Community Analysis: Exploring the Lock the Gate Community in Australia

This essay provides a sociological analysis of the Lock the Gate (LTG) community in Australia, examining how the sociological concept of culture explains the community's collective experience. The essay explores the community's formation in response to environmental concerns related to mining, coal seam gas, and fracking, highlighting their objectives, values, and ethics. It delves into how the community leverages integrated communication strategies, including social media and events, to mobilize supporters, raise awareness, and advocate for environmental conservation. The essay discusses the importance of community participation, social inclusion, and critical pedagogy in empowering the community to challenge the mining industry and protect Australia's natural resources. The analysis references relevant research to support the arguments, emphasizing the role of strong cultures and values in achieving community goals and fostering a sense of belonging and motivation among members.

1
COMMUNITY ANALYSIS
Community analysis
(Name)
(Institution affiliations)

2
COMMUNITY ANALYSIS
Introduction
Over the past decades, the community has been involved in the various projects in order
to solve their own problems by gathering people together, making use of cultural nuance and
changing process via community forums. The community involvement projects enabled diverse
stakeholders to express their opinions, making a collective decision, negotiating with agencies
and making sustainable goals and priorities that develop their own collective experience (Neef &
Neubert, 2011). Therefore, the research paper aims at examining how the sociological concept of
culture explains the way community makes sense of their own collective experience.
How the sociological concept or theory of culture explain the way in which the community
makes sense of their collective experience
The entire research paper will be based on the Lock the Gate (LTG) which is a
community that has experienced a high growth rate over the past years as a result of a clear set of
objectives, value, ethics and cultures about the conservation of environment in Australia (Lock
the Gate Alliance, 2019). The community is made up of 450 local groups and over 120, 000 local
supporters who have a concern of coal mining, coal seam gas and fracking (Lock the Gate
Alliance, 2019). Lock the Gate community was formed in 2010 involving various groups like
urban residence, conservationist, traditional custodians and farmers with a vision “protect
Australia’s natural, cultural and agricultural resources from inappropriate mining and to
educate and empower all Australians to demand sustainable solutions to food and energy
production” (Lock the Gate Alliance, 2019). The community developed a culture of conserving
the environment due to increased core mining activities in Australia. The mining companies have
significantly polluted the environment with the emission of poisonous gasses and contamination
of resources such as water. This has led to the community to respond through peaceful

3
COMMUNITY ANALYSIS
demonstrations and campaigns which the community hosts in various towns across Australia.
For example, in 2011, the Lock the Gate community was able to mobilize thousands of activists
on its National Day of Actions for it to push for the government to take actions against the
companies and individuals who were involved in the destruction of the environment (Lock the
Gate Alliance, 2019). In addition, the campaigns and demonstration from the Lock the Gate
community intended to push the landowners to terminate their contracts with the mining
companies which were failing to comply with government regulations on environmental
pollution and ended up risking the livelihood of the entire community. According to research
carried out by Eccles, Perkins & Serafeim (2012), an organization with an established culture
which units its workforce to work towards set objectives and goals gains success in facilitating a
change and growing sustainability. Thus, the Lock the Gate campaign has resulted to the
community which is very well established with strong cultures and values that stand up to protect
the destruction of their environment in Australia and improvement of livelihood through
enhancement of air quality and clean water for domestic and commercial use.

4
COMMUNITY ANALYSIS

5
COMMUNITY ANALYSIS
(Image source Lock the Gate Alliance, 2019)
The community awareness of their rights and education is what it takes to stand firm and
contest against the environmental pollution that results from the mining companies across
Australia. This means critical pedagogy is essential as it ensures leaders walk around the
community educating people, raising consciousness, working to find a sustainable solution that
benefits the community (Aliakbari & Faraji (2011).To differentiate the negative impact the
mining industry has on the environment despite creating employment and generating income to
various households and also being a source of revenue to the government requires a thorough
exercise of critical pedagogy and brilliant community. Therefore, to mobilize the community
towards protesting against big mining companies with capital influence requires a community
leader who can educate others, lead, being involved in the mass action and support social
inclusion. Education creates awareness and makes stakeholders have a clear understanding of
how the mining activities have adverse impacts on the present and future generations. As a
transformational leader in the community, the president of the Lock the Gate community
accommodates opinions from both internal and external stakeholders like activists protesting for
environmental conservation, landowners and farmers to have their take on the environmental
destruction issues. With the main objective of the Lock Gate Community being to promote a
pollution-free environment in Australia, social inclusion is exercised with the community putting
their ideological and physical differences such as politics of ethnicity to focus on environment
protection. Social inclusion is defined as a process of improving terms for people to participate in
community work often (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2011).

