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The (de-)construction of technology legitimacy

  • Why do some countries assign a major role to wind energy in decarbonizing their electricity systems, while others are much less committed to this technology? We argue that processes of (de-)legitimation, driven by discourse coalitions who strategically employ certain storylines in public debates, provide part of the answer. To illustrate our approach, we comparatively investigate public discourses surrounding wind energy in Austria and Switzerland, two countries that differ strongly in wind energy deployment. By combining a qualitative content analysis and a discourse network analysis of 808 newspaper articles published 2010–2020, we identify four distinct sets of storylines used to either delegitimize or legitimize the technology. Our study indicates that low deployment rates in Switzerland can be related to the prominence of delegitimizing storylines in the public discourse, which result in a rather low socio-political acceptance of wind energy. In Austria, by contrast, there is more consistent support for wind energy by discourse coalitions using a broad set of legitimizing storylines. By bridging the related but separate literatures of technology legitimacy and social acceptance, our study contributes to a better understanding of socio-political conflict and divergence in low-carbon technological pathways.

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Metadaten
Author:Nina Schneider, Adrian Rinscheid
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2023.122929
ISSN:0040-1625
Parent Title (English):Technological Forecasting and Social Change
Subtitle (English):Contending storylines surrounding wind energy in Austria and Switzerland
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Year of publication:2024
Release Date:2024/01/30
Tag:discourse network analysis; socio-political acceptance; technology legitimacy; wind energy
Volume:198
Article Number:122929
Number of pages:16
First Page:1
Last Page:16
Organisationseinheit:Forschung / Forschungszentrum Business Informatics
DDC classes:300 Sozialwissenschaften / 300 Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie, Anthropologie
Open Access?:ja
Peer review:wiss. Beitrag, peer-reviewed
Schneider, Nina