Citizen Voices: Performing Public Participation in Science and Environment Communication (European Communication Research and Education Association)

This volume explores the ways in which citizen voices on science and environmental issues are articulated, heard, marginalized, and silenced in mass media, policymaking, and other public venues. In a range of case studies from countries across Europe and North America, contributors offer empirical insights about the articulation of citizen voices, as well as citizens’ scope for action in different national, cultural, and institutional contexts. Drawing on science and technology, environmental studies, and media and communication studies, they also present methods for foregrounding the role of communication in scientific and environmental governance.

Louise Phillips is associate professor in the Department of Communication, Business, and Information Technologies at the Roskilde University, Denmark.

Anabela Carvalho is associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences at the University of Minho in Portugal.

Julie Doyle is a principal lecturer in media studies in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Brighton, UK.

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction

      Louise Phillips, Anabela Carvalho and Julie Doyle

Part I: Public Participation and Media

2. When Citizens Matter in the Mass Mediation of Science: The Role of Imagined Audiences in Multidirectional Communication Processes

      Ursula Plesner

3. Contested Ethanol Dreams—Public Participation in Environmental News

      Annika Egan Sjölander and Anna Maria Jönsson

4. Citizen Action and Post-Socialist Journalism: The Responses of Journalists to a Citizen Campaign against Government Policy towards Smoking

      Pavel P. Antonov

5. Discourse Communities as Catalysts for Science and Technology Communication

      Hedwig te Molder

6. Online Talk: How Exposure to Disagreement in Online Comments Affects Beliefs in the Promise of Controversial Science

      Ashley A. Anderson, Dominique Brossard, Dietram A. Scheufele and Michael A. Xenos

Part II: Public Participation and Formal Public Engagement Initiatives

7. Communicating about Climate Change in a Citizen Consultation: Dynamics of Exclusion and Inclusion

      Louise Phillips

8. Public Engagement as a Field of Tension between Bottom-up and Top-down Strategies: Critical Discourse Moments in an ‘Energy Town’

      Anders Horsbøl and Inger Lassen

9. The Stem Cell NetWork: Communicating Social Science through a Spatial Installation

      Maja Horst

10. Issue-centered Exploration with a Citizen Panel: Knowledge Communication and ICTs in Participatory City Governance

      Pauliina Lehtonen and Jarkko Bamberg