A Risky Object? The Politics of Ascribing Health and Environmental Risks to Microplastics in Media and Scientific Discourse

• In Event: Science Communication - II: Making Science in Public

Abstract

Microplastics is increasingly populating the environment and human and non-human bodies. Its presence is accompanied by concerns about its potential environmental and health effects, visible in a rise in scientific research and in media articles on the topic. We explore the multiple relations between the life of microplastics in the media, where it is increasingly treated as an established ‘risk object’ (Hilgartner, 1992), and its more uncertain status within the scientific community. Our analysis draws on articles published in German high-circulation media between 2004 and 2018, interviews with researchers and observations at scientific conferences. In the media, microplastics has progressively become constructed as inherently risky over time and more recent articles increasingly call for action to reduce microplastics. Markedly, it is mainly citizens, primarily addressed as consumers, who are rendered responsible for reducing their microplastics footprint. An essential part of this narrative about risk and action are quotes by scientists that confirm this risk-oriented stance. The prevalence of such risk-affirming quotes in the media, is, however, at odds with the plurality of positions researchers voice in interviews and at scientific conferences. It is, simultaneously, congruent with scientists’ reports about difficulties in establishing a media presence if they express more nuanced positions. Yet, scientists also contribute to the public rendering of microplastics as a risk object through other communication channels, such as project and conference descriptions and funding applications. We trace these complex negotiations within and between different social arenas that do and do not establish microplastics as inherently risky.

Authors

• Sarah Maria Schönbauer, Technical University of Munich

• Ruth Müller, MCTS TU München