
impacted communities.
Robert Bullard, commonly known as the father of EJ, warned us that environmental
inequalities arise due to a multitude of factors, such as wealth distribution, housing and real estate
practices, industrial location decisions, land use planning, patterns of racial and economic
discrimination, redlining, and inequitable enforcement of environmental regulations (Bullard,
1994, p. 282). This seemingly exhaustive list of factors leading to environmental disparities has
been a valuable foundation for expanding EJ literature. By laying the groundwork for the field to
grow, this study is situated on fertile soil for considering how environmental narratives in
marginalized communities are formed and how they are engaged by CBOs, planners, and
policymakers, considerations that the literature has not yet fully explored.
Beyond the Distributive Paradigm of Justice
As has been pointed out in David Pellow’s book Critical Environmental Justice, EJ studies
can be divided into two phases: “the ‘first generation,’ which was focused primarily on
documenting the existence of environmental inequality through the lens of race and class; and

18
“second generation” studies that extend beyond questions of distribution to incorporate a deeper
consideration of theory and other categories of difference that shape EJ struggles” (Pellow, 2018,
p. 9). However, it is perhaps too simplistic to merely divide EJ scholarship into two generations,
the first of which focused on a distributive lens and the latter of which expanded the scope of what
EJ literature went on to include. During the 1990s and early 2000s, EJ scholars started to shed light
on the distributive paradigm’s myopic perspective. In reality, the lines between two distinct
generations blurred. Over time, the meaning of the term “environment” became discursively
different (Agyeman, 2005).
As EJ literature expanded, scholars acknowledged the importance of prior studies while
posing questions regarding new directions in the field, uncovering new possibilities. One such
article, “Right Answers, Wrong Questions: Environmental Justice as Urban Research,” noted that
numerous statistical studies “suffered from the same problems of scope and scale that beset early
studies of environmental goods distribution, with insufficient empirical attention to the role that
agglomeration economies and residential segregation play in environmental quality” (Schweitzer
& Stephenson, 2007, p. 326). The authors pointed out that even when studies account for race,
there was “too great a willingness to presume single cause explanations for how race affects the
complex outcome that is a community’s residential living patterns and urban distribution”
(Schweitzer & Stephenson, 2007, p. 332). By making EJ seem mostly, if not only, a matter of
spatial or locational harm, some warned that “the realization of this goal will hardly trouble
polluting industry, which, after adjusting its locational prerogatives, will resume its risk generating
production, only with the EPA assurance of fair equality of opportunity to pollute and be polluted”
(Heiman, 1996). The implication is that if a polluter worried only about how or where its pollution
was distributed, it could easily relocate. Other scholars sounded a similar warning bell when

19
suggesting that the EJ movement faces the risk of losing its momentum as the general population
becomes more aware of, and opposed to, hazardous land uses, running the risk of diverting the
movement's vital efforts into the unstable soil of distributional politics (Low & Gleeson, 1998).
Despite the literature’s evolution being a fair account of all relevant scholarship, the idea
of the EJ movement expanding into a field of multifaceted considerations linearly may not be
entirely accurate. While it is generally true that the literature gradually moved beyond a
disproportionate focus on examining the field through a distributive paradigm, some of the earliest
EJ scholars pointed out the expansiveness of issues under the EJ umbrella. As scholars have noted
since at least the 1990s, achieving EJ in environmental decision-making requires democratic
decision-making (community self-determination), community empowerment, and the
incorporation of social structure—such as community health problems, cumulative impacts of
preexisting environmental hazards, the effect of segregated housing patterns (Cole & Foster,
2001). Relatedly, the movement for EJ is also about creating clean jobs, building a sustainable
economy, guaranteeing safe and affordable housing, and achieving racial and social justice.
David Schlosberg reminds us that Cole and Foster had already pointed out the longstanding
characteristic of the EJ movement as being broad in scope. In consideration of Cole and Foster
appropriately acknowledging several tributaries that fed the EJ movement, Schlosberg (2013)
writes, “We could easily add immigrant rights groups and urban environmental and smart growth
movements, as well as local foods and food justice movements, to the list” (p. 41). Going further,
he adds,
Environmental justice moved from being simply a reflection of social injustice generally
to being a statement about the crucial nature of the relationship between environment and
the provision of justice itself. The concept has pushed boundaries since its inception, and

20
has expanded both spatially and conceptually….in its latest incarnation, environmental
justice is now also about the material relationships between human disadvantage and
vulnerability and the condition of the environment and natural world in which that
experience is immersed. (Schlosberg, 2013, p. 51)
Adding another voice to this expanding literature, scholars like Julie Sze have long
subscribed to the idea that “unjust environments are rooted in racism, capitalism, militarism,
colonialism, land theft from Native peoples, and gender violence” (Sze, 2020, p. 7). Along these
lines, others have pointed out that creating the U.S. National Park systems “went hand in hand
with the eviction of indigenous peoples from those lands, or with severe reductions in their
territories” (Pellow, 2018, p. 122).
The historical origins of environmentalism underscore why reliance on expert and
scientific knowledge is not enough. The first wave of environmentalism, which included notable
figures such as John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the 20th century, involved
tensions between preservationists focused on protecting wilderness from human destruction and
conservationists, the term given to those who embraced human usage of nature but emphasized a
need for wise stewardship (Cole & Foster, 2001). For the first half of the 20th century, the tension
between these two camps made up a good portion of the national discussion about the environment,
without going into details on Native populations’ views. But discourse about the environment and
what “the environment” meant changed during the latter half of the century.
The second wave, also known as modern environmentalism, coalesced around Earth Day
in 1970 and was institutionalized in the proliferation of legal-scientific groups such as the Natural
Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, and the Environmental Defense
Fund, organizations that currently dominate the national scene. Made up overwhelmingly of

21
lawyers, this wave of environmentalism moved toward an insider strategy based on litigation,
lobbying, and technical evaluation, focused primarily on legal and scientific approaches to
environmental problems. While many of the laws passed during the late 20th century (i.e., NEPA,
CAA, and CWA) succeeded in cleaning up the environment, they also had an unintended
consequence: excluding those without expertise from much of environmental decision-making.
Such exclusion may have been a reasonable price, considering that these legal and scientific
experts managed to pass significant laws. However, it is reasonable to wonder what was lost in the
larger fight against injustices when so many affected community members have been excluded
from such decision-making.
Having designed and helped implement most of the nation’s environmental laws, the
second wave has spent the past 25 years litigating. For some time, traditional groups have
employed lawsuits as their primary, and sometimes the only, strategy. Meanwhile, racism and
other prejudices have historically excluded activists of color and grassroots activists from the
traditional environmental movement. Some of these activists regard traditional environmental
groups as obstacles to, if not outright enemies of, progress (Cole & Foster, 2001). Therefore,
relying solely on expert and scientific knowledge has, and continues to run the risk of, splintering
the larger movement against environmental injustices, whereby those who are alienated by not
possessing such knowledge can become disengaged and depoliticized.
In response lack of representation at the decision-making table and due to the exclusive
nature of technocratic environmental planning processes, EJ scholars and activists have
specifically aimed “to democratize the scientific enterprise to new, often marginalized populations
that have traditionally been subjects, not participants, in science” (Corburn, 2017, p. 66). As one
example, scholars have described environmental injustices, such as the case of Flint, Michigan, to

22
emphasize how the atrocities there may have been prevented had there been a more established
recognition of local voices (Sze, 2020; p. 54). Marginalized communities’ silencing due to their
inexperience with science, technical terminology, and concepts continues to grow. Numerous
scholarly articles and books identified cases similar to Flint, with cases such as Chester,
Pennsylvania; Buttonwillow, California; and East Palestine, Ohio (Cole & Foster, 2001; Pellow,
2018; Sze, 2020; Taylor, 2014)
Environmental justice is also increasingly concerned with the well-being of the non-human
world. As EJ has become a global topic, there is growing awareness of the value to our planet that
all living species represent. Some scholars substantiate the valuing of non-human species by
suggesting that thinking of the allocation of an environment solely for human utilization is
inherently limited and fails to encompass a crucial aspect of the justice dynamic, contemplating
further that our moral connection with the non-human world could help foster a sense of ecological
justice in this relationship. (Low & Gleeson, 1998).
Furthermore, in her book Earth Democracy, Vandana Shiva makes a similar case by
stating, “We must broaden democracy to include the excluded—disenfranchised communities,
children, prisoners, the elderly, and the diverse species of earth” (Shiva, 2005, p. 66). In addition
to calling for a shift away from a worldview based on “markets and military, monocultures and
mechanistic reductionism,” much of her scholarship focuses on “the peaceful co-creation and
coevolution of diverse beings, connected through the common bonds of life” (Shiva, 2005, p. 165).
To this end, EJ scholar David Pellow writes, “The idea of socioecological indispensability reflects
the Critical EJ Studies affirmation that the well-being of all living things and of all species is
indispensable” (Pellow, 2018, p. 61). For Pellow, questions concerning the degree to which social
categories of difference among all species should be one of the main objectives of his first pillar

23
of critical EJ (Pellow, 2018). In total, Pellow identifies four pillars, the other three concerning
single-scale versus multi-scalar analysis, social inequality and power, and the expendability of
human and non-human populations (Pellow, 2018).
Questions of scale are fundamental to taking a critical EJ studies approach to understand
EJ issues. This approach would categorize the earlier generation of EJ scholarship as conducting
research at one scale or another (Pellow, 2018, p. 14). The expanding and increasingly multi-scalar
analysis of EJ issues has led to acknowledging various life-protecting perspectives and made room
for additional relevant and sometimes fundamental questions about the knowledge systems that
enable such perspectives, conceptualizations of race, and strategies to combat environmental
injustices. The long history of considering the non-human and emphasizing the “crucial role of the
natural world” includes the work of environmental and civil rights activists when they set the
principles of EJ in 1991 (Celermajer et al., 2021). Vandana Shiva, for example, explores the
interconnection of all living species and focuses on valuing different knowledge systems, raising
questions about how marginalized communities might engage in more integrated science.
Since the 1970s, some scholars and advocates moved toward an overall strategy focused
on litigation, lobbying, and technical evaluation, perhaps not realizing that severe limitations in
legal frameworks threatened to undermine EJ scholars’ and activists’ efforts in terms of racial
justice (Cole & Foster, 2001). For example, the term “environmental justice” is often used
interchangeably with the term “environmental racism,” making the subject of racism within the
eyes of the law extremely difficult to recognize. To prove racism in such cases, legal interpretations
became fixated on proving “intent.” The idea that environmental racism might only be legally
recognized when malicious intent is proven has been a significant limitation in achieving EJ. A
singular focus on proving a racist intent, as opposed to taking a more multi-scalar approach, has

24
often been detrimental in allowing legal practitioners to consider the complexity of racism and the
many forms in which it operates. As scholar Pulido (2000) notes that defining racism so narrowly,
racial inequalities that cannot be attributed directly to a hostile discriminatory act are not
acknowledged as such, but perhaps as evidence of individual deficiencies or choices. Yet if we
wish to create a more just society, we must acknowledge the breadth and depth of racism (p. 12-
13). Emphasizing the complexity of race still further, Pulido writes, “Consider the various scales
at which racism exists: the individual, the group, the institution, society, the global” (p. 15).
We can focus on a particular, but we must always be cognizant of its relationship to other
scales of racism” (Pulido, 2000). Scholar Jason Corburn adds, “Approaching and understanding
environmental injustice as a function of structural racism suggests that researchers must orient
their work around a set of normative themes that are anti-reductionist, anti-deterministic, and anti-
positivist” (Corburn, 2017, p. 62). The focus on intent fails to recognize the multi-scaled
dimensions, the intersections of racism, and that the legal system is limited by its inability to
recognize how racism operates in other subtle ways. While it may have been easier to identify
racism at different points in history, laws have forbidden certain overt actions for some time. As a
result, judges have a harder time identifying whether someone was “openly and intentionally
seeking a discriminatory outcome” (Cole & Foster, 2001, p. 64). As long as this continues to be
the case, EJ activists should develop multi-pronged strategies that do not perpetuate the over-
reliance on legal victories. Courts will continue to ignore the fact that “decisions about racial
matters are influenced in large part by factors that can be characterized as neither intentional—in
the sense that certain outcomes are self-consciously sought—nor unintentional—in the sense that
outcomes are random, fortuitous, and uninfluenced by the decision maker’s beliefs, desires and
wishes” (Cole & Foster, 2001, p. 64). Unless the legal system develops a more flexible and broader

25
understanding of racism and the decision-making process more meaningfully includes those
without expertise, EJ scholars and activists will not often succeed.
The central arguments of this research are embedded within this multi-scalar, anti-
reductionist, anti-deterministic, and anti-positivist theoretical framework. As noted, scholars have
paved the way for a more inclusive analytical framework for understanding EJ issues and the
marginalized communities they affect. However, expanding the lens and scope through which to
view a subject does not equate to identifying the forms of knowledge and evidence considered
legitimate for close study.
The Role of Technocratic Knowledge In Community-Based Storytelling
The disproportionate legitimacy of technocratic and scientific knowledge is one of the most
critical challenges for marginalized communities to be authentically engaged and for their
embodied experience to be understood. This study aligns with an “anti-positivist” research
framework, seeking to break through the “high entry barriers set by professional scientists and
disciplines,” some of which exclude valuable alternative kinds of knowledge (Corburn, 2017, p.
63). The role of scientific expertise and how it interacts or engages with EJ communities has been
a critical point examined by various scholars (Schlosberg, 2013). Despite the potential for
favorable environmental decision-making, legal environments often exclude those without
expertise (Cole & Foster, 2001). Governments and regulators tend to rely on scientific terminology
when addressing environmental injustices, often ignoring local residents’ embodied experiences
(Mendez, 2020).
Limiting environment framing and storytelling to scientific narratives would considerably
limit the possibility of achieving broader EJ goals. A focus on expert/scientific information would
leave out important discussions about the political economy’s racial and class aspects. For

26
instance, some government agencies and industry groups long preferred the term “environmental
equity” because they felt it most readily lent itself to scientific risk analysis, thereby avoiding those
sometimes controversial terms “racism” and “justice.” “Environmental justice” has been preferred
because it expresses their aspiration and encompasses the political economy of environmental
decision-making. The movement continues to shape environmental policy while creating increased
opportunities for marginalized communities to speak out about their own disenfranchisement and
the social and economic policies that subject them to daily environmental hazards.
As some scholars have observed, “This intersection of science, lay knowledge, and
environmental health decision-making remains contested terrain, but local knowledge has proved
to be an essential aspect of enhancing science and protecting vulnerable populations and places”
(Corburn, 2017, p. 63). Some scholars referred to scientific experts as part of the oppression and
domination of marginalized communities. As articulated in his book Sustainable Communities,
Agyeman (2005) writes,
The discourse of environmental justice sees the use of scientific experts as part of a system
of oppression and domination. Without access to experts of their own, some local
community activists see scientific discussions as a means of keeping their viewpoints and
concerns from being addressed by government officials. As a consequence, environmental
justice groups challenge the authority of scientific experts to adequately express
community concerns. (p. 22)
Agyeman and Corburn are heavy proponents of community-based participatory research,
an approach and set of methods to engage communities in the research process. Such approaches
and methods “aim to deconstruct power and democratize knowledge production by lifting up the
experiential knowledge of community members alongside other professional ways of capturing

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data” (Corburn, 2017). Methods such as community-driven map-making and data collection are
part of a larger set of growing projects known as citizen science, particularly in ecology and the
environmental sciences (Silvertown, 2009). In alignment with these community-driven data
collection efforts, this study sought to capture how CBOs in SELA engage communities about
local environmental injustices via Facebook. The EJ literature makes clear that bottom-up
narratives are important and that such storytelling must be reconciled with technocratic knowledge
as part of a more inclusive effort to pursue policy solutions. However, the EJ literature has not
sufficiently engaged with the role that social media might play in capturing community narratives
with such goals in mind.
Understanding Framing and Storytelling in the Context of Planning
Residents’ diverse life experiences often lack a platform for being shared, and even the
most well-intentioned institutionalized forms of public participation fail to capture these stories,
as such engagement often comes with limitations. Laypersons’ participation has long been seen as
promoting amateurism and parochialism (Day, 2016; Rich, 1986). Furthermore, traditional
planning has long reinforced a narrow conception of participatory planning as associated only with
formal processes despite a variety of informal participatory arrangements existing for centuries; it
fails to account for participatory contributions that strengthen our knowledge of urban issues
(Tauxe, 1995; Thorpe, 2017). With such narrow conceptualizations of participatory planning,
potentially valuable community narratives may not be sufficiently taken into account. Capturing
grassroots stories is, therefore, critical if planners and policymakers seek to assess environmental
injustices through a more comprehensive and inclusive lens. The goal of public participation to
expand the range of people who participate in science requires involving people with little to no
prior experience in science about the environment (Strasser et al., 2018). Determining what types

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of evidence and knowledge are considered legitimate has been a recurring theme in EJ literature
and is highly relevant for examining as an important concept for planners to understand (Corburn,
2017; Throgmorton, 1992).
Framing as a Fundamental Component of Planning and Storytelling
Considering that EJ is embedded within the field of planning, it is relevant and important
to first contextualize storytelling in planning in terms of the importance of framing. We think in
terms of typically unconscious structures called frames (sometimes schemas), which include
semantic roles, relations between roles, and relations to other frames (Lakoff, 2010). Frames are
essential for understanding how planners and policymakers view problems. For instance, the
legitimacy of urban EJ research relies heavily on how problems are initially framed. There is
always the risk, for example, that a problem framed “too narrowly, too broadly, or wrongly” might
result in a collection of evidence and solution generation that “may suffer from the same defects”
(Corburn, 2017). Framing can also result in policies that deviate from prioritizing human life, as
commonly occurs with climate adaptation planning, which is often framed foremost as a necessary
strategy for protecting city assets (Hughes, 2015). Thinking about framing as a fundamental aspect
of storytelling helps illuminate the construction of environmental issues communicated to
audiences, how human lives are considered, and how these lives embody the multilayered
intersection of political, economic, social, cultural and historical processes (De Lara, 2018).
Framing and storytelling are inextricably tied, as both involve familiar elements:
protagonists (and antagonists), facts and presentations that serve as tropes, and intricately
embedded metaphors (Eckstein & Throgmorton, 2003; Myers, 2007; Throgmorton, 1996). Insofar
as public dialogue can be referred to as an exchange of arguments, even the act of argumentation
is typically referenced using a metaphor, perhaps most commonly as an act resembling war. We

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might refer to claims as being indefensible, criticisms as being right on target, and arguments in
general as competitions resulting in a winner (Lakoff & Johnson, 1981). For much of planning
history, and briefly again touching on storytelling metaphors, policy has been described and
portrayed as something reminiscent of a machine, whereas when something isn't functioning
properly, we have the option to deconstruct it into its individual components, identify the faulty
parts, repair them, and reassemble the whole, ensuring that the issue is resolved." (Innes & Booher,
2010). As a pure input and output system, this way of thinking is far from reflecting the reality in
which we live, with all its nuance and complexities. In this way, metaphors can be unproductive,
misleading, and destructive in influencing how planners understand and communicate a problem.
Metaphors such as this can be destructive in that they destroy much of the potential for imagining
something different, as describing a problem and making an analogy to something else can narrow
the possibilities for solutions thereby conceived.
As part of taking an anti-reductionist approach to environmental injustices, planners have
the potential to serve a more inclusive narrative of issues facing marginalized communities by also
being constitutive in their framing and the narratives they help create, as planners exhibit the power
to “shape community, character, and culture” vis-a-vis the stories they tell (Throgmorton, 48,
Sandercock, 2003). The way a problem is presented significantly influences the questions posed
and the aspects that are investigated during empirical investigations (Ostrom, 1990). How planners
frame a problem sets the stage for what aspects of a problem will be emphasized and discussed.
The mere naming of a problem could be a critical first step in framing and storytelling. For
example, “naming problems as environmental racism, inequality, inequity, or injustice has
different philosophical and political stakes and distinctly positions the roots and solutions” (Sze,
2020, p. 6). By knowing and understanding framing’s power in storytelling, planners and

30
policymakers can deliver on deliberative democratic approaches while creating and disseminating
a more comprehensive and inclusive narrative about an issue or community. The constitutive
shaping of new imaginations is critical for planning, as political disagreements about the future
often involve a false dichotomy between present individualism and an uncertain future (Myers,
2007). In other words, as planners create, ideally co-create, narratives that help everyone imagine
what the future might hold and how it might be best planned for, planners keep communities aware
of their future options as a community rather than making planning debates mostly about the
shortsighted concerns of present-day individualism (Myers, 2007).
Public dialogue is a particularly important intersection where storytelling and public
participation meet. As different imagined futures are considered, storytelling provides an
opportunity for various stakeholders in the public to co-construct a “shared understanding of what
their situation is and what can be done” (van Hulst, 2012, p. 312). There is a need for space for
public discourse and the exchange of different ideas and imaginations. As academics have
highlighted, Habermas saw our understanding of both reality and ethics as contingent upon the
context in which the act of "understanding" occurs. (Low & Gleeson, 1998). Providing the space
and opportunity for conflicting interests to tell their own stories allows relevant stakeholders to
internalize each other’s perspectives as they articulate their own.
Framing is fundamental to storytelling in planning if we take an anti-reductionist approach
to creating and disseminating more comprehensive and inclusive narratives. Planners must
safeguard against reductionist narratives as they have a responsibility to the communities they
serve. To seek more comprehensive narratives of an issue or community, planning should be a
form of persuasive storytelling in which “planners are both authors who write texts (plans,
analyses, articles) and also characters whose forecasts, surveys, models, maps, and so on, act as

31
tropes (figures of speech and argument) in their own and others’ persuasive stories” (Throgmorton,
48, p. 19). This is particularly important to keep in mind when planners and policymakers seek a
comprehensive and inclusive narrative about an environmental crisis while assessing the worth of
multiple persuasive stories competing for attention. Planning and policymaking efforts that
interweave conflicting stories and create a new inclusive story would deliver on the promise of
deliberative democratic approaches. Some scholars might refer to such a strategy as a synthesizing
strategy in which opposing viewpoints can co-exist and likely create a new hybrid type of
perspective (Mandelbaum, 1991).
Theoretical Considerations of Storytelling as a Model “Of” and “For ” Planning
More than simply describing how storytelling operates, planning scholars who study
storytelling shape planning practice while working to “enrich the theory of storytelling in
planning” (van Hulst, 2012, p. 305). As part of this field, scholars identified two models to
understand storytelling. In the first model, storytelling can be understood as a model of planning,
meaning scholars observe the commonalities between planning practice and the act of telling
stories, paying special note to how “planning documents and the plans themselves tell stories”
(Sandercock, 2003; Throgmorton, 1992, 1996; van Hulst, 2012, p. 302).
Storytelling as a model of planning calls for studying how formal planning activities tell
stories and noting how informal interactions in planning practice do the same, some of which might
eventually be found in formal documents or discussions. For instance, government institutions’
environmental planning documents often tell a story about what has transpired, framing an
environmental issue in a way that sets the stage for taking particular actions. Similarly, a
conversation between a planner and a city manager might heavily influence how a city council or
planning commission agenda item frames an environmental issue. In this scenario, both the

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framing of the informal conversation and the resulting agenda item are examples of storytelling as
a model of planning. The conversation participants’ framing and the resulting tangible
encapsulation as an official planning agenda item reflect a certain narrative. In this way, state-
sanctioned storytelling controls a narrative by framing an issue in terms that might serve particular
objectives and priorities. The challenge here is that as a model of planning, formal documents tell
a story that is only as comprehensive and inclusive as possible if these documents also include
community perspectives to capture embodied experiences about environmental injustice.
Aside from storytelling as a model of planning, scholars have also identified storytelling
as a model for planning, in which the theoretical connections between storytelling and planning
become more proactive and constitutive. Whereas storytelling as a model of planning is generally
a more passive assessment of how a narrative is reflected vis-a-vis planning documents, a model
for planning emphasizes actively employing storytelling to take agency regarding a planning issue.
The key distinction here is that storytelling is intentionally employed to construct a narrative,
although a state agency’s objectives and/or priorities can ultimately still largely dictate that
narrative. By leveraging knowledge of what constitutes good storytelling, scholars thinking about
storytelling as a model for planning more explicitly view it as a tool used intently to help shape “a
new imagination of alternative” (Sandercock, 2003, p. 18; van Hulst, 2012).
The more active and conscious use of storytelling under the theoretical framework of a
storytelling model for planning can be characterized as having a double-edged sword. On the one
hand, governments and other formal institutions might use storytelling to serve their interests,
potentially at the exclusion of marginalized community voices and perspectives. To address this
extended marginalization, scholars pointed out that planning practitioners’ ability to make space
for community stories is more important than the ability to tell stories (Sandercock, 2003). On the

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other hand, thinking of storytelling as a model for planning can also be critical in allowing entities
outside the state to instrumentalize the power of storytelling. In other words, thinking of
storytelling as a model for planning, CBOs focused on capturing more comprehensive and
inclusive community narratives can benefit through storytelling instrumentalization. Perhaps most
important, CBOs’ instrumentalization of storytelling can be a necessity to protect marginalized
communities in which “deep histories of identity and domination are the context through which a
present dispute is viewed” (Forester, 2000, p. 157). The storytelling literature in planning allows
us to consider the various ways in which storytelling functions as a model of and for planning, but
it falls short of providing examples of how community-based efforts can instrumentalize
storytelling to highlight the embodied experiences of marginalized residents, particularly those
experiences whose are subject to being overshadowed by a more robust state-sanctioned
storytelling apparatus upholding state priorities and objectives. However, before considering such
potential mechanisms for hearing grassroots voices, we should note the potential challenges to
community-based storytelling.
Sujatha Fernandes’ book Curated Stories provides a conceptualization of storytelling that
carries considerable value for this study in its anti-reductionist qualities, although it still presents
some challenges for how community-based storytelling is understood and disseminated. We look
to Fernandes when developing how this study operationalizes the concept of storytelling, a
differential definition more intent on stating what storytelling is not. First, the author stresses not
treating stories as “predetermined universal categories and objects of analysis,” instead seeking a
more complex type of storytelling that fits within an anti-reductionist framework (Fernandes,
2017, p. 5). Second, Fernandes avoids curated stories, compact and portable narratives that states
and non-profit organizations instrumentalize to serve narrow goals characterized either by market

34
principles or a particular value based on the returns such stories can provide (Fernandes, 2017, p.
28). Instead, drawing from Fernandes’s work, this study upholds the democratic characteristics of
the stories Fernandes would describe and support as those not exclusively legitimizing credentialed
voices, stemming from formal entities, or told only via big data or science, falling well within EJ
scholars’ anti-positivist framework (Corburn, 2017). In its pursuit of examining community-based
storytelling, this study is situated Within this type of differential definition of storytelling, along
with the anti-positivist and anti-reductionist frameworks.
Before we examine community-based storytelling and its value for this study, a discussion
of the challenges Fernandes finds when examining non-profit organizations’ storytelling is useful.
If we think of storytelling as a model for planning, CBOs can instrumentalize stories in the service
of social justice issues. However, as Fernandes points out, such instrumentalization has limitations
and challenges. One of her central arguments is that states and other entities, such as non-profit
organizations, have used stories to further narrow objectives. By focusing on individual lives, for
instance, truth commissions, political campaigns, and other philanthropic/non-profit organizations
have applied a utilitarian approach, using storytelling to serve and advance their objectives. Many
of these efforts to harness the power of stories are not interested in challenging systemic power
structures (Fernandes, 2017. pp. 19-20). Instead, these stories are often instrumentalized in ways
that do not hold such power structures accountable, choosing to focus on individuals and uphold
neoliberal agendas. Fernandes contends not so much with the instrumentalization of stories in these
ways but with a
utilitarian approach to stories that seeks to reduce experiences and histories to easily
digestible soundbites in service of limited goals. We need to reclaim storytelling as a craft
that allows for the fullness and complexity of experience to be expressed and which seeks

35
to transform rather than reproduce global hierarchies and structures of power through
movements for social change. (Fernandes, 2017, pp. 3–4)
Additionally, storytelling under an anti-reductionist framework is averse to stories that seek
unity as an objective. Planners and policymakers sometimes struggle to honor a community’s
differences while emphasizing similarities (Mora, 2014). Scholars such as Iris Marion Young have
raised the point that modern political theory tends to reduce political subjects to a unity, while
valuing commonness/sameness over specificity and difference (Young, 1990, p. 3). Seeking
uniformity also “limits the diversity of stories of injustice, the multiple forms it takes, and the
variety of solutions it calls for (Schlosberg, 2007, p. 535). Part of the challenge with state-
sanctioned storytelling that attempts to contextualize a marginalized community’s experiences is
that a formal political authority might reduce the narrative to a simplistic construct. In addition,
part of the difficulty in gaining a more nuanced understanding of a community’s storytelling is
that it becomes tempting to curate a story that is easily consumable and accessible, but doing so
runs the risk of erasing “histories, ambiguities, and political struggles” to portray people’s lives as
being just like ours” (Fernandes, 2017, p. 2). For these reasons, narratives should be accessible to
community residents to achieve a more comprehensive and inclusive narrative when planners and
policymakers assess environmental injustices and their community impacts. It seems, then, that
seeking justice while considering the concept of difference is less about “making of cultural rules
than providing institutional means for fostering politicized cultural discussion, and making forums
and media available for alternative cultural experiment and play” (Young, 1990, p. 152). Making
narratives possible through media seems worthwhile to explore.

