Introduction
Nuclear power and climate change are both scientific and technological issues that involve calculations of risk and the potential for crises. Nuclear energy was developed as a source of power after World War II. Since that time, public awareness of nuclear energy has involved a “dualism” with the atomic bomb and the destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989). For at least two decades after World War II, the public accepted a progress view of nuclear power as a peaceful use of the atom, but opposition began to grow with the rise of the environmental movement in the 1960s, the energy crisis of the 1970s, and the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Mazur, 1990). Since the 1990s—as scientists have determined that the environment is at risk of global climate change resulting from the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases—proponents have “reframed” nuclear energy as a “zero-carbon” alternative to fossil fuels such as coal (Sovacool, 2007; Sonnett, 2009).
It is impossible to predict with certainty crises such as Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, this year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, or the future impact of global climate change. Crisis management researchers, however, suggest it is possible to prepare for or prevent potential crises by assessing for risk (Coombs, 2007). Risk involves a calculation of likelihood and impact that also cannot necessarily be determined with certainty. Communication researchers have suggested that risk calculation is a socially constructed process involving the media, the public, and proponents and challengers of a technology such as nuclear power (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Fitzgerald & Rubin, 2010).
This paper offers a brief examination of public opinion and media framing of nuclear power from after World War II until the present, including the “reframing” of nuclear energy as a potential solution to climate change. It proposes a study on the potential influence of media frames on support for nuclear power after the recent disaster in Japan.
Crisis Communication and the Social Construction of Risk
Coombs (2007) defined “crisis” as “the perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes” (pp. 2-3). Heath and Millar (2004) noted that “a crisis can harm stakeholders and damage the organization’s relationship with them” (p. 2). A crisis “is unpredictable but not unexpected” (p. 3), Coombs (2007) wrote, and organizations can prepare for or prevent crises in part by assessing for risk.
Risk involves likelihood, or “the probability of an issue gaining momentum” (p. 39), and impact, or “how strongly the issue can affect” (p. 39) an organization, Coombs (2007) noted. “Not all risks have the potential to be crises,” Coombs wrote. “Crisis managers must be able to separate minor risks from crisis-producing risks” (p. 39).
Hearit and Courtright (2004) noted the role of communication in the perception and management of crises. “Rather than being a vehicle that transfers meaning from one person to another, communication is the process whereby meaning is created and agreed upon” (p. 205), they wrote. Furthermore, they noted, “a social constructionist approach suggests that crises are only as serious as issue mangers, be they media, corporate, governmental, or interest groups, make them” (p. 208). According to Stallings (1990), “risk and its inverse, safety, are embedded in social structure” (p. 80). In contemporary society, Fitzgerald and Rubin (2010) noted, “risk definition is paramount because there has been an objective increase in risks caused primarily by technological innovation and, if these risks were to actualize, they would result in widespread catastrophe. At the same time, risks are never objectively comprehended; they must be defined and interpreted” (p. 368).
News organizations are significant actors in the social construction of risk, Stallings (1990) noted. Journalists influence the interpretation of risk “by selecting events to report, by interviewing and quoting experts who interpret those events, and by assembling and distributing news products” (p. 80), Stallings wrote. As Fitzgerald and Rubin (2010) noted, “When issues enter the public discourse they are shaped by ‘symbolic packaging’ attempts made by diverse actors in various institutional settings” (p. 375).
According to Heath and Millar (2004), “Reporters seek information, interpret information, and form evaluations (including attitudes), which motivate them to act” (p. 15). Media discourse, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) explained, “can be conceived of as a set of interpretive packages that give meaning to an issue” (p. 3). Each of these packages has “a central organizing idea, or frame, for making sense of relevant events, suggesting what is at issue” (p. 3, emphasis in original). Each of these frames, they wrote, “typically implies a range of positions, rather than any single one, allowing for a degree of controversy among those who share a common frame” (p. 3). These frame packages, they noted, are often sponsored by organizations that employ “specialists whose daily jobs bring them into contact with journalists. Their jobs breed sophistication about the news needs of the media and the norms and habits of working journalists” (p. 6).
