| 1. |
- Boholm, Max, 1982, et al.
(författare)
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Dis-Ag-reement: the construction and negotiation of risk in the Swedish controversy over antibacterial silver
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of Risk Research. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1366-9877 .- 1466-4461. ; 18:1, s. 93-110
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- What constitutes a potentially hazardous object is often debated. This article analyses the polemic construction and negotiation of risk in the Swedish controversy over the use of antibacterial silver in health care and consumer products. This debate engages the media, government agencies, parliament and government, non-governmental organizations and companies. Texts and websites from these actors were studied using content analysis. Antibacterial silver is construed by some actors as a risk object with harmful effects on a series of objects at risk: the environment, public health, organisms and sewage treatment. In contrast, other actors deny that antibacterial silver is a risk object, instead construing it as mitigating risk. In such a schema, antibacterial silver is conceived of as managing the risk objects of bacteria and micro-organisms, in turn managing the risk objects of infection, bad smell and washing, and in turn helping the environment and public health (objects at risk). The structure of the debate suggests two basic modes of risk communication. First, antibacterial silver is construed as a risk object, endangering a variety of objects at risk, such as organisms, public health, the environment and sewage treatment. Second, this association between antibacterial silver and objects at risk is obstructed, by denying that antibacterial silver is a risk object or by associating silver with the benefit of mitigating risk.
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| 2. |
- Boholm, Max, 1982, et al.
(författare)
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Risk Identification: A Corpus‐Assisted Study of Websites of Government Agencies
- 2020
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Ingår i: Risks, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy. - : Wiley. - 1944-4079. ; 11:3, s. 242-269
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Government agencies have a key role in the regulation, management, and communication of risk. This paper explores how seven Swedish government agencies in the policy fields of (i) chemicals, (ii) civil contingencies, (iii) energy, (iv) environmental protection, (v) food, (vi) housing and buildings, and (vii) traffic identify risks on their websites. The relational theory of risk is used as an analytical tool to unpack risk identification. An analytical distinction is made between “risk objects,” that is, potentially harmful objects, and “objects at risk,” that is values at stake. The articulation of risk objects and objects at risk on government agencies’ websites is explored by using corpus linguistic techniques that reveal lexical and grammatical patterns of the word “risk.” The agencies identify an extensive assembly of risk objects of various kinds. The sets of risks identified are rather idiosyncratic and there is limited overlap between agencies. The identification of objects at risk is less varied and idiosyncratic than the identification of risk objects, were the agencies appear to be more in agreement. The findings are discussed in relation to the scope of risk identification; institutional explanations, and in terms of conditions for inter‐agency collaboration, identified as a key feature of effective risk governance.
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| 3. |
- Boholm, Max, 1982, et al.
(författare)
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The many faces of nano in newspaper reporting
- 2012
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Ingår i: Journal of Nanoparticle Research. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1388-0764 .- 1572-896X. ; 14:2, s. 722-740
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The morpheme nano in languages such as Swedish and English is a constituent of many words. This article linguistically analyses the meaning potential of nano by focusing on word use in a Swedish newspaper corpus comprising 2,564 articles (1.6 million words) covering a 22-year period (1988–2010). Close to 400 word forms having nano as a constituent have been identified and analyzed. The results suggest that nano covers a broad and heterogeneous conceptual field: (i) as a prefix of the SI system; (ii) in relation to the scientific activities of nanoscience and nanotechnology, including their sub-processes and actors; and (iii) in relation to objects. The identified meanings of nano, besides the standard definition (i.e. ‘billionth part’ in relation to SI units), are ‘operating at the nanometre level’ in relation to activities and their actors and ‘nanometre sized’ and ‘nanotechnological’ in relation to objects; in addition, the less precise and non-technical meaning ‘very small’ is identified. We discuss the implications of the findings for a hypothesis about media influence on public understanding of technology, suggesting that repeated findings in Europe and the USA of little self-reported understanding and knowledge of nanotechnology or nanoscience among the public make sense in light of the polysemy of nano reflected in its broad variety of verbal forms and usages.
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| 4. |
- Boholm, Åsa, 1953, et al.