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Why Social Media Is Valuable for Storytelling in Planning
In recent decades, democratic institutions have been challenged to obtain and maintain the
trust of their citizenry (Borge et al., 2009). Access to media channels and platforms is a significant
inequality, considering that states and marginalized communities have vastly different capacities
for capturing and disseminating information. Much of corporate media and other more traditional
forms of media are either inaccessible to marginalized residents or not effective at capturing
bottom-up narratives that could help understand how marginalized communities frame and talk
about environmental injustice. The importance of capturing such narratives through media is
perhaps most pronounced when considering our increasingly mediated world (Schweitzer &
Stephenson, 2016).
Planning scholars have called for improving urban planners’ media literacy (Frick, 2016;
Shannon, 2016). This is to say that planners need to better understand the media’s role and purpose
to better incorporate media tools into their community engagement. Specifically, media tools’
potential for planning lies in their capacity to enable more genuine participatory processes and
democratic debate. Media represent an important set of tools to improve participatory planning
processes characterized as those that build on one another in a non-teleological manner and are not
otherwise fully programmed from the start. Given the media’s expanding role in how we
understand urban phenomena and society in general, we must consider the role of social media in
particular because it is often the most accessible platform for forming and sharing community
narratives. A key motivation for this study is capturing diverse and more nuanced narratives about
environmental issues in SELA via the social media content of CBOs.
Planners could be uniquely instrumental in

37
helping to even the playing field between the necessary complexity and dissent that must
be addressed via deliberation and the epistemic demands of mediatized planning in a highly
charged political environment in which different groups enjoy differing levels of media
access and communications expertise. (Schweitzer & Stephenson, 2016, p. ?)
However, there is also a hidden danger to communicating via the media in ways that
undermine the ability to engage in meaningful public dialogue to influence a project in significant
ways. Ultimately, media coverage controlled by state entities can be particularly, perhaps
deliberately, simplistic and harm the public by depoliticizing the discourse surrounding a project
and disempowering the public’s ability to meaningfully participate in relevant discussions. This
occurs when storytelling is mostly peddled in the service of state agencies’ and consultants’ own
“perceptions of the project’s efficacy,” public trust can be severely damaged (Schweitzer &
Stephenson, 2016). In such cases, obtaining community narratives and perspectives is not a
concretely prioritized objective. In terms of truly engaging and capturing the public’s desires and
concerns, the public may never have a fair opportunity to have its narratives and perspectives taken
into account.
Why Social Media?
Using social media to engage important storytelling from a bottom-up perspective is a
possible solution for improving access to mediated platforms, capturing community narratives
about local environmental harms, and bridging knowledge gaps between communities and the
technocratic realm of planners, scientists, and policymakers. In this way, social media content can
either counter or inform government narratives that frame environments and injustices. Like other
forms of qualitative data, social media provides an opportunity to observe and examine phenomena
often beyond the reach of technocratic methods and scientific inquiry. As evidence for planners to

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consider, social media can play an important role in adjudicating environmental controversies
when scientific knowledge and the politics of social justice clash. Social media could help planners
and policymakers understand such narratives much more inclusively by capturing how residents
experience and respond to injustices.
Social media has become a ubiquitous and accessible tool (López-Ornelas et al., 2017).
Planners and policymakers should consider social media a mechanism for capturing community-
based storytelling under anti-reductionist and anti-positivist frameworks. Diverse epistemological
approaches could be brought together through this undisciplined approach to EJ research to solve
a specific problem (Moore et al., 2019). Though not a panacea, CBOs’ social media content can
be an important mechanism for capturing community-based storytelling, some of which can
function as extended forms of public participation, “lifting up the experiential knowledge of
community members alongside other professional ways of capturing data” (Corburn, 2017, p. 63;
López-Ornelas et al., 2017). Since disadvantaged communities often lack access to experts of their
own, this study focuses on CBOs prioritizing marginalized residents’ lived experiences and using
social media to amplify their voices. An important balance must be considered when examining
social media content and its inclusion as evidence for planners and policymakers to refine their
understanding of marginalized communities’ environmental issues. Therefore, while this study
seeks to highlight the insights that CBOs’ social media content might provide to planners and
policymakers, it will also be important to note its limitations.
Social Media as a Form of Community Engagement Outside of State Processes
Some scholars favoring a more participatory framework for community inclusion have
articulated a preference for implementing such frameworks with minimal reliance on state
institutions. Scholar David Pellow adds, “By building and supporting strongly democratic

39
practices, relationships, and institutions, movements for social change will become less dependent
upon the state, while any elements of the state they do work through may become more robustly
democratic” (Pellow, 2018, p. 24). The idea that strategies to solve environmental issues could be
implemented outside the state seems difficult to grasp. It is challenging for planners and
policymakers to view a strategy as potentially successful without a government institution’s
oversight. Furthermore, it would be challenging to expect individuals or groups to seek outcomes
beyond their self-interests. But this type of thinking falls into what is misleadingly perceived as a
type of prisoner’s dilemma associated with the idea of the tragedy of the commons, a situation in
which individuals who share a common pool resource act based only on their self-interests do not
achieve their own best possible individual outcome and deplete a common pool resource.
As scholars of political economy have critically countered, many of these common pool
resources fail to account for the possibility that all stakeholders communicate with each other and
develop solutions requiring local knowledge and involving a sense of collective purpose (Ostrom,
1990). Ostrom’s theory of collective action has influenced EJ scholars and activists to push back
on environmental planning and policy approaches that assume a centralized government solution
is the only way to solve environmental problems. This study sought to contribute to the wide and
ongoing efforts to provide a more nuanced understanding of marginalized communities, past,
present, and future. To achieve such an understanding, a synthesizing strategy will be adhered to,
where opposing viewpoints co-exist and might create an entirely new hybrid type of perspective
(Mandelbaum, 1991). A hybrid approach will build interpretation “through a mosaic of arranged
and contrasting fragments,” using multiple perspectives to challenge power structures by restoring
suppressed stories (Zimmerman & De Michiel, 2018, p. 59). To make it possible for the public to
engage in authentic interactions of meaning and co-creation of knowledge, planners should

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actively create or consider opportunities created by community-based stakeholders to highlight
community narratives and perspectives, and these strategies for doing so should be intentional
toward achieving such objectives (Brody et al., 2003).
Notable Gaps in Environmental Justice Literature
Two notable gaps in the EJ literature that represent the focus of this study involve (a) how
communities in places such as SELA are being engaged about local environmental injustices by
CBOs and (b) how these CBOs are conducting such engagement through their use of social media.
In both cases, storytelling’s role is critical to capturing how communities engage with local
environmental issues and social media as a platform that enables us to observe such engagement.
Storytelling can be “critical for delivering democratized representation by allowing marginalized
voices an opportunity to shape community narratives,” something that has long been
“overshadowed by a prioritization of technocratic knowledge that has often been presented as
either the dominant narrative” or as the “decontextualized applications of cold, hard logic”
(Throgmorton, 1992, p. 28). An important justification for focusing on social media engagement
stems from its democratic attributes, such as the access it provides to community residents relative
to other more traditional media channels. While other media platforms allow stakeholders and
communities to share their environmental narratives, social media is more accessible to the largest
number of residents in SELA. However, prior to diving into storytelling as a concept to be
operationalized for this study, it is important to address why framing is fundamentally important
to storytelling itself.
Significance of Studying Social Media and Community-Based Storytelling
Exploring how CBOs used social media during the COVID-19 pandemic between 2020
and 2021 provides an opportunity to examine how they prioritize issues in their social media

41
content, further uncover how and whether CBOs strategize with social media content, and analyze
the extent to which those efforts affect audience engagement. This study’s contributions are a more
complete picture of how marginalized communities respond to local environmental injustices and
other tangential issues, which might be useful for CBOs to refine their social media engagement
strategies and a more sophisticated discussion about how such strategies might influence or relate
to how local policymakers understand and thereby frame local environmental injustices in their
communication with the public. A more systematic inclusion of such contributions would identify
larger narratives that could push our policy solutions beyond their past and modern-day
formulations (Tauxe, 1995). This research also sought to uphold polyphony as a strategy to refute
grand narratives, instead shifting attention from causality, linearity, and unity, which are often
associated with hegemonic powers that minimize difference and oversimplify the complexity of
events and marginalized communities (Zimmerman & De Michiel, 2018).
In addition to thinking about creating inclusive spaces for authentic interaction and the co-
creation of knowledge that planners can prioritize, storytelling via social media also interacts with
public participation in terms of the framing of stories communicated to the public. Just as theories
in academia seek to explain or predict a problem, the stories that public institutions tell
communicate directly or indirectly with those impacted by a project or action, often by a particular
framing of the problem or issue. Such communication might involve directly informing the public
about a project, a specific issue, or something as general as a vision for the future, all of which are
how a public institution sets the stage for how a topic will be discussed and how it will be framed.
Consequently, public institutions might communicate with the public through the media, framing
an issue to depoliticize the public for whom such communication is intended. In all these ways,
framing should be understood as the building blocks for how things happen since, ultimately, how

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we talk about things has deep and wide implications for how we understand them. CBOs’ social
media content could challenge public institutions to be more comprehensive and inclusive in
communicating environmental issues. By encouraging planners and policymakers to consider the
evidence that CBOs can provide via social media, communities can be considered in ways that
current formal participatory processes might neglect.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a unique opportunity to focus on the role of social media
and virtual communication in general in the types of issues and narratives that EJ communities
engaged with and/or responded to. With few opportunities to engage with EJ communities in
person, virtual engagement was of unprecedented importance for struggling residents, many of
whom faced primary needs and concerns that superseded potential long-term harmful
environmental impacts. For much of the 20th century, mass media’s power was unrivaled by its
ability to establish “political, social, economic and cultural frameworks that shaped how outsiders
perceived a given location” (López & Schweitzer, 2023, p. 386). For better or worse, social media
enables individuals and communities to “interact, bolster their political identities and organize”
(Graham et al., 2016, p. 1386. The communities in SELA featured in the case studies face
distinctive environmental threats and contend with powerful state agencies and/or stakeholders
with capitalistic interests, each with greater resources that enable the creation and dissemination
of narratives that often undermine a community’s heterogeneity. These formal stakeholders often
frame issues in ways that ignore, undermine, and/or dismiss community voices and experiences
into a simplistic portrayal, viewing community storytelling as “an emotional or unempirical,
subjective (and weak) approach versus the muscular truth of data and science” (Sze, 2020, p. 56).

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Chapter 3: Study Design and Methods
This study employs unconventional methods to understand whether EJ CBOs in SELA
used social media strategically to get their perspectives heard during the COVID-19 pandemic.
First, by focusing on one primary case study, I set out to understand how one prominent CBO,
Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), engaged with its Facebook followers during the
study period. The objective was to focus on one case study while using a secondary, or assisting,
case to achieve an iterative process that would ultimately strengthen the primary case study by
helping to identify “issues to expect, questions to ask, and data to look for in the primary case”
(Mukhija, 2010, p. 416). The secondary case study includes the only other prominent community-
based organization in SELA, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard). Second, I set out to understand whether these organizations view their use of social media
strategically. If so, I explored how planners and policymakers might find this content useful in
obtaining more comprehensive and inclusive narratives about environmental injustices.
Research Questions
Fundamentally, this study addresses a need for planners and policymakers to regard
community members as experts who can actively participate in framing local environmental
problems and co-producing knowledge about their communities. Specifically, as described in the
introductory chapter, this study aims to answer the following research question:
1a. Do community-based organizations (CBOs) focused on environmental justice
issues in Southeast Los Angeles use Facebook strategically to get community
perspectives heard, and if so, how?
To answer this question, this study collected Facebook posts for the two most prominent
CBOs in SELA over 15 months from March 23, 2020, to June 18, 2021. One spreadsheet was

44
created for each of the primary and secondary case studies. Each post was inserted into a separate
row on a spreadsheet. Each row was then additionally populated with additional cells of data
corresponding to 33 attributes, 14 of which are defined as coding categories and described later in
this chapter. The information collected for each of the 14 coding categories was then compiled
into tables described in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 takes each of those coding categories described and
provides analysis for both case studies. In addition to the primary research question, the following
secondary question was consistently part of the analysis completed in Chapter 5:
1b. What value can Facebook content created by CBOs have for planners and
policymakers, and can such gained value be incorporated into how planners and
policymakers understand community-based narratives and perspectives related to
local environmental injustices?
To answer this secondary question, extended consideration of such implications related to
planners and policymakers is part of the analysis conducted for each coding category whenever
that particular coding category has obtained sufficient and relevant data to consider. As data
permits, considerable attention is given to exploring how planners and policymakers can interpret
this study’s findings and how such interpretations can be translated into more comprehensive and
inclusive storytelling in planning.

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Figure 1
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)

Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
Although it was founded in Chicago in the 1970s, CBE was chosen as a primary case study
because it is one of the two most prominent CBOs working in SELA. CBE is valuable as a voice
for marginalized communities in this region and is considered one of the preeminent EJ
organizations in the nation. CBE started working in Los Angeles in 1978. Since then, it has been
active throughout California, leading EJ advocacy efforts in response to a variety of “pollution
sources—oil refineries, power plants, chrome plating facilities and lead smelters, and other
polluters right next to schools, senior centers and homes” (CBE, 2016b, para 2). As shared on their
website, CBE’s mission is defined as one seeking to “build people’s power in California’s
communities of color and low-income communities to achieve environmental health and justice
by preventing and reducing pollution and building green, healthy and sustainable communities and
environments” (CBE, 2016a, para. 3).
The primary case study captured 15 months’ worth of CBE’s Facebook posts. CBE has
6,100 followers. This portion of the study took into account every CBE Facebook post beginning

46
on March 23, 2020, and ending on June 18, 2021. During this period, CBE posted exactly 400
posts on their Facebook page, each of which was further explored through 31 attributes and then
more thoroughly by analyzing the 14 coding categories that stemmed from those attributes.
The secondary study served to confirm or question the findings derived from the primary
case study. The following paragraphs further explain the secondary case study.

Figure 2
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East Yard)

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Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
This study was conducted to amplify the voices of residents living in SELA’s marginalized
communities by investigating how CBOs’ use of Facebook lifts those voices. East Yard was
founded after years of unheard community voices that had “silently suffered the effects of pollution
in their neighborhoods” and has since worked as a cohesive unit to “[develop] a plan of action that
utilizes research-based information, workshops and training to empower local communities”
(EYCEJ, 2023, para. 4). East Yard has been working for over two decades on EJ issues in East
Los Angeles, SELA and Long Beach. Founded in 2001 by residents in the Commerce/East Los
Angeles area, this CBO’s mission is to work towards a safe and healthy environment for
communities that are disproportionately suffering the negative impacts of industrial pollution”
(EYCEJ, 2023, para. 8).
This secondary case study captured 15 months' worth of East Yard’a Facebook posts.
While CBE has 6,100 followers, East Yard has about 5,000. Since CBE works throughout the
entire state and East Yard works primarily in SELA, the difference in followers indicates that East
Yard has been more successful in developing a following commensurate with its region of focus.
While this portion of the study took into account every East Yard Facebook post beginning on
March 23, 2020, and ending on June 18, 2021, this condensed secondary case study only collected
data for posts that had more than 10 total Facebook reactions. This condensed study was largely
intended to confirm or question the results stemming from the primary case study. Considering
only East Yard’s posts with more than 10 total reactions yielded 46 Facebook posts. These criteria
for capturing a small sample of East Yard’s posts were thought to be a fair opportunity to compare
each CBO’s top 20 posts in terms of total Facebook reactions, defined in more detail below. As

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with CBE’s posts, each East Yard post was inserted into its own separate row on a spreadsheet,
and each row was then additionally populated with additional cells of data corresponding to 33
attributes, 14 of which are defined as coding categories and described in the following sections.
Why Facebook Is the Social Platform of Choice for This Study
Prior to selecting Facebook as the most appropriate social media platform for this study,
Instagram, Twitter and Reddit were considered as potentially valuable platforms. The following
paragraphs describe the steps taken to explore each of these social media platforms and the
rationale behind their exclusion from this study.
Instagram
In August 2021, I tracked all Instagram (IG) accounts focused on SELA. Specifically, I
archived all IG posts by CBOs focused on EJ issues in SELA. This effort included identifying
incidents about which these accounts posted. However, several limitations became evident in
representativeness, selective self-presentation, shallow engagement, and limited textual data. First,
limited representativeness became apparent rather quickly. In addition to not being representative
of the entire SELA population, much of the EJ dialogue seemed disproportionately indicative of a
younger population, likely excluding the older residents living and working in this region. The
introduction of such biases in data collection made Instagram seemingly less capable of providing
findings that could be generalizable to SELA. Second, selective self-presentation is inherent to all
social media platforms, which allow users to curate and present a carefully selected version of an
issue or experience. This potential bias was permissible to some extent, considering that other
platforms likely suffered from similar limitations. This realization was an early indication that
regardless of the platforms used for data collection, a certain amount of bias and limited
generalizable findings were to be expected. Third, the challenge of shallow engagement and

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limited textual data was perhaps the decisive factor for excluding IG from this study. Since IG
focuses largely on visual content and short captions, it was immediately clear that this was not a
platform for capturing more comprehensive and nuanced community-based environmental
storytelling. Video testimonies were potentially useful, but additional steps would have to be taken
to download and transcribe such videos to perform content analysis.
Reddit
In the fall of 2021, I explored Reddit as a possible platform for study. I created posts in a
couple of subreddit communities (r/LosAngeles, r/environmentaljustice) that I felt might inspire
some crowd-sourced assistance to find robust EJ online discussions focused on marginalized
communities in SELA. In fact, I was looking for discussion not just about these communities but
also, most importantly, discussions that marginalized residents themselves were having. The first
of my subreddit posts read as follows:
TITLE: Looking for more Subreddits related to EJ and CBOs in Southeast Los Angeles
POST: Looking for subreddits focused on: environmental justice and/or community-
based organizations in Southeast Los Angeles, and any other subreddits related to
Southeast Los Angeles (aka SELA). I’ve done searches on here with these key terms but
want to know if I’m missing any other subreddit communities. Any subreddits or other
highly relevant resources would be super appreciated.
After gaining few leads from this first post, I posted the following in the r/askLosAngeles
subreddit:
TITLE: Where do you go for information or discussions about Environmental Justice
and/or Community-Based Organizations in Southeast Los Angeles?

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POST: Where do you go for information or discussions about Environmental Justice
and/or Community-Based Organizations in Southeast Los Angeles? On one hand, I’m
looking for subreddits focused on: environmental justice and/or community-based
organizations in Southeast Los Angeles, and any other subreddits related to Southeast
Los Angeles (aka SELA). I’ve done searches on here with these key terms but want to
know if I’m missing any other subreddit communities. I’m also looking for more
information on any other highly relevant resources. Thank you.
One person replied with the following organizations and links: SELA Collaborative, LA
Más, Friends of the LA River, and CBE. Another person mentioned this wiki for subreddit links:
r/LosAngeles/wiki/subreddits. What became almost immediately clear is that Reddit’s user base
was not diverse enough to approximate a representative population of embodied experiences in
SELA. Thus, in addition to the same limitations described above for Instagram, Reddit had limited
representativeness. While the limitations of selective self-presentation, shallow engagement, and
limited textual data were not as applicable to Reddit, a perceived issue with the level of education
among its users was also somewhat apparent. This was a major limitation I later confirmed was
inherent in other social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Tumblr. A graph
underscoring the favorability of Facebook in terms of inclusivity regarding the level of education
is shared and described later in this section.
Twitter
On August 10, 2021, I started to explore Twitter as a possible platform for study. I posted
on the developers forum under the community section of Twitter. The first of my posts on this
forum read as follows:

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I am doing research on how people talk about local environmental justice incidents
before and after they occur. I’ve never done research like this and I’m only beginning to
teach myself Python and how to use API’s (not sure I’ll have time to ramp up these skills
fast enough to do any kind of coding myself on this project, which I would ideally
complete in two months). I’m posting here to cast a wide net in hopes of obtaining any
suggestions, advice or recommendations on how I might best be able to approach
collecting social media data that would be useful to answering this type of research
question.
I then contacted a professor in my department on August 11, 2021, for guidance on Twitter
and Facebook. He mentioned that the data I collected should be machine-readable and that I should
consider hiring coders or computer science students to pull data. He mentioned that I should
contact Twitter and ask about obtaining constrained fire hose data and how much that would cost.
He mentioned that the cost could be quite expensive, but they might offer an academic discount. I
then contacted Twitter to ask about this data while also doing an advanced search interface with
keywords, key dates, etc. Unfortunately, none of these attempts bore any fruit that I could use to
proceed with my research, leaving me with Facebook as a viable option for capturing community-
based narratives and perspectives focused on EJ issues.
Facebook
Social media provides a platform that facilitates the sharing of community narratives and
perspectives that can be valuable to planners and policymakers as an additional source of evidence
when assessing a local environmental injustice, past or present. Twitter, for one, is much more
accessible in terms of generally accessing data. On the other hand, Facebook is not very
forthcoming with its data, which presented a challenge I had to work around. I had to think of

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different innovative ways of capturing that data. This is why I eventually decided to capture
Facebook data manually and consolidate it all into Excel spreadsheets. Perhaps the most salient
point for choosing Facebook as a social media platform for this study involves its ability to include
community-based narratives and perspectives. The access that marginalized residents have to
Facebook exceeds the access they have to more traditional media channels, but more than that, it
is the most inclusive when we consider levels of education. It is common for census tracts in SELA
to feature levels of educational attainment that rank in the 80th percentile or higher, meaning that
many SELA census tracts have levels of education that are worse than 80% of the census tracts in
the state of California (California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, 2023).
Therefore, it is critical to convey the role of education levels on social network site use. As these
census tracts in SELA are often also burdened by high percentages of poverty, unemployment,
linguistic isolation, and housing insecurity, the challenges associated with the digital divide are
also necessary to consider when thinking about social media use in SELA overall and the need for
equitable channels to capture the narratives and perspectives of its most marginalized residents.
Compared to other social media platforms, Facebook has been found to have much less variance
in terms of its users as a group, signifying a much more accessible platform across the board
(Hargittai, 2020). The relationship between education and social network site use is demonstrated
in Figure 3, which further justifies the reasons for excluding other social media platforms discussed
in earlier sections of this chapter.

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Figure 3
Who Is Using Social Media?

There is, of course, a large variation in people’s experiences with social media. Based on
the data shown in the graph above, it is important to note that other than Facebook, most such sites
are used by only a minority of internet users (Hargittai, 2020). As is also evident based on available
data, social media platform selection by groups with various levels of education is far from
random. People with lower educational attainment and those from lower socioeconomic status are
less likely to be on other sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit. To the extent that
lower educational attainment is associated with inferior internet skills, there also appears to be an
important correlation of use with higher educated and skilled users to actively engage in various
social media platforms. For these reasons, CBOs, planners and policymakers could likely achieve

54
greater engagement with local residents by discovering more effective and inclusive ways to
communicate with their targeted audiences.
Why Social Media for This Study
Without acknowledging the biases that go into who uses social media sites in the first place,
studies assume at times that various sites’ users are representative of the larger population, but that
is not the case (Hargittai, 2020). All social media platforms can be prone to bias, misinformation
and the spread of unverified information. On some platforms, such as Instagram, the emphasis on
visual content could make it easier for manipulated or misleading visuals to circulate. Considering
the study period of this research taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic, the tendency to
exploit outrage and other strong emotions was found to heavily influence political disinformation
strategies and spread false information (López & Schweitzer, 2023).
Despite its limitations, social media is a valuable source of evidence. While any study
should be aware of the limitations of social media tools, we cannot lose sight of the fact that they
provide information that can be very useful to planners and policymakers. Social media is
important to explore further because it is yet another form of evidence that planners and
policymakers can consider to understand an issue. Notwithstanding its limitations, Facebook is
ultimately another medium for storytelling and, in many respects, a much more accessible one for
marginalized communities to share their narratives and perspectives. This access is especially of
interest, given this study’s focus on understanding how CBOs use Facebook to capture and amplify
community voices. In light of these considerations, Facebook can also operate as a democratized
representation of marginalized voices, even if not a perfect one.

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Although not a panacea, and considering the biases and limitations associated with each
social media platform, social media can still be a useful tool, even if it does not entirely reflect the
reality on the ground. By being more sophisticated in how such content is analyzed and engaged
with, community-based social media can still allow planners and policymakers to develop more
inclusive narratives and communities, as it still does a better job than other forms of storytelling
capturing stories from bottom-up perspectives. Lastly, social media also carries much potential for
expanding media literacy so that planners and policymakers gain insights from the ground. At a
fundamental level, it is also important to consider that problems’ framing largely determines the
understanding of those problems and the solutions pursued. The social media posts produced by
CBOs provide an opportunity for planners and policymakers to better understand how
communities are framing the environmental injustices that impact their daily lives. This is critical,
considering formal processes often frame a problem from a top-down perspective and ask residents
to provide public comments only after a government institution has framed an environmental
problem. Figure 4 summarizes the justifications for focusing on social media to capture
marginalized narratives and perspectives.

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Figure 4
Why Social Media

Coding Categories for This Study
To analyze each CBO’s Facebook content, this study focused on breaking down each
Facebook post into attributes that might provide insights to help uncover how each post was
operating as a story and how its elements might also provide planners and policymakers with a
unique opportunity to understand community-based experiences. Each post was coded with 14
attributes that allowed me to understand how each post operated. Table 1 lists each coding
category, with each explained in further detail below. Each category was conceived as part of a
method to systematically obtain a multifaceted understanding of each post. The following
paragraphs feature a more detailed description of the rationale behind each category and the results
it provided.

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Table 1
Coding Categories
Coding categories
Original or shared post
Hashtags
Link active or dead
Language of post
Intention
Geographic area of focus
General topic of interest
Specific topic of interest
Industrial stakeholders mentioned
Organizations mentioned
Government agencies mentioned
Policymakers mentioned
Type of content shared
Facebook reactions, shares, and comments

Coding Category Descriptions
Original or Shared Post
This category notes whether a post is an original one written by the CBO under examination
or whether its content is shared from another Facebook account. The rationale behind noting this
distinction is based on the notion that an original post might provide particular insights into how a
CBO strategizes its use of Facebook and/or how it might prioritize certain issues. However, it is
important to note that sharing posts from other accounts could also be similarly insightful.

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Ultimately, making distinctions based on originality might uncover other patterns perhaps not yet
fully understood.
Hashtags
This coding category is an attempt to capture information that might provide additional
insights into how a CBO might be strategically seeking to engage its followers and how certain
topics are being framed.
Link
This coding category notes whether a post includes one or multiple links that followers can
use to access additional information. This particular attribute for a post is part of an effort to
understand the different mechanisms by which a CBO provides information to its audience.
Link Active or Dead
This coding category essentially notes whether a link provided within a post is active or
dead. This information was thought to be potentially useful in terms of understanding the temporal
nature of any particular information being provided. One challenge with this category was
determining what constitutes a link that is dead. For instance, some links were meant for public
meetings that had already taken place on Zoom. In most cases, these links take you to the Zoom
website with the capability to still enter a meeting. Despite the fact that the link is no longer useful,
as the meetings using said link had already transpired, these links were considered “Active.” On
the other hand, links were considered dead if they were entirely no longer in existence. Therefore,
while some links are considered active, they may, in fact, not be useful for obtaining additional
information about the post’s subject matter.

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Language of Post
This coding category notes whether a post is in English, Spanish, or both. Noting the
language of a post was thought to be potentially helpful in understanding yet another layer of how
CBOs use social media to engage with their followers.
Intention
Intention as a category was designed as an attempt to understand all of the ways in which
a post might be instrumentalized for a specific objective. This coding category is considerably
more complex than other more straightforward and singular or binary categories. One of the
challenges with this category is that any post can be said to have multiple intentions. For instance,
a post could be understood as intending to inform followers while also intending to provide them
with resources. Additionally, if a post is indeed informing and/or providing resources, its intention
might also be more generally understood as a call to action or as an encouragement for people to
take a specific action, such as signing a petition, voting, or submitting a public comment at an
upcoming meeting. Ultimately, the explicit intention behind each post is difficult to determine,
and for this reason, this study is limited by not including interviews with CBO representatives for
each case study.
Geographic Area of Focus
Community-based organizations, such as CBE, sometimes work in more than one
geographic area. CBE is focused on environmental issues throughout the state, while EYCEJ
works predominantly in SELA. This coding category is meant to provide an understanding of how
many posts were focused on SELA relative to other regions during the period of study.

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General Topic of Interest
To understand how each CBO is strategizing its messaging via Facebook, this coding
category is meant to track a more high-level understanding of the topics being prioritized for
engagement with followers. Examples of general topics for this category are housing justice, EJ,
and COVID-19, whereas more specific topics might include calling for an eviction moratorium,
encouraging public comments for the Exide bankruptcy plan, and COVID-19 donations for mutual
aid.
Specific Topic of Interest
This coding category was created to keep track of the topics of interest being discussed by
each post with greater specificity. While a more general topic of interest might be housing justice,
a more specific topic might be a more specific discussion on rental assistance for those impacted
by COVID-19.
Industrial Stakeholders Mentioned
With this coding category, the data collection included an effort to track specific industrial
stakeholders mentioned within each post. This category was motivated by an interest in learning
what specific industrial stakeholders CBE and East Yard addressed in their Facebook posts. By
keeping track of these mentions, the data also offers simple statistical information that provides
insights into the relative importance of each industrial stakeholder mentioned by CBE and East
Yard.
Organizations Mentioned (Not CBE)
This coding category tracked how many additional CBOs are mentioned in each post. Since
all original posts are clearly related to either CBE or East Yard as organizations, this category
tracked how many additional CBOs or other organizations were also subjects of interest.

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Government Agencies Mentioned
Similar to the previous two categories, this coding category was meant to keep track of the
government agencies discussed in each post. Noting which government organizations were
referenced in each post might be useful for future research linking social media engagement and
policy implications.
Policymakers Mentioned
This coding category was also created as a reference for policy implications. For each post,
this category kept track of individual policymakers mentioned, ranging from city council and
congress members to the governor of California.
Type of Content Shared
This coding category kept track of the type of content shared to gain insights into CBE
and East Yard’s use of content to engage followers. The options include whether a post shared
information with an information flier, a web link, or a video. This category also noted whether a
post was written, as opposed to sharing only one type of content, which may simply include a web
link. This category also noted if a post shared an article.
Facebook Reactions, Shares and Comments
Based on Facebook’s various engagement metrics, the study kept track of the information
available related to the various reactions that Facebook enables its users to express. The reactions
made possible include emojis. The coding categories created for each emoji are the following:
angry, amazement, sad, care, and love. Collectively, the quantitative engagement captured by these
coding categories is responsible for the coding category of total reactions. Furthermore, the study
captured the number of each post’s shares, a metric that Facebook makes readily available for each
post. And finally, the comments in response to each post were also captured by this study. This

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study looked at each comment to collect data on whether it shared additional web links, was in
English or Spanish, and whether it exhibited any political polarization among users engaging with
a particular post.
Runtime
This category was mainly used to indicate a runtime if the post included video content. I
had originally expected to capture more videos and perhaps short documentaries about
environmental topics, but only a small percentage of the posts included video content. Due to
insufficient data for this coding category, the analysis did not integrate these specific data.
Article Title
When a post shared articles, this category kept track of their titles. Similar to the note
regarding video content, I had expected to capture more articles shared, but only a few of the posts
shared articles. By capturing the names of each article, this category was intended to obtain
additional insights into the issues CBE and East Yard prioritized when engaging with followers
via Facebook. However, the analysis did not integrate these specific data because they were
insufficient for this coding category.

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Chapter 4: Findings, Descriptive Results, and Analysis
Over the 452-day study period, CBE created 400 Facebook posts between March 23, 2020,
and June 18, 2021. This chapter will describe the data analysis results, capturing these posts in
greater detail. Since there are 16 coding categories, the following section will describe results that
were tabulated to make sense of the data. The 16 coding categories were created to make sense of
each post, and they were critical for creating various tables that organized the results. Additional
descriptions will also be provided later in this chapter based on the more straightforward
quantitative metrics that Facebook uses to indicate levels of engagement, for instance, describing
results based on likes, shares, comments, etc. The following sections follow the order in which
each coding category appeared within the data.
Original or Shared Post
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
To understand CBE’s social media approach to engaging communities, it was important to
establish whether it produced original content or shared content originating in other Facebook
accounts. Table 2 provides a quantitative view of the number of original and shared posts. A third
category involves CBE sharing a post it had previously posted, making it inherently original. In
other words, these posts are original to CBE, but they were not appearing for the first time. They
were being shared from prior content. With 321 out of 400 posts categorized as original,
approximately 80% of CBE’s Facebook posts were original content. Additionally, this number can
be thought of as being slightly larger if we include the 18 posts that are original to CBE but were
being shared from prior content. This would make the total number of original posts 339, or
approximately 85% of the 400 posts. Sixty-one posts were categorized as shared, meaning these

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were posts that were originally created by other Facebook accounts. Overall, these 61 shared posts
represent approximately 15% of the 400 posts.
Table 2
Original or Shared
Original 321
Shared 61
Original (Shared) 18
Total 400

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Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
Whether EYCEJ was producing its original social media content or sharing content that
originated with other Facebook accounts is one of the few coding categories not explored. The
analysis chapter of this study will provide further explanations for omitting this coding category
from the secondary case study.
Hashtags
In addition to establishing the nature of CBE’s posts in terms of the extent to which they
were posting original content during the study period, this study also sought to understand the use
of hashtags during this time. According to Dictionary.com, a hashtag is “a word or phrase preceded
by a hash mark (#), used within a message to identify a keyword or topic of interest and facilitate
a search for it” (dictionary.com). By including hashtags as a category, this study sought to capture
information that might provide additional insights into how a CBO might strategically seek to
engage its followers and how certain topics are framed. The range of hashtags used and a
quantitative account of each were captured as an additional layer of information to provide insights
into the topics each CBO prioritized through their social media engagement.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
A total of 257 hashtags were used, making it difficult to investigate each hashtag in great
detail. Therefore, this section describes the data by focusing only on one subset of hashtags at a
time. The following tables provide a look at the different hashtags used and the number of times
each hashtag was used. For instance, Table 3 shows only the top 10 hashtags used, followed by a
brief description of that particular table. Subsequent tables follow that pattern. This section
provides mere descriptions. The analysis chapter of this study will focus on the quantitative data.

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Among the top 10 hashtags, the following five specifically relate to Northern California:
#Richmond, #BeyondChevron, #RichmondDumpsChevron, #ByeChevron, and #CBERichmond.
Hashtags with the word “chevron” specifically refer to the Chevron facility in Richmond. Two of
the top five hashtags relate to COVID. In fact, if #COVID and #Covid19 were added together with
21 and 19 hashtags, respectively, COVID would be tied at the top with 40 hashtags.

Table 3
Top 10 Hashtags Used
Hashtag Count
#Richmond 40
#BeyondChevron 28
#COVID 21
#Covid19 19
#RichmondDumpsChevron 19
#ByeChevron 18
#YES 16
#JustTransition 15
#NoDrillingWhereWereLiving 14
#CBERichmond 13

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Six of the next 10 (11–20) hashtags are in the double digits (Table 4). The second subset
of hashtags also has more geographic variety, with #SELA, #CBESELA, #Wilmington, and
#EXIDE based in Los Angeles, while #CBEEastOakland and #CatCrackerRule both being based
in Northern California’s Bay Area.

Table 4
Second Subset of Hashtags
Hashtag Count
#SELA 12
#CatCrackerRule 11
#CBEEastOakland 11
#CBEWilmington 11
#EJ4All 11
#EXIDE 11
#BlackLivesMatter 9
#CBESELA 9
#emPOWERoutreach 8
#EnvironmentalJustice 8

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Before moving on to the following tables listing the hashtags used by CBE and the number
of times they appear, the following is a word cloud highlighting the top 25 hashtags used among
all 400 Facebook posts.

Figure 5
Top 25 Hashtags

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Table 5 focuses on the next 10 hashtags ranked by the number of times they appear. In this
third subset of hashtags, there is also geographic variety between those in the Bay Area and those
in Los Angeles.

