New but for whom? Discourses of innovation in precision agriculture.

We describe how the set of tools, practices, and social relations known as "precision agriculture" is defined, promoted, and debated. To do so, we perform a critical discourse analysis of popular and trade press websites. Promoters of precision agriculture champion how big data analytics, automated equipment, and decision-support software will optimize yields in the face of narrow margins and public concern about farming's environmental impacts. At its core, however, the idea of farmers leveraging digital infrastructure in their operations is not new, as agronomic research in this vein has existed for over 30 years. Contemporary discourse in precision ag tends to favour emerging digital technologies themselves over their embeddedness in longstanding precision management approaches. Following several strands of science and technology studies (STS) research, we explore what rhetorical emphasis on technical innovation achieves, and argue that this discourse of novelty is a reinvention of precision agriculture in the context of the growing "smart" agricultural economy. We overview six tensions that remain unresolved in this promotional rhetoric, concerning the definitions, history, goals, adoption, uses, and impacts of precision agriculture. We then synthesize these in a discussion of the extent to which digital tools are believed to displace farmer decision-making and whether digital agriculture addresses the biophysical heterogeneity of farm landscapes or land itself has become an "experimental technology"-a way to advance the general development of artificial intelligence. This discussion ultimately helps us name a larger dilemma: that the smart agricultural economy is perhaps less about supporting land and its stewards than promising future tech and profits.

Visualizing changes to US federal environmental agency websites, 2016-2020.

Websites have become the primary means by which the US federal government communicates about its operations and presents information for public consumption. However, the alteration or removal of critical information from these sites is often entirely legal and done without the public's awareness. Relative to paper records, websites enable governments to shape public understanding in quick, scalable, and permissible ways. During the Trump administration, website changes indicative of climate denial prompted civil society organizations to develop tools for tracking online government information sources. We in the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) illustrate how five data visualization techniques can be used to document and analyze changes to government websites. We examine a large sample of websites of US federal environmental agencies and show that between 2016 and 2020: 1) the use of the term "climate change" decreased by an estimated 38%; 2) access to as much as 20% of the Environmental Protection Agency's website was removed; 3) changes were made more to Cabinet agencies' websites and to highly visible pages. In formulating ways to visualize and assess the alteration of websites, our study lays important groundwork for both systematically tracking changes and holding officials more accountable for their web practices. Our techniques enable researchers and watchdog groups alike to operate at the scale necessary to understand the breadth of impact an administration can have on the online face of government.

Barriers and opportunities for breast cancer organizations to focus on environmental health and disease prevention: a mixed-methods approach using website analyses, interviews, and focus groups.

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women worldwide and most cases are not due to high risk inherited genes. In response, breast cancer activists successfully advocated for innovative research on environmental chemical exposures as a possible cause. Since then, new evidence supports hypotheses that common industrial and consumer chemicals are linked to the disease, and expert panels recommend reducing exposures. We evaluated whether these research results and recommendations are translated back into the work of breast cancer organizations and what barriers and opportunities influence their ability to focus on environmental factors. METHODS: We used a Python script to evaluate the frequency of environmental terms on the websites of 81 breast cancer organizations (> 14,000 associated URLs) and conducted two focus groups and 20 interviews with leaders of breast cancer organizations. We also analyzed the frequency of terms on two trusted, national cancer websites. RESULTS: 40% of organizations include information on environmental chemicals on their websites, but references are infrequent and rarely cite specific chemicals of concern. Most organizations (82%) discuss other risk factors such as exercise, diet, family history, or genetics. From interviews and focus groups, we identified four types of barriers to addressing environmental chemicals: 1) time and resource constraints, 2) limited knowledge of the state of the research and lack of access to experts, 3) difficulties with messaging, including concern that cultural and economic factors make it difficult for individuals to reduce their exposures, and 4) institutional obstacles, such as the downplaying of environmental risks by industry interests. Participants expressed the desire for easy-to-adopt educational programs and increased federal funding for scientist-advocate research partnerships. CONCLUSION: Our research underscores the need for environmental breast cancer experts and trusted cancer organizations to increase research translation activities so that breast cancer organizations can communicate new science on environmental factors in their online and in-person work. Moreover, our research highlights how most groups are focusing on providing resources to diagnosed women, including addressing problems with healthcare access, which displaces their ability to work on breast cancer prevention.

Learning in Crisis: Training students to monitor and address irresponsible knowledge construction by U.S. federal agencies under Trump.

Immediately after President Trump's inauguration, U.S. federal science agencies began deleting information about climate change from their websites, triggering alarm among scientists, environmental activists, and journalists about the administration's attempt to suppress information about climate change and promulgate climate denialism. The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) was founded in late 2016 to build a multidisciplinary collaboration of scholars and volunteers who could monitor the Trump administration's dismantling of environmental regulations and science deemed harmful to its industrial and ideological interests. One of EDGI's main initiatives has been training activists and volunteers to monitor federal agency websites to identify how the climate-denialist ideology is affecting public debate and science policy. In this paper, we explain how EDGI's web-monitoring protocols are being incorporated into college curricula. Students are trained how to use the open-source online platforms that EDGI has created, but are also trained in how to analyze changes, determine whether they are significant, and contextualize them for a public audience. In this way, EDGI's work grows out of STS work on "critical making" and "making and doing." We propose that web-monitoring exemplifies an STS approach to responsive and responsible knowledge production that demands a more transparent and trustworthy relationship between the state and the public. EDGI's work shows how STS scholars can establish new modes of engagement with the state, and create spaces where the public can not only define and demand responsible knowledge practices, but also participate in the process of creating STS inspired forms of careful, collective and public knowledge construction.