Sociology Research Seminar
Media, Stigma and Risk: Will Nanotech be the Next GM?
Wednesday 15 April 2009, 4 – 6pm Monash Conference Centre (Level 7, 30 Collins Street)
Dr Alison Anderson
University of Plymouth
Abstract
Nanotechnology is increasingly the focus of news media interest around the globe. Despite receiving relatively little attention as an issue of public debate thus far, nanotechnologies are predicted by some commentators to have the potential to radically transform the future. In the UK the Royal Society Report (2004) expressed concerns about current and potential future developments. More recently, Friends of the Earth Australia have raised particular anxieties over food safety issues given that they claim in excess of 100 food, food packaging, and agricultural products containing nano-ingredients are currently on sale internationally without mandatory food labelling measures in place (FOE, 2008). This paper discusses findings from an ESRC study into the production and coverage of news on nanotechnology in the UK press, devoting particular attention to the discursive struggle over competing definitions of the possible risks involved.
Alison Anderson
Alison Anderson is Reader in Sociology, in the School of Law and Social Science, University of Plymouth, UK. Dr Anderson has published widely in the field of environmental issues and the media, including numerous journal articles and one of the first books to have been published in the field, Media, Culture and the Environment (1997:Taylor & Francis/ Rutgers University Press). Her most recent co-authored book, Nanotechnology, Risk and Communication, will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in spring 2009. She is currently writing the single-authored book, Media, Environment and the Network Society (Palgrave, 2009), and editing a special issue of the Journal for Risk Research on new challenges for the study of media and risk.