Table 5
Third Subset of Hashtags
Hashtag Count
#HousingJustice 8
#ToxicChevronThursdays 8
#Wilmington 8
#Chevron 7
#EraseUtilityDebt 7
#BayArea 6
#California 6
#Oakland 6
#SouthEastLA 6
#YesonAB345 6

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The fourth subset includes the next 14 hashtags ranked by the number of times they
appeared. Table 5 had 10 hashtags to include all those appearing 6 times. Table 6 has 14 hashtags
to include all those appearing either 5 or 4 times. The fifth subset of hashtags below includes all
the hashtags that appeared three times (Table 7).

Table 6
Fourth Subset of Hashtags
Hashtag Count
#HealthyLA 5
#MayDay 5
#SB467 5
#SchoolsAndCommunitiesFirst 5
#CAYouthvsBigOil 4
#cleanenergy 4
#EastOakland 4
#Election2020 4
#Freedom2Breathe 4
#GivingTuesday 4
#JustTransitionNow 4
#LosAngeles 4
#MayDay2020 4
#StudentsDeserve 4

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Table 7
Fifth Subset of Hashtags
Hashtag Count
#BAAQMD 3
#ClimateChange 3
#ClimateCrisis 3
#Coronavirus 3
#DefundThePolice 3
#EarthDay 3
#GivingTuesdayNow 3
#HuntingtonPark 3
#JusticiaAmbiental 3
#JustTransitionNow! 3
#Martinez 3
#OurPower 3
#PeoplesBailOut 3
#Phillips66 3
#RepCA 3
#Shell 3
#SoutheastLosAngeles 3
#YesOn15 3

There are 193 remaining hashtags out of 257. Of these, 42 appeared two times, while the
remaining 151 appeared only once.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
Thirty-three out of 46 selected East Yard Facebook posts included hashtags, while 13 posts
did not include any. The 33 posts used 24 different hashtags, making it relatively easier than CBE’s
primary case study to investigate each hashtag in detail. Table 8 presents the different hashtags
East Yard used and the number of times it was used. Out of 24, the following six appeared more
than once: #WeAreJustTryingtoBreathe, #FightingForLife, #NoMoPlomo, #LuchandoPorVida,
#ToxicBusinessAsUsual, and #ZeroEmissionsNow, while the remaining 17 appeared only once.

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The analysis chapter will further discuss some thematic patterns among the hashtags. Themes for
East Yard include geography, environmental struggle, social and political activism, and
intersectional environmental issues. Considering that this study took place during the COVID-19
pandemic, the pandemic’s impact on EJ issues is further examined in the analysis chapter. The
insights gained from studying the hashtags used by this secondary case study will provide data that
will be used to further analyze CBE’s hashtag usage within the primary case study. Such analysis
will be conducted only after both case studies are first examined individually within the analysis
chapter.

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Table 8
East Yard’s Hashtags
Hashtags Count
#WeAreJustTryingToBreathe 29
#FightingForLife 18
N/A 13
#NoMoPlomo 7
#LuchandoPorVida 4
#ToxicBusinessAsUsual 3
#ZeroEmissionsNow 2
#WOTY 1
#wearejutstryingtogrowfood 1
#Shero 1
#SELA 1
#RaceCounts 1
#Pride58 1
#nomoregasstations 1
#no710freewayexpansion 1
#LongBeach 1
#foodinsecurity 1
#foodapartheid 1
#Fascistfree323 1
#COVID19 1
#community 1
#commerce 1
#CASolidarity 1
#BeyondBiden 1

Link Active or Dead
In addition to capturing hashtags and whether each post was original or shared, this study
also sought to record whether the web links provided were active or dead. This information was
thought to be potentially useful in terms of understanding the temporal nature of the information
provided. A more detailed explanation of this coding category can be found in the study design
chapter.

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Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
A sum of 217 CBE posts featured active web links. In other words, approximately 54% of
the posts CBE provided included active web links. Alternatively, 38 posts included web links that
were dead or no longer accessible on the internet. Therefore, only 9.5% of the 400 posts had dead
web links. Considering web links as a whole, both active and dead, it is notable that the combined
total of these posts is 255, or approximately 64% of all CBE posts. Therefore, more than half of
CBE’s posts provided web links for users to further engage with the content. Additionally, there
are two remaining types of posts beyond those that have either an active or dead web link. This
refers to the category of “Both,” which identifies posts that included more than one web link and
where at least one was active and at least one was dead. If the combined total of posts with one
web link was 255, adding those that included both an active and dead web link would only increase
that total by two, amounting to 257 posts, still representing approximately 64% of all 400 posts.
Meanwhile, 143 posts did not include a web link at all and are identified in Table 9 as “N/A.”
Therefore, approximately 36% of the 400 posts did not include a link.

Table 9
Web Links
Link active or not Count
Active 217
N/A 143
Dead 38
Both 2

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Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
This study did not focus on whether the web links East Yard provided were active or dead.
Examining only East Yard’s posts, it seems that most of its links were still active 2 to 3 years after
they were originally posted.
Language of Post
This coding category noted whether a post is in English, Spanish, or both. As mentioned
in the study design chapter, knowing the language of a post was thought to help understand how
CBOs use social media to engage with followers.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
A total of 286 CBE posts, or approximately 72%, were entirely in English. Almost two-
thirds of CBE’s content was not directly addressed to Spanish speakers. Eighty-three posts, or
approximately 21%, were in both English and Spanish. Thirty-one posts, or approximately only
8%, of CBE’s 400 posts directly addressed Spanish speakers. Of course, English speakers can read
these posts, given Facebook’s built-in translation tools. Ultimately, if we combine the “English
and Spanish” category with either the English or Spanish category, there are additional numbers
to note. First, when we combine “English and Spanish” with “English,” these two categories
amount to 369 posts. This means approximately 92% of CBE’s posts were accessible to English
speakers without the need for translation tools via Facebook. On the other hand, when we combine
“English and Spanish” with “Spanish,” these two categories amount to 114 posts (Table 10). This
means that approximately 29% of CBE’s posts were accessible to Spanish speakers, with the need
for translation tools via Facebook. CBE did not use other languages to engage its followers.

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Table 10
Posts’ Language
Language of post Count
English 286
English and Spanish 83
Spanish 31

Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
This study did not collect data on the languages East Yard used, as a brief examination of
their posts shows that they consistently use both English and Spanish.
Intention
This coding category was designed to understand all of the ways in which a post might be
instrumentalized for a specific objective. This coding category is considerably more complex than
other more straightforward and singular or binary categories, but this section will focus only on
describing the data for the perceived intention behind each post. The analysis chapter of this study
will further explore the challenges of determining “intention.”
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment
Table 11 presents CBE’s top 11 intentions, along with a count of the times a post was
perceived as having a particular intention. The column on the right of the table provides examples
of intention types for a corresponding post. Since any post can have more than one intention, none
of the ascribed intentions are mutually exclusive. Most posts were essentially informing, with
“inform” being ascribed as an intention for 328 posts. This means that 82% of CBE’s posts were
focused on providing information. Throughout the study period, a post informing CBE followers
is one that provides specific information on how to attend upcoming virtual meetings.

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Table 11
CBE’s Top 11 Intentions
Intention Count Examples of intention types
1. Inform 328 Providing information about virtual meetings
2. Provide resources 232 Providing information on jobs or financial assistance
3. Encourage activism 194 Encouraging signing a letter urging an eviction moratorium
4. Call to Action 64 Encouraging people to vote, march, or sign petitions
5. Encourage virtual event
attendance
43 Encouraging people to attend a city council meeting
6. Encourage voting 23 Encourage singing petitions to expand voting options
7. Share article 22 Sharing the link to an article about a relevant issue
8. Encourage petition signing
21
Encourage signing a petition to provide those impacted by
COVID-19 with rental assistance
9. Profile community resident 12 Highlight a former CBE intern winning a major award
10. Ask for donations 10 CBE asking for donations for their community fund
11. Recognize activism 8 Celebrate activism resulting in failed plans for 710 expansion

Meanwhile, some of these 328 posts also had an additional intention identified as “provide
resources.” A total of 232 (58%) posts focused on providing a resource. A post providing resources
is any that provides information on job opportunities or how to obtain financial assistance.
The third top intention involves posts that function as encouraging activism. Beyond
informing or providing resources, 194 posts are ascribed as having the intention of encouraging
activism. An example of a post doing so is one that encourages people to perform an activity
demanding action or change, such as signing a letter urging an eviction moratorium. These 194
posts identified as encouraging activism represent 48.5% of the CBE’s total posts. However, many
more posts might indirectly also encourage activism.
The fourth top intention involves posts that function as a call to action, which very closely
resembles encouraging activism. Beyond informing, providing resources, and encouraging
activism, 64 posts are ascribed as having the intention of calling people to action. An example of
a call to action post is one that might encourage people to perform an additional activity, such as

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voting, marching or signing petitions. These 64 posts identified as having an explicit call to action
represent 16% of the CBE’s total posts. However, many more posts might indirectly encourage
action. Therefore, as previously mentioned, the “inform” category can be quite challenging to
categorize accurately and consistently. These challenges are described in greater detail in the
analysis chapter of this study.
One of the first clear examples of posts having multiple identified intentions can be seen
when considering posts ascribed with the intention of encouraging virtual event attendance, for
which there are 43 posts. These posts represent 10.75% of CBE’s total posts and specifically
provide information for followers to join an upcoming virtual meeting. This intention is relatively
more self-explanatory. A type of post with the ascribed intention of encouraging virtual event
attendance is one that explicitly provides web links or other logistical information that encourages
joining a virtual meeting. An example of this is a post that specifically provides information about
an upcoming city council meeting where followers are encouraged to participate.
Another self-explanatory type of intention stems from posts ascribed with the intention of
encouraging voting, for which there are 23 posts. This type of intention represents only 5.75% of
CBE’s total posts. An example of a post that intends to encourage voting is one that specifically
encourages people to sign a petition that expands voting options. Another type of post that is self-
explanatory is that ascribed with the intention to share an article. Posts with this type of intention
appeared 22 times, representing only 5.5% of CBE’s total posts. A post intending to share an article
is mostly a post that provides a web link to the source of an article about a relevant issue.
Yet another self-explanatory type of intention stems from posts ascribed with the intention
of encouraging petition signing, for which there are 21 posts. This type of intention represents only
5.25% of CBE’s total posts. One example of a post that intends to encourage petition signing is

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one that specifically encourages people to sign a petition that expands voting options, as previously
described above for posts intending to call people into action. Another example is a post that
similarly encourages signing a petition to provide financial assistance for those impacted by
COVID-19.
The ninth top intention involves profiling community residents. Posts with this type of
intention appeared 12 times (3%) and are largely interested in highlighting particular community
members’ achievements. One example of a post with the intention of profiling a community
resident is one where CBE highlighted a community member and former CBE intern who received
a significant award. Similar to some of the aforementioned intentions, the 10th and 11th top
intentions are self-explanatory: asking for donations and recognizing activism. These two
intentions appeared in 10 and 8 posts, respectively. The 10 posts with the intention of asking for
donations represent only 2.5% of all posts, while the eight posts with the intention of recognizing
activism represent only 2% of all posts. An example of a post intending to ask for donations is one
where CBE seeks donations to support its community fund. An example of a post intending to
recognize activism is one celebrating the activism that resulted in the failed plans for the 710
freeway expansion. Recognizing activism is retroactive, acknowledging activism that has already
taken place. Conversely, the intention of encouraging activism has a future orientation,
encouraging CBE’s followers to take future action. As previously mentioned, encouraging
activism and calling people into action can both be intentions ascribed to one post.
Table 12 presents the next nine top intentions and a count for the total number of times a
post was perceived as having a particular intention. As with Table 11, the column on the right
provides examples of intention types for a corresponding post. Each of the posts in this table is in
the single digits when counting the number of times each of the intentions appears. The next top

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post is ranked 12th overall and refers to posts ascribed as intending to encourage public comments.
This type of post appears six times (1.5%). One example of a post with the intention of encouraging
public comments is one where CBE was encouraging followers to submit public comments at a
police commissioners meeting.
Table 12
CBE’s Next Nine Intentions
Intention Count Examples of intention types
12. Encourage public comments 6 Encouraging public comments at a police
commissioners meeting.
13. Celebrate political decision 6 Celebrating DACA Supreme Court ruling
14. Encourage live event attendance 4 Encourage attendance at a local resource fair
15. Encourage survey completion 4 Encourage survey completion to understand utility
debt
16. Memorialize a resident who
passed
4 Memorialize the passing of a community member
17. Encourage people to send emails 3 Encourage people to send emails to Bay Area Air
Quality Management District for influence ruling
18. Encourage people to submit letter 2 Encourage people to send a letter to Bay Area Air
Quality Management District for influence ruling
19. Encourage to register for training 2 Encourage youth to register for Youth for
Environmental Justice Summer Training
20. Gratitude for CBE supporters 2 Thank CBE supporters and ask for donations

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The second top post in Table 12 is ranked 13th overall and refers to those ascribed as
intending to celebrate a political decision. This type of post also appears six times (1.5%). An
example of a post with the intention to celebrate a political decision is one where CBE celebrates
a Supreme Court ruling related to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Five of the
remaining seven intentions in Table 12 involve encouraging some specific type of action:
encourage live event attendance, encourage survey completion, encourage people to send emails,
encourage people to submit a letter and encourage people to register for training. These types of
intentions each appeared between two and four times. In other words, each type of intention
comprises 1% of CBE’s total posts at most. Respectively, the following is a list of singular
examples for each of these types of intentions: encourage attendance at a local resource fair,
encourage survey completion to understand utility debt, encourage people to send emails to Bay
Area Air Quality Management District for influence ruling, encourage people to send a letter to
Bay Area Air Quality Management District for influence ruling, and encourage youth to register
for Youth for Environmental Justice Summer Training. Each of these five intentions focused on
encouraging a straightforward action. For instance, if a post encouraged people to complete a
survey, then it was relatively easy to identify its intention to be exactly that. As mentioned earlier
in this chapter, a post such as one intending to encourage survey completion could also be ascribed
with the intention of being a call to action.
The next top intention to describe in Table 12 involves memorializing a resident who
passed away. Posts with this type of intention appeared only four times, comprising 1% of CBE’s
total posts. One example of a post with the intention of memorializing a resident who passed away
is exactly as it sounds. And finally, the last top intention in Table 12 involves gratitude for CBE
supporters. Posts with this type of intention appeared only twice, comprising less than 1% of

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CBE’s posts. One example of a post with the intention of showing gratitude for CBE supporters is
one thanking CBE supporters and asking for donations on Giving Tuesday. While it can be said
that this post’s intention is to ask for donations, it is classified here as intending to mostly express
gratitude for CBE supporters.
The next 13 top intentions are provided in Table 13, along with a count for the total number
of times a post was perceived as having a particular “intention.” Each of the “intentions” in this
table appears only once when accounting for the number of appearances they have within all of
CBE’s 400 posts during the study period. Unlike the previous tables displayed above, examples of
intention types for a corresponding post are not provided since most of the remaining intentions
are relatively self-explanatory. For instance, a post ascribed as one intending to share a job
opportunity or share a report does not require an example to further illustrate a type of intention
that corresponds with that post.

Table 13
CBE’s Next Top 13 Intentions
Intention Count
21. Share job opportunity 1
22. Share report 1
23. Encourage calling representatives 1
24. Encourage completion of census form 1
25. Encourage listening to a radio show 1
26. Encourage watching a short film 1
27. Encourage healing 1
28. Profile community organizer 1
29. Profile new staff 1
30. Memorialize an EJ champion who passed 1
31. Appreciation of resident participants 1
32. Acknowledge CBE and community allies 1
33. Celebrate Earth Day 1

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Five of the remaining 13 intentions in Table 13 involve encouraging a specific action:
calling representatives, completing a census form, listening to a radio show, watching a short film,
and healing. These types of intentions each appeared only once. In other words, each comprises
less than 1% of CBE’s posts. Five of the remaining intentions ranked 27th to 32nd are relatively
self-explanatory and can be viewed as a group of posts focused on people, each centered on
particular individuals or groups. The last ranked intention in this table differs in that it celebrates
the Earth Day holiday as opposed to focusing on individuals or groups of people. These final 13
intentions each represent less than 1% of CBE’s total posts.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
Table 14 lists the 12 different intentions identified among East Yards 46 posts based on the
level of engagement. For each intention listed, the table also includes a count for the total number
of times a post was perceived as having a particular intention. As with CBE’s posts, most of East
Yard’s posts are essentially informing, with “inform” being ascribed as an intention for 43 out of
the 46 posts. This means that all but three posts focused on providing information to followers.
Also similar to CBE’s posts, one example of a post informing CBE followers is any post providing
specific information to encourage the public to attend upcoming virtual meetings.

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Table 14
East Yard’s 12 Intentions
Intention Count
Inform 43
Call to action 20
Encourage activism 14
Encourage virtual event attendance 4
Celebrate political decision 3
Provide resources 3
Highlight activism 2
Profile East Yard founder 1
Celebrate community resident 1
Profile community resident 1
Celebrate activism 1
Encourage people to fill out survey 1

The second top intention listed involves posts that function as a call to action. Therefore,
the top three intentions are the most recurring intentions by far among all 12 intentions in East
Yard’s posts. Forty-three posts intended to inform, and 20 intended to serve as a call to action.
Beyond informing or operating as a call to action, 14 posts are ascribed as having the intention of
encouraging activism, although many more posts might indirectly also serve as a call to action or
encourage activism. Since intentions are not mutually exclusive, an example of a post informing,
operating as a call to action, and/or encouraging activism could all be intentions ascribed to a post
that encourages the public to attend upcoming virtual meetings. While the remaining intentions
occur less frequently, some can be combined with slight changes made to how they were identified
in terms of intention. For example, “highlighting activism” and “celebrating activism” would
easily be viewed interchangeably. Similarly, “profiling a community resident” and “celebrating a
community resident” can also easily be viewed interchangeably. With these examples, however,
their significantly less frequent appearances would not make a significant difference overall.

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Geographic Area of Focus
The coding category of geographic area of focus is meant to provide an understanding of
how many posts were focused on particular geographic regions during the period of study. These
particular data were also captured to further understand each CBO's specific focus geographies.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
CBE is focused on environmental issues throughout California. CBE has 45 distinct
geographic areas of focus. However, it should be noted that these areas are not mutually exclusive,
as some geographies can overlap with others. For instance, a post might focus on the city of
Maywood, with “Maywood” as a geographic area of focus. Meanwhile, that same post could
explicitly highlight SELA, where Maywood is located. The study attempted to limit the
interpretation of geographies as much as possible. For instance, even if a post seemed to focus on
an issue taking place in Los Angeles, “Los Angeles” as a geographic area of focus was only noted
if the post specifically mentioned it. Such content might include, for instance, the written text of a
post, a map, a video, or a hashtag.
Over the study period, 336 Los Angeles-based geographies were mentioned, sometimes
with more than one in one post. Meanwhile, 169 Bay Area geographies were mentioned, also with
more than one in one post at times. The Los Angeles-based geographies consist of the following:
Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, Wilmington, SELA, Huntington Park, Carson, Los Angeles
County, Cudahy, Vernon, Maywood, Southbay (Los Angeles), Long Beach, South Los Angeles,
South Gate (SELA), Downey, Brentwood, Commerce, Boyle Heights, and Walnut Park. The Bay
Area geographies consist of the following: Richmond, Oakland, East Oakland, Bay Area,
Martinez, East Bay, Contra Costa, San Francisco, North Oakland, and Rodeo. Los Angeles and
the Bay Area represent the two most referenced geographies since they are both areas in which

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CBE does most of its work in California. When a post did not explicitly mention geography, the
term “unclear” was used. In some cases, when a geography was not clear while it was still evident
that a particular topic discussed applied to EJ issues across the state or the country, the terms
“California” or “nationwide,” respectively, were used. Some outlier geographies outside CBE’s
focus areas are Standing Rock, the U.S. Atlantic Coast, and Warren County, North Carolina.
Table 15 shows the top 13 ranked geographies among CBE’s 400 posts. The top specific
geographic area was Los Angeles, appearing in 141 of the 400 posts. Other posts focused on Los
Angeles, but these 141 either explicitly referred to Los Angeles as a whole or did not specify a
particular city within Los Angeles. These 141 posts represent slightly over 35% of the CBE’s 400
posts. The next top geography specified within all posts is California, which came up 86 times,
representing 21.5% of all 400 posts. Naturally, many other posts focused on California,
considering that most of CBE’s work has taken place in the Bay Area or Los Angeles. However,
ascribing California as a geographic area of focus indicates that the post was either specifically
using that name in its content or the subject matter had relevance to the entire state.

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Table 15
Top 13 Geographies Among CBE’s Posts
Geographic area of focus Count
1. Los Angeles 141
2. California 86
3. Richmond 65
4. Southeast Los Angeles 46
5. East Los Angeles 46
6. Oakland 40
7. Wilmington 33
8. unclear 26
9. East Oakland 26
10. SELA 24
11. Bay Area 22
12. nationwide 17
13. Southeast Los Angeles (SELA) 11

The next top geography specified within all posts is “Richmond,” which came up 65 times,
representing approximately 16% of all 400 posts. Since Richmond is a more specific geography
than, say, the Bay Area or Los Angeles, the posts where Richmond is a geographic area of focus
are those that specifically mention it with its content. The next two top geographies are SELA and
East Los Angeles, each coming up 46 times and therefore appearing in approximately 11.5% of
all 400 posts. Southeast Los Angeles comprises nine cities within that part of Los Angeles County,
whereas East Los Angeles is an unincorporated region east of downtown Los Angeles and north
of the SELA region.
Accounting for a full quantity of posts focusing on SELA goes beyond the posts that
explicitly refer to this geography as “Southeast Los Angeles.” For instance, other posts refer to
this region under the acronym “SELA,” “Southeast LA,” or “Southeast Los Angeles (SELA).”
Additionally, posts that specifically focus on cities located within this region can be said to also

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identify SELA as a geographic area of focus. Adding all such variations of names referring to
SELA and the names of the individual cities that comprise it, there are 100 appearances. We cannot
say, however, that SELA appears in 25% of CBE’s 400 study period posts since all such mentions
are not mutually exclusive, and one particular post might refer to SELA in multiple ways.
The next top geography specified within all posts is “Oakland,” which came up 40 times,
representing 10% of all 400 posts. Since Oakland is a more specific geography than, say, the Bay
Area or Los Angeles, the posts where Oakland is a geographic area of focus are those that
specifically mention it with its content. However, 26 other posts specifically mentioned East
Oakland, which is still more specific than merely referring to the city of Oakland as a whole. With
26 appearances, East Oakland represents only 6.5% of the CBE’s total posts. However, if we sum
the appearances for Oakland, East Oakland, and North Oakland (not featured in Table 15), we
arrive at 68 appearances or 17% of all posts.
Seventh on the list of top geographic areas of focus is Wilmington, which came up 33
times, approximately 8% of all 400 posts. Next on the list and ranked eighth are the posts for which
the geographic area of focus was unclear. Twenty-six posts were unclear in having a specific
geography mentioned. This means only 6.5% of the CBE’s posts did not involve some specifically
referenced geography. On the other hand, some posts contained subject matter that was applicable
nationwide, thus not having a specific geographic area of focus. The “nationwide” posts totaled
17, or only 4.25% of all posts.
The 11th-ranked geographic area was the Bay Area, appearing in 22 of the 400 posts. There
were other posts focused on the Bay Area as well, but these 22 posts either explicitly referred to
the Bay Area as a whole or did not specify a particular city in the Bay Area. These 22 posts
represent approximately 5.5% of the CBE’s 400 posts. Given the number of overlapping focus

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areas, further consolidating the data might be helpful. For instance, categories for the different
geographic areas could be consolidated into the Los Angeles and Bay Area metropolitan areas.
Table 16 lists the remaining geographic areas of interest captured.

Table 16
Remaining Geographic Areas of Interest
Geographic area of focus Count
14. Huntington Park 6
15. N/A 6
16. Carson 5
17. Martinez 5
18. East Bay 4
19. Northern California 4
20. Southern California 3
21. Los Angeles County 3
22. Cudahy 3
23. Vernon 3
24. Maywood 2
25. South Bay 2
26. South Bay (Los Angeles) 2
27. Long Beach 2
28. Contra Costa 2
29. San Francisco 2
30. North Oakland 2
31. Southeast LA 1
32. South Los Angeles 1
33. South Gate (SELA) 1
34. Downey 1
35. Brentwood 1
36. Commerce 1
37. Boyle Heights 1
38. Walnut Park 1
39. Sun Valley 1
40. Rodeo 1
41. Standing Rock 1

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Geographic area of focus Count
42. U.S. Atlantic Coast 1
43. District #64 1
44. Warren County, NC 1

Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
Fourteen distinct geographic areas of focus for East Yard collectively appeared 53 times
among its posts. It should be noted, as with CBE, that these areas are not mutually exclusive, as
some geographies can overlap with others. For instance, a post might focus on the city of Bell
Gardens, with Bell Gardens as a geographic area of focus. Meanwhile, that post could explicitly
highlight SELA, where Bell Gardens is located. While most of the geographic areas of focus occur
less frequently, some can be combined with slight changes made to how they were identified. For
example, SELA and Southeast LA are interchangeable since they have identical meanings. All
geographic areas listed, with the exception of California, essentially focus on Los Angeles, if not
SELA specifically. For example, Boyle Heights, Downtown LA, Compton, and East Los Angeles
are all in Los Angeles but not in SELA, appearing only once among East Yard’s posts.
Collectively, these posts amount to six out of the 53 appearances listed below. This means that 47
out of 53 geographic areas of focus captured as part of this data refer to an area in SELA.

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Table 17
East Yard’s Geographic Areas of Focus
Geographic area of focus Count
Los Angeles 30
Long Beach 4
Commerce 4
Compton 3
SELA 2
Bell Gardens 2
Boyle Heights 1
Downtown LA 1
Maywood 1
Vernon 1
Southeast LA 1
California 1
unclear 1
East Los Angeles 1

Descriptive Results for General Topics of Interest
Each post for each CBO was captured on a separate row on a spreadsheet, and each row
was then populated with attributes that corresponded with coding categories represented by each
column. The next coding category to describe in this section is general topics of interest. The
explicit content of each post was the primary motivation for determining the general topic of
interest that should be attributed to each post. For instance, while topics such as climate change
and climate justice might seem almost interchangeable as general topics of interest, it was
important to first assign a general topic of interest to each post based exclusively on what that
particular post was about, with secondary consideration at this point being given to how each
general topic of interest related to other general topics attributed to other posts. In this respect,
striving for consistency across all general topics was an immediate challenge, thus resulting in 107

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total general topics of interest being assigned overall across all 400 posts for CBE and 21 general
topics of interest across all 46 East Yards posts based on level of engagement.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
As part of the 16 categories assigned to each post, in addition to tracking the more
straightforward Facebook metrics such as likes and shares, each of the 400 posts was assigned a
general topic of interest to which its subject matter could be attributed. Overall, 107 general topics
of interest were identified. Consistency was one of the most critical challenges in assigning a code
for each post. For instance, the general topic of interest that most appeared was the topic of oil,
with 74 posts. Meanwhile, 49 posts were assigned environmental justice as a topic, posts which in
some cases could have also fallen under the category of oil when they related to oil refineries.
Careful judgment was necessary to determine whether a particular post was essentially more
intricately tied to EJ or oil as a general topic. Table 18 lists all 107 assigned general topics of
interest, including the number of times each one appears during the study period.

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Table 18
CBE Assigned General Topics of Interest
General topic of
interest
Count General topic of
interest
Count General topic of
interest
Count General topic of interest Count
Oil 74 Clean energy 3 Voting 2 Fossil fuel companies 1
Environmental justice 49 Climate change 3 Water 2 Frontline workers 1
Air quality 26 Community
members
3 Youth activist
training
2 Grassroots campaign 1
Utilities 26 Fracking 3 Air pollution 1 Green New Deal 1
Oil drilling 21 Juneteenth 3 Award 1 Gun violence 1
Oil refineries 21 May Day 3 Budget finance 1 Heat wave 1
Housing 18 Oil industry 3 California
Democratic
Party
1 Immigration rights 1
Legal resources 18 Tenants rights 3 CBE social media 1 Indigenous people 1
Upcoming Bay Area
AQMD vote on
Cat Cracker Rule
15 Utility companies 3 CBE staff 1 Internet access 1
Energy 13 Akoma Market 2 CEJA event 1 Labor movement 1
Housing justice 13 Bay Area AQMD
ruling
2 Census 2020 1 LA City Council meeting 1
Job opportunity 12 CBE community
meetings
2 City of LA City
Council’s
Environment
Committee
1 LA Unified School
District
1
Virtual public hearing 11 City budget 2 Climate action 1 May Day march 1
Gas 10 Climate Emergency
Mobilization
Office (CEMO)
2 Community
demands
1 Methane gas leak 1
School funding 10 Community
partnerships
2 Community safety 1 Mobile homes 1
Community funds for
financial assistance
8 Earth Week 2 COVID-19
measures
1 Oil regulations 1
Racial justice 7 Education 2 COVID assistance 1 Organizing 1
Smog repairs 7 Environmental
justice scorecards
2 Crematoriums 1 Park funding 1
Exide 6 Gas leak 2 Earth Day 1 Public land 1
Oil and gas 6 Housing elements 2 Economy 1 Racial solidarity 1
Food justice 5 Nuclear energy 2 Election day 1 Resources for
communities
1
Tenant anti-
harassment
5 Oil spill 2 Elections 1 Richmond City Council
meeting
1
Climate justice 4 Pipeline 2 Electric vehicles 1 Vaccines 1
COVID-19 4 Revamping parks
and green spaces
2 Environmental
Justice
Communities
1 Virtual altar 1
Fossil fuels 4 Support for car
expenses
2 Environmental
racism
1 Voter rights 1

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General topic of
interest
Count General topic of
interest
Count General topic of
interest
Count General topic of interest Count
Refinery flaring 4 Toxins at local
schools
2 environmental
regulation
1 Youth for Environmental
Justice
1
Black Lives Matter 3 Utility debt relief 2 Fires 1

Third from the top, air quality appears 26 times after oil and environmental justice. Also
with 26 appearances is the general topic of utilities. With 107 general topics identified overall, 15
appeared at least 10 times, ranging from the 74 posts generally dealing with oil to the 10 posts
generally dealing with gas or school funding. By frequency of appearance, the next 21 general
topics listed appeared between eight to three times, ranging from the eight posts generally dealing
with community funds for financial assistance to the 10 general topics that each appeared in three
posts: Black Lives Matter, clean energy, climate change, community members, fracking,
Juneteenth, May Day, oil industry, tenants’ rights, and utility companies. Subsequently, the
following 21 general topics by frequency appeared in exactly two posts, followed by 50 general
topics, each appearing in only one post.
Some of these general topics of interest were consolidated to facilitate analysis and reduce
their number. For example, oil and several other topics were consolidated to create one general
topic of interest that more comprehensively encapsulated the various general topics related to oil.
For example, eight general topics of interest (oil, oil drilling, oil refineries, oil industry, refinery
flaring, fracking, oil spill, and oil regulations) were all placed into one consolidated label titled oil,
amounting to 129 posts. As part of the effort to create greater consistency, Table 19 lays out the
results for other consolidated general topics of interest.

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Table 19
Results for Other CBE Consolidated General Topics of Interest
Consolidated topics General topics of interest Count
Oil Oil, oil drilling, oil refineries, oil industry, refinery flaring,
fracking, oil spill, oil regulations
129
Housing Housing, housing justice, tenant anti-harassment, tenants
rights, housing elements, legal resources, mobile homes
60
Environmental justice Environmental justice, environmental justice scorecards,
environmental justice communities, environmental racism,
youth for environmental justice
54
Air Air quality, air pollution, upcoming Bay Area Air Quality
Management District vote on Cat Cracker Rule, Bay Area
Air Quality Management District ruling
44
Utilities Utilities, utility companies, energy 42
Economic assistance Community funds for financial assistance, resources for
communities, smog repairs, utility debt relief, support for car
expenses, job opportunity
32
Education Education, school funding, toxins at local schools 14
Racial justice Racial justice, Black Lives Matter, Juneteenth, Racial solidarity 14
Gas Gas, gas leak 12
Public hearing (not including
AQMD)
Virtual public hearing
11
Fossil fuels (general) Fossil fuels, oil and gas, fossil fuel companies 11
Climate justice Climate justice, climate change, climate action 8
COVID Covid-19, Covid-19 measures, COVID assistance, vaccines 7
Exide Exide 6
Green energy Clean energy, Green New Deal, electric vehicles 5
Democracy Elections, election day, voting, voter rights 5
Food justice Food justice 5
CBE CBE community meetings, CBE social media, CBE Staff 4
Community members Community members, virtual altar 4
Government budgeting City budget, budget finance 3
Organizing Grassroots campaign, organizing, May Day march 3

It should be noted that some of the 400 posts included more than one of these 107 general
topics of interest. Therefore, spread across all 400 posts, individual general topics of interest
appeared 519 times. When taking into account the 21 consolidated general topics in Table 19,
individual general topics of interest appeared 473 times, leaving an additional 34 general topics

96
representing 46 total general topic appearances that were not easily grouped within a consolidated
group. Thus, by representing 473 general topics of interest, the 21 consolidated groups in the table
above represent 91% of the total general topics assigned overall.
The second consolidated group, housing, contains general topics that appeared 60 times
among all 400 posts. The third highest-ranking consolidated category is the environmental justice
category, which appears 54 times among all 400 posts. Closely following this group are the air and
utilities groups, each appearing 44 and 42 times, respectively. The last relatively larger
consolidated group appearing 32 times is the economic assistance group, identified as such given
its associated posts explicitly dealing with various forms of financial assistance made available to
CBE’s Facebook followers. Education and racial justice each appeared 14 times, while gas
appeared 12 times. The public hearing and fossil fuels consolidated groups appeared 11 times each.
It should be noted that the public hearing consolidated group does not include general topics of
interest related to public hearings that are otherwise related to an air quality management district
since those instances already fall under the air consolidated group. Similarly, the fossil fuels
consolidated group does not include general topics of interest that more explicitly fall under the
oil consolidated group. The remaining groups among the top 21 consolidated groups include the
following: climate justice, COVID, Exide, green energy, democracy, food justice, CBE,
community members, government budgeting, and organizing. As previously stated, the remaining
34 general topics of interest (out of 107) that do not fall under any consolidated general topics of
interest represent 46 appearances (out of 519). Table 20 lists these excluded unconsolidated
general topics.

