sciencewise "which publics" webinar slides
TRANSCRIPT
A L I S O N M O H R , S U J AT H A R A M A N , B E V E R L E Y G I B B S
Which Publics? When?Exploring the policy potential of involving different publics in dialogue around science and technology
Overview
Brief introduction
The case for looking beyond a representative sample of the ‘public’
to multiple ‘publics’ (10 min)
Q&A (10 min)
Key themes from the report (10 min)
Q&A (10 min)
Lessons and some questions for policy-makers to consider (5 min)
Forum to discuss the policy and practical implications of engaging
‘publics’ (15 min)
GM Nation? The public debate (2003)
A remarkable experiment in constructing novel forms of citizen deliberation around an emerging technology (Jasanoff, 2005)
How GM Nation? revealed contested ways of thinking about ‘the public’
Participants were self-selected because the dialogue was open to all
Picture that emerged of attitudes critical of GM was considered unrepresentative of
the disengaged attitude of the ‘general public’ that emerged from MORI surveys
(Horlick-Jones et al., 2007)
Questions for public dialogue that followed the experience of GM Nation:
Can self-selected participants with an interest/stake in the issue claim to speak on behalf of
(represent) ‘the public’?
Shouldn’t public dialogue be conducted with a statistically representative sample to be legitimate?
Yet, the idea that we do public dialogue to capture majority public opinion has been
challenged (e.g., Lezaun & Soneryd, 2007; Reynolds & Szerszynski, 2006)
Why has the criterion of ‘representative sampling’ as the gold standard for public dialogue been challenged?
The purpose of public dialogue is to engage the public on ‘wicked
problems’ rather than to study them
Key facts and value judgments are not settled when it comes to ‘wicked
problems’
Public dialogue aims to elicit diverse perspectives through a process of
engagement (Brown, 2004; Burgess and Chilvers, 2006)
Applied without awareness of the purpose of dialogue, representative
sampling methods can give a distorted picture focusing on: Majority public opinion (rather than diversity of perspectives)
‘Neutral’ views (rather than multiple views incl. those informed by prior knowledge)
Translating diversity into a majority view (so that diversity is, in fact, lost in practice)
Key challenges posed by GM Nation?
Is majority opinion sufficient to sustain the legitimacy of
policy decisions?
Can the idea of a diffuse, general public with fixed, pre-
given, ‘neutral’ views and preferences sustain good policy
where issues are complex and still emerging?
If not, how then should we think about the public?
Multiple publics
Campaigning publics
Make themselves known at some point and in some space(s)
around the issue in question
But, may not always be visible to policy makers – depending on
size, access, contacts (e.g., Greenpeace vs. No Leith Biomass)
Put forward particular visions of the public and the public
interest
Raise new questions and bring in forms of knowledge not
previously considered
Civil society publics
Organised and active in different spaces, but not
around the issue in question
Vary in size, access, visibility
E.g., Women’s Institute vs. Mumsnet vs. ‘low profile’ or
‘obscure’ groups
Potential to engage around the big policy issues that we
have to collectively confront
Latent public
Hard-to-reach, disenfranchised
Democratic imperative of reaching out to them to meet
the criterion of inclusivity
May be characterised as ‘disengaged’
But, may well be articulate about their priorities
Cannot be predicted in advance of the process of
dialogue
Health warning on labels!
Our aim is to draw attention to how the public might make
itself known, remain in the shadows or be revealed by others
Sensitizing device for public dialogue and its use in policy-
making
The categories of publics are issue-specific, time-specific –
and subject to change
Not meant for segmenting people into fixed categories –
people may move across categories
Why ‘publics’?
Does not mean ‘there is no such thing as the public’ or ‘the public interest’
What comes to be defined as the public view (public interest) is the
outcome of a process of which dialogue is a part
Can still be challenged especially when it seems to reflect only certain
narrow private or individual interests
Or challenged when some embodiments of the collective interest do not
adequately acknowledge constraints, limits, alternative visions
‘Publics’ allows us to both recognise the need for public input into policy-
making and understand that this input can be contradictory and diverse in
ways that need to be taken into account
Core lesson for policy-making
Dialogue processes have the potential and capacity to keep policy-making open to the unexpected by experimenting. . .
With different ways of thinking about the public With different ways of engaging with the public With different ways of understanding the public view
With different ways, therefore, of making policy
Question 1
The value of experimenting can only be captured if the policy-making process remains open to different ways of framing the policy problem by asking different questions that haven’t been posed or considered before
Given the way the policy-making system is structured and organised, does it have the capacity to keep these (framing) questions open for public input?
Question 2
Keeping policy-making open to unexpected public inputs means we have to consider different ways of experimenting with multiple publics in dialogue
Is the lack of ‘representativeness’ or of a majority view a problem for policy makers? What value can multiple publics and diverse perspectives have in the policy-making process?
Acknowledgements
Sciencewise-ERC
Public dialogue stakeholders who participated in our
workshop and interviews
Leverhulme Trust Research Programme (2012-17)
“Making Science Public: Opportunities and
Challenges”
Thank you for participating