Media, Fitzgerald and Rubin (2010) noted, “are pervasive and the source of information about new technology for all sectors of society. . . . As knowledge grows increasingly complex and plays a pervasive role in organizing social life, individuals rely on representatives of experts to play a translational role for them, which contribute to the centrality of the media to debates about science policy” (p. 374). According to Mazur (1990), “the organs of mass communication seem to be especially potent in bringing topics of environmental hazard to the attention of the audience” (p. 294). However, even when editors are inclined to favor technological change, Mazur wrote, reporting “is never wholly positive because of the tradition in American journalism to maintain balance in reports about controversial topics” (p. 311). For that reason, he noted, “increased reporting of a controversial topic always includes an increase in unfavorable as well as favorable comment” (p. 310).
Heath and Millar (2004) described “crisis as the interruption of a narrative. The story of an organization and the persons whose interests it affects are expected, by those persons, to constitute a story that ‘continues happily ever after.’ A crisis interrupts this narrative” (p. 11). As Stallings (1990) noted, “Most of the time, people ignore the risks of everyday life” (p. 81). However, this changes “when the taken-for-granted outcomes of routine activities fail to occur. . . . Forces that seemed benign, under control, or nonexistent appear to be malicious, unchecked, and omnipresent in the aftermath of such dramatic events” (p. 81). Indeed, according to Heath and Millar (2004), “crises are events or a series of events that are newsworthy. They attract attention to something an organization has done or needs to do. Reporters do not necessarily focus on faults, but their typical view of the scene suggests that some organization needs to address concerns and issues that are on the minds of markets, audiences, and publics” (p. 15).
In extraordinary, unexpected situations, Stallings (1990) noted, “because few of us may have direct contact with specialists” (p. 81), the public turns to news organizations, which have access to expert sources. “We watch, listen, and read about the likely causes of the unsettling event and hope to be reassured about the absence of future harm,” Stallings wrote. “In other words, the reality of risk for most of us exists mainly in images created by others” (p. 81). News organizations, Stallings explained, “bring us into contact with people who, in telling us about an event, invite us to see greater risks than we thought we knew, a world less safe than we assumed” (p. 91).
Fitzgerald and Rubin (2010) contended that “the ability to define risks is fundamentally about power. If so, the examination of media coverage of an emerging technology is an ideal methodology to reveal power differences” (p. 369). A small number of national news organizations, Mazur (1990) noted, “are very influential in selecting which among many hazards merit most attention” (p. 296). Their agenda changes from year to year, Mazur wrote, and does not necessarily reflect “the actual level of risk—or expected mortality—of a hazard” (p. 296). Journalists, Stallings (1990) wrote, “simultaneously create and perpetuate an image of reality when they assemble news products” (p. 87). This occurs as reporters—who in the prestige press are primarily white, male, urban, and upper middle class—select news sources, Stallings noted. According to Mazur (1990), “through their repeated contacts, reporters develop personal relationships with individuals who are important sources of information” (p. 296). Typically, these sources work for organizations linked by journalists to the issue under examination, Stallings (1990) wrote. “The organizational, occupational, and disciplinary points of view of those sources, transformed by reporters and editors into sentences, paragraphs, and headlines, present an account of how the world works in terms of risk and safety” (p. 87).
Furthermore, Stallings (1990) wrote, “like most members of the educated middle class, journalists in the prestige press see stories involving the hazardousness of the built environment as secular matters involving scientific content” (p. 87). According to Weaver, Lively, and Bimber (2009), “Belief in progress arising from the linkage of technological change to improving social conditions is a common element of American culture, and it is reflected in the tradition of news coverage of science and technology” (p. 146).
Although journalists rely on expert sources for technological information, Fitzgerald and Rubin (2010) noted, “the lay public has experienced a decline of trust in expert knowledge. That loss of trust results, in part, from the failures of experts and policy makers to prevent environmental and technological disasters (e.g., Chernobyl)” (p. 373).