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Table 20
Excluded Unconsolidated General Topics
Unconsolidated general topics of interest Count
May Day 3
Akoma Market 2
Climate Emergency Mobilization Office (CEMO) 2
Community partnerships 2
Earth Week 2
LA City Council meeting, Richmond City Council meeting 2
Nuclear energy 2
Pipeline 2
Revamping parks and green spaces 2
Water 2
Youth activist training 2
Award 1
California Democratic Party 1
CEJA event 1
Census 2020 1
City of Los Angeles City Council’s Environment Committee 1
Community demands 1
Community safety 1
Crematoriums 1
Earth Day 1
Economy 1
Environmental regulation 1
Fires 1
Frontline workers 1
Gun violence 1
Heat wave 1
Immigration rights 1
Indigenous people 1
Internet access 1
Labor movement 1
LA Unified School District 1
Methane gas leak 1
Park funding 1
Public land 1

98
Beyond each assigned general topic of interest, each post was also assigned a specific topic
of interest, which will be further discussed in the following section. It is important to note here
that not every appearance of a general topic was associated with a unique topic of interest, as some
specific topics appeared multiple times.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
Overall, East Yard’s posts yielded 21 general topics of interest. Not surprisingly,
environmental justice appeared 16 times, more than any other general topic. As with CBE’s
general topics of interest, careful judgment was used to determine whether a particular post was
essentially more intricately tied to one general topic or another. For example, some posts could
have been categorized as having environmental justice or Exide bankruptcy as a general topic.
This careful judgment was necessary to maintain consistency when categorizing posts by general
topics of interest. Next on the list, and also not surprising given the period in which the study took
place, COVID-19 appeared five times. Tied for ranking second on the list is Exide bankruptcy, a
general topic of interest also with five total posts and one that could have been easily associated
with seven posts if it was merged with Exide cleanup, which appears in two posts. Also associated
with two total posts is the general topic of Amazon’s environmental impacts. The remaining 15
general topics of interest identified and listed in Table 21 each appeared in only one post among
all 46 of East Yard’s posts. Unlike with CBE, the condensed nature of this secondary case study
does not require further consolidation of general topics to narrow down topics into categories that
more easily lend themselves to analysis. Some consolidation of the general topics listed below
could occur, but the low count for most general topics does not make consolidation necessary.

99
Table 21
East Yard General Topics of Interest
General topic of interest Count
Environmental justice 16
COVID-19 5
Exide bankruptcy 5
Leadership transition 4
Exide cleanup 2
Amazon environmental impacts 2
Celebrate East Yard founder 1
Food justice 1
Labor justice 1
Importance of activism 1
Job announcement 1
Youth leadership 1
Political corruption 1
710 expansion 1
Toxic shutdowns and cleanups 1
Air quality rule making 1
Local political leaders 1
New special projects announcement 1
Housing justice 1
Community membership 1
Metro survey 1

Descriptive Results for Specific Topics of Interest
In addition to assigning a general topic of interest to each post, an additional step was taken
to identify a specific topic of interest. Identifying a specific topic of interest was thought to provide
additional insight into how each post operated and what topics were specifically prioritized and
used to engage with each CBO’s Facebook followers. Again, some specific topics appeared
multiple times, so not every general topic is associated with a unique specific topic.

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Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
The following tables revisit the top 11 consolidated general topics of interest. We focus on
the top 11 consolidated groups since they appeared more than 10 times among all 400 posts. With
particular significance for this section, the following tables include examples of specific topics that
align with each of the general topics of interest that make up each consolidated group.
As seen in Table 22, the general topics of interest associated with each post can be
understood in closer detail when looking at their respective specific topics of interest. Starting at
the top of the column for general topics of interest, oil appears 74 times among all 400 posts, and
each appearance has an assigned specific topic of interest. Table 22 shows only one example of a
specific topic of interest for each general topic. With 74 appearances, oil comprises 57% of the
general topics of interest in this group, while with 18 total appearances, both the oil drilling and
oil refineries topics make up 14% each. The remaining five topics (oil industry, refinery flaring,
fracking, oil spill, and oil regulations) collectively amount to only 10% of this group’s general
topics of interest. The specific topics range from legislation and facilities to specific calls to action.

Table 22
General Topics of Interest Associated With Each Post
Consolidated
topic
General topics of interest
(appearances)
Examples of specific topics of interest
Oil (129)
Oil (74) Wilmington Environmental Justice Case
Oil Drilling (21) Voting Yes on SB 467 to create buffer zones
Oil Refineries (21) Chevron in Richmond
Oil Industry (3) Protecting Communities from Oil
Refinery Flaring (4) Call SouthCoast AQMD
Fracking (3) Fracking Permits
Oil Spill (2) Richmond Community Statistics
Oil Regulations (1) Oil Drilling

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Housing is the next consolidated group. Table 23 demonstrates additional examples of
specific topics of interest under this topic, which consists of seven general topics of interest,
collectively appearing 60 times. Starting at the top of the column for general topics of interest,
housing, and legal resources each appears 18 times among all 400 posts. Each appearance also has
an assigned specific topic of interest. Table 23 shows one example of a specific topic of interest
for each general topic. The housing and legal resources topics comprise 30% of this group's general
topics of interest, while the housing justice topic makes up 22%. The remaining four topics (tenant
anti-harassment, tenants’ rights, housing elements, and mobile homes) collectively amount to 18%
of this group’s general topics of interest. Among the top five consolidated groups, housing is
perhaps the only group that may not immediately appear related to environmental issues. While
this topic is discussed further in the analysis chapter, it is noteworthy that housing as a popular
topic speaks to EJ’s intersectionality.

Table 23
Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Housing
Consolidated
topic
General topics of interest
(appearances)
Example of specific topics of interest
Housing (60)
Housing (18) Community talk about housing
Legal resources (18) Tenant legal clinics
Housing justice (13) Calling for an eviction moratorium
Tenant anti-harassment (5) Public comment for tenant anti-harassment ordinance
Tenants rights (3) Caravan in support of tenants’ rights
Housing elements (2) Inform public about lawsuit against Huntington Park
related to Housing Element
Mobile homes (1) Protecting residents from displacement in Carson

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Environmental justice is the next consolidated group. Table 24 demonstrates additional
examples of specific topics of interest under this group, which consists of five general topics of
interest, collectively appearing 54 times. Environmental justice appears 49 times among all 400
posts. Similar to the topics in previously described consolidated groups, each of its 54 appearances
as a general topic has an assigned specific topic of interest. Table 24 shows only one example of a
specific topic of interest for each general topic. With 49 out of 54 appearances, environmental
justice makes up over 90% of the general topics of interest in this group. The EJ scorecard topics
only appeared twice, while the rest of the topics only appeared once. It should also be noted that
the singular general topic of youth for EJ could have easily instead been reclassified as falling
under EJ, just as other youth-related topics were classified. The analysis chapter will discuss this
in further detail, although here, it is important to highlight this example as representative of how
challenging it is to classify a post under a particular general topic of interest.

Table 24
Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Environmental Justice
Consolidated
Topic General Topics of Interest (appearances) Example of Specific Topics of Interest
Environmental
justice (54)
Environmental justice (49) Encourage public comments for Exide
bankruptcy plan
Environmental justice scorecards (2) California Environmental Justice Alliance’s EJ
scorecard for California representatives
Environmental JUSTICE communities (1) emPower Outreach Program
Environmental racism (1) Weekly update announcement
Youth for Environmental Justice (1) Youth Instagram engagement

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Since this study is primarily focused on EJ, and since “environmental justice” as a general
topic within this consolidated group is vastly over-represented, additional examples of specific
topics are important to note. Table 25 provides 12 additional examples of specific topics of interest
that fall under this general topic. Although not all specific topics under this general topic are listed,
these additional ones provide a more comprehensive sense of the types of EJ topics that CBE
focused on. Some of these specific topics involve specific toxic facilities, while others involve
issues that are not necessarily associated with a particular site.

Table 25
Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest for Environmental Justice
Twelve specific topics of interest for environmental justice
Anniversary of environmental
justice principles
Crematoriums and mercury in East
Oakland
Celebrating 4-year anniversary of
CMI being shut down
Connections between climate and
environmental justice
CALSOMAH’s public forum Exide plant
Public comment to LA City
Council’s Environmental
Committee
Environmental health impacts Richmond High School “Oiler”
mascot
Phillips66 flares Public meeting about Exide cleanup Fossil fuels linked to premature
deaths

104
Air is the next consolidated group. Table 26 demonstrates additional examples of specific
topics of interest under this consolidated topic, which consists of four general topics of interest,
collectively appearing 44 times. Air quality appears 26 times among all 400 posts. Each
appearance has an assigned specific topic of interest. Table 26 shows one example of a specific
topic of interest for each general topic. With 26 out of 44 appearances, air quality makes up almost
60% of the general topics of interest in this consolidated group. With 15 out of 44 appearances,
“Upcoming Bay Area Air Quality Management District Vote on Cat Cracker Rule” makes up 34%
of the general topics of interest in this group. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District
ruling only appears twice, while the air pollution topic only appears once.

Table 26
Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest under Consolidated Air Topic
Consolidated
Topic
General topics of interest
(appearances)
Example of specific topics of interest
Air (44)
Air Quality (26) Encourage people to demand respite centers
Upcoming Bay Area Air Quality
Management District Vote on Cat
Cracker Rule (15)
Sign petition to protect against “Cat Cracker”
particulate matter from refinery pollution prior to
June 2nd air district board meeting
Bay Area Air Quality Management
District ruling (2)
Petition to approve Bay Area Air Quality Management
District regulation
Air Pollution (1) Air monitoring research

105
The next consolidated group is utilities. Table 27 demonstrates additional examples of
specific topics of interest under this topic, which consists of only three general topics of interest,
collectively appearing 42 times. “Utilities” appears 26 times among all 400 posts. Each appearance
also has an assigned specific topic of interest. Table 27 shows only one example of a specific topic
of interest for each general topic. With 26 out of 42 appearances, the utilities group makes up 62%
of the general topics of interest in this group. With 13 out of 42 appearances, energy makes up
31%. The topic of utility companies only appears once.

Table 27
Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Consolidated Utilities Topic
Consolidated
Topic
General Topics of Interest
(appearances)
Example of Specific Topics of Interest
Utilities (42)
Utilities (26) Low-income census tracts
Energy (13) Encourage CPUC to invest in clean energy
Utility companies (3) Utility debt

106
Economic assistance is the next consolidated group, with five general topics of interest
collectively appearing 32 times. Starting at the top of the column for general topics of interest, job
opportunity appears 12 times among all 400 posts. Each appearance has an assigned specific topic
of interest. Table 28 shows one example of a specific topic of interest for each general topic. With
12 out of 32 appearances, job opportunity makes up nearly 38% of the general topics of interest in
this group. With eight out of 32 appearances, “community funds for financial assistance” makes
up 25%, while “smog repairs” follows next with seven appearances, amounting to approximately
22% of the general topics of interest in this group. Utility debt relief and support for car expenses
had two appearances each, while resources for communities only appeared once.

Table 28
Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Consolidated Economic Assistance
Topic
Consolidated Topic General Topics of Interest
(appearances)
Example of Specific Topics of Interest
Economic assistance (32)
Job opportunity (12) Hiring a community organizer
Community funds for financial assistance
(8)
Applications for financial assistance open
Smog repairs (7) Free smog repairs
Utility debt relief (2) Utility debt survey
Support for car expenses (2) Funding programs
Resources for communities (1) Applications for resources

107
Education is the next consolidated group. Table 29 demonstrates additional examples of
specific topics of interest under this topic, which consists of only three general topics of interest,
collectively appearing 14 times. School funding appears 10 times among the 400 posts. Each
appearance has an assigned specific topic of interest. Table 29 only shows one example of a
specific topic of interest for each general topic. With 10 out of 14 appearances, school funding
makes up nearly 71% of the general topics of interest in this group. Education and toxins at local
schools each have two appearances, each making up only 14% of the general topics of interest.
The school funding and education topics are focused on Los Angeles, while the topic of toxins at
local schools focused on meetings held at East Oakland schools.

Table 29
Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Consolidated Education Topic
Consolidated Topic General topics of interest
(appearances)
Example of specific topics of interest
Education (14)
School funding (10) Defund LA school police
Education (2) LA Unified food distribution centers
Toxins at local schools (2) Online meeting to discuss toxins in local
schools

108
Table 30 demonstrates additional examples of specific topics of interest under the next
consolidated group of racial justice. There are only three general topics of interest that comprise
this consolidated topic, collectively appearing 14 times. Racial justice appears seven times among
the 400 posts, and each appearance has an assigned specific topic of interest. Table 30 shows one
example of a specific topic of interest for each general topic. With seven out of 14 appearances,
racial justice makes up 50% of the general topics of interest in this group.

Table 30
Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Consolidated Racial Justice Topic
Consolidated topic General topics of interest
(appearances)
Example of specific topics of interest
Racial Justice (14)
Racial justice (7) Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter (3) Rally and march to offer 9 minutes of silence
for George Floyd and all unarmed Black
people
Juneteenth (3) Defund the police, Black communities,
resignation of Donald Trump
Racial solidarity (1) Anti-Asian racism

109
As seen in Table 30, Black Lives Matter appears as both a specific and general topic of
interest. In the former case, posts speaking broadly about racial justice sometimes specifically
mentioned Black Lives Matter. In the latter case, for example, three posts spoke broadly about
Black Lives Matter while specifically being focused on a particular rally to recognize a particular
incident. In this case, the incident relates to the murder of George Floyd. Black Lives Matter and
Juneteenth each have three appearances, each making up approximately 21% of the general topics
of interest in this consolidated group. Notably, Juneteenth appears three times as a general topic
of interest, and each is associated with three separate specific topics of interest: defund the police,
Black communities, and the resignation of Donald Trump. Finally, racial solidarity appears only
once as a general topic of interest, representing approximately 7% of the general topics in this
group.
Gas is the next consolidated group. Table 31 demonstrates additional examples of specific
topics of interest under this topic, which consists of two general topics of interest, collectively
appearing 12 times. Starting at the top of the column for general topics of interest, gas appears 10
times among all 400 posts. Each appearance has an assigned specific topic of interest. Table 31
only shows one example of a specific topic of interest for each general topic. With 10 out of 12
appearances, gas makes up approximately 83% of the general topics of interest in this consolidated
group. Finally, gas leak appears only once as a general topic of interest, representing approximately
17% of the general topics in this group.

110
Table 31
Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Consolidated Gas Topic
Consolidated topic General topics of interest
(appearances)
Example of specific topics of interest
Gas (12)
Gas (10) Stop investing in gas plants and gas infrastructure
Gas leak (2) Gas leak in Downey

Public hearing (not including AQMD) is the next consolidated group. Table 32
demonstrates additional examples of specific topics of interest under this topic, which consists of
only one general topic of interest that appeared 11 times. The virtual public hearing topic appears
11 times within all 400 posts. Each appearance has an assigned specific topic of interest. Table 32
only shows one example of a specific topic of interest for each general topic. Virtual public hearing
makes up 100% of the general topics of interest in this group.

Table 32
Additional Examples of Topics of Interest Under Public Hearing (Not Including AQMD) Topic
Consolidated topic General topics of interest
(appearances)
Example of specific topics of interest
Public hearing (not including
AQMD) (11)
Virtual public hearing (11) Exide bankruptcy plan

111
Fossil fuels (general) is the next consolidated group. Table 33 demonstrates additional
examples of specific topics of interest under this topic, which consists of only three general topics,
collectively appearing 11 times. “Oil and gas” appears six times among all 400 posts, with each
appearance assigned a specific topic of interest. Table 33 shows one example of a specific topic of
interest for each general topic. With six out of 11 appearances, “oil and gas” makes up
approximately 55% of the general topics of interest in this group. “Fossil fuels” has four
appearances, making up approximately 36% of the general topics of interest in this group. Finally,
“fossil fuel companies” appears only once, representing approximately 9% of the general topics in
this group.

Table 33
Additional Examples of Specific Topics of Interest Under Consolidated Fossil Fuels (General)
Topic
Consolidated topic General topics of interest
(appearances)
Example of specific topics of interest
Fossil fuels (general) (11)
Oil and gas (6) Public comment to LA City Council’s
Environmental Committee
Fossil fuels (4) Call to prevent bailout of fossil fuel polluters
Fossil fuel companies (1) Article about Fossil Fuel Regulatory Agency

112
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
Table 34 shows the specific topics of interest identified among East Yards posts. Whereas
there were too many specific topics of interest for the primary case study to list them all, the
condensed secondary case study makes possible an exhaustive list of all specific topics of interest.
Forty-five specific topics of interest were identified for this secondary case study. Six specific
topics appeared twice among East Yard’s 46 posts, while the remaining 39 appeared only once.
As with the challenge of identifying general topics of interest, careful judgment was used to
determine whether a particular post was essentially more intricately tied to one specific topic or
another. But while some posts, such as “inform community about a procession based on public
hearing on Exide Bankruptcy” and “emphasizing procession against Exide,” could have been
merged into one specific topic, most of the specific topics listed below are specific enough that
they are easily distinguishable from each other.

Table 34
East Yards Posts’ Specific Topics of Interest
Specific topic of interest Count
Celebrating award-winning community resident 2
COVID emergency shelter 2
East Yard announcing leadership transition 2
Encouraging people to document and expose toxic threats 2
Inform community about a procession based on public hearing on Exide Bankruptcy 2
Inform community about public hearing on Exide Bankruptcy 2
Amazon workers demand it stop polluting near communities of color 1
Appreciation of East Yard members 1
Article about COVID lockdown exacerbating lead exposure 1

113
Specific topic of interest Count
Article on people of color shaping climate action 1
Call to Action 1
Call to reject conditional use permit for recycling business 1
Calling out political leaders who do not represent their communities 1
Calls to shut down Farmer John 1
Cannot rely on corporate politicians 1
Celebrate CalTrans decision to pause 710 freeway expansion 1
Celebrate East Yard founder appointed to EJ Advisory Council at the White House 1
Celebrate political decision to deny conditional use permit for Gu’s Recycling 1
Chemical spill in Compton 1
Decentralized garden project 1
East Yard co-executive director agrees with EPA mandate to stop 710 freeway expansion 1
Emphasizing procession against Exide 1
Encourage virtual event attendance of lecture and workshop series 1
Environmental racism in Long Beach 1
Event to inform community about AQMD Rulemaking 1
Grocery store closures in Long Beach after new grocery worker pay mandate 1
Highlight East Yard members vocalizing Amazon concerns 1
Highlight environmental racism of 710 expansion 1
Highlight residents who fought off gas station 1
Latino clinic provided with only 100 vaccines 1
Los Angeles more federal deals not to prosecute polluters than anywhere else 1
Maywood officials charged in corruption scandal 1
Metro survey to eliminate bus and rail fares 1
Misinformation 1
New community organizing job opportunity 1
New research project announced 1
Panel on environmental justice 1
Plastic barrier over Exide significant tear 1
Sharing EPA press release 1
Sharing new study, how race, class, and place fuel a pandemic 1

114
Specific topic of interest Count
Site cleanup in Commerce 1
State’s audit of the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC)’s handling of Exide
cleanup 1
Stay-at-home orders lifted in CA 1
Tenants evicted from motel 1
Virtual toxic live session on Instagram 1

Industrial Stakeholders Mentioned
This coding category was an attempt at identifying the industrial polluting stakeholders the
posts targeted during the study period. Primarily, the category focuses on specific industrial
facilities that were explicitly referenced in each post. By keeping track of these mentions, the data
also offer simple statistical information that provides insights into the relative importance of each
industrial stakeholder mentioned by each CBO during the study period.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
There were 24 distinct industrial facilities mentioned among all 400 CBE posts. Whenever
a post did not mention a specific stakeholder and/or facility, it was ascribed with the term “N/A.”
Overall, 299 posts did not mention a specific facility and, therefore, fall under N/A. Therefore, the
remaining 101 posts either mentioned a stakeholder such as Chevron or explicitly mentioned or
referenced a specific industrial site like Chevron in Richmond. The table below showcases the top
11 industrial stakeholders and specific facilities that appeared among all posts. These 11 industrial
stakeholders are included in the first table below since they all appeared more than once. The
industrial stakeholders included in a subsequent table below include all remaining stakeholders,
all of which only appeared once. Except for Chevron, which appears in a few different forms as
both a stakeholder and in reference to specific facilities, all other industrial stakeholders and sites

115
only appeared in one form. For instance, PG&E appears only as PG&E and not as a specific PG&E
facility.
Beginning at the top of the table after N/A, Chevron in Richmond appears as a specific
facility 46 times. This means that Chevron in Richmond appeared in approximately 11.5% of
CBE’s total 400 posts. More than a 10th of CBE’s Facebook posts during the study period focused
on this facility. This is especially notable since it has almost twice as many appearances as the next
ranked industrial stakeholder or facility mentioned. “Exide battery recycling plant” appears as a
specific facility 24 times. This means that Exide appeared in approximately 6% of CBE’s total 400
posts, still notable considering that this is the only other industrial stakeholder or facility with a
total number of appearances in the double digits. The next facility ranked on this table is PBF in
Martinez, which appeared seven times, or approximately less than 2% of all posts. PG&E appears
six times, or approximately 1.5% of all posts. Chevron is the next ranked industrial stakeholder
mentioned, although this Chevron is distinct from both Chevron in Richmond and Chevron in El
Segundo, the latter of which appears in Table 35. Chevron is mentioned without referring to a
specific facility since this type of post refers to Chevron as a stakeholder at large. Chevron appears
five times or only 1.25% of the CBE’s total posts.

116
Table 35
Industrial Stakeholders Mentioned
Industrial stakeholders Count
N/A 299
Chevron in Richmond 46
Exide battery recycling plant 24
PBF in Martinez 7
PG&E 6
Chevron 5
Phillips 66 in Carson 4
AB&I Foundry in Oakland 4
Neptune Society of Northern California’s crematorium 2
Dakota Access Pipeline 2
Chevron in El Segundo 2

The next two ranked industrial stakeholders mentioned are Phillips 66 in Carson and AB&I
Foundry in Oakland, each appearing four times, representing merely 1% of all posts. These two
stakeholders refer to specific facilities, one in Los Angeles County in the city of Carson and the
other in the City of Oakland. The remaining three top stakeholders are Neptune Society of Northern
California’s crematorium, Dakota Access Pipeline, and Chevron in El Segundo, all appearing only
two times, each representing less than 1% of all posts. Among all the industrial stakeholders
mentioned in Table 35, the Dakota Access Pipeline is the only one that does not relate to a
stakeholder or facility in California. The Neptune Society of Northern California’s crematorium is
located in Oakland, while the Chevron in El Segundo is located in the city of El Segundo. While
the data emphasize specific facilities, it should be noted that further consolidated categories of the
stakeholders ranked below are also possible. For instance, if we want to account for each time that
the Chevron corporation is mentioned regardless of the facility, we would add Chevron in
Richmond, Chevron, and Chevron in El Segundo, and our total number of Chevron appearances
would be 53 times, representing 13.25% of CBE’s posts.

117
The remaining top-ranked industrial stakeholders mentioned are listed in Table 36. Each
of these remaining stakeholders is only mentioned once, and they represent a mixture of both
industrial stakeholders at large, such as Target or Amazon, and specific facilities, such as the
Marathon facility in Martinez and Phillip 66 in the City of Rodeo. One stakeholder mentioned is
Wilmington oil refineries, which is not a stakeholder per se but represents several stakeholders.

Table 36
Industrial Stakeholders Mentioned in CBE’s Posts
Industrial stakeholders Count
Target 1
Amazon 1
Instacart 1
Central Metal Inc 1
East Bay Community Energy 1
MCE 1
Brentwood Oil Well 1
Wilmington Oil Refineries 1
Dominion Energy 1
Duke Energy 1
Atlantic Coast Pipeline 1
LADWP 1
Marathon in Martinez 1
Phillips 66 in Rodeo 1

118
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
Partially due to the condensed nature of this secondary case study, very little data was
collected among East Yard’s posts related to the industrial stakeholders mentioned. Among those
46 posts, 29 posts did not mention an industrial stakeholder. Of the remaining 18 industrial
stakeholders, Exide was mentioned 11 times, a highly significant number relative to any others.
The more hyper-local nature of East Yard as an organization is also reflected through a higher
concentration of local facilities mentioned. Exide, Gu’s Recycling, and Farmer John are all located
in SELA, collectively mentioned 15 times or more than 80% of all industrial mentions among East
Yard’s posts. While Amazon and Motel 6 are larger corporations based elsewhere, the specific
sites referenced here are also located in SELA.

Table 37
Industrial Stakeholders Mentioned in East Yard’s Posts
Industrial stakeholders mentioned Count
N/A 29
Exide 11
Gu’s Recycling 2
Amazon 2
Crawford coal-fired power plant 1
Farmer John 1
Motel 6 1

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Organizations Mentioned (Not CBE)
This coding category tracks how many CBOs and foundations are mentioned in each post.
Since most CBOs’ Facebook posts are created as original content, this category seeks to identify
CBOs and foundations other than CBE or East Yard.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
There were 82 distinct organizations and foundations mentioned among all 400 of CBE’s
posts. Some posts mentioned more than one organization or foundation outside of CBE, while 313
posts, or 78.25% of all posts, did not explicitly mention any other CBOs or foundations. The
following tables list all the organizations or foundations mentioned in CBE’s posts. The first table
in this section begins with the top 12 organizations and foundations mentioned. The Liberty Hill
Foundation appears in 14 (3.5%) posts. The California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA)
and Strategic Concepts in Organizing & Policy Education appeared 10 (2.5%) times each. Pacoima
Beautiful appears nine times, while the Natural Resources Defense Council appears eight times,
representing 2.25% and 2% of all posts, respectively. It is worth mentioning that the next top-
ranked organization mentioned is EYCEJ, with seven total appearances, or only 1.75% of all posts.
This organization is noteworthy, considering it forms the secondary case study for this research.
More information about the Facebook content produced by East Yard during the study period will
be provided later in this chapter. Next on the list is the Food and Water Watch organization, tied
with East Yard with seven appearances overall. The Asian Pacific Environmental Network
(APEN) and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy appeared six times, or 1.5% of all
posts. Finally, the last three organizations or foundations mentioned in the first table below are
Physicians for Social Responsibility, Power California, and Sierra Club, each appearing four times,
individually representing only 1% of all 400 posts.

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Table 38
Top 12 Organizations and Foundations Mentioned
Organizations Mentioned (not CBE) Count
1. Liberty Hill Foundation 14
2. California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) 10
3. Strategic Concepts in Organizing & Policy Education 10
4. Pacoima Beautiful 9
5. Natural Resources Defense Council 8
6. East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice 7
7. Food & Water Watch 7
8. Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) 6
9. Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy 6
10. Physicians for Social Responsibility 4
11. Power California 4
12. Sierra Club 4

Table 39 ranks the next 17 ranked organizations and foundations, all of which appeared
either three or two times among all posts. The variety of organizations and foundations included
below is a testament to the intersectionality of EJ issues.

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Table 39
Next 17 Ranked Organizations and Foundations
Organizations mentioned (not CBE) Count
California Housing Partnership 3
Coalition for Environmental Health and Justice (CEHAJ) 3
Greenpeace USA 3
Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling 3
The Center on Race Poverty & the Environment 3
The Greenlining Institute 3
Black Lives Matter 2
Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice 2
Central California Environmental Justice Network (CCEJN) 2
Community Legal Aid 2
Deep East Oakland Rising 2
Inner City Law Center 2
L.A. Housing Equality & Advocacy Resource Team 2
Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles 2
SoCal HEART 2
Students Deserve 2
The Richmond Our Power Coalition 2

Table 40 ranks the remaining 51 ranked organizations and foundations, all of which
appeared only once. As with the previous tables in this section, the variety of organizations and
foundations included below is further proof of the intersectional nature of EJ and the work
performed by CBE. These organizations and foundations also illustrate the racial diversity of the
EJ movement.

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Table 40
Remaining 51 Ranked Organizations and Foundations
Organizations mentioned (not CBE)
1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East Lift up Contra Costa Action
350 Bay Area Movement Generation
API Equality-LA MVMT Los Angeles
Association of Flight Attendants-CWA Nikkei Progressives
Black Cultural Zone Oakland Chinatown Coalition
Black Women For Wellness Palms Up Academy
California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance PODER
California Latinas for Reproductive Justice Progressive Asian Network for Action
CAYouthVsBigOil Redeemer Community Partnership
Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable
Economy Regenerate California
Chinatown Community for Equitable Development SCIU2015
Climate Justice Alliance
Service Employees International Union California
(SEIUCA)
Coalition for Community Safety and Justice Sierra Club’s The My Generation Campaign
Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice Stay Housed LA
Community Coalition Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE)
Data for Progress Sunday Jump
East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy
Sunrise Movement, International Indigenous Youth
Council SoCal
Environmental Health Coalition The East Oakland Collective
Esperanza Community Housing The Movement for Black Lives
Holman United Methodist Church Todos Santos Tenants Union
Inner City Struggle Tuesday Night Project
J-Town Action and Solidarity UFW Foundation
Kabataang maka-Bayan/ProPeople Youth Urban Tilth
Khmer Girls in Action Voices in Solidarity Against Oil in Neighborhoods
Ktown4BlackLives Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability
L.A. Tenants Union

Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
As previously mentioned, East Yard has seven appearances among CBE’s posts. However,
CBE did not appear at all in East Yard’s posts. East Yard’s posts mentioned 19 distinct

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organizations and foundations, not including East Yard itself. As with CBE, these 46 posts
illustrate the intersectional nature and racial diversity of East Yard’s work and collaborations. The
East Yard posts were selected based on having the highest level of engagement as measured by
Facebook reactions such as likes, shares, and comments. Forty-three out of 46, or 93%, of these
posts did not mention any organizations in addition to East Yard. Such posts are labeled as N/A.
Only three posts mentioned the 19 distinct organizations and foundations, with one mentioning 17,
or nearly 90%, of the foundations and organizations listed in Table 41. Table 41 lists the different
organizations or foundations mentioned within CBE’s posts.

