Snowpocalypse 2021: Understanding Stakeholder Topoi in the 2021 Texas Power Grid Failure

Abstract

Purpose: This research is the first step in exploring how public policymakers use the expert knowledge and nonexpert knowledge they acquire in oversight hearings. This step is focused on learning what the testimony in oversight hearings reveals about how the primary stakeholders of the February 2021 power loss event understood that event. Method: The researcher used NVivo, a content analysis application, to examine public comments, witness testimony, and a combination of legislators' press releases and the text of bills they drafted. All texts were generated in February and March 2021. The researcher ran both a word frequency analysis and a thematic analysis of each set of texts to identify topoi used by each stakeholder group and compared the results. Results: The analysis revealed that the three primary stakeholder groups perceived the February 2021 power loss event differently, though some of the most salient, significant, or urgent concerns of each group overlapped. The stakeholder groups shared some topoi, but the ways each group used those topoi suggested different ways of understanding and interpreting the event. Conclusions: Technical communicators who are tasked with reconciling technical and nontechnical audiences in situations like this can use the techniques discussed here to better identify specific places where the respective groups' use of topoi diverged from one another or aligned with one another. The more that is known, and not just surmised, about stakeholders and how they understand and interpret their technical knowledge, the better we can address how that knowledge may be communicated throughout the legislative process.