Jul 2026· 2026 11th International Conference on Applying New Technology in Green Buildings (ATiGB)· pp. 506-511· 0 citations· 25 references
Abstract
Data is often positioned as an objective and rational basis for policy decision-making. However, divergences between data-based claims and lived social realities indicate that such data do not always function as a neutral representation. They play an active role in shaping power relations and policy communication. This study aims to analyse the dynamics of communication in the governance of sustainable urban mobility by positioning data as a discursive practice intertwined with power. The study employs Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis of six key policy and governance documents. The findings reveal four discursive mechanisms: first, data are constructed as an epistemic authority that is difficult to contest. Second, the authority enables technocratic framing that depoliticizes mobility issues by translating social concerns into technical matters. Third, this process produces discursive exclusion, whereby certain experiences become invisible within policy representations. Fourth, the assemblage culminates in a symbolic shift of accountability from political actors to systems and technical indicators.
This study investigates the overlooked yet pivotal role of local sports communities (LSCs) as data agents in the collaborative governance of urban public spaces. Rather than framing citizens’ leisure sports solely as intervention, we develop a triadic framework, comprising Governance Structure, Data Production, and Decision Mediation, to analyze how LSCs generate, manage, and translate data for urban governance. Three integration patterns are identified through the theory-informed case studies (
n
= 12). The findings show that LSCs function with multifaceted roles, providing trust and legitimacy, generating grounded data, and mobilizing narratives to shape governance pathways. Ultimately, we conclude with a
Quadrant Model
to map LSCs’ embeddedness along the axes of institutional legitimacy and grassroots agency, offering a diagnostic tool for tracing the evolution from data silos to active data agency. The study contributes to debates on data-driven urbanism, collaborative governance, and leisure sports.
Yijia Jiang, Kin Wai Michael Siu, Jiayu Yang et al.· Urban studies· 0 citations
Sustainability has become a central concept in global policy agendas, corporate strategies, and civil society discourse. Yet, despite its ubiquity, the term often functions as a vague ideal, encompassing divergent-and at times conflicting-interests. This study addresses the critical gap in understanding how sustainability operates not merely as an environmental or developmental goal, but as a discursive construction that shapes political identities and power relations. Drawing on post-structuralist theory, particularly the works of Foucault, Derrida, Laclau, and Mouffe, the research investigates how sustainability functions as a hegemonic identity by marginalizing alternative narratives and securing broad ideological consensus. Employing critical discourse analysis, the study examines policy documents and public narratives from the European Union, the United Nations, and Turkey to trace how sustainability is articulated, institutionalized, and contested in different governance settings. The findings indicate that sustainability has evolved into an “empty signifier”-a flexible concept that unites diverse agendas under a common rhetorical umbrella. While this discursive openness facilitates global alignment, it also allows for co-optation, symbolic politics, and the suppression of transformative alternatives. Emerging critiques such as degrowth and climate justice movements reveal the fragility of this consensus and highlight growing resistance to technocratic and market-driven sustainability models. By situating sustainability within a broader field of ideological struggle, the study underscores its unstable and contested nature. Recognizing the discursive mechanisms that elevate sustainability to hegemonic status opens space for more pluralistic, democratic, and justice-oriented sustainability imaginaries. These insights carry important implications for rethinking policy frameworks and grassroots strategies in the face of ecological and political crises.
Elif Saracoğlu· Humanities and Social Scienc...· 0 citations
Given the increasingly significant role of discursive frames in shaping climate change governance, this research addresses the following question: How does policy language, through the frames it employs, mediate the relationship between institutional intent and real-world carbon outcomes? To answer this question, the study proposes an integrated Language-Policy-Outcome (LPO) framework to compare carbon governance discourse in China and the United States (California) between 2007 and 2022. Combining quantitative methods (large-scale topic modeling and network analysis) with qualitative ecolinguistic frame analysis, it examines 209 official policy documents and links discursive dynamics to CO2 emissions through correlation analysis. By bridging linguistic framing with empirical performance, this research advances a holistic understanding of how carbon governance discourse operates as an intermediary connecting institutional behavior, epistemic culture, and environmental outcomes. Results reveal that China’s technocratic frame and California’s legalistic frame both operate largely within a weak sustainability paradigm, where short-term compliance and efficiency improvements are emphasized compared to systemic socio-ecological transformation. While both discursive systems exhibit strong linguistic and thematic coherence, their association with emission outcomes remains partial and context-dependent, suggesting that policy language acts as a mediating and conditioning factor rather than a direct causal driver in decarbonization. The analysis also identifies rebound patterns, where efficiency gains coincide with continued absolute emission growth, highlighting the complex interplay between discourse, economic dynamics and governance structures. Methodologically, the study demonstrates the value of a mixed-methods approach that combines computational scalability with interpretive depth and performance validation, contributing to a more integrative understanding of climate governance communication.