Table 41
Organizations and Foundations Mentioned In CBE’s Posts
Organizations mentioned (not East Yard) Count
N/A 43
Little Village Environmental Justice Organization 1
Anti-Recidivism Coalition 1
Brotherhood Crusade 1
CDTech 1
Children’s Defense Fund-CA Beat the Odds 1
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights 1
Coalition for Responsible Community Development 1
Community Coalition 1
Innercity Struggle 1
Khmer Girls in Action 1
Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy 1
L.A. Black Worker Center 1
L.A. Voice 1
PICO California 1
Power California 1
SEIU Local 99 1
SEIU Local 2015 1
Urban Peace Institute 1
UFCW 770 1

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Government Agencies Mentioned
Similar to the previous two categories, this coding category identified the government
agencies discussed within each post. This coding category might also serve as a useful reference
for future research investigating the links between social media engagement and policy
implementations.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
The following table shows the top 21 government agencies mentioned throughout the study
period. In addition to this table, a subsequent table will then list the remaining government agencies
mentioned among all 400 posts, all of which were only mentioned once. Overall, 40 distinct
government agencies, broadly defined, were specifically identified among all of CBE’s posts.
A total of 270 posts did not explicitly mention a government agency when engaging
followers on Facebook. Most of the remaining 130 posts mentioned only one government agency.
In total, the 40 distinct government agencies are mentioned throughout the study period 135 times,
meaning that some posts mention more than one of the 40 government agencies identified during
the study period. The government agency that was mentioned the most times was the “Bay Area
Air Quality Management District.” This agency’s 29 appearances represent 7.25% of all 400 posts.
When this number of appearances is considered only among the 135 total mentions of all 40
government agencies, the “Bay Area Air Quality Management District” represents 29 out of 135
mentions, or approximately 22% of all government agency mentions. In fact, these 29 appearances
are almost twice as many as the next government entity on the list: the LA City Council.
The LA City Council specifically refers to the Los Angeles City Council. While not a
government agency per se, government elected officials were included within this broader category
of government agencies. With 16 appearances, mentions of the LA City Council represent 4% of

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all 400 posts. However, when this number is considered only among the 135 total mentions of all
40 government agencies, the LA City Council represents 16 out of 135 mentions, or approximately
12% of all government agency mentions. Next on the ranked list of government agencies
mentioned is the County of Los Angeles, which appears 11 times, representing approximately 8%
of the 135 government agencies' appearances. The next two government agencies ranked in the
table below are the California Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Toxic
Substances Control (DTSC), each appearing seven times, representing approximately 5% of all
government agency appearances. For both of these agencies, seven appearances represent only
1.75% of all 400 posts. However, when this number of appearances is considered only among the
135 total mentions of all 40 government agencies, the California Public Utilities Commission and
the DTSC each represent seven out of 135 mentions, or approximately 5% of all government
agency mentions.
The next two government agencies ranked in the table below are the Los Angeles
Department of Water & Power and the U.S. Department of Justice, each appearing six times. For
both agencies, six appearances represent only 1.5% of all 400 posts. However, when this number
of appearances is considered only among the 135 total mentions of all 40 government agencies,
the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power and the U.S. Department of Justice each represent
6 out of 135 mentions, or approximately 4.4% of all government agency mentions. The eighth-
ranked U.S. Senate and the ninth-ranked California State Senate appeared next on the table below
with five and four appearances, respectively. The former represents 1.25%, while the latter
represents only 1% of all 400 posts during the study period. Additionally, the former represents
approximately 3.7% of all government agency mentions, while the latter represents approximately
3%.

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The next ranked government agencies each have three appearances: California Governor,
City of Oakland, and So Cal Edison. With three appearances apiece, each represents less than 1%
of all 400 posts, approximately 2.2% of all government agencies mentioned. Each of the remaining
eight government agencies appeared only two times, representing only 0.5% of all 400 posts and
approximately 1.5% of all government agencies mentioned.
Table 42
Government Agencies Mentioned in CBE Posts
Govt. agencies mentioned Count
1. Bay Area Air Quality Management District 29
2. LA City Council 16
3. County of Los Angeles 11
4. California Public Utilities Commission 7
5. Department of Toxic Substances Control 7
6. Los Angeles Department of Water & Power 6
7. U.S. Department of Justice 6
8. U.S. Senate 5
9. CA State Senate 4
10. California Governor 3
11. City of Oakland 3
12. So Cal Edison 3
13. Alameda County 2
14. Los Angeles Unified School District 2
15. Metro Los Angeles 2
16. Oakland City Council 2
17. SCAQMD 2
18. Senator Lena Gonzalez 2
19. White House 2
20. Los Angeles Police Department 2

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The remaining 19 government agencies are listed in Table 43. Out of the 39 agencies
mentioned, each of the remaining agencies listed below was only mentioned once among CBE’s
400 posts. Therefore, approximately half of the total agencies mentioned were only mentioned
once. These remaining agencies represent a full mixture of jurisdictions and organizational
structures at the city, county, regional, state, and federal levels. Some entities mentioned are not
government agencies per se but can still be characterized as political entities working within, along
with, or in proximity to a government agency. Examples of these entities include the CA
Democratic Party, the LA County Crisis Response Team, and South Gate Parks and Recreation.
The following table includes the remaining government agencies mentioned among CBE’s 400
posts.

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Table 43
Government Agencies Mentioned in CBE’s Posts
Government agencies mentioned Count
Alameda County Public Health Department 1
CalGEM 1
CA Democratic Party 1
California Environmental Protection Agency 1
Caltrans 1
City of Cudahy 1
City of Huntington Park 1
Contra Costa Board of Supervisors 1
Contra Costa Health Department 1
County of Los Angeles Department of Regional Planning 1
LA County Crisis Response Team 1
Richmond City Council 1
So Cal Gas 1
South Gate Parks and Recreation 1
Torrance City Council 1
U.S. Census Bureau 1
U.S. Congress 1
U.S. Supreme Court 1
Police Departments 1

Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
The following table shows the 11 government agencies mentioned throughout the study
period of this condensed secondary case. Twenty-nine of East Yard’s 46 selected posts did not
explicitly mention a government agency and are categorized by “N/A” in the table below. Most of
the remaining 17 posts mentioned only one government agency. In total, the 11 distinct
government agencies are mentioned throughout the study period 23 times, meaning that some posts
mention more than one of the 11 government agencies identified during the study period. The
government agency that was mentioned the most times was “LA County,” or Los Angeles County.

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This agency’s four appearances represent slightly more than 8% of all 46 posts. However, when
this number of appearances is considered only among the 23 total mentions of all 11 government
agencies, LA County represents four out of 23 mentions, or approximately 17% of all government
agency mentions. In fact, these four appearances are at least twice as many as nine of the
government agencies mentioned overall. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation
Authority, listed as “Metro,” the California Department of Transportation, listed as “Caltrans,”
and the Environmental Protection Agency are three local, state and federal agencies ranked next
on the list with three appearances each. The next three government agencies ranked in the table
below are the U.S. Department of Justice, the California DTSC, and the LA County Board of
Supervisors, each appearing only twice and each representing approximately 8% of all 23
government agency appearances.

Table 44
Government Agencies Mentioned
Government agencies mentioned Count
N/A 29
LA County 4
Metro 3
Caltrans 3
Environmental Protection Agency 3
U.S. Department of Justice 2
California Department of Toxic Substance Control 2
LA County Board of Supervisors 2
Trump Administration 1
City of Commerce 1
South Coast Air Quality Management District 1
Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority 1

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Policymakers Mentioned
This coding category was also created to potentially serve as a useful reference for potential
policy implications. For each post, this category keeps track of individual policymakers mentioned,
if at all, ranging from city council and congress members to the governor of California.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
Eighty-six individual policymakers are mentioned. Each policymaker mentioned within
CBE’s 400 posts is captured in the following tables, including their specific government office
held and the number of times they appeared among all posts. Table 45 lists the top 20 policymakers
in terms of how many times they appeared. All 20 of these policymakers appeared more than once.

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Table 45
Top Twenty Policymakers Mentioned
Policymakers Government office/policymaking title held Count
1. Gavin Newsom Governor of California 23
2. Councilmember Nury Martinez Los Angeles City Councilmember 5
3. Lena A. Gonzalez California State Senator (Los Angeles) 4
4. Mayor Eric Garcetti Los Angeles mayor 4
5. David Canepa San Mateo County Board of Supervisors 4
6. Mayor Pauline Cutter San Leandro Mayor 4
7. Supervisor David Haubert Board of Supervisors in Alameda County 4
8. Brad Wagenknecht Board of Supervisors in Napa County 4
9. John Gioia Board of Supervisors in Contra Costa County 3
10. Sen. Susan Eggman California State Senator (Northern CA) 3
11. Sen. Robert Hertzberg California State Senator (Los Angeles) 3
12. Sen. Ben Hueso California State Senator (San Diego) 3
13. Sen. John Laird California State Senator (Northern CA) 3
14. Cindy Chavez Board of Supervisors in Santa Clara County 3
15. Margaret Abe-Koga Mountain View Councilmember 3
16. Mayor Teresa Barrett Petaluma Mayor 3
17. Supervisor Lynda Hopkins Board of Supervisors in Sonoma County 3
18. Davina Hurt City of Belmont City Councilmember 3
19. Shamann Walton Board of Supervisors in San Francisco County 3
20. Myrna Melgar Board of Supervisors in San Francisco County 3

The first column in Table 45 lists the policymakers as they are mentioned within the posts
in which they appear. The second column lists the government office held by each corresponding
policymaker. In some cases, the government office held is included along with the policymaker’s
name. For instance, the seventh-ranked policymaker is listed as Supervisor David Haubert.
Meanwhile, other county supervisors are listed simply by name, such as the fifth-ranked
policymaker, David Canepa. Therefore, the second column is intended to make readily available
the specific policy-making title for each policymaker listed, regardless of whether or not the left
column already includes a title and a person’s name. While several of the individuals listed in this

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section have held multiple policymaking positions, the policymaking titles listed in these tables
correspond with the titles they held during the time of the post in which they are mentioned.
In Table 45, the most frequently mentioned policymaker among CBE’s posts was
California Governor Gavin Newsom, with 23 mentions. This number of mentions is more than
four times those associated with the next listed policymaker, councilmember Nury Martinez, who
appears five times. The next six policymakers listed are each mentioned four times among all 400
posts: State Senator Lena A. Gonzalez, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, San Leandro Mayor
Pauline Cutter and three county supervisors for San Mateo, Alameda, and Napa Counties. With
Table 45 listing 20 total policymakers, the remaining 12 are each mentioned three times. These
remaining 12 policymakers are four California state senators, city council members in the cities of
Mountain View and Belmont, a mayor in the city of Petaluma, and five county supervisors for
Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Sonoma, and San Francisco Counties. It should also be noted that
except for the governor of California, only three of the policymakers listed in Table 45 are based
in the Los Angeles region, while 14 of the 18 remaining ones are based in Northern California.
Table 46 lists the next 17 ranked policymakers mentioned among all 400 posts. These
policymakers were all mentioned twice throughout the study period. Ten city council members are
mentioned in Table 46, with nine being members of the Los Angeles City Council and one being
a member of the Oakland City Council. The remaining seven policymakers include two California
State Assembly members, one California state senator, a mayor for the City of Morgan Hill, and
three county supervisors for the following counties: San Mateo, Solano and Marin. Contrary to
Table 45, most of the policymakers listed in Table 46 are based in the Los Angeles region, with
nine of the 17 being city council members in Los Angeles and one being California State
Assemblymember Anthony Rendon, who is based in SELA.

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Table 46
Next 17 Ranked Policymakers Mentioned
Policymakers Government office/policymaking title held Count
21. Councilmember Bob
Blumenfield Los Angeles City Councilmember 2
22. Councilmember Mike Bonin Los Angeles City Councilmember 2
23. Curren D. Price, Jr. Los Angeles City Councilmember 2
24. Dan Kalb Oakland City Councilmember 2
25. Paul Koretz Los Angeles City Councilmember 2
26. Paul Krekorian Los Angeles City Councilmember 2
27. Toni G. Atkins California State Senator (San Diego) 2
28. Speaker Anthony Rendon California State Assemblymember (Los Angeles) 2
29. Councilmember Harris-Dawson Los Angeles City Councilmember 2
30. Councilmember Cedillo Los Angeles City Councilmember 2
31. Councilmember Ridley-Thomas Los Angeles City Councilmember 2
32. Councilmember Blumenfield Los Angeles City Councilmember 2
33. Mayor Rich Constantine Morgan Hill Mayor 2
34. Carole Groom Board of Supervisors in San Mateo County 2
35. Supervisor Erin Hannigan Board of Supervisors in Solano County (Northern CA) 2
36. Supervisor Katie Rice Board of Supervisors in Marin County 2
37. Lori D. Wilson California State Assemblymember (Northern CA) 2

The remaining 38 policymakers listed in Table 47 were all mentioned only once within
CBE’s 400 posts. As with the previous two tables, policymakers are listed along with their
corresponding government office/policymaking title. Of these 38 remaining policymakers, nine
are California state assembly members, five are either California or U.S. senators, five are county
supervisors, six are U.S. Congress members, eight are city council members, four are either city,
district or supreme court attorneys, and one is a school district board member. With the exception
of some U.S. congress members listed, all other policymakers are either based out of the Los
Angeles or Bay Area regions, the two main regions in California where CBE does most of its work.

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Table 47
Remaining 38 Policymakers Mentioned
Policymakers Government office/policymaking title held
38. Alex Padilla U.S. Senator for California
39. Assemblymember Marc Berman California State Assemblymember (Northern CA)
40. Assemblymember Miguel Santiago California State Assemblymember (Los Angeles)
41. Candace Anderson Board of Supervisors in Contra Costa County
42. Congresswoman Barbara Lee U.S. Congress Member (Northern CA)
43. Diane Burgis Board of Supervisors in Contra Costa County
44. Federal Glover Board of Supervisors in Contra Costa County
45. Jackie Goldberg Los Angeles Unified School District Board Member
46. Jackie Lacey Former Los Angeles County District Attorney
47. Karen Mitchoff Board of Supervisors in Contra Costa County
48. Libby Schaaf City of Oakland Mayor
49. Loren Taylor Oakland City Councilmember
50. Lynnette McElhaney Oakland City Councilmember
51. Mike Feuer Former Los Angeles City Attorney
52. Nikki Fortunato Bas Oakland City Councilmember
53. Dan Kalb Oakland City Councilmember
54. Barbara Parker Oakland City Attorney
55. Noel Gallo Oakland City Councilmember
56. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard U.S. Congress Member (Los Angeles)
57. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier U.S. Congress Member (Northern CA)
58. Rep. Ted Lieu U.S. Congress Member (Los Angeles)
59. Representative Alan Lowenthal U.S. Congress Member (Los Angeles)
60. Senator Tom Umberg California State Senator (Los Angeles)
61. U.S. Rep Nanette Diaz Barragán U.S. Congress Member (Los Angeles)
62. Al Marutsuchi California State Assemblymember (Los Angeles)
63. Christina Garcia Former California State Assemblymember (Los Angeles)
64. Hilda Solis Board of Supervisors in Los Angeles County
65. Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia California State Assemblymember
66. Wendy Carrillo California State Assemblymember (Los Angeles)
67. Senator María Elena Durazo California State Senator (Los Angeles)
68. Senator Bob Archuleta California State Senator (Los Angeles)
69. Amy Coney Barrett U.S. Supreme Court Justice
70. Assemblymember Mike A. Gipson California State Assemblymember (Los Angeles)
71. Councilmember John Lee Los Angeles City Councilmember
72. Councilmember Nithya Raman Los Angeles City Councilmember

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Policymakers Government office/policymaking title held
73. Rob Renni County Supervisor Los Gatos City Councilmember
74. Nancy Skinner California State Senator (Northern CA)
75. Phil Ting California State Assemblymember (Northern CA)

Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
Only six individual policymakers are mentioned among East Yard’s posts. Table 48
captures each policymaker mentioned, including their specific government office and the number
of times they appeared among all posts. The table below lists the six policymakers in terms of how
many times they appeared during the condensed study period for this secondary case study. Only
two of these policymakers appeared more than once, whereas the remaining policymakers listed
in TABLE 48 appeared only once. The study period spans the end of one U.S. presidency and the
beginning of another; hence, Table 48 lists two U.S. presidents.

Table 48
Policymakers
Policymakers mentioned Government office/policymaking title held Count
N/A N/A 36
Cristina Garcia California State Assemblymember (Los Angeles) 2
Hilda Solis Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors 2
Donald Trump U.S. President 1
María Davila South Gate City Councilmember 1
Joe Biden U.S. President 1
Gavin Newsom California Governor 1

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Type of Content Shared
To gain insights into CBE’s use of particular content to engage followers, this coding
category keeps track of various types of content shared. The words “type” and “category” are used
interchangeably. The types of content shared include information fliers, web links, and videos.
This category also notes whether a post is written, as opposed to a post that merely shares an image,
a video, or a web link. This category also notes if a post is sharing an article.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
Overall, CBE shared eight different types of content. Table 49 shows each type of content
shared, and a count column shows the number of times a particular type of content is shared.
Starting at the top is the category for written posts, which appeared 370 times, approximately 93%
of all 400 posts. This first category essentially notes the posts with a written message as opposed
to sharing other types of content, such as web links and videos. However, posts with a written
message can also share a video, a web link, or a GIF. Therefore, these are not mutually exclusive
categories, considering that any post might include multiple types of content.

Table 49
Type of Content Shared
Type of content shared Count
1. Written post 370
2. Shared information 360
3. Information flier 278
4. Web link 219
5. Video 34
6. Shared article 30
7. Shared image 7
8. GIF 3

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Next, Table 49 presents the category of shared information. This category refers to posts
that share information, as opposed to merely expressing an opinion or comment that is not
considered particularly informative. Posts sharing information added up to 360 (90%) of all CBE
posts. The various types of information shared are not further described here, but they do include,
for example, information on upcoming events, updates on local environmental injustices, and
factual information based on other sources. Next is the “information flier” category, which appears
278 times, approximately 70% of all 400 posts. These fliers are typically embedded within a post
and might have logistical information about an upcoming event: the address, the time of the event,
and who some of the people involved will be. Exactly 219 posts, more than half of CBE’s 400
posts, included a web link. Relatedly, this study also separately tracked whether shared web links
were active. The remaining types of content shared in the study appeared much less frequently
than the types previously mentioned. Thirty-four posts shared a video, 30 posts shared an article,
and seven posts shared an image not associated with a web link and not an information flier.
Among all posts, only three included a GIF.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
Overall, East Yard shared seven different types of content. The table below shows each
type of content shared and a count column showing the number of times a particular type of content
was shared. Starting at the top is the category for written posts, which appears 46 times or 100%
of all East Yard’s posts. As with CBE, this first category essentially notes posts with a written
message as opposed to sharing other types of content, such as web links and videos. However,
posts with a written message can also share a video, a web link, or a GIF. Therefore, these are not
mutually exclusive categories, considering that any post might include multiple types of content.

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As with CBE’s posts, the next type of content listed in Table 50 is the category of “shared
information.” This category refers to posts sharing information, as opposed to merely expressing
an opinion or comment not considered particularly informative. For this secondary case study, 30
(65%0 of East Yard’s posts shared information. The various types of information shared are not
further described here, but they do include, for example, information on upcoming events, updates
on local environmental injustices, and factual information based on other sources.

Table 50
East Yard’s Content
Types of Content Shared Count
Written post 46
Shared information 30
Images 19
Web link 12
Shared article 12
Information flier 9
Video 2

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Facebook Reactions, Shares and Comments
Based on Facebook’s various engagement metrics, the study kept track of the information
available related to the various types of reactions that Facebook enables its users to express. These
coding categories mostly capture the quantitative data that Facebook makes readily available when
viewing any particular post. The types of reactions made possible include various emojis. The
coding categories created for each emoji are the following: “Likes Reactions,” “Angry Reactions,”
“Amazement Reactions,” “Sad Reactions,” “Care Reactions,” and “Love Reactions.” Collectively,
the quantitative engagement captured by these coding categories is responsible for the coding
category “Total Reactions,” a category representing the sum of all other “reaction” categories.
Furthermore, the study captures the number of shares each post has, a metric that Facebook
makes readily available for each post. The shares metric operates as an effort to measure how many
users have shared that post with another web user. And finally, the comments in response to each
post are also captured by this study. This study examined each comment to collect data on whether
it shared additional web links, was in English or Spanish, and whether it exhibited political
polarization.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
Table 51 and Figure 6 provide context to the data related to Facebook engagement metrics
for CBE’s posts, such as the reactions users could express when engaging with a post. First, Table
51 provides a broad picture of the type of engagement achieved throughout the study period. The
left column in this first table lists a range of numbers based on the total reactions that some posts
were observed to have. The right column lists the number of posts corresponding to each of the
total reactions quantified in the left-hand column. Fixed numbers are used for the lower number of
reactions, while ranges are used for the higher number. A breakdown of the various numbers of

140
reactions observed and their corresponding number of posts is also illustrated in Figure 6, which
indicates an inverse trend. As the total number of reactions increases, the number of posts
decreases. In other words, more posts sharing the same number of reactions would generally
indicate fewer reactions. The end of the graph appears to plateau only because ranges instead of
fixed numbers are used as the total number of reactions are accounted for. Otherwise, using only
fixed numbers would demonstrate a much steeper decline based on having those additional data
points.

Table 51
Facebook Engagement Metrics for CBE’s Posts
Number of reactions Corresponding number of posts
0 51
1 71
2 61
3 54
4 34
5 39
6 21
7 15
8 12
9 6
10 6
11–19 17
20–40 8
40+ 5
60+ 3

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Figure 6
Posts and Reactions

Table 52 ranks the top 20 posts in terms of the number of total reactions they each achieved.
In other words, this table provides a ranking of posts based on their level of engagement on
Facebook as measured by total reactions. For context, 331 of the 400 posts had fewer than 10
reactions. This means that approximately 83% of all posts had very little, if any, engagement. In
fact, 122 of these 331 posts, more than a third, had either one or zero reactions. The fact that such
a vast number of posts had so few reactions underscores how significant it is when a post obtains
dozens. On the other hand, the data indicate that only 16 of CBE’s 400 posts had more than 20
total reactions. Of these 16 posts, half had between 20 and 40 reactions. Five of the eight remaining
posts had more than 40 reactions, while only three of those five remaining posts had more than 60
reactions.

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Table 52
CBE Top 20 Posts by Reactions
Date of post General topic of interest Specific topic of interest Total Reactions
April 8, 2021 Utilities Community financial assistance 67
June 18, 2021 Smog repairs Free smog repairs 67
April 22, 2021 Smog repairs Free smog repairs 63
June 17, 2021 Smog repairs Free smog repairs 44
May 20, 2021 Utilities Save energy 42
May 3, 2021 Smog repairs Free smog repairs 38
June 24, 2020 Environmental justice Fellowship awardee 36
June 2, 2020 Black Lives Matter Public comment at police commission 34
June 2, 2020 Black Lives Matter CBE solidarity for Black Lives Matter 32
May 3, 2021 Smog repairs Free smog repairs 29
April 1, 2020 Award 2020 woman of the year award 21
Sept. 10, 2020 Climate/environmental justice Connections between CJ and EJ 21
April 7, 2021 Utilities Community financial assistance 20
March 27, 2020 Job opportunity Sharing job posts 17
July 6, 2020 Pipelines Atlantic Coast pipeline 17
March 23, 2020 Housing justice Calling for an eviction moratorium 16
Sept. 18, 2020 Oil Chevron in Richmond 16
June 18, 2020 Immigration rights DACA Supreme Court ruling 15
May 19, 2021 Utilities Save energy 14
May 4, 2021 Smog repairs Free smog repairs 13

Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
Similar to CBE, Table 53 ranks the top 20 posts in terms of the number of total reactions
achieved during this condensed secondary case study. The table essentially provides a ranking of
posts based on their level of engagement on Facebook as measured by total reactions. For context,
consider that this secondary case study only had 46 posts available for analysis. All posts listed in
the top 20 in the table below have 17 total reactions or more, meaning the remaining 26 posts all
had under 16 reactions. It should be noted that all posts selected for East Yard were based on
whether or not an individual post had 10 total reactions or more. This means that all 46 of the posts

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have 10 or more total reactions. While 331 of CBE’s 400 posts had fewer than 10 reactions, there
is insufficient data for this secondary case study to make additional comparisons between both
CBOs’ ability to engage the public via their Facebook posts.

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Table 53
East Yard’s Top 20 Posts by Reactions
Date of post General topic of interest Specific topic of interest
Total
reactions
August 28, 2020 Leadership transition East Yard announcing leadership transition 178
September 1, 2020 Leadership transition East Yard announcing leadership transition 42
November 8, 2020 Exide cleanup Plastic barrier over Exide significant tear 38
March 31, 2021 Celebrate East Yard
founder, leadership
transition
Celebrate East Yard founder appointed to EJ
Advisory Council at the White House 31
October 19, 2020 Exide bankruptcy Emphasizing procession against Exide 30
September 14, 2020 Environmental justice Panel on environmental justice 24
February 2, 2021 Food justice, labor justice Grocery store closures in Long Beach after
new grocery worker pay mandate
24
March 8, 2021 Environmental justice Environmental racism in Long Beach 24
October 12, 2020 Exide bankruptcy Inform community about public hearing on
Exide bankruptcy
23
March 23, 2021 Environmental justice Celebrate political decision to deny
conditional use permit for Gu’s
Recycling
23
July 12, 2020 Environmental justice Site cleanup in Commerce, misinformation 22
January 20, 2021 Importance of activism Can’t rely on corporate politicians 20
October 14, 2020 Exide bankruptcy Inform community about public hearing on
Exide bankruptcy
19
December 22, 2020 Leadership transition, job
announcement
New community organizing job opportunity
19
March 24, 2021 Environmental justice Highlight residents who fought off gas
station
19
March 29, 2021 Environmental justice Encourage virtual event attendance of
lecture and workshop series
19
May 7, 2020 COVID-19 COVID emergency shelter, sharing new
study how race, class, and place fuel a
pandemic
18
December 4, 2020 Youth leadership Celebrating award-winning community
resident
18
February 4, 2021 Political corruption Maywood officials charged in corruption
scandal
17
May 13, 2021 710 expansion Celebrate Caltrans decision to pause 710
freeway expansion
17

For CBE, considering that 331 of their 400 posts had less than 10 reactions and 122 of
these 331 posts had either one or zero reactions, obtaining 10 more reactions is relatively

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significant. Although data for East Yard is insufficient, a similar assessment can be perceived
based on the countless posts with one or zero total reactions, making all of their 46 posts with 10
or more total reactions also relatively significant. The condensed data for East Yard indicates that
the top five posts had 30 or more total reactions, while the top 12 posts had 20 or more. The eight
remaining posts had at least 17. The following chapter will further analyze these results and
examine how this secondary case study confirms or denies the findings gained from the primary
study.

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Chapter 5: Analysis of Results
Detailed descriptions of data collected for this study have been provided in the previous
chapter. This chapter will review each coding category described by providing an interpretation of
the results obtained. For instance, for the first coding category, “Original or Shared,” I will first
analyze the results for the primary case study before interpreting the results from the secondary
case study. Subsequent to interpreting such results individually, I will attempt to reconcile the
findings from both case studies by providing an analysis that compares and contrasts both case
studies. The goal of the reconciled analysis for each coding category will be to use the secondary
case study to strengthen the primary case study. For example, the results of the secondary case
study will be considered an opportunity to identify “issues to expect, questions to ask, and data to
look for in the primary case” (Mukhija, 2010). As mentioned in Chapter 2, the decision to
thoroughly explore a primary case study is drawn from research arguing that while single case
studies are generally meant for gaining in-depth understandings, and multiple cases are meant for
acquiring broader understandings, secondary cases might, under certain circumstances, provide an
opportunity to conduct in-depth, single case research” (Mukhija, 2010, p. 419). Each coding
category was designed to explore the primary and secondary case studies to gain insightful
information about the two most prominent CBOs in SELA and their use of Facebook when
engaging local marginalized communities about environmental injustice. As Mukhija suggests,
this study seeks to gain insights that may include new questions to ask about the CBOs examined
and what types of data a future or more expanded study might look for when examining the CBO
examined in the primary case.

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Original or Shared
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
The question of whether the CBOs examined were producing their own original social
media content or whether they were sharing content that originated with other Facebook accounts
was meant to gain a sense of the extent to which these CBOs were being strategic about their
content as opposed to the extent to which they were significantly relying on content other Facebook
accounts shared to engage with their audience. To answer this question, the “Original or Shared”
coding category was designed to quantify how many of the 400 posts by CBE were either original
or shared from another account. A third category, “Original (Shared),” noted how many posts were
inherently original but were shared from one of CBE’s prior posts. As it turned out, 85% of CBE’s
400 posts could be labeled inherently original. This result suggests that CBE seriously considered
what, when, and how they discussed local issues with their Facebook followers. It is safe to say
that CBE was mostly being relatively strategic about the content they were highlighting and/or
prioritizing. Furthermore, CBE’s social media strategizing was operating to a significant degree
with an independent sense of what issues and events its organization considered important.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
The question of whether EYCEJ produced original social media content or shared content
that originated with other Facebook accounts is one of the few coding categories not explored.
Insofar as this secondary case study was intended to confirm or raise questions about the
conclusions drawn about the primary case, there were no compelling reasons for further exploring
the extent to which CBE’s use of original or shared content was in question. Therefore, on the one
hand, part of the reason for not exploring this coding category for the secondary case study can be

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justified by significantly conclusive evidence indicating that CBE was, in fact, mostly producing
original content via Facebook. Similarly, when doing a casual observation of EYCEJ’s posts, it
seemed quite evident that relatively few of their posts were shared from other Facebook accounts
as well. In other words, by observing the 47 Facebook posts included in EYCEJ’s data set, it
seemed quite clear that it was mostly producing its own social media content.
Hashtags
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
Information about hashtags was primarily collected to gain a sense of how each CBO was
framing the issues they were sharing. With 257 different hashtags used throughout the study
period, it is evident that CBE’s social media content reflects the intersectional nature of EJ. As
noted in the descriptive chapter of this study, 193 of the 257 hashtags appeared only once or twice,
making it difficult to surmise much beyond further confirming the enormous range of issues that
intersect with those of a more direct environmental nature. Several additional takeaways can be
noted in the remaining 64 hashtags that appeared more than twice, and it is perhaps best to separate
them thematically.
The first obvious theme is geography, with several hashtags directly referencing a
particular city, region or location. Hashtags associated with such geographies, mostly in the Bay
Area and Los Angeles metropolitan regions, reflect the geographic locations where CBE is based
and primarily focused. Hashtags such as #ByeChevron and #BeyondChevron may not connote a
particular geography as directly as other hashtags such as #RichmondDumpsChevron or
#CBERichmond. However, these and other hashtags frame their pertinent posts with a geographic
context that provides a sense of where environmental injustices take place. Despite working
throughout the state, however, CBE’s social media posts are not an exhaustive list of the

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environmental injustices that occurred throughout the state. It is clear from these hashtags that
CBE was primarily engaging with communities in the Bay Area and Los Angeles metropolitan
regions.
Given that the study period begins at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the second
most heavily conjured theme is the pandemic itself. Considering the extent to which marginalized
communities were being impacted by the pandemic, it is not surprising that combining the hashtags
#COVID and #Covid19 would amount to 40 total appearances, making it tied for first among all
hashtags used. Furthermore, if one were to add the three appearances of the hashtag #Coronavirus,
the COVID-19 pandemic would surpass the use of any other hashtags, assuming that the various
hashtags related to Chevron or Oil were not similarly combined. Considering that CBE works with
marginalized communities, it stands to reason that the challenges and inequities facing such
communities were so significantly exacerbated by the pandemic that COVID-related hashtags
were featured as prominently as they were during the study period. In essence, the impacts of the
COVID-19 pandemic on frontline communities were synonymous with environmental injustice,
and CBE’s social media engagement reflected this obvious link. Noted as early as July of 2020 in
a New York Times report, differential exposures to environmental hazards as a function of
socioeconomic status and race resulted in health vulnerabilities to the COVID-19 virus that made
Black and Latino communities disproportionately subject to the most serious and fatal health
threats presented by the COVID-19 pandemic (Oppel et al., 2020). CBE was in tune with such
disproportionate impacts and was effectively using its Facebook account to draw attention to this
reality. It is also seemingly apparent that CBE’s social media content and extensive use of different
hashtags reflect an understanding of the wide range of issues that concern the communities with
whom it works.

