Fostering Voice, Inviting Dialogic Transformation: Exploring Emergent Communication Practices in Community Collaboration Efforts

Abstract

The complexities of contemporary social issues, often termed ‘wicked problems,’ require responses that bring together diverse stakeholders to engage in collaborative solution-building processes. However, entrenched polarization around problems such as firearm violence often hinders the potential for new meaning and understanding to emerge through dialogue. This study explores how the communicative processes within community collaboration efforts around firearm violence work to foster voice, and subsequently dialogic transformation amongst stakeholders coming from marginalized positions within their local communities. Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews, inquiry into participant experiences of community conversations amongst four immigrant groups in a small city in the Midwest offers insights into communicative factors shaping participants’ investment in, and capacity for, dialogic engagement within the conversations. Findings reveal the importance of understanding how participants’ practices of authentically sharing their different experiences and interests, or their voices, is connected to their prior experiences of voice within community spaces. This inquiry also observes how being invited into communication environments that emphasize emergence and mutuality introduce pathways toward dialogic transformation and the achievement of collaborative goals. Investigating contextual influences on participants’ engagement brings expanded theoretical awareness to barriers and motivators of voice amongst marginalized populations, offering actionable insights to inform more tailored, inclusive, and effective community collaboration efforts toward addressing wicked problems.