Furthermore, Gamson et al. (1992) noted, media messages “can be read in different ways. . . . Texts may have a preferred meaning and point of view which the reader is invited to accept. But many readers decline the invitation, either entering into some negotiation with the dominant reading or rejecting it outright with an oppositional meaning” (p. 388). Individual readers, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) wrote, “bring their own life histories, social interactions, and psychological predispositions to the process of constructing meaning” (p. 2). According to Mazur (1990), “newspapers and broadcasting are only two of many factors that affect attitudes, with the social influences of family and friends often more potent” (p. 294).
Noting the interaction between the media and the public, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) wrote, “media discourse is part of the process by which individuals construct meaning, and public opinion is part of the process by which journalists and other cultural entrepreneurs develop and crystalize meaning in public discourse” (p. 2). Risk, Stallings (1990) noted, “is not the outcome of media and public discourse, but exists in and through the process of discourse. Hence risk is never constant” (p. 82, emphasis in original).
According to Fitzgerald and Rubin (2010), “public understanding about the potential risks involved in new technologies can affect the level of support and adoption of these technologies” (p. 374). As Mazur (1990) noted, “Actions by citizens to alleviate a hazard, or their opposition to a risky technology, increase and decrease with the amount of reporting of that hazard or technology. Protests by citizens and journalistic attention reinforce each other” (p. 296). Opposition to a hazard or technology among the wider public also increases along with the volume of news coverage, Mazur wrote. “Although news reports about controversial technologies are typically balanced, nonetheless they usually convey a general impression that a hazard is present, thus reinforcing opposition to the technology” (p. 296), he noted.
New events can change the public’s perception of risk, Stallings (1990) noted. “Since media discourse is an open and fluid process,” Stallings wrote, new events “may undermine a winning account at any time. . . . Journalists and their sources may re-examine previous events to see if there is some feature they all seem to share. Identification of a new common element may then shift responsibility onto a new set of actors, thereby implying a different solution” (p. 91).
Nuclear Power, Crises, and Public Perception
Gamson and Modigliani (1989) examined news coverage of nuclear power from the post-World War II years to the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters. “Nuclear power, like every public policy issue, has a culture” (p. 1), they wrote:
On an issue such as nuclear power, there is the specialist’s discourse using journals and other print media aimed at those whose professional lives involve them in the issue. There is the largely oral discourse used by officials who are directly involved in decision-making roles on the issue and by those who attempt to influence them. There is the challenger discourse, providing packages that are intended to mobilize their audiences for some form of collective action. (pp. 1-2)
In particular, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) noted, “a dualism about nuclear energy is part of its core” (p. 12). Public awareness of nuclear power, they explained, is linked to the atomic bomb and the destruction in Japan at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Even when discourse focuses on the use of nuclear reactors to generate electricity, the afterimage of the bomb is never far from the surface” (p. 12), they noted.
Gamson and Modigliani (1989) identified dominant frame packages in news coverage of nuclear power. A progress package benefited “by its resonances with a larger cultural theme of technological progress” (p. 5). Public agencies such as the Atomic Energy Commission and its successors, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Department of Energy “have been important sponsors of the progress package” (p. 7, emphasis in original), they noted, along with industry groups and “a neoconservative advocacy network” that has “spread this package through its journals” (p. 7).
After World War II, this progress package was “framed as a choice between atoms for war and atoms for peace”—an “either/or structure of nuclear dualism” that “essentially remained unchallenged for the next quarter century” (p. 13). Gamson and Modigliani cited “the lack of attention paid to a serious nuclear accident at the Fermi reactor outside Detroit in the fall of 1966” as evidence “of the dominance of the progress package” (p. 14). Even as late as the 1970s, Mazur (1990) wrote, serious nuclear accidents at Brown’s Ferry in Alabama and Rancho Seco in Northern California were mostly unreported by the national news media.
However, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) noted, “American culture also contains a countertheme that is skeptical of, or even hostile to, technology” (p. 6). They identified two competing frame packages—runaway and soft paths—that “draw much of their symbolism” (p. 6) from this suspicion of technology. Environmental and consumer protection advocates; a professional organization, the Union of Concerned Scientists; and “direct-action groups such as the Clamshell Alliance” (p. 7) have sponsored these antinuclear packages, they wrote.
