IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jriskr/v25y2022i8p991-1007.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public involvement in risk governance in the internet era: impact of new rules of building trust and credibility

Author

Listed:
  • Agata Stasik
  • Dariusz Jemielniak

Abstract

The article draws attention to the multidirectional impact of the widespread Internet communication on public involvement in risk governance processes. The prevalence of Internet communication changes the rules of building credibility and trust, and a position of expert knowledge. As online peer-to-peer information are not verified by any single trustworthy institution, the expert community often perceives it as a source of disturbance in risk governance. We refuse to frame online communication simply in terms of a threat to responsible dealing with risks and, instead, demonstrate how it creates new conditions for public involvement in risk governance, which may strengthen or hamper responsible risk governance, potentially compensating for the shortcomings of the system based solely on state agencies’ activities. Basing on the qualitative analysis of three critical cases, we show how the involvement of Internet-enabled groups impacts the risk governance of specific issues in Poland. Specifically, the Internet-enabled participation amplifies evidence-based concerns (the case of city air pollution), signals new “unknown unknowns” (the case of fracking), or weakens procedures based on the body of scientific knowledge (the case of vaccination controversy). To decide when and how to harness the potential of internet-enabled public involvement and when to focus on limiting the harms it may engender, we propose a framework that takes into account the level of uncertainty, the extent to which risk mitigation policy in place reflects the scientific consensus (if there is one), and the accepted rules of credibility and trust by Internet-enabled groups to expert knowledge. We claim that risk governance processes should routinely involve analyses and actions aimed at governing risks that ignore the impact of widespread Internet use may prove counter-effective.

Suggested Citation

  • Agata Stasik & Dariusz Jemielniak, 2022. "Public involvement in risk governance in the internet era: impact of new rules of building trust and credibility," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(8), pages 991-1007, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:25:y:2022:i:8:p:991-1007
    DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2020.1864008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669877.2020.1864008
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13669877.2020.1864008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wu, Xinyan, 2024. "Performative credibility: How opioid researchers sustain public trust during the opioid epidemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 340(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:25:y:2022:i:8:p:991-1007. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJRR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.