Shale gas: Energy innovation in a (non-)knowledge society: A press discourse analysis

For years, technological innovations have been the cause of controversy. In reaction to this, increasingly often the bodies responsible for implementing these innovations undertake social dialogue with stakeholders. An important environment for this is media discourse, which defines the problems and key actors and disseminates strategies for argumentation. Effective communication on public policies is one of the challenges in deliberative democracy. This paper aims to analyse the role of experts and knowledge in reference to the models of public communication on shale gas. Using a qualitative press analysis, an incoherence was observed in the understanding of knowledge and the profile of experts and the models of communication using them. The communication, which is rather oriented towards persuasion without legitimisation of scientific factual knowledge, fails. Reference in the discourse to the unknown or uncertain directs attention to the issues related to the strategic exploitation of nonknowledge.