Methods

Case selection and research design

The proposed New Cruise Berthing Facility project in the Cayman Islands was selected as the case study for this research. This port infrastructure project was selected because, in the years following its announcement in 2013, an environmental dispute between two coalitions (over the potential economic benefits versus environmental impact) arose and continues to this day. Both coalitions ran sophisticated campaigns that pushed their policy beliefs to persuade the public and government to proceed with or cancel the project. The project's threat to adjacent coral reefs and an unprecedented outcome of an indefinite halt of the project, mobilized by the non-dominant coalition, make this case of special interest.

This research uses a critical case-study research design to gain in-depth and contextual insights into a complex and contemporary issue (Yin, 2018). This case qualifies as a critical case because understanding how coalitions are formed to contest infrastructure projects that threaten coral reefs is important for future environmental disputes and is not limited to coral reef conservation. A qualitative approach to content analysis is used, wherein the researchers collect document data from local newspapers to identify coalition properties and the occurrences of policy change and learning. The Advocacy Coalition Framework is used with deductive logic to thematically code and analyze data (Saldaña, 2016).

Data collection

A total of 420 news articles were collected as the data for this book. Articles were collected from two local newspapers: The Cayman News Service and the Cayman Compass. Newspaper sources were chosen because the port project overtook national headlines for seven years with stories running almost daily for weeks at a time between 2018 and 2019. The Cayman News Service and The Cayman Compass were chosen because they are the two prominent online local newspapers in the Cayman Islands. While many articles were neutral, the Cayman News Service emphasized the views of and expressed support for the anti-port coalition, while the Cayman Compass (to a lesser extent) supported the pro-port coalition. The earliest article was dated on June 8, 2015 and the latest on September 9, 2021. n = 308 articles exist under the tag “cruise dock facility” in the Cayman News Service, of which n = 283 were included.