Incorporating stakeholder interests: What is the role that material artefacts play in public engagement settings?

Public engagement is becoming increasingly commonplace globally, bringing with it unique sets of rituals and procedures that project managers must follow through. The disparate and divergent nature of stakeholder cohorts makes the management of these processes particularly challenging. Much attention has focussed on how the public can be identified as stakeholders to the project, and how they should be managed within this contested environment. Less attention is paid to the actual procedures that are involved, especially the role and use of material artefacts in public engagement processes. In this paper, we examine the material artefacts used in public engagement settings, in particular, how they are used to cross political knowledge boundaries. We take a socio-technical approach to consider these artefacts as nodes in a wider heterogeneous network. Using data collected through an ethnographic study, we show examples where material artefacts i) represent a form of power that is already in-play; ii) control and direct the flow of discussion; and iii) used to rally or promote points of view. By exploring the role these artefacts play, we seek to uncover and explain the highly politicised and value-laden network in which managers often have to operate.