Open Conference Systems, RUC Sunrise Triple C Conference: Climate – Change – Communication

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Deliberating climate change - the creation of a global voice for citizens?
Erling Jelsøe, Annika Agger, Birgit Jæger, Louise Philips

Last modified: 2010-04-15

Abstract


The global event World Wide Views on Global Warming (WWV), initiated by the Danish Board of Technology (DBT), took place on September 26, 2009, and was an innovative attempt to gather a united citizen voice on a global scale. As such the WWV is one of the most recent experiments with new ways to include the voice of the citizens into complex scientific and technological issues. The purpose of WWV was to pass on the opinions of ordinary citizens to political decision-makers at The United Nations Climate Summit, COP15, in Copenhagen in December 2009. The authors made a study of the Danish WWV event including a) observations on the Danish location, b) survey among the participants, c) follow-up focus group interview with voluntary participants, and d) interview with the organizers of the global event from DBT. Based on this study we analyse how the deliberation was institutionally framed. This includes considerations regarding how the process was designed in order to be legitimate as a voice for citizens, how different types of knowledge and expert identities were created and negotiated in the event, and how the framing influenced the outcome. The specific conditions of the event, i.e. the relation to a high-policy global summit like COP15, are also considered in the discussion about the WWV as innovative design. The analysis draws upon theoretical perspectives of deliberative democracy and STS studies of public engagement with science.


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