As with other technological issues, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) wrote, in journalists’ coverage of nuclear power, “it is these competitors that bear the burden of proof” (p. 7). Journalists, they noted, “make official packages the starting point for discussing an issue” (p. 7). According to Mazur (1990), “most active proponents of the ‘establishment’ side of a controversy are connected with the issue through the occupational activity of their working life” (p. 304). As for opponents to a technology such as nuclear power, Mazur noted, “with the exception of a relatively few paid professionals—lawyers, writers, officers of environmentalist groups—most ‘challengers’ contribute their time and other resources outside their regular occupational tasks for little or no monetary compensation” (p. 304), but are encouraged and motivated by media attention.
By the 1970s, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) wrote, “media discourse on nuclear power reflected an issue culture in flux. Progress was still the most prominent package, but its earlier hegemony had been destroyed” (p. 15). According to Mazur (1990), “increasing national attention to environmental problems in the late 1960s, and to the ‘energy crisis’ of the 1970s, reinforced the movement against nuclear power plants” (p. 306). Challengers, raising the prospect of a hazardous release of radiation into the environment, introduced the soft paths package, which argued against reliance on highly centralized technology, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) noted. However, they wrote, the oil crisis also brought a new pronuclear package: energy independence.
Mazur (1990) determined that “the amount of reporting about an environmental or technological hazard, rather than what is reported about the topic, is the primary vehicle of communication about such risks, and that the beliefs of the audience follow directly from the intensity and volume of reporting” (p. 295). Furthermore, Mazur wrote, “extensive reporting of a controversial technological or environmental project not only arouses public attention, but also pushes it towards opposition” (p. 295). Media coverage of nuclear power increased in the mid-1970s, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) noted. “In the first three months of 1979,” before the Three Mile Island accident, “the networks ran 26 stories related to nuclear power” (p. 17), they wrote. The coverage emphasized the progress package, they noted, with challengers’ views limited to “the faint hint of soft paths implied by the mention of safety and environmental concerns” (p. 19).
When covering issues such as nuclear power, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) noted, journalists look for news “pegs”—defined as “topical events that provide an opportunity for broader, more long-term coverage and commentary” (p. 11). For example, the Hollywood release of The China Syndrome just weeks before Three Mile Island suggested the runaway package. The film, Gamson and Modigliani wrote, provided “a concrete, vivid image of how a disastrous nuclear accident could happen” (p. 21). The China Syndrome, they wrote, “numbered among its stars Jane Fonda, an actress so closely identified with the antinuclear movement that pronuclear groups used her as a symbol of it” (p. 21). According to Mazur (1990), “had the accident at Three Mile Island occurred in 1976, it might also have been ignored, at least initially. But in 1979, President Carter was planning a major program for the production of energy, and the anti-nuclear film, The China Syndrome, was being exhibited across the country: the response of reporters and editors was therefore intense” (p. 299).
With the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) wrote, “a progress interpretation was forced to compete with others that were saying that a serious nuclear accident could and probably would happen” (p. 22). According to Mazur (1990), “pictures are especially powerful in concentrating symbols of a technology or an environmental hazard into a simple image” (p. 311). At Three Mile Island, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) wrote, ABC’s television news operation “used the cooling towers as visual reinforcement for a runaway package that permeated its coverage and provided its central storyline” (p. 22). Seven years later, coverage of Chernobyl brought a “striking new image,” Gamson and Modigliani wrote, with “frequent footage of radiation detectors being used to check people and food” emphasizing “the invisible danger theme” (p. 22). The use of the progress package, they wrote, had shrunk and often had “a grudging and defensive tone” (p. 23), while energy independence, soft paths, and other frame packages were mostly nonexistent.
