Emo Gotsbachner

Renegotiation and stabilization of meanings is inherent to all political processes. Hence Discourse Analysis aims to reconstruct, how habitualised and recognizable ways of speaking legitimise (or otherwise criticise) particular social and political practices, in affirming patterns of meaning which certain actors take for granted while trying to normalize their ideological world-views as ‚social knowledge'. Discourses which become hegemonic as defining frames of social reality demarcate what is politically feasible at certain points in time, and how discourses become hegemonic is a crucial question.        

In my paper I argue that a process-oriented Discourse Analysis specific to Political Science must become one step more complex. It needs to conceptualise that discursive propositions competing for hegemony in the political arena of public discourse are related to each other, and take into consideration that the main addressees, to whom these discursive propositions are tailored, are a heterogeneous electorate. How different audiences actually make sense of political messages is an open question not even touched in most discourse analytic research designs. Illuminating the antagonistic ways competing discourses structure people's perception of a complex social and political world therefore must be a crucial part of the discourse analytic endeavour, which cannot be left to quantitative opinion polls. Under the conditions of politics of meaning mainly being channelled through television news and other mass media it is also a common strategy of political actors to orient to these heterogeneous understandings of different audiences in adopting a kind of heteroglot rhetoric. There is a competition about who stands for a legitimate solution to which political issue, where it burns down to the question to whom the audience ascribes the competence, credibility and suitable political position to talk about these issues, deciding about rights of definition and burden of proof. Discursive strategies of politicians trying to establish certain framings as 'social knowledge' can backfire severely, because what certain communities of interpretation regard as common sensical knowledge, for other communities rather represents pure ideology.          
I will present first impressions of results from an ongoing research project, which tries to integrate these conditions, conceptually and methodologically. Our 'Frame Project' examines how political actors try to establish their interpretative frames of political issues in televised panel discussions, and explores their influences on the interpretational orientations of various groups of audiences. We analyse how different audiences assign credibility and importance to different aspects of information and representation and whether or not they take them on as appropriate, close-to-experience definitions of social reality. Especially important are cases where political actors are able to establish their framings and readings beyond their 'logical' clientele (in terms of social background and party affiliation), because where interpretative frames and their definitions of social conditions, problems and roles spread to the wider public and become dominant, one can expect to find a basic leverage point of social and political dynamics.

Markku Lehtonen and Ms Mari Martiskainen

Nuclear power is undergoing a revival in a number of countries of both developed and developing world, and is increasingly portrayed as a solution to the problems of climate change and energy security. This paper presents an analysis of the current debates concerning nuclear power, focusing specifically on the debates in Finland, France and the UK around the projects to build the new European Pressurised Reactors (EPR), at present under construction in Finland (Olkiluoto) and France (Flamanville). The controversies concerning the EPR projects, notably the Finnish reactor, are of high relevance for the future of nuclear power, notably because the Finnish and the French reactors are seen as showcases of the EPR, portrayed by the nuclear protagonists as a safer and more efficient new generation of nuclear technology. A number of countries, including the UK, are considering the EPR as a possible technology for their future nuclear projects.

The empirical analysis of the debates in France and the UK relies on an approach of pragmatic sociology, employing the research methods of 'socio-informatics'. This approach is centred around the application of 'Prospéro' software, developed at the research group on pragmatic and reflexive sociology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. The research approach enables the analyst to follow the actors and arguments in a wide array of arenas in which controversies are created and transformed. The analysis places the current debates within their historical context, traces the transformations and key turning points over the years, including notably the changing actor networks and the argumentative strategies employed by these actors. Major benefits of a Prospéro-based analysis include its flexibility and openness to different research approaches, its open-ended nature which makes it suited to analysing on-going debates, and its ability to combine quantitative statistical analysis with qualitative in-depth analysis. Because Prospéro does not yet allow analysis in Finnish, the analysis in Finland will focus on a more limited sample of debates in Parliament before its decision in 2002 to give a go ahead to the EPR project and selected recent newspaper articles, press releases and policy documents concerning the problems encountered in the Olkiluoto site construction. Stakeholder interviews will complement the analysis in all three countries, notably in order to validate the inferences made on the basis of the textual analysis. Conclusions will be drawn on the similarities and differences in the EPR debates in the three countries; the importance of country-specific and cultural factors in explaining differences; and on the respective qualities of the two analytical approaches - the Prospéro (France and the UK) and the more traditional content and discourse analysis (Finland).

[1] Corresponding author. Until 30 June 2010, visiting fellow at the Groupe de Sociologie Pragmatique et Réflexive (GSPR), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris.

Reiner Grundmann, Ramesh Krishnamurthy, Mike Scott,

The topic of climate change has become one of the fastest rising issues in media coverage over the past years. At the time of writing there is not a single day in the Western world on which the topic is not mentioned in the news. Climate change has made a phenomenal impact on policy circles and the public at large. It raises fundamental questions about the function and influence of media reports on global environmental politics, such as the lead up to the Copenhagen conference and the prospects for future reporting.

In previous work we have collected full text data on climate change reporting from four countries. After creating a Corpus and starting a preliminary analysis, we found that there is a continuous rise in levels of newspaper reporting on climate change, indeed, there is an exponential rise after 2005. 2007, the latest year in our database, is the year with the highest levels of reporting ever observed (Grundmann and Krishnamurthy 2010).

