Research Associate Dominic Balog-Way was interviewed on the Plugging-In podcast, hosted by Barry Wygel of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York. In the October 15 episode, “Talking Risk: How Early Engagement Builds Stronger Renewable Projects,” Dominic discussed how improving risk communication practices can support New York State’s renewable energy transition. He emphasized the importance of early, meaningful engagement with local communities as a way to ensure that residents’ knowledge, values, and preferences are reflected in energy decision-making.
Publications
Research Associate Dominic Balog-Way, November 2025, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Why Enhancing Transparency in Risk Regulation Requires Effective Communication Processes,” Journal of Risk Research.
This conceptual paper opens by untangling the complex relationship between “transparency” and communication in risk regulation, introducing a typology that clarifies what policymakers aim to make more “visible” to outsiders (objects), how (mechanisms), for whom (audiences), and why (objectives and goals). It then offers a communication-based critique of popular transparency policies that rely on disclosing, revealing, or opening-up complex regulatory events and processes in the form they were originally produced. The central argument is that such “light-handed” policy mechanisms often fail to enhance transparency or achieve the regulators’ ambitious objectives, because they rest on an overly simplistic conception of complex communication processes.
Graduate student Julia Goolsby wrote a book review of Kyle Boogs’ Recreational Colonialism and the Rhetorical Landscapes of the Outdoors, November 2025.
In her review, Julia analyzes how the U.S. outdoor recreation industry and the discourse that surrounds it harms the rights and perceived legitimacy of Indigenous communities. The book also describes and contextualizes Indigenous resistance to such “recreational colonialism.”
Assistant Professor J. Nathan Matias & Megan Price, November 2025, “How Public Involvement Can Improve the Science of AI,” Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.
What, if anything, can public involvement add to the science of artificial intelligence? What are the actual strengths and weaknesses of participatory science on AI, and how can we make it better? This article summarizes the literature and shares examples for scientists, communities, and funders on improving the evaluation of AI systems.
Professor Katherine Sender, graduate students Margaret Foster and Beatrys Rodrigues… H. Wang, November 2025, “Strategic Methodological Essentialism: An Approach to Transnational LGBTQ+ Audience Research,” Media, Culture & Society.
This paper addresses the methodological challenges of conducting transnational audience research with LGBTQ+ fans of Netflix’s makeover show “Queer Eye.” Taking a queer and postcolonial approach, we recommend the careful use of language and identity categories for the pragmatic purposes of data collection and political engagement, while remaining critically aware of their limitations. Strategic methodological essentialism advocates an embrace of queer failure as a critical method to encourage context-specific approaches that challenge dominant paradigms in audience research and media studies.
Picture Time!
