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