We now want to examine why there has been a steep increase in attention after 2005. We will pursue a key word analysis that aims at showing how significant specific content words are in relation to their wider use. Key words/phrases, i.e. sequences which appear in text to an unusually high extent, can be revealing in identifying patterns. Significant differences with regard to some key words would suggest a shift in discursive practice over time.

There are three kinds of key words in this connection. First there are the obvious ones which directly relate to the physical phenomena, such as greenhouse effect, or global warming. These terms may be of interest in terms of their changing frequencies or differing uses for different readerships. We might see variations of such terms, e.g. global heating or climate chaos.

Second, terms which have been popularized as part of the debate and whose status reflects changes in focus. One example has to do with the increasing use of the term 'tipping points'. 'Tipping points' appear for the first time in 2003 when The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article 'Hot Air and Cold Fear: Scientists Debate Whether Global Warming Can Cause a Big Chill'--before any publications are documented in the scientific literature on climate change. The first academic publication dates from November 2005. Russil and Nyssa (2009) examine the diffusion of this popular concept into climate science. Popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book with the same title in 2000, the term has been also taken up by political leaders in 2006 when Tony Blair and Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende wrote in a letter to EU leaders that 'we have a window of only ten to fifteen years to avoid crossing catastrophic tipping points.' (Quoted in Hulme 2009:333).

Other relevant terms include the window metaphor as in 'window of 10-15 years' and 'climate stabilization' goals (Boykoff et al. 2009).

Thirdly there are other not easily noticed indicators such as time expressions or signals of reader-writer interactivity, which the software WordSmith is useful in picking up.

Using our Corpus, we will present data from a key word analysis that aims at showing how significant such specific words are compared to their general use. In so doing, we will demonstrate a discursive shift taking place after 2005 that has led to a dramatization of the climate change discourse in the print media.

Our study suggests that media dramatization of climate change may have important political implications.

Nathalie Ortar (LET-ENTPE Lyon)

During a biographical interview the interviewee recalls his/her life. All the process of the interview is there to reshape a linear story according to the linear Newtonian acceptance of time. A story has to have a beginning, childhood and an end, the actual time of the interview. By doing so extraordinary events are stressed, those which have marked a turn in the life of the interviewee during his life cycle.

In the case of multilocation the interviewee is there but continues also to live a time and a life where he is not physically present. For example a mobile worker who still "lives with" his family, experience a multiple time experience. The contiguity of those times cannot be retranscript by the linearity of the biographical account based on events and facts. Time distortions, circularity and parallelism do not appear or only on the margins of the interview.

Based on biographical accounts made with French and British mobile workers as well as second home owners we will analyse the possibilities and constraints of the method due first, to the need to apprehend the life of the interviewee in different places, places the researcher does not know, secondly the various support used to help recall the different time-space the interviewee has experienced.

Reiner Keller (University Koblenz- Landau)

The contribution outlines a research pro­gramme which I have coined the "sociology of knowledge approach to discourse" (Wissens­sozio­logische Diskursanalyse WDA). Originating in comparative studies of public debates on waste issues in France and Germany in the early 1990s, the WDA-Approach since then has been spreading across different social sciences disciplines in Germany, including sociology and political sciences to figure by now amongst the most established approaches to discourse in these fields. Recent studies in political sciences have focused on nuclear energy debates (R. Bern, Norway) and forest policies (G. Winkel, Freiburg), on campaigning and voting for the European constitution in France, Ireland and the Netherlands (W. Schünemann, Landau), on Identity politics of social movements (P. Ulrich, Berlin) or on the scientific construction of Islamic terrorism (C. Brunner, Wien).

The WDA approach to dis­course integrates important insights of Foucault's theory of discourse into the interpretative paradigm in the social sciences, especially the "German" approach of hermeneutic sociology of knowledge (Hermeneutische Wissenssoziologie), referring to the Berger/Luckmann tradition. Accordingly, in this approach discourses are con­sidered as "structured and structuring structures" which shape social practices of enunciation. Un­like some Foucauldian approaches, the WDA approach to discourse recognises the importance of socially constituted actors in the social production and circulation of knowledge as well as the interpretive dimension of discourse research. Furthermore, it com­bines research questions related to the concept of "discourse" with the methodical toolbox of qual­itative social research. Going beyond ques­tions of language in use, "the sociology of knowl­edge ap­proach to discourse" (Wissenssozio­logi­sche Dis­kurs­analyse) addresses social sciences inter­ests, the analyses of social relations and politics of knowl­edge as well as the discursive construction of re­al­ity as an empirical ("material") process. For empiri­cal research on discourse the approach proposes the use of analytical concepts from the sociology of knowledge tradition, such as inter­pretive schemes or frames (Deutungsmuster), "clas­sifi­ca­tions", "phenomenal structure" (Phäno­men­struktur), "narrative structure", and the use of the methodological strategies of "grounded theory". Materialities of discourse are adressed by concepts as 'dispositif', 'practice' and 'actor'. The presentation will address the WDAs theoretical groundings, methodological reflections and strategies for research in politics of knowledge, drawing on examples from empirical research.