Enhancing public participation through visualization technologies: Mountaintop removal as a case study

This paper identities the potential value that geospatial technologies such as Google Maps and Google Earth may offer for public advocacy groups. Using mountaintop removal as a case study, this paper outlines the means by which geospatial technologies can be used to contest official and industry claims of sustainability while also offering alternative understandings of sustainability. This paper also advances a call to recognize the significance of the “spatial turn” to communication studies and to develop a line of inquiry that responds to the growing use of interactive geospatial and visualization technologies.