George W. Grayson, Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State? (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers, 2010), pp. xiv+349, $34.95, hb - George W. Grayson and Samuel Logan, The Executioner's Men: Los Zetas, Rogue Soldiers, Criminal Entrepreneurs and the Shadow State They Created (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers, 2012), pp. xxiii+271, $34.95, hb.

Research about science and publics in the COVID-19 pandemic often focuses on public trust and on identifying and correcting public attitudes. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 209 residents in six countries—Austria, Bolivia, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and Portugal—this article uses the concept of performativity to explore how participants understand, and relate to science, in the COVID-19 context. By performativity, we mean the ways by which participants understand themselves as particular sorts of publics through identification with, and differentiation from, various other actors in matters that are perceived as controversies surrounding science: COVID-19 vaccination, media communication of science, and the interactions between governments and scientists. The criteria used to construct the similarities and differences among publics were heterogeneous and fluid, showing how epistemic beliefs about the nature of, and trust in, scientific knowledge are intermingled with social and cultural memberships embedded in specific contexts and across disparate places.

Section: Performing Publics Of Science In the Covid-19 Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performing publics of science in the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative study in Austria, Bolivia, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and Portugal

Machado,

de Freitas,

Fiske

et al. 2024

“…Who participates in a public debate? In 1925, Walter Lippman challenged the idea of the public as one group (Lippmann, 1925), and John Dewey shortly after argued that multiple publics exist (Dewey, 1927). Already here, they questioned the division between a "general public" as a group of ignorant people with no opinion toward an issue and "stakeholders" with strong opinions toward a specific topic.…”

Section: Data Authority and Public Debatementioning

confidence: 99%

Data authority: Public debate about personalized medicine in Denmark

Skovgaard

Hoeyer

2022

Personalized medicine has generated massive investments in data integration initiatives and stimulated new flows of health data among multiple actors. Such flows raise questions as to who should be able to access data, for which purposes, and how this access and use should be regulated. We suggest thinking of these questions as matters of ‘data authority’: who can legitimately do what with health data? In this article, we analyze a public debate developing in written media about personalized medicine to understand negotiations of data authority. We demonstrate how the debate creates no consensus and yet seems to stimulate selective regulatory changes. The changes are selective in the sense that they focus on the protection of autonomy but fail to address concerns about, for example, commercial interests. We argue that data authority rests on enduring conflict and that this conflict can be seen as constitutive for personalized medicine as a sociotechnical phenomenon.

“…The shaping of public opinion is a complex issue that communication and policy scholars have attempted to decipher, measure, and predict since the inception of both fields. When in 1922Walter Lippman (1991[1922) coined the term "manufacturing of consent"-to refer to the manipulation of public opinion by means of persuasive communication, he had already acknowledged that influence is not a straightforward process, rather an intricate one. Today, we know much more about this process, including how vested interests manage to keep controversy alive even after scientific consensus has been reached (Oreskes and Conway, 2010).…”

Section: Introduction: Europe's Under-researched Realitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change contrarian think tanks in Europe: A network analysis

Almirón¹,

Cabezudo

Farrell

2022

Drawing from network theory and previous findings from US-based analyses, we measure the structure and interconnectedness of climate contrarian think tanks in Europe. This exploratory analysis can illustrate European organizations’ capacity to promote or disrupt political discourse. To this end, we use social network analysis to conduct actor-focused research. We identify the individuals bridging European think tanks, as well as their ties with the US climate change contrarian network. Our analysis reveals a discernible network structure for European climate change contrarian think tanks, with a profile connected to neoliberal organizations, including a few, but highly relevant links, with the US countermovement. We also find that the European think tanks’ institutional structure is very much shaped by a strong predominance of men, which aligns with previous research on masculinity and climate contrarianism.