Descripción de la primera etapa de ejecución del diseño

The regulatory problems of disruptive innovations arise partly as a result of scientific estimates of the risks they pose. In both case studies, the primary means by which the issues of fracking and e-cigarettes were constructed as problems and made governable was through scientific attention to the risks that the technologies presented. In the case of e-cigarettes, this was evident in the strong stance taken against them in the tobacco control ecology and the calls for pharmaceutical regulation. In the fracking study, the risks of air and groundwater pollution, seismicity, and so forth were communicated primarily by activists and Green politicians who made frequent reference to scientific studies to back up their claims. Science played an important role in providing cognitive

keys for framing strategies. As indicated above, however, science and experts also encountered surprising limits on what they could achieve, especially in the face of what were characterized as highly polarized and emotional debates. This begs us to consider how science, expertise and emotions interact in framing contests. It is convenient to approach this topic through the sociology of risk, based on the intuition and observation that science enjoys a privileged position when framing risks, but a neither insurmountable nor absolute one. My departure point for this section is therefore the nature of risk and the role of science in its construction.

The sociology of risk emphasizes that risks are always situated within a social context and are therefore linked to actors’ activities (Lidskog & Sundqvist 2012). Because society is differentiated, risks are differently perceived by different societal actors. The sociology of risk therefore objects to the traditional understanding of risk assumed by “technical risk analysis” (TRA). TRA implies that risks exist objectively outside society and can be adequately measured and communicated by scientists. One group of experts might measure the risks, leaving it up to another group of experts to calculate the costs and benefits of addressing the risk. Political priorities can thereafter be based on these measurements (Power 2007). Because these scientific approximations are taken as given and left unquestioned, TRA is a wholly un-sociological view of risk and is neither conceptually nor empirically satisfactory for the current exercise. It assumes that scientific knowledge can provide complete and objective accounts of risk profiles that are universally acceptable. In previous chapters, I have already established that frames and perspectives matter – we must go beyond the purely technical and dive into the social.

In spite of numerous critiques of TRA (Slovic 1987; Kasperson et al. 1988; Irwin & Wynne 1996), the prevailing approach to risk governance in modern societies overwhelmingly builds on TRA and the public deficit model (Irwin 2006; Lidskog 2008). This “deficit model of public understanding of science” assumes that science is produced within a closed circle of experts and then disseminated to the public, who are often unable to properly understand the science (Irwin & Wynne 1996). TRA and the public deficit model make up a core part of the modern “civic epistemology”, that is, the way in which the robustness of knowledge claims are assessed in a society (Jasanoff

2005). If we follow the assumptions of the social construction of risk, it is not enough to

assert that TRA and the deficit model are inadequate – we must ask what these models do. What are the practices that sustain them, and what actors and relationships support them? The short answer is that TRA and the assumptions of the deficit model allow experts to frame an issue as falling under their control, and organizations can claim legitimacy by delegating risk management to the experts. To conceptualize an object as a risk is to make it governable (Hood et al. 2001).

Risks imply a calculated uncertainty. They have their basis in “a situation or event where something of human value (including humans themselves) has been put at stake and where the outcome is uncertain” (Rosa 1998, p.28). As discussed above, there is no straightforward way to make these calculations within contested social and political settings. Risks are contextualized differently, and different values are placed on their causes, consequences and mitigation strategies. We should therefore be careful not to disavow or relativize scientific and expert statements, but consider them as crucial elements in framing strategies that compete with other forms of normative, cognitive and relational keying.

Seen in this light, risks are framing devices that turn “an open-ended field of unpredicted possibilities into a bounded set of possible consequences” (Boholm 2003, p.167). Risks are neither objective nor subjective, but relational, consisting of three codetermined parts: a risk object, objects at risk, and a relationship that causally connects the risk object to the objects at risk (Boholm & Corvellec 2011, p.179). Risk objects are sources of harm, and the objects at risk are the targets of that harm. Actors construct these links through framing strategies, and all three aspects of the risk relationship are created simultaneously (p.181). This means that things cannot constitute a risk in and of themselves – they are always configured in semantic relationships (or framing strategies) that include valued objects at risk and some causal connection that

shows how those valued things are threatened by the risk object.31 Boholm (2003,

pp.171–172) identifies three types of framing strategies for dealing with risks under conditions of high uncertainty: faith, precaution and avoidance. Faith strategies get around the problem of uncertainty by placing trust in those responsible for managing the risk or in some other principle or force. Precautionary strategies adopt various measures to control, ban or otherwise regulate a possible risk. Avoidance strategies construct a dichotomization between risk and safety, implying that the risk object should be avoided and can never be made safe.