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Expanding further on this notion of wide-ranging concerns, the third theme from the
examination of hashtags involves the intersectionality of EJ. CBE’s hashtags directly addressed or
conveyed the issues and topics ranging from criminal justice to housing justice, educational equity,
political elections, and utility debt. Despite the organization’s name indicating its efforts toward a
better environment, the wide-ranging topics and issues underscored by the various hashtags used
further convey a comprehensive awareness of the particular needs its targeted audience
experienced. Considering the succinct nature of hashtags, it is also notable to observe the framing
of the complex issues that underlie some of the various tangential needs. For instance, when CBE’s
posts focus on legal clinics that address tenants’ rights, the use of #HousingJustice as a hashtag
makes it clear that CBE views the experience of tenants as falling under a broader category of
social justice. Similarly, when CBE posts focus on the Chevron facility in Richmond, its hashtag
reflects a framing that stems from the perspective that such a facility either should not exist or is,
at the very least, completely undesirable. Relevant hashtags that assume this type of framing
include #BeyondChevron, #RichmondDumpsChevron, #NoDrillingWhereWereLiving,
#CAYouthvsBigOil, and #ByeChevron. Without having to read the content within each of their
corresponding social media posts, these hashtags frame a perspective that is antagonistic to the
Chevron facility in Richmond. In some cases, hashtags also reflect particular political stances on
ballot items. For instance, the hashtags #YesonAB345, #Yeson15,
#SchoolsAndCommunitiesFirst, and #StudentsDeserve all take a side when addressing ballot
initiatives.
At other times, the hashtags used exhibit a more neutral framing. For example, the hashtag
#Election2020 refers to a political election without clearly advocating for a political bent. But
despite all of these more nuanced considerations regarding the types of framings established by

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each hashtag, the variety of the subject matter reiterates the theme of intersectionality they conjure.
Interestingly, one aspect of intersectionality that these hashtags do not fully highlight is the
bilingualism among the marginalized communities that comprise a significant portion of CBE’s
social media audience. For example, only one hashtag out of the top 64 that appeared more than
twice is in Spanish: #JusticiaAmbiental. Given that many of CBE’s Facebook posts are either
entirely in Spanish or bilingual, it is interesting to note that only one hashtag out of those appearing
more than twice is in Spanish. Does this somehow reflect unfamiliarity with hashtags among
CBE’s Spanish-speaking Facebook followers? Or, might it reflect a blindspot in how CBE engages
with its Spanish-speaking followers? While it is difficult to determine what this might ultimately
indicate in terms of CBE’s social media strategy and community engagement practices, it is
nonetheless worth noting, considering perhaps broader discussions about the digital divide that
marginalized communities face.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
With 24 different hashtags, it is evident that East Yard’s social media content also reflects
the intersectional nature of EJ. The 24 hashtags that appeared more than once yield several
additional takeaways, and it is perhaps also best to separate them thematically. As with CBE, the
first obvious theme is geography. The hashtags East Yard used are not as diverse as CBE’s. The
lack of geographic variety is partially due to East Yard being a much more localized CBO in
SELA, where its work is entirely focused. Only three of the 24 hashtags used directly relate to a
specific geographic location: #SELA, #LongBeach, and #commerce. While no official boundaries
define SELA, these three locations are all within the region.

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Continuing with the hashtags that appeared most, themes of environmental struggle and
social and political activism emerge. With hashtags such as #WeAreJustTryingtoBreathe,
#FightingForLife, and #LuchandoPorVida, East Yard’s use of hashtags seems highly focused on
capturing a sense of environmental struggle, conveying a seeming desperation to survive amid
environmental precarity, whether it is a basic need to breathe or a more broadly defined struggle
to live. These hashtags capture a sense of struggle and urgency, an essence that is further
confirmed by the fact that these hashtags appeared in more than 50% of East Yard’s 93 hashtag
appearances in the selected posts. Such struggles are further conveyed by the hashtag
#wearejutstryingtogrowfood, which appears only once.
Additional themes that emerge among East Yard’s hashtag usage are social and political
activism and intersectional environmental issues. With hashtags such as #NoMoPlomo,
#ZeroEmissions Now, and #ToxicBusinessAsUsual, East Yard demands certain political actions
in unequivocal hashtag terms, whether that is demanding the elimination of lead, emissions, or
toxic business practices. Among the list of hashtags that appeared only once, political activism is
also expressed with hashtags such as #nomoregasstations, #no710freewayexpansion,
#Fascistfree323, and #CASolidarity. It is clear from these hashtags that East Yard is clearly stating
a political viewpoint. Furthermore, an analysis of the political nature of the issues referenced also
reflects the intersectional nature of East Yard’s environmental issues of interest. For instance,
hashtags such as #foodinsecurity, #foodapartheid and #COVID19 provide a glimpse into East
Yard’s broad range of environmental focal points.

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Link Active or Dead
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
This coding category was thought to be useful in terms of understanding the temporal
nature of the content CBE shared. With the amount of information being increasingly shared
online, something that became particularly critical overnight as we entered the COVID-19
pandemic, it was important to explore the temporal digital aspects of the content being shared
through CBE’s Facebook account. A total of 255 out of 400 posts included shared web links. As
information was being shared in response to constantly evolving news, and as physical interactions
continued to be potentially life-threatening encounters, the digital space provided by social media
became more than just a virtual lifeline for the communities disproportionately affected by the
ever-unfolding exacerbating effects of the pandemic. Therefore, questions about the length of time
that information remained useful featured prominently in the decision to focus on whether web
links shared remained active. These considerations were also not unrelated to the ever-present
questions related to whether and how marginalized communities engage with digital
communications considering digital divides.
Of the 255 CBE posts sharing web links via Facebook, 217 of those web links were still
active 3 years later, in 2023, when this content was being examined for this study. This means that
most of the web links shared seemed to have relevance and a certain amount of permanence years
after they were shared. More than being web links to address some immediate crisis, such relative
permanence seems to reflect the long-lasting presence of the environmental concerns and
challenges being addressed. In addition to the variety of intersectional topics covered by CBE’s
posts being a reflection of CBE’s comprehensive understanding of the communities it serves, the
fact that more than half of its Facebook posts remained active years later also speaks to CBE’s

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ability to address issues with long-lasting relevance. However, while this does not necessarily
mean that residents were expected or encouraged to go back to previous posts in search of
resources, the web links’ relatively long-term active nature speaks to the importance of social
media as a useful source of evidence for planners and policymakers to study how CBOs engage
marginalized communities about environmental, and other intersectional topics. Such data seems
relatively unexplored by the EJ literature in terms of how stories are being told, how they are being
framed, and how people are engaging with such shared information.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
This study did not focus on whether the web links provided by EYCEJ were active or dead.
By doing a less comprehensive examination of their posts, it seemed clear that most of their links
were also still active 2 to 3 years after they were originally posted.
Language of Post
This coding category captured whether Facebook posts were written in English, Spanish,
or both. Noting the language/s used was thought to be potentially helpful in understanding how
CBOs are using social media to engage with followers.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
A total of 286 out of 400 posts were entirely in English, while another 83 posts were in
both English and Spanish. The remaining 31 posts were entirely in Spanish. It should be noted that
despite a majority of CBE’s posts being strictly in English, Spanish speakers could still understand
the content. Facebook provides a built-in translation tool for users to translate content based on
their chosen language settings on the platform. For the posts where CBE provided information in
both English and Spanish, CBE translated their message themselves.

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Beyond realizing that CBE uses both languages when providing content focused mostly on
the Bay Area and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, it is difficult to determine whether additional
insights can be gained from the data. Considering that this category represented an opportunity to
further understand how CBE uses social media to engage with followers in terms of language,
there are no discernible patterns based on the data to determine whether language correlates in any
way to other coding categories used, particularly those indicating levels of engagement through
Facebook reactions, comments or shares. In other words, when considering whether a post is more
or less likely to have higher engagement based on language, the data does not show any such
correlations. What is clear, however, is that CBE routinely uses both languages to target mostly
Facebook followers who live or work in the Bay Area and Los Angeles metropolitan regions, both
of which feature significant Spanish-speaking populations.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
This study did not focus on East Yard’s language. A brief examination of East Yard’s posts
confirmed a routine use of English, Spanish and bilingual posts, which altogether also did not show
any discernible patterns or correlations between the language/s used and other coding categories.
Intention
This coding category was designed as an attempt to understand the intention of each post
created. As mentioned in Chapter 3, this coding category is considerably more complex than other
more straightforward and singular or binary categories. This section will provide a more nuanced
discussion about what this category means and the challenges of determining intention for a
particular post. It is important to note that regardless of how one might define intention, any given
post can have more than one intention, and none of the ascribed intentions identified are mutually

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exclusive. For instance, a post could be said to have the intention of informing, while it can also
be intended to encourage activism. Intention is a challenging concept to operationalize, as this
study made the most logical assumption based on content analysis. However, to truly know what
a post was intended to do, the study would have to include interviews with each CBO’s staff
responsible for producing social media content. As a result, the explicit intention behind each post
is difficult to determine, as this study was limited by not including interviews with those
individuals. For this study, determining the intention of a post is based on what the content of a
post seems to reveal about its intention.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
There were 33 different types of intentions identified for CBE, and though they are varied,
many of them overlap depending on how one defines each intention. Perhaps here, it is useful to
briefly explain two examples of “intention” categories and what constitutes being identified as
such. On a basic level, 328 of the 400 posts produced by CBE were identified as informing, thus
categorizing such a post as one with the intention to inform. This was the highest-ranked
“intention” of all posts, meaning it was an intention that could be attributed to most of the posts
created by CBE. Ranking immediately after “inform” was “providing resources.” Posts said to be
providing resources were those, for instance, providing information on job opportunities or how
to obtain financial assistance. Thus, it is apparent that posts of this kind identified as “providing
resources” could easily also be identified as informing. When examining the top 11 intentions
ascribed among all posts, an image of CBE’s proactive nature emerges. For instance, these top
intentions include encouraging followers on Facebook to attend a virtual event, exhibit some form
of activism, sign a petition, or vote. Other intentions include the providing or sharing of resources

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and articles to read. While one intention is identified as a call to action, nearly all top posts
encourage followers to take action.
Furthermore, an analysis of all 33 intentions identified reveals certain characteristics about
the CBOs themselves, not least of which is the reaffirmation that this CBE takes an active political
stance and promotes political objectives. In the primary case, for example, CBE’s political
objectives can be seen via posts that specifically encourage people to vote and sign petitions for
certain political causes. In fact, nearly half of their posts encourage activism through a variety of
activities, such as sending emails, submitting letters to public officials and encouraging people to
make phone calls to political representatives. Activism is also encouraged through CBE’s clear
valuing of residents and community organizers via posts where such individuals are profiled and
framed as notable role models for their communities. CBE’s political inclinations are especially
transparent when examining posts that celebrate certain political decisions, either locally,
statewide or nationally. Most often, the political decisions that are celebrated are decisions related
to the environment, although further research could be done to further categorize the types of
political decisions CBE seems to value most vis-a-vis their Facebook posts. It would be interesting
to know, for example, whether most of the political decisions being celebrated are environmental
in nature and whether these types of decisions vary beyond their categorization as environmental
decisions. For instance, among the political decisions celebrated, it would be informative to know
whether those decisions were related to air quality, water or soil contamination, hazardous waste,
land use planning, or other intersectional EJ issues.
Analyzing the intention behind CBE’s posts is also potentially illuminating when we
consider the aforementioned theoretical concepts for viewing storytelling as a model of and for
planning. First, as previously stated, taking a page from the concept of viewing storytelling as a

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model of planning, inferring the intention behind CBE’s posts allows us to closely examine the
narratives CBE shares about environmental injustice and the ways in which they may reflect the
kind of planning they wish to see. If planning documents and plans themselves tell stories, it is fair
to assume that social media posts themselves also tell stories. Therefore, we could potentially
uncover how the stories within each post are framed by some fundamental intention by inferring
the “intention/s” behind each post. A couple of examples could help illustrate how CBE’s social
media posts tell stories that planners and policymakers might find useful when considering how to
solve environmental problems.
Twenty-one posts created by CBE explicitly encouraged residents to sign petitions. One
such post specifically encouraged people to sign a petition that would provide rental assistance to
those impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The inferred intention behind this post was to
encourage people to sign the petition and to draw attention to the vulnerable conditions and
housing insecurities that marginalized communities faced, many of them exacerbating the
cumulative impacts that such communities facing environmental injustices were already
experiencing. The story within a post like this informs us, on the one hand, that people are
suffering, and, just as importantly, by encouraging people to sign a petition advocating for rental
assistance, it informs us that capturing such a story is potentially effective for informing planners
and policymakers to make such assistance possible. In some ways, CBE is doing the initial
“planning” here by telling this story via social media, with the Facebook post itself serving as a
model of planning. Meanwhile, however, this particular type of post also serves as a model for
planning, as this story being told by CBE is ultimately intended to effect some form of change, or
introduction, in policy.

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By considering the role of storytelling here within a social media post, it is apparent that a
story is being instrumentalized by a CBO to influence local planners and policymakers, which
would benefit from such a narrative being shared in that they would now be in a better position to
incorporate community needs into their agenda, some of which may or not have already existed
on their radar of broader planning and policy concerns. While it is quite possible that planners may
have eventually become informed about this particularly framed community narrative via the
petition, it would still be worthwhile for planners to learn and engage with the viewpoints shared
through such a social media post. This would add more context to local housing concerns for
planners and policymakers and allow them to better understand or reinforce their sense of the
urgency behind such concerns through the confirmed demands for help made apparent by the
post’s likes, shares and comments. Furthermore, by not entirely relying on a petition being brought
to their attention, planners and policymakers could more quickly anticipate the scope of a problem
and, therefore, think of potential solutions earlier if they were in the practice of engaging
community-based social media content as part of the evidence they consider when making
decisions.
Twenty of CBE’s posts told stories that essentially captured community-based efforts that
represent significant community stories and perspectives. Twelve posts had the ascribed intention
of profiling individual community residents, and eight separate posts had the ascribed intention of
recognizing some form of activism. Altogether, though not categorized as such, these 20 posts are
also examples of CBE intending to instrumentalize storytelling as a model of planning. As
previously stated, if planning documents and plans themselves tell stories, here again, it is fair to
assume that these 20 posts themselves also tell stories. One example of a story being told by one
of the 12 posts profiling community residents is a post that highlights the embodied experience of

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a resident in Wilmington, CA. Within the content of this post, CBE shares the following, “In
Wilmington, a predominantly Latino community in south Los Angeles, Dulce Altamirano says her
children and grandchildren suffer from headaches, rashes, nose bleeds, and respiratory problems
caused by pollution.” In this post, CBE is using social media to highlight an embodied experience
that reflects what residents of this particular community in south Los Angeles face in terms of
health impacts. CBE is framing an experience that immediately highlights how pollution is
affecting residents in this community. But beyond this, CBE is also capturing stories from the
community by sharing its platform to provide this community resident with a voice. The content
of this post shares, “‘The air quality is very bad,’ 45-year-old Altamirano says in Spanish, with a
sigh. ‘I personally have many problems with breathing, with my throat ... There have been times
when my husband wanted to call the paramedics.’” To provide additional context to this individual
experience, CBE’s post added,
The city sits between numerous refineries, oil wells and storage facilities, shipping ports,
and high-traffic roads, and some neighborhoods rank in the top 10th of CalEnviroScreen
scores. She lives close enough to a refinery to hear valves pop open and to smell the noxious
fumes that seep out. Sometimes, flares illuminate the night sky above her house. And she
says she’s still waiting to see change.
The ascribed principle intention of this post, as stated earlier, is to profile the experience
of a community resident. By profiling such an experience, this post operates as an example of
CBE’s social media storytelling, serving as a type of model of planning. In other words, CBE’s
social media content itself reflects CBE’s plans or objectives as an organization. Similar to how
planning documents themselves are examples of storytelling told by planners and policymakers,
CBE’s social media posts exist as a different type of evidence that can be understood as

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storytelling. But more than that, and similar to the previous example provided above, it is worth
repeating that this particular type of post also serves as a model for planning, as this story,
essentially co-authored by both CBE and the community resident profiled, is ultimately intended
to gain the attention of a wider public. As such, it stands to reason that local planners and
policymakers in SELA should pay close attention to this type of community-based storytelling via
social media. As members of the wider public, and also more importantly, as individuals whose
decisions potentially carry direct implications for the lives of residents experiencing such health
threats in this particular community, planners would expand their understanding of such
communities by paying particular attention to this type of community-based social media content.
On a very basic level, this type of post has the “intention” of profiling community residents.
However, on a much deeper level in terms of analyzing storytelling and social media as it relates
to planning, this type of post potentially is also “intending” to influence how planners and
policymakers understand the lived experience of local residents as it relates to EJ.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
An analysis of all 12 intentions identified for East Yard reveals certain characteristics about
their organization, not least of which is the reaffirmation that, similar to CBE, East Yard takes an
active political stance and promotes political objectives. In this secondary case, for example, East
Yard’s political objectives can be seen via posts that specifically encourage or celebrate activism,
celebrate political decisions, and encourage people to attend virtual events and fill out surveys. In
fact, nearly all of East Yard’s posts either encourage or acknowledge activism or political events,
with the exception of those providing resources or profiling or celebrating community residents.
The theoretical storytelling implications for East Yard are similar to CBE, with social media posts

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providing a platform for community residents in SELA to share their narratives and perspectives.
On July 12, 2020, for instance, East Yard attempted to correct a local narrative with the following
statement shared as part of a long post about a cleanup site in the city of Commerce: “Since there
are certain electeds providing misinformation to community about who CAN clean the site, here
is the clarification. Much appreciation to community who see through the fake news and titles.”
This post shared a detailed explanation of recent events related to the cleanup site. In a separate
post on May 7, 2020, East Yard shared a post pointing the finger at Los Angeles County for
inequitable actions taken in SELA in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The post reads,
When we pressed LA County for putting a COVID-19 isolation center in SELA before
dedicating any testing resources to our communities, the response was that there weren’t
enough medical facilities in SELA to handle positive cases. We don’t get resources because
we don’t have resources?! This is how legacies of White supremacy and capitalism get
reinforced. Check the new study on How Race, Class, and Place Fuel a Pandemic.
The post provides a web link providing readers with more information about this challenge. This
example confirms the value planners and policymakers could gain by regularly engaging with East
Yard’s social media content as a proxy for learning more about how community residents
experience and respond to local environmental injustice.
Geographic Area of Focus
This study also focused on understanding the geographic context of the communities CBOs
communicate with via social media. By analyzing how geographic context factors into the study
of CBOs using social media to engage with the public about EJ issues, researchers and advocates
can identify areas disproportionately affected by environmental hazards. This coding category was
included to provide an understanding of how many posts were focused on SELA relative to other

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regions. Capturing these data also helped to understand where CBE’s specific geographies of focus
are located.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
CBE’s Facebook posts most referenced Los Angeles and the Bay Area throughout the study
period, clearly reflecting the fact that CBE does most of its work in California. Los Angeles-based
geographies were mentioned 336 times, while Bay Area geographies were mentioned 169 times,
often with more than one geographic mention in one post. Sometimes, geographic areas were not
explicitly mentioned, but it was still possible to surmise what geography was being discussed or
referenced within a post. The study, however, attempted to limit the interpretation of geographies
as much as possible. While 45 distinct “geographic areas of focus” were identified among CBE’s
400 posts, one challenge for separating out distinct geographic areas was that these areas were not
always mutually exclusive. Some geographies overlapped with others, such as when a post
mentioned both the city of Maywood and SELA. Maywood is within SELA, meaning that these
two geographies are not mutually exclusive and are, therefore, not necessarily two distinct
geographies.
Other than reflecting the communities where CBE focuses its efforts, analyzing the
geographic areas mentioned was believed to potentially provide valuable insights into the social,
economic, and political structures that shape environmental inequalities while also potentially
helping to identify patterns of environmental injustice, such as the clustering of disadvantaged
communities near polluting facilities and industries or the exclusion of marginalized groups from
decision-making processes. If this study had included a more sophisticated spatial analysis, the
mapping of these patterns may have been additionally helpful, perhaps allowing CBOs to more
effectively advocate for policy changes, mobilize community action, and raise awareness about

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affected communities’ specific challenges. Such spatial analysis would have been particularly
helpful to local planners and policymakers interested in considering additional visual evidence
illustrating where certain concerns or activities were taking place. But even despite mapping not
being included, this study’s data still contains valuable data that may be of particular interest to
planners and policymakers who work for specific jurisdictions. For instance, planners in cities
such as Richmond or Huntington Park could view the data tables in Chapter 4 and specifically gain
a sense of where environmental injustice issues that are most relevant to them are either taking
place or being talked about.
Focusing on the geographic areas mentioned in this study also provides a framework for
analyzing the spatial dimensions of EJ movements on social media, allowing researchers and
potentially local planners and policymakers to examine how online activism and information
sharing intersect with offline actions and community organizing. Considering that CBE’s social
media posts are, in part, capturing narratives and perspectives from community residents, taking
into account the geographic areas mentioned or referenced in these posts also adds an important
spatial context to the storytelling being captured through CBE’s social media posts. Social media
platforms, including Facebook, have become powerful tools for activism, organizing, and raising
awareness about environmental issues. Focusing on geographic areas allows us to think of how
different communities engage with social media platforms, perhaps in unique ways, influenced by
factors such as digital literacy, access to technology, and cultural norms. Local planners and
policymakers might identify the most relevant and effective topics, issues and engagement
strategies for reaching and engaging with communities impacted by environmental injustice by
understanding geographic context on a more granular level through CBOs’ social media content.
By trying to assess the impact of social media campaigns and online advocacy in addressing

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environmental injustices within specific geographic contexts, this study might also lead to future
research on how social media engagement’s relationship to EJ in SELA differs among census
tracts. A more precise view into locally differing digital engagement would present opportunities
for planners and policymakers to address such inequities and, in doing so, might capture
community-based narratives and perspectives that can confirm knowledge about a community or
expand on currently available data.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ/East
Yard)
Considering that East Yard is located in, and focused almost exclusively on, SELA, almost
all geographic areas mentioned for East Yard relate to SELA. This hyper-localized CBO is an
invaluable resource for local planners and policymakers interested in adding more layers of
geographic context to their understanding of environmental injustices in SELA. Some of the
limitations of this condensed secondary case study are also worth considering. For example, one
of the most widely known environmental injustices in SELA in recent years refers to the Exide
Battery Recycling Plant in the City of Vernon. However, since the posts for East Yard do not show
the full extent of their Facebook posts, the city of Vernon only shows up once. This example serves
as a reminder that the geographic areas of focus covered by East Yard’s posts do not reflect a full
picture of the geographic areas that were the subject of East Yard’s focus during the study period.
However, despite their limited nature, the posts confirm the geographic difference for each CBO
in terms of the location/s in which they both focus their efforts.
General Topics of Interest
Under this coding category, CBE’s and East Yard’s posts were assigned a general topic of
interest. In fact, each post was assigned both a general and a specific topic of interest based on the

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subject matter. A subsequent section will further explore the “specific topic of interest” category.
As part of determining what general topic to assign to each post, one of the most critical challenges
involved the importance of consistency. For instance, there had to be general topic categories used
for multiple posts falling under a certain general topic category. It would have been difficult to
analyze if, for example, each of CBE’s 400 posts had a distinctly ascribed general topic category.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
Overall, 107 general topics of interest were identified among CBE’s 400 posts. To facilitate
analysis on such a large number of general topics identified and to achieve consistency among all
assigned categories, it was necessary to further consolidate posts into categories that encompassed
broader criteria. For example, as previously described in Chapter 4, the general topic of interest
that most appeared was the topic of oil, with 74 posts. However, in addition to these 74 posts
broadly related to oil, an additional 55 posts were ascribed the following categories for “general
topics of interest”: Oil, Oil Drilling, Oil Refineries, Oil Industry, Refinery Flaring, Fracking, Oil
Spill, Oil Regulations. Therefore, each of these oil-related topics were consolidated into a general
category called oil, ultimately consisting of 129 posts in total. Similarly, 60 posts were
consolidated into a general category called housing, ultimately consisting of 60 posts in total and
incorporating posts that were ascribed the following categories for general topics of interest:
housing, housing justice, tenant anti-harassment, tenants rights, housing elements, legal resources,
and mobile homes.
After consolidating all general topics, a final output table of all consolidated general topics
of interest was created, ultimately amounting to 21. Out of 519 general topics of interest ascribed
to each post, an individual post could contain more than one general topic of interest. However,
after consolidating all the general topics, 473 total general topics were consolidated into the final

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output table shown in Chapter 4, as an additional 34 general topics (representing 46 total general
topic appearances throughout all 400 posts) were not easily grouped within a consolidated group.
Therefore, the final consolidated table includes 473 general topics of interest that were folded into
21 consolidated categories. Chapter 4 also includes a final table created for all 34 excluded
unconsolidated general topics.
An analysis of all general topics is perhaps best initiated by looking at the six top-ranked
consolidated general topics of interest based on the number of times they appeared among all 400
posts. It is reasonable to begin the analysis with these top six categories because many of them
appeared at least twice as many times as the others. In order of ranking, these six categories appear
as follows: oil, housing, EJ, Air, utilities, and economic assistance. The immediate and obvious
takeaway from these categories is that CBE creates social media content that views EJ through an
intersectional lens. This, of course, means that issues such as housing and utilities are understood
to play a role in people’s embodied experience when analyzing the factors that impact their lives
in terms of their environment, broadly speaking. Since these are the six top-ranked categories, they
speak to the type of general topics that CBE was mostly focused on. As this study period
encompasses the initial year of the COVID-19 pandemic, these topics make clear that CBE was
focusing its efforts on addressing not just the more traditional types of EJ issues; it was also
addressing housing and financial insecurities such as housing rights issues, utility debt, and the
need for economic assistance. Consistent with the growing and expanding definition of EJ that
Chapter 2 traces over the past several decades, CBE’s posts reflect an expanded definition of
environment that includes “where we live, where we work and where we play” (Agyeman, 2005,
p. 24). By incorporating issues such as housing and economic justice, CBE’s Facebook posts also
reflect Agyeman’s (2005) “just sustainability paradigm,” a term meant to emphasize the

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importance of integrating environmental sustainability in urban development and planning
processes with social justice (p. 6).
An analysis of the next 15 ranked consolidated “general topic of interest” categories further
confirms the intersectional nature of CBE’s understanding and approach to EJ. Among these
remaining 15 categories, topics such as racial justice, food justice, climate justice, and organizing
further reflect CBE’s integration of social justice and the expansive lens through which they
engage the public about EJ issues, not just through its social media content but also through their
broader mission of raising awareness about environmental racism and fighting for equitable and
sustainable solutions.
It is worth noting that CBE’s posts could have been categorized under somewhat distinct
“general topics of interest,” particularly when borrowing concepts and frameworks from various
EJ scholars. For instance, general topics could have been consolidated into categories, separating
out each post based on whether it falls under one of EJ scholar Jason Corburn’s three “Elements
of Environmental Justice”: Procedural, Distributive, or Corrective (Corburn, 2017). Or, all posts
could have been separated into EJ scholar David Pellow’s three pillars of EJ, with the first
described as, “providing greater attention to how multiple social categories of difference are
entangled in the production of environmental injustice;” the second as, “using multiscalar
methodological and theoretical approaches to better comprehend the complex spatial and temporal
causes, consequences, and possible resolutions of EJ struggles;” the third as, “the view that social
inequalities – from racism to speciesism – are deeply embedded in society (rather than aberrations)
and reinforced by state power, and that therefore the current social order stands as a fundamental
obstacle to social and environmental justice;” and the fourth as taking into account issues of “racial
and socio ecological indispensability” (Pellow, 2018, pp. 17–25). Furthermore, all posts could

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have also been categorized under the various “tributaries” of EJ, namely, “the civil rights
movement, the anti-toxins movement, academia, Native American activists, and the labor
movement” (Cole & Foster, 2001, pp. 20–18). However, despite the myriad of ways in which
CBE’s Facebook posts could have been categorized in terms of general topics of interest, it was
important for this study to create practical categories that might be considered useful to planners
and policymakers. Considering that planners have to design plans that touch upon a variety of
topics ranging from housing and environment to transportation and public health, for example, the
general topics of interest for this study were created and ultimately consolidated to create
categories that would feel relevant to planners and policymakers seeking to address environmental
injustices.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ)
Unlike this study’s examination of CBE’s posts, the consolidation of all general topics for
East Yard was not necessary, given the condensed nature of the posts used for this secondary case
study. By comparison, CBE’s general topics of interest had to be filtered down into 21 consolidated
general topics of interest, while East Yard only had 21 general topics identified overall to begin
with. Since an individual post could contain more than one general topic of interest, East Yard’s
46 posts featured 49 general topics of interest overall.
An analysis of East Yard’s general topics is perhaps best to initiate by also looking at the
six top-ranked general topics of interest based on the number of times they appeared among all 46
posts. It is reasonable to begin the analysis with these top six categories mainly because they are
the only topics that appeared more than once. In order of ranking, these six categories appear as
follows: EJ, COVID-19, Exide bankruptcy, leadership transition, Exide cleanup, and Amazon
environmental impacts. Each of these topics easily falls under the umbrella of EJ, making the

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intersectional breadth of topics seemingly not as extensive as the range of topics found in the
primary case study. Nevertheless, the general topics in its posts demonstrate that East Yard’s social
media content also views EJ through an intersectional lens. Furthermore, while CBE’s posts could
have been categorized under somewhat distinct “general topics of interest,” particularly when
referring to concepts and frameworks from the various EJ scholars and tributaries mentioned
above, the same can be said about this secondary case study. However, just as with the analysis
above of CBE’s general topics of interest, the general topics of interest for this secondary study
were also created to provide categories that would feel relevant to planners and policymakers
seeking to address environmental injustices.
Specific Topics of Interest
This coding category was created to keep track of the topics of interest being discussed by
each post with greater specificity. Taking the time to focus on specific topics of interest for each
post beyond the general topics of interest discussed in the preceding section allows this study to
narrow down the scope of the analysis made possible for each post. Making a note of specific
topics allows for a more targeted approach to examining each of CBE’s Facebook posts, thereby
making possible the extraction of more meaningful insights by collecting an additional layer of
data that allows us to examine how topics were specifically being prioritized and used to engage
with CBE’s Facebook’s followers. This study makes possible an analysis that can dive deeper into
the nuances, trends, and dynamics related to those subjects. For example, as described in Chapter
4, an individual post might fall under the general topic of interest category of housing justice, a
broad topic that can relate to various housing justice issues. By making note of the more specific
topic of interest for that post, this study can record, for instance, that a post was specifically about
“Rental Assistance for those impacted by Covid 19.” The coding category allows for each post's

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general topics of interest to be understood in closer detail by including their respective ascribed
specific topics of interest.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
The section on descriptive results for specific topics of interest in Chapter 4 provides tables
that capture the top 11 out of 21 consolidated general topics of interest based on the number of
times that these consolidated general topics appear among all 400 CBE posts. Based on their
ranking in terms of appearances, each of the 11 consolidated groups is then separated into tables
that indicate the various general topics consolidated. Each general topic comprising a consolidated
category of general topics is then listed in a separate row that includes an example of a specific
topic of interest in that general topic. Only one example of a specific topic of interest is provided
since there are too many to discuss here. For instance, the consolidated general category of “oil,”
with 129 appearances, consists of eight general topics of interest: oil, oil drilling, oil refineries, oil
industry, refinery flaring, fracking, oil spill, and oil regulations. Each general topic is then provided
with an example of a specific topic of interest that falls under that category. “Oil drilling” as a
general topic, for instance, is specifically concerned with CBE explicitly encouraging the public
to “vote Yes on SB 467 to create buffer zones.”
Each of the subsequent consolidated tables described in the specific topics of interest
section of Chapter 4 is similarly constructed. Similar to the section on general topics of interest,
the variety of specific topics reflects CBE's comprehensive engagement with topics that affect the
communities they serve. As mentioned in Chapter 4, housing is perhaps the only group that may
not immediately appear related to environmental issues among the top five consolidated groups.
Additional research could further quantify how many specific topics of interest CBE’s Facebook
posts covered.