6
COMMUNITY ANALYSIS
Lock the Gate Community uses various communication channels for organizing the
meeting with trade unions, mining companies and the government to push for the environment
conversation. The communications of the community are done through Integrated
Communication Channels that involving both traditional and modern channels of
communications such as memos, social media and calls (Thorson & Moore, 2013). The social
networks that the lock Gate Community often uses to communicate its agenda and progress are
Twitter and Facebook. The community has an established page and groups where the members
can share their opinions, the leaders post the community progress and make any other relevant
communication. In addition, the events and videos captured by Lock the Gate Community are
posted on the website and YouTube for the world to be informed and enlightened about what is
going on. The integrated communication technologies cover a wide geographical area and can
mobilize people across various regions in Australia and the entire world who have an interest in
joining the community and push for their main objective. For example, through the social
networks like Facebook and Twitter, the lock Gate Community is able to share their grievances
faster, connect with the right agencies by tagging them their concerns, raise funds to support
their campaign and encourage many members to participate in their affairs. Therefore, the
modern social networks used by the lock gate community are essential towards connecting
business, rural and urban people in Australia, trade unions, agencies, farmers and other key
stakeholders to participate in their main objective of conserving the environment.
Lock the Gate Community motivates people from diverse regions across Australia to feel
part of the community. According to Sun, Rau & Ma (2014), when people feel included in the
community, they become motivated to work towards a common vision and their community
participation increases. Community participation involves mobilization of human resource to

7
COMMUNITY ANALYSIS
take a common action and is very useful towards connecting and educating people to foster a
culture that can lead to the achievement of the vision (Aref, 2011). The Lock the Gate
community connects people through Integrated Communication Strategies to ensure people
participate in their agenda. This can also be done through social capital like using maximally
suing Facebook page for attractiveness in order to ensure there is effective functioning of the
community through cooperation, trust, shared values, understanding, sense of identity, culture
and interpersonal relationship (Lin & Lu, 2011).
Conclusion
The Lock the Gate Community has encouraged people across various regions in Australia
to foster a positive culture that encourages them to participate in their campaigns and
demonstrations of pushing for environmental conservations. Lock The Gate Community uses
Integrated Communication Strategies to educate, empower and inform all the stakeholders on
their progress. Some of the integrated communication strategies used include social media
platforms, emails, calls, websites and formal meetings. The main aim of the strategies is to create
a culture of unity that can unify members to be active in community participation.

8
COMMUNITY ANALYSIS
References
Aliakbari, M., & Faraji, E. (2011, October). Basic principles of critical pedagogy. In 2nd International
Conference on Humanities, Historical and Social Sciences IPEDR (Vol. 17, pp. 78-85).
Aref, F. (2011). Sense of community and participation for tourism development. Life Science
Journal, 8(1), 20-25.
Eccles, R. G., Perkins, K. M., & Serafeim, G. (2012). How to become a sustainable
company. MIT Sloan Management Review, 53(4), 43.
Lock the Gate Alliance (2019). About us, retrieved from https://www.lockthegate.org.au/about_us
Neef, A., & Neubert, D. (2011). Stakeholder participation in agricultural research projects: a conceptual
framework for reflection and decision-making. Agriculture and Human Values, 28(2), 179-194.
Otsuji, E., & Pennycook, A. (2011). Social inclusion and metrolingual practices. International Journal of
Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14(4), 413-426.
Sun, N., Rau, P. P. L., & Ma, L. (2014). Understanding lurkers in online communities: A
literature review. Computers in Human Behavior, 38, 110-117.
Thorson, E., & Moore, J. (Eds.). (2013). Integrated communication: Synergy of persuasive voices.
Psychology Press.