We can apply the typology of keys utilized in the theoretical framework of the thesis to construct a typology of framing strategies for coping with unknown risks. The

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Although they are related, the relational theory of risk addresses a shortcoming of the cultural theory of risk put forward by Douglas and Wildavsky (1983). Cultural theory has been criticized for its

functionalist explanation of why people come to form the beliefs they hold (Boholm 2003; Kahan 2012). It problematically and tautologically attributes agency to collective entities by saying that people form risk perceptions congenial to their way of life because those perceptions cohere with and promote their way of life. Relational theory and the psychometric school are opening up the black box of culture by investigating the social and psychological mechanisms or processes that intervene between culture and risk perception. Relational theory focuses on framing and social interaction, while the psychometric school looks at psychological processes within the individual. They operate on different scales.

faith strategy thus emphasizes relational keys, the precautionary strategy emphasizes cognitive keys, and the avoidance strategy emphasizes normative keys. However, these three strategies each have a mirror image, which Boholm fails to identify. The different key emphasized by each strategy respectively can be modulated in a positive or negative direction. In other words, you can cope with unknown risks by either supporting them or rejecting them. All coping strategies carry within them an evaluative assessment of the risk object as something inherently good or bad. This is because “there is no risk assessment without normative evaluation” (Rescher 1983, p.31): to be at risk, an object must be ascribed some kind of value.

When cognitive strategies reject a risk object, the cognitive frame emphasizes the inherent incalculability of the risk or the insufficiency of our knowledge to argue for its strict regulation or prohibition. This is an example of a negative modulation of the cognitive frame, which we can call precaution. It is similar to the way the European Commission thinks about the Precautionary Principle: this principle is invoked to legitimize regulatory measures taken on the basis of the inherent uncertainty and possible harm of the risk object (European Commission 2000). In contrast, cognitive strategies that are positively modulated in support of the risk object emphasize the calculability of the risk and identify measures we can take to effectively decrease the probability of an adverse occurrence. This strategy can be called prevention, which is closer in line with how EU law thinks about preventive measures taken to protect the

environment (“the Preventive Principle”).32

The difference between precaution and

32 _{This principle is implicit in both primary and secondary EU law. For primary law, see articles 191-193}

of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, available online at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12012E/TXT, accessed November 12, 2015. For secondary law, see for example the Industrial Emissions Directive, the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive, Seveso

prevention is that precaution implicitly rejects the risk by referring to its incalculability (what we do not know), while prevention supports the risk by referring to its calculability (what we know). In different terms, the prevention frame attempts to turn the unknown risk into a known risk.

Similarly, relational and normative strategies can also be modulated to either support or reject the risk object. What Boholm refers to as the faith strategy mobilizes relational keys to signal trust as a mechanism for coping with the risk. I will call that

strategy trust from now on, as it is a more exact antonym to the inverse mistrust

strategy, which does the opposite to discredit those running the risk or managing it. What Boholm identifies as an avoidance strategy implies an explicit negative normative judgment of the risk. It is inherently a bad thing regardless of what we know about it or

who is doing it or managing it. The inverse of this might be called acceptance, implying

a normative validation of the risk as something worth running because of the inherent value it embodies or the morally desirable state of affairs it can bring about. Thus, while both cognitive and relational strategies imply a normative judgment of the risk, they do this on the grounds of what we know about the risk or about the relevant actors. The normative strategies differ from the others by explicitly passing normative judgment on

the risk regardless of its cognitive or relational dimensions. This difference matters and

leads to another kind of framing strategies, as the analysis will show. Table 6-1 displays the typology of framing strategies for coping with unknown risks.

Table 6-1. Framing strategies for coping with unknown risks

Normative Cognitive Relational

Support Acceptance Prevention Trust

Reject Avoidance Precaution Mistrust

Another way to understand the difference between the framing strategies is to consider to which aspect of the risk relationship they primarily refer. Normative framing strategies relate primarily to the objects at risk – they are normative claims about the values we attach to the threatened objects. Cognitive framing strategies, on the other hand, are primarily targeted at the causal link. Scientific evidence has a privileged position when it comes to crafting these types of framing strategies (Boholm & Corvellec 2011, p.181). They assume that the calculability (or incalculability) of the consequences of the risk object are the most salient feature of the risk relationship. On the basis of what we know, do not know or cannot know about the consequences and causal relationship, they pass judgment on the risk object. Finally, relational strategies target the actors or those carrying out or managing the risk relationship. They bring some characteristic of the relevant actors into focus as imparting crucial expectations about the risk relationship as a whole. It is also important to point out that the different parts of the risk relationship can be completely reconfigured in various framing

strategies – one person’s risk object may be another person’s object at risk.33 When

analyzing how framing strategies address unknown risks, it is important to consider not

33 _{Boholm & Corvellec (2011) provides an example of how a rail tunnel project can be seen as a risk to}

the groundwater and fertile geology of an area valued by farmers, and vice versa, how the groundwater and geology is seen as a risk to the successful completion of the tunnel. Likewise, the threat of ‘dangerous dogs’ can be configured in various ways to suggest that it is, for example, the responsibility of the owner,

only the ways that cognitive, normative and relational keys interact, in positive and negative modulations, but also the various ways that risk objects, objects at risk, and risk relationships are configured. This is because the way the risk relationship is configured, and the specific strategies used to communicate it, have direct implications for how the risk is governed (Corvellec 2010). This applies not only to the content of a frame, but also to how the frame is communicated.