Nuclear power discourse in Lithuanian mass media and public opinion: attitudinal divergencies and the emerging talking and acting classes in the risk society

Abstract

The article aims at investigating the framing of the dominant discourse on nuclear power in Lithuanian media and in society at large. The paper is based on the mass media monitoring in 2008 and public opinion surveys (2008 and 2009) carried out in the framework of the RINOVA project (Risk Perceptions and Public Communication in the Knowledge Society). It examines how the risks and symbolic meanings concerning the development of nuclear power in Lithuania are articulated. The analysis of nearly 400 articles has revealed the dominant tendencies – the emergence of the new “talking classes” who obtain the capacity to “legitimately” speak and discuss nuclear issues, ignoring the rest of society. The public opinion polls, by contrast, suggest that the need, and public expectations, for a referendum concerning the new nuclear power plant in Lithuania, as well as sustained moderate public trust in science and technology as capable of tackling nuclear safety issues are evident. Studying public attitudes towards the old and the new nuclear power plants demonstrate the predominance of the economic rationale; however, civic stand and the societal concern about the raise of oligarchic tendencies is more apparent vis-à-vis the newly planned nuclear power plant. Drawing on the concept of “talking classes”, the authors indicate that the nuclear power discourse in Lithuania suggests those classes turning into “acting” oligarchic structures as epitomized by the recent story of the Leo LT nuclear project in Lithuania, – the classes that are cynically colonizing the public space and public resources and undermining the possibilities to attempt building a deliberative participatory democracy in Lithuania, even at the latter stage of its transition from the Soviet regime. The latter has collapsed, inter alia, due to the nondeliberative, non-participatory, non-democratic mode of governance epitomized in the
1980s by the emblematic Chernobyl catastrophe and protests against the Ignalina NPP in Lithuania (Balockaite, Rinkevicius 2008). Currently, society is becoming incapable of escaping not only the technogenic (e. g. nuclear) risks, which would be the case of a risk society, but also the oligarchic colonization of the public sphere by the new talking and acting classes.