Background: Professional communication researchers have engaged communities through community
research and interventions, such as town halls, charettes, and participatory design work. Such interventions rely on
community members who are willing to get involved, voicing their perspectives, and engaging in productive dialogue.
Yet, some communities do not have these precursor conditions for intervention: they face significant social barriers that
make such interventions unlikely to succeed. In an interview- and document-based study, we examine the social
barriers described by interviewees in “Permia,” a small town in the Texas Permian Basin region. In contrast to the five
other communities we studied, Permia participants demonstrate little readiness to engage in community dialogue. We
explore how Permia interviewees made sense of unwillingness to participate in its public life, how their understandings
contrasted with the other communities we investigated, and how this research might guide professional communicators
as they plan future community-based interventions. Literature review: We review the professional communication
research on community interventions as well as relevant sociological literature on boomtowns. Research questions: 1.
How do community leaders understand their community heritage as constraining or enabling development? 2. Where do
community leaders and members see potential for change and growth in community development? Where do they see
barriers, threats, and hard choices? 3. How do community leaders describe the relations among community
development stakeholders? How do they describe expectations and trust among them on interpersonal, intergroup, and
interorganizational levels? Research methodology: We collected documents and statistics about six small Texas
towns, then interviewed community leaders about the towns’ advantages and challenges. Based on those interviews,
we collected further documents. We analyzed the data using deductive and inductive coding, as well as narrative
analysis. Results/discussion: Through coding, we determined that interviewees saw Permia’s residents as unwilling
to engage in deliberations in traditional forums such as city council meetings, and that their explanations for this
unwillingness fell into three categories of barriers: distrust of institutions, dwindling personal ties, and lack of moral
expectations for residents to engage in community dialogue. These three categories contrast with the other communities
we studied. Through narrative analysis, we identify stories that were told by the interviewees to explain how these
barriers developed in Permia. Conclusion: We conclude by discussing how professional communicators might survey
barriers to community dialogue. Such surveys can help professional communicators choose a pathway for intervention
in their community projects.IC2 Institut