Even so, the Three Mile Island disaster had just a temporary effect on public opinion, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) wrote. “When the media spotlight was turned off, public opinion rebounded almost immediately to pre-TMI levels” (p. 31), they noted. According to Mazur (1990), Three Mile Island “was regarded as a near-disaster by persons who were previously opposed to nuclear energy, but supporters of nuclear energy viewed the lack of fatalities as proof of the effectiveness of the safety systems. Hardly anyone with a prior position on nuclear power changed it as a result of the accident” (p. 294). Over a 15-year period beginning in the early 1970s, Gamson and Modigliani (1989) wrote, Three Mile Island “looks like little more than a small blip, which slightly accelerated a secular trend against nuclear power” (p. 31). As Mazur (1990) noted:
Reporting about nuclear power plants and public opposition to them rose together in the mid-1970s, then dropped during 1977-78, then rose sharply in response to the accident at Three Mile Island; both had then fallen by 1980. After 1980, opinion became increasingly negative while news reporting declined, and the two trends did not converge again until the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, when they rose abruptly together and then fell off erratically from that peak. (pp. 315-316)
Mazur (1990) recognized the inconsistency that a decrease in news coverage of nuclear power accompanied growing opposition in the early 1980s. However, he noted, “Ronald Reagan began his presidency in 1981 with a very critical attitude towards the Soviet Union and a determination to build up the military strength of the United States, including nuclear weapons” (p. 317). This led to protests in Europe and North America the next year calling for a nuclear freeze, he noted. Mazur contended that “the ominous image of nuclear weapons, made suddenly salient in 1982, merged with the public’s simple image of nuclear power, as it often has” (p. 320) in the 20th century.
Climate Change and the ‘Reframing’ of Nuclear Power
In the 1990s and in this century, as concern has grown about the impact of global climate change, proponents have suggested nuclear power as an energy source that could help reduce emissions of carbon dioxide produced from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal. As Sovacool (2007) noted, “The Kyoto protocol, which entered into force for 141 countries in 2005 and aims to cut back on global greenhouse gas emissions, has driven interest in nuclear reactors, which many consider a ‘zero carbon dioxide emission’ technology” (p. 107).
Like nuclear power and other technological issues, climate change involves calculations of risk. Climate, Sonnett (2009) wrote, “is by definition an averaging of weather conditions over a given time and space, and is not immediately experienced like a catastrophic weather event. Perceptions and judgments about climate change and its impacts therefore depend heavily on social processes of knowledge construction” (p. 698). As with other technological issues, Sonnett noted, “communication media will play a vital role in constructing knowledge about, and responses to, this climate risk” (p. 698).
According to Bickerstaff et al. (2008), “in the past decade, human influence on the climate through increased use of fossil fuels and changes in land use has become widely acknowledged as one of the most pressing issues for the global community” (p. 145). In the United Kingdom, Europe and elsewhere, they noted, proponents are suggesting “a new framing of nuclear power as ‘sustainable energy’ ” (p. 146). This “reframing,” they wrote, “presents the construction of new nuclear powered electricity (referred to as ‘new nuclear build’) as essential to future energy policy and specifically delivering climate change mitigation” (p. 146).
Based on a survey of 1,547 respondents and follow-up focus groups, Bickerstaff et al. (2008) concluded that public opinion in Britain is mixed about a possible resurgence of nuclear power. “For many, radioactive waste was also intimately connected to a rich cultural repertoire of images associated with the history of nuclear technology” (p. 153). Furthermore, they noted, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and other nuclear disasters “are crucial to understanding people’s concern about the nuclear industry” (p. 153). As for the threat of global warming, they found, “climate change was largely seen as an unknown danger” (p. 155), while radioactive waste was “linked to images and symbols of dread and unfairness, connected with a technology that is more clearly identified with risks and harm than benefits” (p. 155). Even so, the reframing of nuclear power as a potential solution to climate change had some influence on public opinion, they found. While initial views on nuclear power “were resolutely negative, there were observable shifts towards more mixed and open views about this issue when participants considered climate change” (p. 159). It can be reasoned, they concluded, “that a policy discourse framing new nuclear build in terms of climate change mitigation would lead people towards a position of reluctant acceptance” (p. 159).
