Problems and Purpose

Because technology-society issues or controversial public policies involve facilities situated in specific locations, their impact is geographically limited. The public often lacks local context or easily falls prey to media narratives and influencer trends, leading to biases and stigmatization of local communities. However, local communities often lack the capacity to influence mainstream discourse or shape narrative power, leading to social divisions and regional injustices. CIDS hopes that through these thematic field trips, local residents can better understand the local context of tech-society impacts, while non-locals can experience how daily life coexists with technological development. This deeper understanding and connection may spark empathy or inspire action.

Why do the Travel Camp?

Nowadays, people often receive information through mass or social media. Under the influence of eye-catching content and algorithm-driven feeds, local affiliations and regional emotions can be reduced to superficial interests, such as subsidies or employment opportunities, that reflect economic dependencies. However, everyday life, socioeconomic dynamics, and local politics should not be oversimplified or discussed in isolation.

The Travel Camp invites participants to experience the tangible pressures and openness of a space, which can be both overwhelming and comforting. The trip also provides an opportunity to "meet and connect" with local citizens who may have different views on certain issues. By engaging all the senses, participants collect and process information, making the issues feel less distant and more vivid and gaining depth and resonance.

Then, through deliberative methods, such as forums or workshops, participants share experiences, reflections, and feedback. They leave with more than just literal "souvenirs" from the event. They gain local knowledge and authentic experiences that counteract misinterpretations of the community driven by passing trends.

How it Works: Process, Interaction, and Participation

Travel Camps unfold through a dual-track methodology that combines research and immersion with participatory simulation:

(1) Research and immersion, including field investigation, stakeholder interviews, and issue decomposition

(2) Participatory simulation, where insights from the field are translated into structured role-play and negotiation settings.

Field investigation + Policy analysis ---------> Simulate negotiation

The simulation phase encourages participants to embody stakeholder roles in a structured, semi-scripted setting where they can experiment with dialogue strategies, test communicative approaches, and explore value conflicts without real-world consequences.

The Travel Camp invites participants to embody stakeholder roles based on real field research. Unlike traditional debate formats where participants defend predetermined positions, this approach encourages experimentation with different communication strategies in a safe environment, role-switching to inhabit perspectives different from one's own beliefs, and a process focused on learning how to dialogue rather than simply reaching conclusions. Through reflective practice, participants can "rehearse" difficult conversations before they occur in formal settings.

The Three-Phase Structure

Phase 1: Start with understanding-– Research and Immersion

Participants enter issue sites to gain first-hand experience, listen to residents, workers, policymakers, and experts, and encounter the historical, social, and contexts behind the controversy.

Key Activities:

1. Site visits to contested locations (for example：decommissioned nuclear plants, industrial zones, residential communities)
2. Stakeholder dialogues with diverse actors including community residents, government officials, corporate representatives, local activists, cultural workers, and technical experts
3. Document collection gathering oral histories, environmental data, policy reports, spatial narratives

Participants attend not only to what people say but why—the historical experiences, structural positions that shape different rationalities.

Example from North Coast Nuclear Waste Camp: Participants visited decommissioned Nuclear Plants No. 1 and No. 2, engaging interview with :

1. local cultural worker: 25 years of anti-nuclear activism and energy transition prospects
2. District Chief: Inadequate community communication and development measures
3. Taiwan Power Company employees: Navigating institutional pressures and community distrust

Example from Kaohsiung Petrochemical Camp: Participants explored frontline communities:

1. Houjin: Site of 25-year resistance movement closing the Fifth Naphtha Cracker
2. Dalinpu: Facing forced relocation due to industrial expansion
3. Dashe & Linyuan: Living in petrochemical plant shadows, experiencing chronic health impacts

Phase 2: Issue Decomposition and Translation – From Field to Framework

Through guided fieldwork, complex problems are unpacked into their core components, the actors involved, underlying tensions, knowledge gaps, and value conflicts, and then translated into concrete roles and discussion frameworks.

Example from North Coast Camp: Field encounters were translated into role frameworks representing:

1. Government agencies (Economic Affairs, Nuclear Safety Commission)
2. Taiwan Power Company (operations, decommissioning, waste disposal, community relations divisions)
3. Expert communities (nuclear engineers, geologists, social scientists, indigenous rights specialists)
4. Local residents (from candidate sites, existing plant communities, future generations)
5. Non-human entities (spent fuel rods, irradiated soil)

Example from North Coast Camp: Field encounters were translated into role frameworks representing:

1. Government agencies (Economic Affairs, Nuclear Safety Commission)
2. Taiwan Power Company (operations, decommissioning, waste disposal, community relations divisions)
3. Expert communities (nuclear engineers, geologists, social scientists, indigenous rights specialists)
4. Local residents (from candidate sites, existing plant communities, future generations)
5. Non-human entities (spent fuel rods, irradiated soil

Example from Kaohsiung Camp: Participants developed digital platforms:

1. Interactive Story Maps visualizing lived experiences in four communities
2. The Asthma Files Archive documenting health and environmental impacts
3. "Life on the Front Line" Pocket Guide translating petrochemical knowledge into accessible formats

Phase 3: Simulation and Dialogue

Participants were assigned different roles—both human and non-human—and asked to articulate their positions, dilemmas, and possible pathways based on what they learned during the field trip.

Human Roles: Participants embody stakeholders such as:

1. Residents living near industrial facilities or waste sites
2. Government officials managing policy demands
3. Workers facing potential job loss from industrial transition
4. Future generations inheriting today's decisions

Non-Human Roles: The non-human roles invited participants to represent entities that cannot speak for themselves but are deeply affected by policy decisions. These roles included material entities central to controversies—such as spent nuclear fuel rods, contaminated ocean water, irradiated soil, and polluted air—as well as future generations.

Influences: The power of education to influence democratic empowerment

Travel Camp positions education not as information delivery, but as democratic infrastructure. By adopting a "learn first, then participate" approach, participants begin by engaging with the issue directly—encountering diverse perspectives in the field, from local residents and government officials to corporate representatives and activists, and practicing dialogue across differences through role-play simulation. These firsthand experiences transform participants from bystanders into empowered citizens, moving them from awareness to critical reflection and developing capacities for engagement in society, not just in classrooms.

Applications and Use Cases

The Travel Camp has served as one of CIDS's core methods for addressing complex technology-society issues. Cases conducted to date include the Taiwan North Coast Nuclear Waste Site Travel Camp and the Taiwan Kaohsiung Petrochemical Transition and Communication Journey. These cases demonstrate the method's core capacities — connecting technical controversies with lived social experience, building dialogue skills among diverse participants, and deepening participants' understanding of multi-actor policy environments.

Broader Significance

It is important to note that this requires meticulous preliminary fieldwork and stakeholder interviews, as well as an understanding of the various perspectives and positions on local issues. This means that the research center's collaboration and engagement with the community begins before the trip even starts. Through issue-based curation and deliberative design, we achieve dissemination that transcends geographical and generational boundaries. In other words, this is not merely the result of action research or social science investigations; it is an innovative approach to public participation. This approach provides diverse stakeholders and perspectives within society with the opportunity for "close-up" observation and analysis. Through the process of observing and being observed, issues gain deeper layers of consideration, incubating new possibilities.

See Also

There's so much more to explore — click here to continue your journey!

1. Travel Camp Method Overview
2. How to Organize a Dialogue Travel Camp
3. Youth Dialogue Nuclear Waste Camp