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Regarding specific topics of interest discussed among the social media posts of an EJ CBO,
it is especially relevant to briefly consider the consolidated group categorized as “environmental
justice” in this study. This category was challenging because all specific topics of interest can be
argued to fall under the umbrella of EJ, particularly if one considers the more expansive and
intersectional view of this field. While the consolidated EJ category features 54 appearances, it
was challenging to label specific topics of interest under this category, given its overlapping nature.
It is, therefore, relevant to highlight how challenging it was to classify a post under a particular
general topic of interest. For instance, as shared in Chapter 4, the general topic of youth for EJ falls
under the consolidated category of EJ. However, it could have just as easily been classified under
a category like oil or air, depending on what this youth group was specifically being active against
or raising awareness about.
An additional example of the challenge of categorization is the consolidated general topic
of racial Justice, which appears 14 times, with each appearance corresponding with a separately
identified specific topic of interest. Also, as described in Chapter 4, “Black Lives Matter” appears
as both a specific and general topic of interest, as posts specifically mentioning Black Lives Matter
could also be said to be speaking broadly about racial justice. The complexity of allocating each
post into a category was relatively nuanced. For example, a particular post can be categorized
under racial justice as a general topic of interest instead of the Black Lives Matter category because
those posts spoke generically about the Black Lives Matter movement within the larger context of
racial justice history. Alternatively, a relatively similar post can be categorized under Black Lives
Matter as a general topic of interest instead of a more generic term such as racial justice because
those posts spoke quite specifically about events directly related to the “Black Lives Matter”

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movement. One such post, for example, specifically informed the public about a “Rally and March
to offer 9 minutes of silence for George Floyd and all unarmed Black people.”
The racial justice issues related to Black Lives Matter are also one example of how in tune
CBE seemed to be about racial justice issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequent to the
George Floyd murder in 2020, CBE expanded its focus to include racial justice issues. While some
of their posts addressed rallies and marches related to seeking justice for George Floyd, CBE also
created posts in honor of Juneteenth, which included calls to “defund the police” and the
resignation of former U.S. President Donald Trump, who had been antagonizing the Black Lives
Matter movement in the aftermath of George Floyd among other public offenses related to national
racial justice concerns. Furthermore, racial justice issues were not limited to justice for Blacks in
the United States. One CBE post also addressed anti-Asian racism, and in so doing, CBE presented
itself as an advocate of racial justice across the board.
If this study is an exploration of the role of CBOs’ social media in terms of evidence and
data that can be useful to planners and policymakers in timely ways, several other specific topics
addressed among CBE’s posts during the lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic help
underscore their timely relevance. Particularly at a time when households working frontline jobs
and living in marginalized communities disproportionately felt economic insecurity, CBE’s
specific topics of interest included addressing the needs of low-income census tracts in SELA and
the Bay Area and providing resources for residents to apply for financial assistance, obtain utility
debt assistance, secure free smog repairs, and other community resources. One concern during the
COVID-19 lockdown involved food justice issues, and some of CBE’s posts provided information
about food distribution centers administered by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

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The specific topics of interest covered by CBE’s Facebook posts address specific proposed
legislation, reject specific legal affairs such as the Exide Bankruptcy Plan, alert the public about
gas leaks in real time, provide logistical and bilingual information about specific upcoming public
meetings concerning a broad range of issues, offer detailed scripts for residents and allies to
provide public comments for upcoming public meetings, share detailed job post information,
encourage the signing of petitions for specific political and economic purposes, and share articles
about a broad range of EJ impacts and concerns. As has been mentioned in prior sections of this
chapter, the range of topics, both general and specific, is quite comprehensive and reflects the
intersectional nature of environmental and social justice issues. While this study collected this data
during the study period, perhaps an ongoing monitoring of the topics discussed and resources
shared would be a topic in and of itself to regularly share with the public as a way of keeping score.
Such scorekeeping could be beneficial for planners and policymakers to keep a high-level picture
at all times about the topics that concern and impact local residents. This study might also prove
that such scorekeeping can be beneficial for keeping track of CBE’s storytelling and how such
stories are framed. These sources of storytelling evidence would be valuable for planners and
policymakers as they, in turn, frame their own stories in planning documents and other formal
public participation materials. Ideally, such storytelling would become much more inclusive and
comprehensive after diversifying the evidence and data with which they work.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ)
As with prior coding categories discussed in this study, the variety of specific topics reflects
East Yard’s comprehensive engagement with topics that affect the communities they serve in
SELA. Unlike CBE, additional research is not required to quantify how many specific topics of
interest East Yard’s posts covered since there were only 45. The specific topics reinforce the issues,

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topics and events that other CBOs, such as CBE, are heavily concerned with while sharing an
activist approach to addressing many of them. East Yard’s specific topics of interest reflect a more
hyper-local focus, as was also reflected when analyzing general topics of interest in the previous
section.
Industrial Stakeholders Mentioned
Collecting data on industrial stakeholders was an attempt to identify the industrial polluting
stakeholders and facilities targeted by each CBO’s posts. These data were viewed as potentially
useful in helping to understand the characters involved in the stories each CBO shared. Chapter 4
identifies all the stakeholders and facilities mentioned via both CBO’s posts.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
A preliminary analysis of this data reveals that 24 distinct industrial facilities were
mentioned among all 400 posts. A total of 299 posts did not mention any stakeholders or facilities,
while the remaining 101 posts mentioned a stakeholder, such as Chevron, or they explicitly
mentioned or referenced a specific industrial site, such as Chevron in Richmond.
Chapter 4 shares two tables. Table 35 shows the top 10 industrial stakeholders and specific
facilities that appear among all posts, while Table 36 shows the remaining 14 stakeholders, all
mentioned only once throughout the study. Each table shared the total number of times each
stakeholder appeared among CBE’s posts. Considering that CBE does most of its work in the Los
Angeles and Bay Area metropolitan regions, most stakeholders are located in these regions, except
nationally recognized infrastructure like the Dakota Access Pipeline, Target, Amazon, and
Instacart. Planners and policymakers would likely already be familiar with stakeholders who have
facilities within their jurisdictions, so this part of the data offers relatively little value in terms of
new information. However, what might be of value to planners and policymakers is to explore the

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community-based narratives and perspectives associated with each stakeholder that is relevant to
their work, which they could explore after first viewing which stakeholders are being mentioned
CBE in the first place.
The Exide Battery Recycling Plant in Vernon, California, is one example of a stakeholder
that is well known to local planners and policymakers. Relevantly, if gaining a better
understanding of the community-based narratives and perspectives is of high priority to them,
planners and policymakers have an opportunity to uncover important information from CBE’s
Facebook posts related to Exide. For example, one post on October 15, 2020, reads, “What this
week has felt like trying to keep up with #Exide’s BS and our govt’s failure to prioritize our
communities.” Figure 7 includes images to visually convey how local residents responded to
Exide’s filing for bankruptcy.

Figure 7
Residents’ Response to Exide’s Bankruptcy

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These images convey the frustration and anger residents felt after Exide filed for
bankruptcy for the third time in an attempt to refuse accountability to the communities they had
harmed. Such narratives and perspectives were perhaps already known to planners and
policymakers at the time of this Facebook post. However, these types of posts visually emphasize
and reinforce the outrage felt by residents living in the surrounding SELA communities. In addition
to making such community sentiments more pronounced, CBE’s posts can also be valuable to
planners and policymakers by perhaps making them more sensitive to the frustrations communities
have experienced when engaging with government entities. The mistrust of public institutions was
a prominent theme found among CBE’s Facebook posts throughout the study period. One such
post on October 30, 2020, for example, revealed the following:
As of today the federal court has released Exide from its obligation to clean up the toxicity
they left in our hoods. We are disappointed in this decision made by the DOJ and the lack
of accountability from the DTSC. We know that the fight doesn’t end here. It was
COMMUNITY who shut Exide down in the first place, not the government and not this
bankruptcy! Our communities will continue to be resilient and organize! LA LUCHA
SIGUE!!!!.
Earlier that month, another CBE post shared a Los Angeles Times article about Exide and
shared the following quote from a local resident:
“I’m not surprised that Exide has continued to find ways to avoid paying for the cleanup,”
said Idalmis Vaquero, a member of CBE who lives in a Boyle Heights public housing
complex within the cleanup zone that has not yet been treated for lead contamination. “I’m
also really frustrated by the incompetence, slow cleanup and the lack of legal power that
[the Department of Toxic Substances Control] is willing to exercise.

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Community-based narratives and perspectives such as these can provide planners and
policymakers with a more nuanced understanding of how local residents feel about ongoing local
environmental injustices and the formal processes and public institutions that have resulted in
feelings of betrayal and negligence. The response to such shared stories is unpredictable, but CBOs
who provide a platform for such community-based stories to be told can potentially increase the
likelihood that planners and policymakers will emerge by developing a more comprehensive
narrative of the industrial stakeholders that lie at the center of the EJ issues and concerns being
addressed by such social media posts. Consequently, as a result of such an expanded and inclusive
narrative being developed, the storytelling found within such posts can become a model for
planning, a way to influence how planners and policymakers will subsequently frame narratives
about the relevant stakeholders when writing planning documents and public meeting agenda items
going forward.
Another analytical takeaway from the industrial stakeholder tables in Chapter 4 is that six
of the top 10 stakeholders/facilities mentioned have something to do with oil. Some refer to
refineries, while one refers to nationally recognized oil infrastructure such as the Dakota Access
Pipeline. Looking at the remaining 14 stakeholders/facilities ranked in the second table described
in Chapter 4, an additional five stakeholders/facilities are associated with the oil industry.
Therefore, among all 24 stakeholders/facilities mentioned overall, 11 of 24 are associated with the
oil industry or almost half. This seems to indicate that CBE’s posts reflect a disproportionate
impact by the oil industry on marginalized communities in the Los Angeles and Bay Area
metropolitan areas. However, almost as meaningful in terms of impact is the harmful presence of
the Exide Battery Recycling Plant, a facility mentioned 24 times in CBE’s posts, when all 11 of
the oil industry stakeholders/facilities are collectively mentioned 71 times. This means that the

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Exide Battery Recycling Plant, a single facility, is mentioned slightly more than one-third of the
number of times that all other oil industry stakeholders/facilities. The timeline in Table 54 of the
significant events related to Exide partially explains why this single facility was of
disproportionate importance for CBE to cover among their social media posts.

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Table 54
Timeline of Significant Events Related to Exide
Date Event/Incident Additional details
May. 19, 2020 Exide files for second bankruptcy
Proposed a settlement agreement with the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency that would allow
Exide to abandon the Vernon facility, remediation
and cleanup efforts, and any responsibility for the
toxic emissions Exide spewed into the air during its
operation, polluting the soil and groundwater. State
regulators estimate that Exide’s operations have
threatened the health of 100,000 Los Angeles County
residents.
Oct. 13, 2020

Exide’s bankruptcy hearing (4pm)
“Exide’s bankruptcy hearing is today at 4PM. With
practically no heads up, it is important as many folks
as possible call in and urge US DOJ to DENY
EXIDE’S PLAN FOR BANKRUPTCY & to leave
our communities with their toxic mess

We’re not too sure what the format of this meeting will
be, but please try to do public comment and voice
your truth” - FB post by Youth for Environmental
Justice/Youth Action
Oct. 16, 2020
Exide declares bankruptcy, Fed
judge allows it to abandon the
contaminated facility.
Left massive cleanup of lead and other toxic pollutants
at the site and in vicinity to CA taxpayers.

Note. From “Supervisor Solis’ Statement on the U.S. Bankruptcy Court Allowing Exide to
Abandon Toxic Battery Recycling Facility in Vernon” by H. Solis, Los Angeles County.
(https://hildalsolis.org/supervisor-solis-statement-on-the-u-s-bankruptcy-court-allowing-exide-
to-abandon-toxic-battery-recycling-facility-in-vernon/). From “Court allows Exide to abandon a
toxic site in Vernon. Taxpayers will fund the cleanup” by T. Barboza, 2020, October 16, Los
Angeles Times. (https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-16/exide-bankrtuptcy-
decision-vernon-cleanup).
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ)
As previously mentioned, if collected data on industrial stakeholders helps us understand
the “characters” involved in the “stories’’ each CBO shared through their social media content, the

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relevant data from East Yard’s Facebook posts indicate that the Exide Battery Recycling Plant was
the most prominent character in East Yard’s EJ narratives. In accordance with this, industrial
stakeholders were mentioned 18 times among East Yard’s posts, and Exide represented 60% of
those posts with 11 mentions. There is probably no environmental injustice in SELA over the past
decade that has been more widely covered than the closing of the Exide plant. After closing in
2014, Exide entered into an agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s office to permanently shut down
the plant in March 2015. The agreement “allowed Exide and its employees to avoid prosecution
for years of environmental crimes, including illegal storage, disposal and shipment of hazardous
waste, while agreeing to pay $50 million to demolish and clean the plant and surrounding
communities, including $9 million set aside for removing lead from homes” (Barboza, 2020a). As
part of the agreement to clean up the thousands of mostly working-class Latino homes it polluted,
prosecutors spared the company and its executives from criminal charges related to the lead dust
contamination of nearby homes (Phillips, 2021).

Figure 8
Image of Exide Plant

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Note. From “Exide may be allowed to abandon toxic battery recycling plant and massive cleanup
bill” by T. Barboza, 2020, October 12, Los Angeles Times.
(https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-10-12/exide-battery-recycler-bankruptcy-
vernon-cleanup)
Remediation and cleanup efforts would have to account for years of polluting local air,
soil, and groundwater. By the following year, in 2016, the state of California had spent over $200
million to clean up about 2,000 properties, far less than necessary to assure the safety of the
affected communities (Ortega, 2022). By the time Exide filed for a second bankruptcy in May
2020, state regulators had estimated that Exide’s operations continued to threaten the health of
100,000 Los Angeles County residents (Ortega, 2022). When Exide declared bankruptcy on
October 16, 2020, a federal judge allowed Exide to abandon the contaminated facility (Barboza,
2020b).
Planners and policymakers following these developments could have relied on media
content, public documents, and hearings to stay informed about this major environmental injustice.
Some of those sources would have provided additional characters to the larger narratives by way
of residents who either participated directly in public hearings and meetings or were quoted in the
media. However, East Yard’s Facebook posts provided the opportunity to amplify the part of the
larger narrative that involved local residents, mainly by sharing their narratives and perspectives
directly or by serving as a platform for residents to write informal comments in response to East
Yard’s relevant Facebook updates. After Exide’s declaration of bankruptcy, for example, a plastic
barrier was placed over the facility to mitigate any further contamination emitting from the plant.
East Yard members had been in contact with residents who had noticed that the plastic barrier had

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stopped working as expected. On November 8, 2020, East Yard took to Facebook to spread the
message by writing,
A significant portion of the plastic barrier over the Exide facility is flapping in the wind.
The damage is clearly visible from the 710 freeway. We contacted Department of Toxic
Substances Control (DTSC) who spoke with the site manager who confirmed a significant
tear in the plastic sheeting. They said it is the exterior layer. The interior barrier is
reportedly undamaged at this point. Tears in the plastic sheeting present a threat to our
communities as the toxins in the facility could be released. We’ll keep y’all posted.
These forms of ground truthing extend legitimacy to residents about concerns that planners
and policymakers might otherwise ignore or underestimate, as they are not in tune with the close
communication between CBOs and community members.
Organizations Mentioned (Not CBE)
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
This coding category of organizations mentioned served to collect data on organizations
and foundations, particularly CBOs outside of CBE. The intent behind this data collection was to
better understand the landscape of community-based efforts in relation to or in tandem with the
issues CBE’s Facebook posts covered. Above all else, this coding category was intent on better
understanding the landscape of CBO activity in SELA. The work of CBOs focused on EJ is crucial
for SELA, particularly given the disproportionate exposure this region faced in terms of pollution,
hazardous waste sites, and other environmental hazards. Despite such disproportionate exposures,
and although 400 CBE Facebook posts mentioned 82 distinct organizations and foundations,
SELA lacks the presence of CBOs to address such concerns. In fact, only CBE and EYCEJ are
particularly focused on achieving EJ in this region. The SELA Collaborative is relevant in this

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region in terms of EJ, but this group is a coalition of organizations and community leaders rather
than a single organization focused on local environmental and social justice issues. Regarding EJ
CBOs in SELA, some might include the San Fernando Valley-based organization Pacoima
Beautiful, given their impact on neighboring communities in Los Angeles, but their work is not
significantly focused on SELA. Lastly, a smaller organization named Comite Pro Uno in the city
of Maywood also heavily focuses on EJ issues in SELA, although its social media presence is still
relatively undeveloped and unavailable for further study to corroborate insights gained from this
study.
Chapter 4 of this study identifies all 82 organizations and foundations CBE’s Facebook
posts mentioned. Three tables identified each organization and quantified the number of times
CBE’s posts mentioned it. The first table lists the top 12 organizations mentioned, the second table
lists the 17 next-ranked organizations (each mentioned 2-3 times), and the third lists the remaining
51 ranked organizations and foundations (each mentioned only once). Among the top 12
organizations mentioned, EYCEJ, mentioned seven times, amounts to only 1.75% of CBE’s 400
posts. This organization is noteworthy as it is the only other organization outside of CBE that
focuses on EJ issues in SELA, which is a primary reason for its inclusion as the secondary case
study for this research.
Beyond being intersectional in the issues it focuses on, CBE is also intersectional in the
collaboration it practices or promotes with other organizations focused on racial and social justice
issues. When addressing racial justice, CBE’s Facebook posts reflect a diverse community of
organizations with whom it either collaborates or is in solidarity: APEN, The Center on Race
Poverty & the Environment, Black Lives Matter, API Equality-LA, Black Cultural Zone, Black
Women For Wellness, California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, Chinatown Community for

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Equitable Development (CCED), Nikkei Progressives, Oakland Chinatown Coalition, PODER,
Khmer Girls in Action, Ktown4BlackLives, The Movement for Black Lives, International
Indigenous Youth Council SoCal, and Progressive Asian Network for Action. When addressing
social justice, CBE’s Facebook posts mentioned dozens of organizations that include social justice
in their principal missions. The intersectionality CBE’s posts reflect also includes religious
institutions, a particular intersection this study did not examine in detail but one worth exploring
further.
The literature on social media impacts related to EJ is sparse, leaving planners and
policymakers without a clear sense of how decision-making processes should incorporate
community narratives. Considering CBE’s broad reach via social media and in light of planning
scholars having previously called for improving urban planners’ and policymakers’ media literacy,
this study offers an opportunity to gain or reinforce a sense of the CBO landscape in SELA
regarding EJ (Frick, 2016). To better understand the role of CBOs’ social media content in SELA,
planners and policymakers would also benefit from understanding the full web of organizations
involved in this space. By gaining a more comprehensive picture of CBOs’ work in this region,
planners and policymakers would gain an increased appreciation for CBE’s and EYCEJ’s
contributions to local communities. Such appreciation would enable local governments’
transparency and collaboration with the CBOs working directly with residents.
Awareness of local CBOs’ social media efforts will familiarize planners and policymakers
with linguistically isolated residents. In SELA, linguistic isolation tends to apply to Spanish-
speaking residents, many of whom might be undocumented and less likely to engage with local
planners’ and policymakers’ formal participatory processes. Moreover, this SELA population has
been relatively neglected in terms of authentic dialogue and engagement in larger discussions

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about local community impacts, particularly noted in cities such as Paramount. More transparent
collaboration could alleviate communities' mistrust of government institutions. This would help
planners and policymakers better engage residents in their formal participatory processes and help
planning and policymakers better incorporate social media tools into community engagement.
Through the Facebook posts of the two most prominent CBOs in SELA, planners and
policymakers can assess whether their community engagement efforts align with the issues these
CBOs discuss and how they discuss them. While their own agendas may compete with these
CBOs’ agendas, planners and policymakers could gain insights that allow them to revise and
finetune their messaging, thereby representing an opportunity for governments to create more
comprehensive and nuanced narratives.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ)
There is relatively very little data to analyze as part of this coding category for this
secondary case study. Insofar as this secondary case study was intended to confirm or raise
questions about the conclusions drawn about the primary case, there were not enough compelling
reasons for further exploring the extent to which East Yard mentioned organizations among their
posts. Since this secondary case study draws only from a condensed number of selected posts based
on higher levels of engagement, the relative lack of organizations mentioned reflects the fact that
East Yard Facebook posts did not obtain much engagement when mentioning organizations
beyond their own. These results, however, are not sufficient to enable conclusions about the extent
of East Yard’s collaboration with other organizations.
Government Agencies Mentioned
Data on the government agencies mentioned via CBE’s Facebook posts was not collected
as a way to understand the roles and responsibilities that government agencies have or how

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effective they are at implementing regulations targeting environmental injustices. Such questions
would pertain to a different type of study focused on the government agencies themselves. Instead,
data on the government agencies CBE and East Yard mentioned was intended to provide a useful
reference for future research on the links between social media and implementations for planners
and policymakers who might be interested in learning how CBOs understand the involvement of
government agencies among their social media posts.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
Among CBE’s 400 Facebook posts, 40 distinct government agencies were mentioned,
indicating that some were mentioned more than once. As described in Chapter 4, 270 posts did not
mention any government agencies at all, meaning that most of CBE’s posts did not directly
reference government agencies' work. This, however, does not reflect a lack of government
agencies’ impact or relevance to CBOs’ work, especially considering that much of the information
CBE disseminated via Facebook for the remaining 130 posts was significantly focused on
influencing various relevant government agencies’ upcoming decision-making.
Considering that most of CBE’s work focuses on the Bay Area and Los Angeles
metropolitan regions, it is unsurprising that the top three government agencies mentioned are the
Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the Los Angeles City Council, and Los Angeles
County. While the Los Angeles City Council is not a government agency per se, this broader
category of government agencies includes elected officials. One obvious takeaway is that the
variety of government agencies mentioned reflects the many jurisdictions and government
stakeholders involved in making decisions affecting California’s marginalized communities in
terms of EJ issues. It also reflects the hierarchy of government decision-making often involved
with such issues, including local agencies like the various city governments mentioned; regional

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agencies like the Bay Area and South Coast Air Quality Management Districts (BAAQMD &
SCAQMD), the California Environmental Protection Agency and the DTSC; state agencies like
the California Public Utilities Commission and California State Senate; and federal agencies like
the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate.
In addition to reflecting the hierarchy of government decision-making and the variety of
the geographic areas, the government agencies mentioned also hint at how they incorporate
community-based narratives, or narratives that communities might predominantly support, into
their decision-making about EJ issues in regions such as the Bay Area and Los Angeles. In addition
to tensions between local and state government agencies with competing objectives, this coding
category was intended to explore whether community-based narratives about EJ issues played a
role in the complex web of jurisdictions and competing agendas of the government agencies CBE’s
Facebook posts mentioned. There were times throughout the study period when CBE explicitly
advocated on behalf of an impacted community for a particular ruling, sometimes framing an
industrial stakeholder or facility as a bad actor requiring stronger regulation. In such cases, CBE
asked the government agencies involved to protect the communities harmed by certain rulings. For
instance, in December 2020, CBE explicitly stated via Facebook, “Bay Area Air Quality
Management District adopt the strongest rule possible! Urge the boldest action in years to cut the
pollution from #Chevron and PBF (formerly #Shell) oil refineries in #Richmond & #Martinez,
CA.” A month later, in a separate post, CBE stated, “Richmond! It Is time to hold Chevron
accountable. Can you turn out to a virtual CBE Meeting to prepare for the Virtual Bay Area Air
District Workshop?!” In this example, CBE’s advocacy efforts proved effective, as a March 2021
post reflected:

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#RICHMOND, YOU DID IT! Thanks to community pressure, the Bay Area Air Quality
Management District’s Stationary Source Committee voted to ONLY move fwd with the
stronger pollution rule on #Chevron We must keep organizing to ensure that the board
makes this final! Stay tuned for updates/action items..! Thank you all so much!!.”
This example shows that CBOs’ advocacy via social media can be effective.
In some cases, the impact of such posts is much harder to assess, but CBE uses targeted
storytelling to inform the public and potentially impact relevant government agencies’ decisions.
For instance, during the lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, a CBE Facebook post in
June of 2020 shared the text of an article quoting a UCLA law student from SELA: “Living here
will have an impact on the quality of life for the rest of their lives. It makes me mad that our lives
are not considered equal when it comes to addressing environmental hardships.” Within the post,
CBE shares the following from the article:
As many as 250,000 residents, mostly working-class Latinos, face a chronic health hazard
from exposure to airborne lead and arsenic that subsequently settled into the soil from the
recycling plant, according to a 2013 health risk assessment by the South Coast Air Quality
Management District. Lead contamination has been found in children growing up in
neighborhoods surrounding the now-shuttered #Exidebatteryplant, a #USC study found.
Lead is a neurotoxin, and there is no level that is considered safe in humans. The 15-acre
recycling facility operated in the industrial city of Vernon for decades with minimal
regulatory oversight. It churned out poisonous pollution around the clock 7 days a week as
the lead from 25,000 old car batteries was melted down every day for use in producing new
batteries.

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This Facebook post shows CBE is intent on sharing a personal narrative and perspective
for additional context and nuance on residents’ environmental concerns. While planners and
policymakers could have read this article through the original source (Hasemeyer et al., 2020, para
55), CBE is contributing to the likelihood that such narratives and perspectives are being shared
with the public and planners and policymakers as well. What is not as clear, however, is whether
this particular storytelling ultimately impacted the decisions of local planners and policymakers
since this study is not focused on measuring the impact of such posts. Rather, this example is
mainly pointing out that such community-based storytelling via social media posts operates as a
model for planning in the sense that it could impact decisions involving tougher regulations for
industrial activities by, for example, influencing the setting of emissions standards, the allocation
of resources for environmental protection, or the development of environmental impact
assessments. Such planning and policy outcomes are, once again, difficult to attribute as a causality
stemming from CBE’s post, but it is nevertheless important to point out that access to CBO social
media content, a less conventional form of evidence, can be at least partially influential when
evaluating how planners and policymakers respond to community-based information about the
disproportionate distribution of environmental burdens, environmental disparities and the
correlations between a variety of environmental factors and social media activities. By considering
this type of data, planners and policymakers can also potentially identify gaps, biases, or
limitations within the more conventional evidence that they consider when making decisions or
framing an environmental narrative on planning documents or public meeting agenda items that
might dictate the types of discussions that are encouraged and the types of solutions that are
pursued. Overall, the interactions between government agencies and community-based social

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media content provide researchers, planners, and policymakers with information on social media
usage for communicating, discussing, and advocating for EJ issues.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ)
Considering that most of East Yard’s work is focused within the Los Angeles metropolitan
region, it is not surprising that five of the 11 government agencies mentioned are located in Los
Angeles. The five Los Angeles agencies mentioned are not all entirely focused on environmental
issues. These are agencies that represent the intersectional aspect of East Yard’s EJ work. These
five agencies include Los Angeles County, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation
Authority, listed as “Metro,” the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the city of Commerce,
and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Despite this hyper-local focus, East Yard’s
posts also reveal an awareness and engagement with agencies at the state and federal levels.
Government agencies, broadly defined, include the California Department of Transportation, listed
as “Caltrans,” the U.S. Department of Justice, and the “Trump Administration’’, all additionally
reflecting the intersections that EJ issues have with transportation issues and other relevant federal-
level considerations. Ultimately, however, in addition to reflecting the hierarchy of government
decision-making and the Los Angeles-centric focus represented, the government agencies
mentioned among East Yard’s Facebook posts also hint at how community-based narratives are
incorporated into the decision-making carried out by government agencies about EJ issues in Los
Angeles. East Yard’s limited selected posts echo the political activism and social justice advocacy
that was previously described with CBE’s Facebook posts in the section above.
Policymakers Mentioned
Going a step beyond collecting data on the government agencies mentioned, this study also
gathered data on the policymakers mentioned in CBE’s posts. As with the rationale behind

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capturing data on the government agencies mentioned, taking note of the policymakers mentioned
was thought to be a potentially useful reference for future research focused on the links between
community-based social media content created by CBOs and its implementations for planners and
policymakers. Also, as with the previous section on government agencies, it is important to note
what these data are not attempting to accomplish. While this study focused on noting the
policymakers mentioned, it did not seek to answer questions about how those policymakers
responded to or implemented CBO social media content in their decision-making, particularly as
their decisions relate to implementing regulations targeting environmental injustices. Answering
such questions could be part of future research that extends beyond the data collected for this study.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
Seventy-five individual policymakers were mentioned by CBE’s Facebook posts during
this study, including the specific government office held and the number of times each policymaker
appeared. To display this data, Chapter 4 provides three separate tables. The first table lists the top
20 policymakers mentioned, each appearing more than twice. The second table lists the next 17
policymakers, each with two mentions. The third table lists the next 38 policymakers, each
mentioned only once. The mentioning of each policymaker provides only a view into the broad
range of policymakers mentioned by CBE during the study. As Chapter 4 details, the policymaking
positions held include California state assembly members, California or United States senators,
county supervisors, U.S. Congress members, city council members, mayors, city, district or
supreme court attorneys, and school district board members. But beyond conveying the broad
range of policymakers mentioned, some additional insights can be gained by conducting some
additional categorizing.

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First, in terms of geography, 37 of the 75 policymakers mentioned, more than half, held
government positions with jurisdictions that are completely within, or at least partially encompass,
the Bay Area metropolitan region. Second, and most relevant for a study focused on SELA, 32 of
the 75 individual policymakers, slightly less than half, held government positions with
jurisdictions that are completely within, or at least partially encompass, the Los Angeles
metropolitan region. Overall, with the exception of some U.S. congress members listed and a few
other state or federal policymaking positions mentioned, 59 policymakers are either based out of
the Los Angeles or Bay Area regions, the two main regions in California where CBE does most of
its work. Nearly 80% of the policymakers mentioned stemmed from both the Los Angeles and Bay
Area regions, with the remaining areas represented including the San Joaquin Valley, Riverside
County and San Diego County. As discussed earlier in this chapter, CBE’s Facebook posts
encompass a broad range of intersectional EJ issues, geographic areas, and organizations
mentioned, and these posts mention a broad range of policymakers in terms of the types of
government offices they hold and their jurisdictions. As such, the data collected for all the
policymakers mentioned, along with the variety of jurisdictions involved, to some degree, reflects
the multi-scalar methodological approach alluded to in Chapter 2 in terms of improving our
comprehension of the “complex spatial causes, consequences, and possible resolutions of EJ
struggles” (Pellow, 2018; p. 17-25).
There are various potential benefits to CBOs using social media to mention policymakers.
For one, mentioning so many policymakers suggests that CBE broadly engages with policymakers
and makes significant efforts to influence the policy landscapes in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
Adding to this research by conducting interviews with CBE staff could confirm the extent to which
CBE is actively strategic about encouraging policymakers to take certain actions or pursue specific

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policy outcomes. While many of CBE’s posts are critical of government agencies and
policymakers, either for not being aggressive enough when regulating polluters or for not being
transparent enough with community residents, CBOs directly mentioning policymakers via social
media could likely indicate a concerted effort to build partnerships, foster dialogue, and create the
types of communication and awareness that could result in meaningful collaboration between
marginalized communities and policymakers. Community fairs are one example of digitally
published events via social media with the ability to create spaces where such partnerships and
dialogue can be fostered. In June of 2021, for instance, CBE promoted an event in SELA with the
following post:
A successful day of tabling at #Maywood Riverfront Park Resource Fair! You can catch
us there again and in Clara Park on Wednesday 6/9 from 4 - 7pm to discuss how you
envision parks and #greenspace in your community! LINK is an initiative to revamp our
parks and create new green space. #SELA #CBESELA.
Such posts help create community-based collaborations, partnerships and information sharing
between communities and local policymakers.
Another potential benefit of CBOs capturing community-based narratives and perspectives
via social media while directly mentioning individual policymakers is that it could lead to
government accountability by applying additional pressure in hopes that environmental injustices
are adequately addressed via regulatory or legal channels. In the event that community residents
feel that industrial bad actors are not held accountable, social media can help amplify the concerns
of residents who may feel neglected or entirely ignored. In October 2020, when the Exide Battery
Recycling Plant was seeking bankruptcy as a way of avoiding accountability, CBE galvanized and
organized locally impacted residents with Facebook content such as the following,

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Please take a second to take action against the #Exide Bankruptcy plan, we have until
Tuesday, October 6th to submit public comment to USDOJ! Use the link below to send a
letter directly to them, we have provided some helpful language to speed along the process.
Just takes one second! WE MUST ENSURE THAT CA’s MOST TOXIC SITE IS NOT A
ORPHANED, EXIDE MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR POLLUTING OUR
COMMUNITIES!
This post was published in both English and Spanish, ensuring that members of the community
fully understood a specific action they could take when addressing policymakers at the U.S.
Department of Justice. Ultimately, the amplification of community voices is central to CBOs’
work, and social media platforms are accessible means through which such voices can be heard.
While it is critical to capture community-based narratives and perspectives, such voices and stories
must be encouraged through direct and clear efforts. In these ways, and despite the limitations of
social media to represent entire communities, CBOs and their use of social media play an important
role in ensuring that policymakers at all levels of government consider communities’ perspectives
and needs.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ)
East Yard’s Facebook posts mentioned only six individual policymakers during this
condensed secondary case study, including the specific government office held and the number of
times each policymaker appeared. In terms of geography, and most relevant for a study focused
on SELA, three of the six individual policymakers held government positions with jurisdictions
completely within, or at least partially encompassing, the Los Angeles metropolitan region. But
beyond what these few policymakers reflect about East Yard in a geographic context, as an
organization, or in regard to its social media strategies to engage the public, planners and

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policymakers, there is relatively very little data to analyze among East Yard’s 46 Facebook posts.
Since this secondary case study draws only from a condensed number of posts based on higher
levels of engagement, the relative lack of government agencies mentioned could merely reflect the
fact that East Yard Facebook posts did not obtain much engagement when mentioning
policymakers. These results, however, are not sufficient to enable conclusions about the extent of
East Yard’s strategies and interactions with policymakers.
Type of Content Shared
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
The CBOs shared eight types of content throughout the study period: written post, shared
information, information flier, web link, video, shared article, shared image, and GIFs. This coding
category was mainly intended to learn how CBE engages the public through various types of
content. Chapters 3 and 4 describe in more detail how each type of content is defined, while
Chapter 4 provides tables that list all eight types of content and the number of times a particular
type of content is shared. For instance, as most posts include a written message CBE created, 370
posts are categorized as written posts. Perhaps the most opposite type of post compared to written
posts are those that merely share videos or web links. However, as previously mentioned, these
types of content are not mutually exclusive, as posts can be “written posts” while also “sharing
information” by sharing an “information flier” that also includes “web links” and “shared images.”
It can also be drawn from the study period that CBE used various types of content to engage with
the public. This, of course, as previously discussed in this chapter, is in addition to providing
content focused on a wide range of geographic areas within California, government agencies,
general and specific topics of interest, levels of policymakers, and content written in either English
or Spanish or both.