Maria Stella Burgio, Gengyuan Liu, Ruiyan Ni et al.· Carbonsphere· 0 citations
This study explores how everyday brokerage mediates access to social assistance and reshapes citizenship practices among Indonesia’s urban poor. Drawing on a qualitative case study, it identifies three primary mediators: the state apparatus, politicians, and grassroots organizations. These actors operate through a framework of mediated practices conceptualized into three functional categories: navigational modes involving advocacy and representation, relational dynamics driven by familism and clientelism, and extractive behaviors characterized by corruption and rent-seeking. The findings reveal that this everyday brokerage is not merely a stopgap response to the absence of the state but a constitutive mode of urban governance. To capture this dynamic, this study introduces the concept of ambivalent citizenship, wherein mediated practices simultaneously empower and marginalize the urban poor. This article argues that the structure of relationships between mediators and citizens, whether fragmented and plural or singular and exclusive, dictates the capacity of the marginalized to claim their rights. When grassroots organizations are active, citizens leverage navigational modes to negotiate access and hold intermediaries to account. Conversely, when mediation is monopolized by political or familial networks through relational modes, exclusion and dependency deepen further. Furthermore, predatory practices that utilize extractive modes actively erode these formal rights. By unpacking the everyday politics of social assistance distribution, this study enriches the literature on urban governance, welfare politics, and citizenship in the Global South.
Haryanto, A. Savirani, Luqman Hakim· Urban studies· 0 citations
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are broadly recognised as independent civil society actors that contest social injustice and advance community empowerment. Yet their autonomy and governance are increasingly compromised by political interference operating through regulatory mechanisms, funding structures, and informal patronage networks. This study adopts a qualitative research design, drawing on semi-structured interviews with key informants from 120 small and medium-sized Delhi-based NGOs, purposively selected based on organisational size, funding structure, and exposure to political and regulatory constraints. Data were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) reflexive thematic analysis. Primary findings were triangulated with secondary literature, government notifications, and publicly documented cases, including materials related to the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) and its 2020 amendment. Political interference operates not only through direct control but via indirect mechanisms that normalise compliance, produce self-censorship, and reconfigure accountability as a disciplinary instrument. Loss of community trust (80%) and loss of organisational autonomy (75%) were the most frequently reported consequences. Findings further reveal governance distortions, including the weakening of internal democratic practices and downward accountability, and the structural production of mission drift and advocacy depoliticisation. The study concludes that preserving NGO autonomy requires stronger internal governance, funding diversification, and transparent self-regulatory mechanisms. State regulatory frameworks should safeguard NGOs’ democratic and moral role rather than constrain their operational capacity. The paper contributes to the growing debate on civil society co-optation, the autonomy–accountability paradox, and the conditions required for NGOs to remain genuine democratic actors.
Himanshi Singh, Satender, Sunil Kumar et al.· Political Discourse· 0 citations
Digitalisation is widely framed as a route to more efficient and participatory public administration. In authoritarian settings, however, digital governance often works less as administrative improvement than as a technopolitical instrument for managing dissent and insulating policy from contestation. This article examines technopolitical energy governance as administrative closure through which political conflict is recast as technical management, grassroots participation is constrained, and accountability is displaced into bureaucratic routines. Based on a comparative qualitative study using policy documents and semi‐structured interviews, the article analyses how digital infrastructures reshape energy policy making and redefine who is entitled to participate. Focusing on Iran and Saudi Arabia, it traces two converging logics. In Iran, digital systems become most visible during crises such as fuel price reforms and blackouts. In Saudi Arabia, digitalisation is embedded within long‐term development planning, where grassroots engagement is selectively structured, narrowing opportunities for meaningful participation in energy policy.
Arash Beidollahkhani· Public Administration and De...· 0 citations
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