In the United States, Whitfield et al. (2009) examined public opinion about nuclear power based on phone interviews of 380 adults in 1997, as well as later Gallup polls. They concluded that “the most recently available national opinion data on expanding the number of nuclear power plants reveals an ambivalent American public” (p. 435). While “the American public supports nuclear power for the generation of electricity in the abstract” (p. 435), a majority also opposes siting of nuclear power plants in or near their own communities. “The most compelling raison d’etre for reviving nuclear power, as a solution to global warming, has yet to attract widespread support” (p. 435), they wrote.
Sovacool (2007) contended that the choice between coal and nuclear power is a false dichotomy:
Nuclear energy systems have already achieved commercialization. Moreover, compared to traditional fossil fueled generators, nuclear plants release less quantities of pollution in a way much easier to manage. Yet such a comparison between nuclear and fossil power systems suffers from a deeper problem: it artificially narrows the discussion and obscures two sets of more effective supply-side solutions to America’s energy problems: renewable energy systems and small-scale non-renewable distributed generation technologies. (p. 108)
Conservation, small-scale power generation, and renewable energy sources such as solar, bioenergy, and wind are superior to nuclear power and fossil fuels on criteria including cost, negative externalities such as air and water pollution, reliability, and security, Sovacool (2007) contended. “A greater use of renewable energy technologies would insulate the U.S. economy from fuel shocks, shortages, and interruptions, and distribute the security risks of the power grid” (p. 117), Sovacool wrote.
In 2011, new concerns about nuclear power were raised in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake and tsunami off the coast of Japan (Onishi & Glanz, 2011). On March 11, a 46-foot tsunami flooded the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility, cutting off power needed for the cooling system that was designed to prevent a release of radiation into the environment. The resulting nuclear disaster, Onishi and Glanz wrote, involved a tragic miscalculation of risk factors at the plant. “Japanese government and utility officials have repeatedly said that engineers could never have anticipated the magnitude 9.0 earthquake—by far the largest in Japanese history—that caused the sea bottom to shudder and generated the huge tsunami,” they wrote.
For decades in a country “known for its technical expertise,” Onishi and Glanz (2011) noted, “Japanese officialdom and even parts of its engineering establishment clung to older scientific precepts for protecting nuclear plants, relying heavily on records of earthquakes and tsunamis, and failing to make use of advances in seismology and risk assessment since the 1970s” such as an emphasis on the likelihood of cataclysmic events rather than whether or not they have happened in the past. Even after the powerful Kobe earthquake in 1995, they noted, “power companies, which were focused on completing the construction of a dozen reactors, resisted adopting tougher standards” to protect their plants against earthquakes and tsunamis.
Proposed Study
The proposed study will attempt to examine the influence of media framing about nuclear power on three groups of college students in undergraduate communication classes. The study also will include a control group that will not be exposed by the researcher to specific media framing about nuclear power.
The first group will be assigned to read a news article prepared by the researcher about the recent nuclear disaster in Japan. The article will contain an examination of the safety of nuclear energy including the perspectives of both pronuclear and antinuclear sources. In class, the group will watch an edited video presentation with similar content.
The second group will be assigned to read a similar article and watch a similar video presentation. However, both will be edited to emphasize the “reframing” of nuclear power as a potential solution to global climate change.
Finally, a third group will be assigned to read an article and watch a video presentation that mention the potential of nuclear power as a solution to climate change, but also emphasize the viability of renewable energy sources.
Each of these three groups then will be surveyed anonymously with questions about their views on nuclear power, climate change, and renewable energy—as well as their general political views. Respondents also will be asked whether they believe most of their friends and family support nuclear power and/or the use of renewable energy, or believe climate change is a valid issue. The fourth group will be asked the same questions, but will not read an assigned article or watch a video presentation.
The study will test competing hypotheses. Mazur (1990) suggested that news coverage of a controversial technology such as nuclear power, even when balanced, leads to opposition. However, Bickerstaff et al. (2008) suggested that the reframing of nuclear power as a potential solution to climate change could lead to reluctant acceptance. It also is possible that the study could find support for the idea that media framing is a less potent influence than the views of an individual’s friends and family.
References
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