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Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ)
Similar to the analysis conducted on organizations and government agencies mentioned,
this secondary case study was heavily limited in its ability to confirm or raise questions about the
conclusions drawn about the primary case. There was insufficient data to draw additional insights
about relevant patterns observed based on the types of content shared.
Facebook Reactions, Shares and Comments
This last portion of the data collected for this study is perhaps the most significant in terms
of understanding the characteristics of a post that result in the most engagement. To analyze
engagement levels, we take a close look at the straightforward quantitative metrics that Facebook
makes available to users through the types of reactions made possible through emojis, such as like,
angry, amazement, sad, care, and love. As described in Chapter 4, levels of engagement are
captured in this study through the coding category of total reactions, representing the sum of each
of the reaction categories.
Primary Case Study: Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
Two tables shared in Chapter 4 help us analyze CBE’s posts in terms of engagement. The
first table has two columns. The left column lists the number of reactions that some posts were
observed to have, with that number sometimes being a range of numbers. The right column lists
the number of posts found within the study corresponding to the total reactions quantified in the
left column. As this first table shows, most posts obtained anywhere between 0 or a handful of
reactions, with significantly fewer posts obtaining 10 or more reactions.
The second table lists the top 20 posts in terms of the number of total reactions they each
achieved. In other words, as described in Chapter 4, the second table ranks particular posts based
on their level of engagement as measured by total Reactions. To provide context, 331 of CBE’s

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400 posts had fewer than 10 reactions, meaning that approximately 83% of all posts had very little,
if any, engagement. In fact, 122 of these 331 posts have either one or zero reactions. The realization
that few posts had a relatively higher number of reactions was one of the most insightful findings
in this study. Isolating these posts and analyzing their characteristics was an opportunity to see
whether there were certain topics of interest that seemed to garner the most reactions. The second
table displays the top 20 posts in terms of reactions, including the dates for each post and both the
general and specific topics of interest that were attributed to each post. The highest engagement
among these posts had 67 total reactions, while the lowest engagement among these posts had 13
total reactions. While 67 total reactions may not seem like a large number in an objective sense, it
is significantly higher when considering again that more than a third of all 400 posts had either
one or zero total reactions.
The findings in this second table are considerably counterintuitive. There are tables shared
in Chapter 4 that allow us to observe the top 20 posts that generated the most reactions on Facebook
for each CBO. And here, total reactions are the cumulative total of likes, loves, or any of the other
different types of reactions that Facebook allows. The data gathered demonstrates the total number
of reactions for each post. For example, the top two ranked posts for CBE each had 67 total
reactions. While 67 reactions may not seem like an objectively high number, when we think about
400 posts over 15 months, and if we consider that more than half of those posts received zero
reactions, it is relatively significant that these posts received as many reactions as they were.
Considering that we are analyzing Facebook posts for an EJ CBO, it is natural that we
might expect mostly the posts focusing on local EJ issues to garner the most engagement.
However, one of the most interesting findings for CBE is that five of the top 10 posts refer to smog
repairs. For example, these posts essentially provide community members with resources to obtain

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money to repair their cars so that they can pass a smog check. This type of post describes how
much money is available for these needs and information about where people can contact the
resources. This type of post is interesting because, while we might intuitively expect that an EJ
community-based organization posting about a wide range of environmental issues might receive
the most engagement when it addresses environmental issues, this result shows otherwise. Figure
9 shares what this type of post looks like.

Figure 9
Example of CBE Post About Community Resources

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In fact, it seems that most of the posts that obtained the most engagement for CBE have
more to do with an urgent economic need experienced in these communities. Additionally, perhaps
in Los Angeles more than in other places, the relative popularity of this post shows that having a
car is fundamental for many individuals and families, and high relative engagement for a post of
this type reflects that.
Ultimately, for CBE, there are three key findings to point out. First, CBE uses Facebook to
inform people in support of their mission, which is wonderful and understandable. We would
expect this to be the case given CBE’s long-standing community organizing and consistent
engagement with the communities in which they work. Second, however, these top posts suggest
that marginalized communities may not be responding to these efforts in the ways that we would
expect or in the way that we might hope. There is some additional nuance to analyze when thinking
about whether CBOs are being strategic in how they engage with followers and the public at large
through their Facebook posts. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from these tables showing posts based
on levels of engagement is that economic needs seem to supersede EJ claims. This is something
that we might intuitively understand in general about what kinds of approaches CBOs should have
when trying to engage people. As this data suggests, addressing the more urgent economic needs
might be more likely to receive higher engagement than other posts, including those that might
inform community residents about local environmental injustices.
Secondary Case Study: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ)
A table shared in Chapter 4 for this coding category displays the top 20 posts for East Yard
in terms of total Facebook reactions, including the dates for each post and the general and specific
topics of interest attributed to each. The highest engagement among these posts had 178 total
reactions, more than double the total reactions obtained by CBE’s highest-ranking post. Both this

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top post and the second post ranked on this list share general and specific topics of interest, the
former being leadership transition and the latter being East Yard announcing leadership transition.
In addition to the two top-ranked East Yard posts described above, a third post in December 2020
was also categorized as having “Leadership Transition” as a general topic of interest. For this post,
however, an added general topic involved a “Job Announcement.” This post provided another
update on East Yard’s staff leadership and information on a new community organizing job
opportunity.
The fact that the top two posts were focused on staff members transitioning into new roles
is worth contemplating. For one, the high ranking of these posts seems to indicate that East Yard’s
Facebook followers are significantly invested in following its inner workings. It also seems to
suggest that such staff leadership is highly regarded by those who live in the communities served
by East Yard and/or those who work directly with this CBO. It might also reflect how highly
regarded East Yard is as a CBO, especially among residents living in SELA, a region lacking
CBOs and grassroots organizations focused on local social justice issues. Furthermore, considering
that these posts were created in late August and early September of 2020, these high-ranking posts
might also reflect the higher reliance on East Yard’s grassroots efforts felt by community members
at a time of extremely high environmental and health precarity during the lockdown phase of the
COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas previous coding categories and corresponding data collected and
analyzed in this chapter were either insufficient or unclear in helping us determine how the
pandemic impacted SELA during the pandemic, it is relevant to note that one of East Yard’s top
20 posts was created in May of 2020 and focused on sharing information about a COVID
emergency shelter, while also sharing a study titled, “How Race, Class, and Place Fuel a
Pandemic.” This post obtained 18 total reactions, ranking 17th among East Yard’s posts.

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In addition to the three “leadership” posts mentioned above, it is also noteworthy that 11
of the top 20 East Yard posts specifically relate to EJ. This is especially notable considering that
half of CBE’s top 20 posts involved financial assistance, leading to the finding that economic needs
supersede EJ claims for its Facebook followers. In this sense, this finding taken from East Yard’s
top 20 posts refutes the finding from CBE’s top 20 posts that suggested that social media posts
created by CBOs obtain more engagement when they specifically address urgent economic needs.
This secondary study contradicts this finding and raises additional questions. For one, it is
important to consider who follows each of their Facebook accounts. By taking a closer look at
some of the comments shared in both CBOs’ posts, it seems that CBE followers perhaps include
a higher proportion of marginalized community residents. If true, this might partially explain why
this population responds in higher numbers to posts impacting their immediate economic reality.
Meanwhile, based on only a preliminary skimming of East Yard’s top posts and their
corresponding comments and by glancing at those who have liked their posts, a higher proportion
of their followers include academic researchers, local elected officials, and other activists.
Additional research could further explore the differences among the followers of each CBO. If
such an assessment of East Yard’s Facebook followers is, in fact, true, it may partially explain why
the top 20 posts involve a higher proportion of posts directly addressing environmental and social
injustices.

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Chapter 6: Conclusion
The introduction of this study highlighted my journey and motivation to pursue research
on EJ, particularly in marginalized communities. My embodied experience growing up in a low-
income Latinx immigrant community in SELA provided me with an intimate understanding of
such neighborhoods’ complexities, and this life experience motivates me to seek research methods
that push beyond the boundaries inherent in planners’ and policymakers’ conventional evidence
sources, such as census data and scientific information from technocrats focused on EJ issues. In
this study, I have argued for the inclusion of community-based social media content as a form of
evidence, allowing marginalized voices to share their stories and perspectives on environmental
injustices. Such evidence is not without its limitations, and the focus of this study was to explore
its potential value in providing a comprehensive understanding of environmental issues. I have
also argued for the need to approach this research focused on industrial clusters and regions to
consider the cumulative impacts of multiple sources of pollution and the broader issues that
intersect with environmental injustices. Overall, my goal was to examine inclusive narratives,
alternative forms of evidence, and the voices of marginalized communities through community-
based social media content.
The concept of EJ moved beyond mere distribution of harms or material goods to
encompass decision-making procedures and other categories of difference in society that allowed
EJ research to include intersectional issues such as housing justice, food justice, and racial justice.
Additional concepts such as sociological indispensability and the well-being of all living things
have also become central concerns within the field. These more expansive conceptualizations of
EJ are reflected through the data. The EJ literature reviewed in Chapter 2 also discusses how the
reliance on scientific and technocratic knowledge in environmental struggles has excluded

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marginalized communities from decision-making processes. In response to such exclusion, EJ
scholars have emphasized the importance of democratizing formal decision-making by including
marginalized voices while also pushing in favor of multi-scalar analysis in understanding EJ
issues. Such a diversification and evolution of the field over time has been fundamentally critical
for recognizing and understanding the interconnectedness of social, economic, and environmental
issues within marginalized communities.
With a focus on one primary case study, this research analyzed how CBE engaged with
followers through its Facebook account, while a condensed secondary case study involving EYCEJ
served to validate those findings. Overall, this study addresses the need for planners and
policymakers to consider community members as experts and active participants in the framing
and decision-making related to environmental problems and their policy solutions. The main
research question driving this research is whether CBOs in SELA strategically use Facebook to
amplify community narratives and perspectives. Data collection involved capturing 15 months’
worth of Facebook posts by both CBOs, analyzing various coding categories, and examining the
value of such content for planners and policymakers. Several social media platforms were
considered for this study. However, Facebook was chosen due to its inclusivity, accessibility, and
ability to capture comprehensive and community-based narratives and perspectives. Overall, in
addition to providing an opportunity to capture a snapshot of CBO’s engagement with local
environmental injustices in SELA, this study contributes to understanding the role of social media
in advancing EJ efforts and promoting more inclusive storytelling in planning processes. The
analysis of the coding categories in the previous chapter reveals significant differences in
engagement when comparing the top 20 posts of the two CBOs, CBE and East Yard. The following
sections of this chapter integrate the analysis conducted for each coding category analyzed in the

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previous chapter by providing a reconciled analysis of each coding category with both CBOs in
mind.
Original or Shared
While there is virtually no reason to question whether CBE was mostly producing its own
original content, this coding category lends itself to additional questions about the extent to which
CBE was being strategic about its social media engagement. In other words, it is one thing to
determine that CBE was producing mostly original content, but it is another thing altogether to
determine the extent to which they were proactively making decisions about the content they
wanted to share with their audience. For instance, it would require additional research, perhaps in
the form of interviews with CBE’s social media staff, to determine whether they are mostly
responding to environmental injustices and other issues and events as they occur or are
predetermining what issues they feel are important and should be shared with their audience.
Gaining additional insight directly from CBE, and perhaps also from EYCEJ, would allow us to
understand the extent to which these CBOs are being strategic in their social media engagement
and provide valuable insights into what criteria determine how they prioritize issues and topics to
discuss with their audience. Perhaps just as importantly, such additional insights would also allow
us to understand how these CBOs think about their audience/s and what their short and long-term
objectives were during the study period.
Hashtags
In terms of geography, CBE’s hashtag usage is much more diverse than East Yard, a point
of analysis that reflects the difference in geographic focus for each of these CBOs. As a secondary
case, East Yard’s more localized mission further highlights CBE’s broader geographic focus
throughout California. For added perspective in terms of comparing the geographic considerations

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of each CBO, some insights can be gleaned from looking at the proportion of hashtags for each
that relates to a specific geography. For CBE, when focusing only on the 62 hashtags that appear
more than three times throughout the study period, 16 specifically reference a geographic location,
either a city or a region such as the Bay Area or SELA. Hashtags used by CBE referencing a
geographic location constitute 25% of their hashtags used with more than three appearances. For
East Yard, when focusing only on the 24 hashtags that appear more than three times among the
posts based on the highest engagement captured throughout the study period, only three hashtags
specifically reference a geographic location. Comparatively, hashtags used by East Yard
referencing a geographic location constitute only 12.5% of their hashtags used with more than
three appearances. The proportionate difference between both CBOs could reflect the difference
in their geographic reach. Considering that CBE works throughout the state of California, it is
perhaps not surprising that they emphasize geographic locations more frequently, based on this
proportionate comparison. Meanwhile, considering that East Yard is located in SELA and is
primarily focused on doing work in this region, it is also perhaps not surprising that emphasizing
geographic locations seems to be less prioritized through their use of hashtags among the selected
posts comprising a smaller sample size of social media activity.
Another proportionate difference involving the use of hashtags relates to the frequency
with which both CBOs refer to the COVID-19 pandemic. As mentioned in Chapter 4, among
CBE’s 257 hashtags used, two of the top five hashtags relate to COVID-19. Furthermore, if
#COVID and #Covid19 were added together with 21 and 19 hashtags, respectively, COVID would
be tied for ranking first with 40 hashtags. Considering the extent to which marginalized
communities were being impacted by the pandemic and the period of time covered by this study,
it is not surprising that combining the hashtags #COVID and #Covid19 would amount to 40 total

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appearances, making it tied for first among all hashtags used. With the COVID-19 pandemic
ranking as the second most heavily conjured theme for CBE, it is interesting to note that East
Yard’s posts do not reflect a similar emphasis on COVID-19 based on their use of hashtags.
Among East Yard’s 24 hashtags captured as part of the secondary case study with limited posts
captured for examination, only one post featured the hashtag #Covid19. This discrepancy could be
attributed to at least two reasons. First, hashtags are not the only indication for assessing how much
a CBO emphasizes a particular theme or issue. They are merely one data point to consider. It is
possible that East Yard’s posts focused on pandemic-related issues and topics but did not always
use hashtags to indicate such a prioritization. Second, as a secondary study, we are only looking
at a selected group of posts based on levels of engagement. It is possible that East Yard both
referenced COVID-19 in a higher proportion of posts and reflected this much via their use of
hashtags, only to have those posts not captured as part of this secondary case study due to their
lower levels of engagement, as measured by Facebook reactions such as likes, shares, and
comments.
Both CBOs overall do, however, align in terms of hashtag usage, reflecting the important
role that political activism and intersectionality play as part of their Facebook content. As a
secondary case study, and while considering its sample size limitations, East Yard’s use of
hashtags confirms CBE’s emphasis on political activism and the overall intersectional nature of
their EJ mission and social media engagement. Similar to CBE, East Yard also appears to reflect
a sense of solidarity with marginalized communities impacted by local environmental injustices,
mainly hinted at through the use of hashtags such as #WeAreJustTryingtoBreathe,
#wearejusttryingtogrowfood, #community, and #CASolidarity. No other discernible patterns are
detected in terms of themes captured by hashtags.

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Link Active or Dead and Language of Post
It is clear from analyzing this coding category that most web links provided through
Facebook posts were active 2 to 3 years later. With the primary case study, the study obtained a
quantifiable number of active web links for CBE, proving that most of the content shared had some
potential longer-term relevance. Meanwhile, although the secondary case study did not obtain a
quantifiable number of active or dead web links for EYCEJ, a cursory examination further
reinforced that both CBOs post content on Facebook that is still available for users to explore 2 to
3 years later.
As a secondary case study data point, the “Language of Post” category for East Yard
confirms the analysis done for CBE, mainly reflecting a routine use of both English and Spanish
and this fact itself reflects the predominant languages used by marginalized communities impacted
by environmental injustices within the Bay Area and Los Angeles metropolitan regions.
Intention and Geographic Area of Focus
The “intention” coding category was designed to explore what each CBO intended to do
with each post and how planners and policymakers might ultimately consider such objectives as
part of their examination of all types of evidence available to them. This was a complex category
that went beyond straightforward and narrow classifications. The stories told via Facebook posts
by each CBO have the potential to influence planners and policymakers in their decision-making.
The data described for this coding category was meant to identify the perceived intentions behind
each Facebook post and how these intentions can also reflect how each post, similar to planning
documents and plans themselves, serves as the motivation behind the stories that are told by each
CBO. CBE had several prominent intentions, including the intention to inform, provide resources,
encourage activism, and call people into action. As described in Chapters 4 and 5, these

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“intentions” were not mutually exclusive. As a secondary case study, East Yard’s Facebook posts
also featured a variety of intentions. However, given the condensed nature of the secondary case
study, it is difficult to compare how both CBOs prioritized each type of intention throughout the
study period. Overall, both case studies demonstrated a diverse range of intentions beyond each
Facebook post. Both significantly focused on providing information, offering resources,
encouraging activism, and calling for specific actions, all of which validate notions that each CBO
is providing a significant and critical service to its followers and, potentially, to the planners and
policymakers who seek to better understand how local EJ issues impact the marginalized
communities with whom they work. As for focusing on geographic areas mentioned or referenced
in this study, perhaps the most notable difference between CBE and EYCEJ is that CBE does most
of its California work in the Los Angeles and Bay Area metropolitan regions. EYCEJ, on the other
hand, is a more locally focused EJ CBO focused in the northern region of SELA.
General Topics of Interest
Despite the condensed nature of East Yard’s posts, however, the 21 general topics
identified among East Yard’s posts do suggest that this CBO is also quite intersectional in terms
of the topics and issues it addresses. For instance, East Yard’s posts include various topics that
may not immediately seem associated with EJ. Such general topics include food justice, labor
justice, political corruption, housing justice and a spectrum of transportation issues implied by
“Metro Survey” as a general topic. As a microcosm of all East Yard’s posts, the posts captured for
this study confirm that both CBOs are concerned with a range of issues that intersect with EJ.
However, East Yard seems to be more focused on traditional EJ topics, perhaps given its
considerably smaller size compared to CBE. Table 55 compares CBE’s top six consolidated
general topics of interest with East Yards top general topics among its selected posts for this study.

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Table 55
Comparison of General Topics of Interest
General Topics of Interest
CBE (consolidated) East Yard (based on selected posts)
Oil Environmental justice
Housing COVID-19
Environmental Justice Exide bankruptcy
Air Leadership transition
Utilities Exide cleanup
Economic Assistance Amazon environmental impacts

According to Table 55, East Yard seemed significantly focused on COVID-19 during the
study period. In a previous section, the use of hashtags did not seem to suggest that East Yard had
been as active in engaging with followers via Facebook about issues related to the COVID-19
pandemic. However, their top six general topics of interest provide strong evidence that East Yard
was highly in tune with marginalized communities’ needs during the pandemic, similar to what
CBEs demonstrate. Planners and policymakers seeking to learn from the non-traditional evidence
about communities via each CBO’s Facebook posts could have confirmed whether their
assessments of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts reflected their framings, narratives, and
perspectives.
Another highly relevant aspect of East Yard’s general topics is the high proportionate
mention of “Exide.” The Exide Battery Recycling Plant represents one of the most significant
environmental injustices in SELA over the past decade due to its lead contamination and attempts
to avoid accountability by filing for bankruptcy. As described in Chapter 4, CBE’s posts ranked

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“Exide” 14th among 21 consolidated general topics of interest. Despite being a major story during
the study period, CBE prioritized it but also had several other competing stories that it focused on.
As an organization conducting work throughout the state of California, Exide was perhaps not
talked about as frequently among CBE’s posts. Conversely, as an organization conducting work
mostly in SELA, and considering its proximity to the Exide Battery Recycling Plant, the evidence
collected by this study strongly suggests that East Yard was disproportionately more focused on
Exide as a general topic of interest. For planners and policymakers, this particular finding
demonstrates how their consideration of a more hyper-local CBO’s Facebook content can be more
informative about local environmental injustices and potentially add considerable nuance to their
understanding of a local issue, topic, or event.
Specific Topics of Interest
Regardless of the number of specific topics discussed, the data for specific topics could
provide planners and policymakers with several practical applications. By analyzing CBE’s and
East Yard’s Facebook posts, meaningful insights could be gained, some of which may help identify
more specific public concerns, misinformation, racial justice, or other emerging issues. For
instance, in terms of public concerns, when looking at the specific topics with CBE’s consolidated
general topic of “oil,” planners and policymakers could learn that the public is particularly
concerned about obtaining protections against oil impacts, such as creating buffer zones. In terms
of addressing potential misinformation, assuming that these communities are associated with the
dissemination of misinformation, planners and policymakers could compare their more
conventional sources of evidence by familiarizing themselves with the community’s statistics CBE
shared in Richmond after a local oil spill or learning about the deals related to a plastic barrier
meant to protect residents from Exide’s contaminated site through East Yards community-based

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storytelling about such events. In terms of discovering emerging issues, planners and policymakers
might see that CBE encourages the public to call the SCAQMD in response to refinery flaring and
might follow up with residents who called to better understand how community members are
affected. They might also learn that tenants are being evicted from a local motel, as East Yard
reported through a Facebook post, and think about revising local housing ordinances or zoning
laws.
While it is entirely possible that planners and policymakers could come to understand these
impacts through their own formal participatory and public comment processes, CBE’s Facebook
posts can still serve as a valuable complementary source of evidence that could lead to additional
efforts to gather more community-based narratives and perspectives. One way in which social
media content could be particularly useful to planners and policymakers is that it provides real-
time and diverse data, which, though not a perfect reflection of how an entire community feels
about a particular issue due to the limitations and biases inherent in social media, can nevertheless
provide insights about public concern and sentiment as it emerges in real time. Access to resident
concerns in real time via CBOs’ social media content allows planners and policymakers a deeper
understanding of specific topics of concern as they arise and can benefit by responding to such
concerns as they unfold.
As this study has discussed the need to appreciate difference, it is important to consider
how planners and policymakers should think about racial tensions in multi-racial marginalized
communities. It is worth noting that SELA, for example, is the most “Latinx” state congressional
district in the country. For some time, political leadership and representation shifted away from
White leadership and increasingly towards Latinx representation. Within SELA, there are visible
Black populations. For instance, the city of Paramount has a 10% Black population. During the

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study period for this research, “Black Lives Matter” raised awareness about the urgent state of the
injustices suffered historically by the Black community at the hands of the state. Meanwhile,
Latinx political leaders in SELA were noticeably reluctant to acknowledge solidarity with the
Black Lives Matter movement. Scholars like David Pellow point out, “Black Lives Matter is
focused on police violence and state-sanctioned violence, but few have made the link to
environmental racism explicitly on those grounds. If we can view environmental racism as an
extension of these practices, then we can more effectively theorize it as a form of state violence, a
framework that is absent from most EJ scholarship” (Pellow, 2018). The data collected for this
research is perhaps insufficient for pushing forward such environmental racism theorizing.
However, this particular topic of discussion within this study does inspire questions that future
research can explore further. On one hand, this raises interesting questions about how academics
can effectively theorize environmental racism as a form of state violence. Additionally, this also
raises questions about how planners and policymakers can make sense, culturally, politically and
economically, of the racial tensions that exist in marginalized communities facing environmental
harms such as SELA.
Furthermore, to the extent that planners and policymakers want to gain a sense of
potentially emerging grassroots movements, there is also the likelihood that social media is simply
a much more accessible means by which community residents can share embodied experiences
from a bottom-up perspective. In this way, CBOs can be invaluable to planners and policymakers
as a data collection source, thereby enhancing their ability to make data-driven decisions about
urgent local issues, including those related to environmental injustices. It is also true that local
governments can engage with residents through their own social media accounts and perhaps make
it less necessary to consult with the social media content produced by local CBOs. While the digital

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divide in marginalized communities might already present a barrier for residents to engage on
social media regardless of who is administering a particular Facebook account, the challenge with
solely relying on social media communications administered by government stakeholders is the
possibility that certain marginalized residents may feel too vulnerable to engage through such
communication channels, either because of their undocumented status or because of an acquired
mistrust of public institutions in general.
Industrial Stakeholders Mentioned
Considering that East Yard is located and primarily focused on environmental injustices in
SELA, it seems founded to realize that their posts disproportionately focus on Exide when
compared to CBE. As a secondary study, East Yard’s posts confirm that both CBOs take political
activism seriously and leverage the power of social media to help create a more inclusive and
comprehensive narrative about the environmental injustices and other intersectional issues they
address.
There is enough evidence to suggest that these CBOs use social media strategically. Their
Facebook posts seem to strategically influence the public, including planners and policymakers,
to view local injustices through a more comprehensive context. For example, prior to the incident
with the torn plastic barrier placed over the Exide facility, East Yard encouraged residents to attend
a public meeting taking place in October 2020 by adding the following context,
We understand the pessimism around the Exide issues. We too have felt this over the years,
and the idea that Trump’s Department of Justice (U.S. DOJ) and Trump’s Environmental
Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) will listen to our communities and come through for us right
now does feel unlikely, but our unrelenting community struggle is what has pushed these
issues forward every step of the way. We remember when the local, regional, and state

215
agencies and elected officials failed us, but we pushed forward, leading to the shut down
of Exide, hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup funds from the state, 2,000 homes
cleaned up and there is so much more to do.
Planners and policymakers have the opportunity through a post like this to view local
injustices through a more comprehensive context, potentially influencing how they make decisions
about other relevant issues going forward, particularly when related to issues that affect the
thousands of families that had been impacted by Exide’s contamination.
Organizations Mentioned
Understanding the organizations mentioned throughout this study allowed for the
identification of networks, collaborations, and alliances that emerge within and across the relevant
communities, particularly those in SELA. By identifying the various networks, communities and
alliances mentioned, this study also has the potential of fostering solidarity and collective action.
Therefore, CBOs’ strategic use of social media involves encouraging community residents to
become more engaged through the formal participatory process. Residents can voice their concerns
via comments on each CBO’s Facebook posts and learn about additional mechanisms through
which they can express their narratives and perspectives. CBE’s 400 posts mentioned 82
organizations and foundations, while East Yard mentioned only 19, all within only three posts.
However, even East Yard’s posts demonstrate a collaborative spirit that is fundamentally
conducive to collaboration with other organizations. For instance, East Yard’s Facebook post on
October 2020, shared above, also includes the following language to encourage such community
participation:
For the US DOJ/US EPA hearing that was requested regarding the bankruptcy (letting
Exide abandon our communities without sufficient financial accountability) and consent

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decree (letting Exide walk away without any criminal accountability), we helped to
mobilize 70+ organizations from across the country some of whom have lead smelter issues
in their communities too. We have taken the opportunity to build movement because we
know this doesn’t start or end with one hearing. This only stops when we do. So, for the
virtual public hearing, we aren’t just speaking to Trump’s administration, we are speaking
to each other and bearing witness for each other. At the end of the day, community is where
we build power and the power of the people don’t stop!!!
Government Agencies Mentioned
East Yard’s 46 Facebook posts mentioned only 11 distinct government agencies, a
significantly lower number of agencies relative to CBE but not surprising given the condensed
nature of this secondary case study. Considering that 29 of East Yard’s 46 posts did not mention
any government agencies at all, the vast majority of their posts were not directly referencing the
work of government agencies. As previously mentioned above for CBE, however, this does not
reflect East Yard’s regard for understanding how government agencies impact, or relate to, the
work that CBOs conduct, especially considering that much of the information that East Yard
disseminated via its Facebook posts is highly limited by such a small sample size of its total
Facebook posts. The ability to make any determinations about East Yard’s social media strategies
and their impact on influencing upcoming decision-making by government agencies was heavily
limited to analyzing the remaining 17 posts mentioning a government agency.
Beyond what these few government agencies reflect about East Yard as an organization or
its social media strategies to engage the public, planners and policymakers, there is relatively very
little data to analyze for this secondary case study. Insofar as this secondary case study was
intended to confirm or raise questions about the conclusions drawn about the primary case, there

217
were not enough compelling reasons for further analyzing the extent to which East Yard mentioned
government agencies among their posts and what insights could be gained from such analysis.
Since this secondary case study draws only from a condensed number of selected posts based on
higher levels of engagement, the relative lack of government agencies mentioned could merely
reflect the fact that East Yard Facebook posts did not obtain much engagement when mentioning
organizations beyond their own. These results, however, are not sufficient to enable conclusions
about the extent of East Yard’s strategies and interactions with government agencies.
Policymakers Mentioned
Insofar as this secondary case study was intended to confirm or raise questions about the
conclusions drawn about the primary case, there were not enough compelling reasons for further
analyzing the extent to which East Yard mentioned policy makers among their posts and what
insights could be gained from such analysis. Adding to this research by conducting interviews with
CBE and East Yard staff could confirm the extent to which both CBOs are actively strategic about
how they encourage policymakers to take certain actions or pursue specific policy outcomes. By
directly mentioning policymakers and engaging them using hyperlinks to their official pages and
using hashtags to underscore their significance to the content of a particular Facebook post, CBOs
appear to be interested not just in informing and engaging said policymakers but also CBOs may
be creating a valuable connection point between the voices of community residents and those that
represent them in government.
Type of Content Shared
One of the goals for analyzing the results for this coding category was to learn whether
some content garnered more engagement than others. For instance, heading into this study, I
thought that Facebook posts featuring videos might achieve more engagement than other posts.

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However, as will be discussed in the next section of this chapter analyzing engagement by focusing
on Facebook reactions, shares, and comments, this expectation was mostly unfounded, as there
were other patterns found to be more correlated to higher engagement. It was anticipated that
planners and policymakers might further understand how effectively CBE and East Yard were
disseminating information based on the type of content shared. Along with this expectation, it was
also anticipated that this study might provide insight into the efficacy of community-based social
media posts using certain types of content as advocacy strategies and storytelling instruments. The
secondary case study generally reflects very similar patterns to the primary case study in terms of
the types of content shared. However, it would be premature to confirm this assessment given the
data for the primary case study and the secondary case study, with its limited data being unable to
strengthen these general assessments. For both CBOs overall, it was challenging to find patterns
related to engagement based solely on the type of content shared. Ultimately, what the results of
this category show is that most of CBE’s and East Yard’s Facebook posts are “written posts’’, they
“share information,” they do such sharing through some form of “informational flier,” and they
provide a “web link” within the post.
Facebook Reactions, Shares, and Comments
When analyzing some of the previously discussed coding categories in this chapter, the
secondary case study neither confirmed nor raised questions about the conclusions drawn about
the primary case, as there was insufficient data to draw additional insights about patterns.
However, we can conduct a much more fair comparison of only the top 20 posts from both case
studies. Among East Yard’s top 20 posts, the one with the lowest engagement had 17 reactions,
higher than the one with the lowest engagement among CBE’s top 20 posts. While 178 reactions
may not seem like a large number objectively, and despite being a one-time occurrence, this level

219
of engagement is still significantly higher when considering that it is still more than all of CBE’s
400 Facebook posts combined. In fact, 178 reactions are significantly high even among East
Yard’s top 20 posts, whereas the second-ranking post obtained 42 reactions. Based on both CBOs’
top 20 posts, East Yard is much more successful at obtaining higher engagement when posting
about local environmental injustices. In contrast, CBE generally obtains higher engagement when
providing its followers with urgent financial assistance, perhaps reflecting a higher proportion of
followers who are local low-income residents of the communities most harmed by the financial
exacerbation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Each CBO’s top 20 posts also carry different implications in terms of how they can
influence local planners and policymakers. In the primary case with CBE, the findings regarding
financial assistance yielding higher engagement would be useful to planners and policymakers for
ground truthing the specific communities and residents most vulnerable to financial insecurity. By
consulting with this type of evidence via community-based social media content, planners and
policymakers might also provide their own financial assistance to address vulnerabilities evident
through such CBO Facebook accounts, collaborating with CBOs like CBE or East Yard. In the
secondary case with East Yard, given the findings regarding higher engagement when sharing
content about organizational staff leadership updates or addressing specific EJ, such posts could
offer planners and policymakers windows to the communities they serve and the environmental
injustices that threaten their health or safety. This evidence and the marginalized voices it amplifies
enable planners and policymakers to develop their own narratives and perspectives about
environmental issues.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Lopez, Jaime Israel (author)

Core Title The role of social media for community-based organizations focused on environmental justice in southeast Los Angeles

School School of Policy, Planning and Development

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Urban Planning and Development

Degree Conferral Date 2023-08

Publication Date 08/14/2023

Defense Date 07/10/2023

Publisher University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag community based organizations,environmental justice,OAI-PMH Harvest,planning,social media,Southeast Los Angeles,Storytelling

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Schweitzer, Lisa (committee chair), de Lara, Juan (committee member), Sloane, David (committee member)

Creator Email jaimeilo@usc.edu;jaimeilo@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113298008

Unique identifier UC113298008

Identifier etd-LopezJaime-12251.pdf (filename)

Legacy Identifier etd-LopezJaime-12251

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Lopez, Jaime Israel

Internet Media Type application/pdf

Type texts

Source 20230814-usctheses-batch-1084 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu