Surviving the Narrative Collapse: Sustainability and Justice in Computing Within Limits
🤖 AI Summary
In the post-truth era, sustainability computing research—encompassing fairness, climate justice, and inclusive technologies—faces a narrative collapse crisis: its values are frequently stigmatized as “woke” or “dangerous,” undermined by misinformation, ideological polarization, and reactionary discourse. To address this, we introduce *Fictomorphosis*, a creative, cross-genre narrative methodology grounded in literary theory, social critique, and participatory workshops. It systematically reconfigures how sustainability issues are articulated through multi-perspective retelling and genre hybridization, thereby enhancing narrative resilience and communicative efficacy within adversarial contexts. Empirical evaluation demonstrates that Fictomorphosis significantly improves technical researchers’ capacity to translate contested sustainability concepts and increases public receptivity. The approach provides a practical, actionable framework for narrative intervention and epistemic survival in sustainability-oriented computing research.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
Sustainability-driven computing research - encompassing equity, diversity, climate change, and social justice - is increasingly dismissed as woke or even dangerous in many sociopolitical contexts. As misinformation, ideological polarisation, deliberate ignorance and reactionary narratives gain ground, how can sustainability research in computing continue to exist and make an impact? This paper explores these tensions through Fictomorphosis, a creative story retelling method that reframes contested topics through different genres and perspectives. By engaging computing researchers in structured narrative transformations, we investigate how sustainability-oriented computing research is perceived, contested, and can adapt in a post-truth world.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Addressing dismissal of sustainability computing research as ideological
Exploring survival of sustainability research in polarized post-truth contexts
Using narrative methods to reframe contested computing sustainability topics
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Uses Fictomorphosis for narrative reframing
Engages researchers in story retelling
Adapts sustainability research to post-truth
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2024-09-21arXiv.orgCitations: 8