(författare)
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Riskhanteringsbeslut inom transportsektorn: Slutredovisning av forskningsprojektet TRANSAM 2007-2010
- 2011
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Inom transportsystemet fattas dagligen otaliga beslut om att hantera risker som hotar människors liv och hälsa, ekonomiska värden eller miljön. Bland beslutsfattarna återfinns statliga och kommunala myndigheter på olika nivåer, privata företag som trafikoperatörer, bygg‐ och konstruktionsentreprenörer och konsultfirmor. Frågor om risk och säkerhet hanteras ofta av grupper och nätverk bestående av privata och offentliga aktörer som samverkar för att utföra och planera offentliga verksamheter. Riskbeslut i infrastruktur‐ och trafikplanering fattas därför ofta gemensamt av aktörer med olika mål, värderingar och prioriteringar. Skiljaktigheter i uppfattningar och erfarenheter bidrar tillsammans med organisatoriska specialiseringar och myndigheters specialiserade sektoriella ansvarsområden och beslutskompetens till hög komplexitet i beslutsprocessen. Syftet med forskningsprojektet Riskhanteringsbeslut inom transportsektorn (2007‐2010), vid Centrum för forskning om offentlig sektor (CEFOS), Göteborgs universitet, har varit att bidra med ökad kunskap om beslutsfattande som sker i komplexa beslutssituationer i samverkan mellan offentliga och privata aktörer. Projektet har varit ett samhällsvetenskapligt mångdisciplinärt forskningsprojekt baserat på ämnesperspektiv från socialantropologi, statsvetenskap, offentlig förvaltning, företagsekonomi, riskforskning och kulturgeografi. Inom ramen för projektet har faktiska beslutsprocesser studerats i realtid och i de institutionella, sociala och politiska sammanhang de ingår i.
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| 5. |
- Bendz, Anna, 1967, et al.
(författare)
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Drinking water risk management: local government collaboration in West Sweden
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Risk Research. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1366-9877 .- 1466-4461. ; 22:6, s. 674-691
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Drinking water provisioning can be approached as a paradigmatic case of transboundary risk management that requires government collaboration. In Sweden, as in most other countries, the provision of safe drinking water and the control of its quality is a responsibility of local governments. This explorative case study investigates how local level decision-makers (politicians and public administrators) identify and understand risks to drinking water services; how they construe governmental responsibility and collaboration between local governments. The empirical results show that decision-makers identify a number of systemically interrelated technical, natural and social risks; that responsibility is understood to be complex and fragmented and that they refrain from collaboration despite clear advantages in theory. Even if the payoff is high from a broad societal perspective for inter-municipal collaborative risk management of drinking water services, collaboration on the local level is low. Institutional uncertainties relating to the allocation of responsibility, transaction costs and political costs for individual municipalities may explain the reluctance to collaborate in this case.
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| 6. |
- Bendz, Anna, 1967, et al.
(författare)
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Indispensable, yet Invisible: Drinking water management as a local political issue in Swedish municipalities
- 2020
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Ingår i: Local Government Studies. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0300-3930 .- 1743-9388. ; 46:5, s. 800-819
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Local policy-makers' incentives to address an issue is conditioned by how they perceive public attention. Our study focuses on drinking water management at the municipal level in Sweden. Provisioning and management of drinking water is a responsibility of the local governments. Interviews with local politicians and public administrators in seven municipalities reveal that local policy-makers think that citizens view provisioning of drinking water as a taken for granted service, and also lack knowledge of and interest in drinking water issues. Public attention is further seen as a double-edged sword since engagement in water issues often is a result of problems with water provision. The findings are discussed from a theoretical perspective of the role of agenda-setting in public policy. It is argued that the view of policy-makers of citizens as unengaged negatively affects the incentives to bring drinking water to a prominent place on the local policy agenda.
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| 7. |
- Binde, Per, 1956, et al.
(författare)
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Schismogenesis in a Swedish case of railway planning
- 2004
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Ingår i: Facility Siting: Risk, Power and Identity in Land Use Planning / Boholm, Åsa, Löfstedt, Ragnar. - London : Earthscan. - 1844071464 ; , s. 160-176
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The modernisation of the west-coast trunk line, approved by the Swedish government in the late 1980s, is the most substantial railway project in Sweden since the railway boom at the end of the nineteenth century. This investment, originally projected to cost SEK 40 billion (approx. 4.4 billion Euro), is part of an ambitious plan to modernise Swedish infrastructure to meet the needs of the twenty-first century in terms of efficiency and environmental sustainability. As to the more specific plans for rebuilding and relocating particular sections of the railway, there have been serious reservations, even fierce opposition, in communities along the proposed route. We take a close look at the debate concerning the West Coast Railway, as it has occurred in towns along the route, to discern features of the rhetorical logic of argumentation and also of its social nature as a process of discordant communication. In this, Gregory Bateson?s concept of schismogenesis will be used as an analytical tool.
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| 8. |
- Boholm, Åsa, 1953, et al.
(författare)
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A relational theory of risk
- 2011
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Ingår i: Journal of Risk Research. - : Informa UK Limited. ; 14:2, s. 175-190
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper outlines a relational theory of risk. According to this theory, risk emerges from situated cognition that establishes a relationship of risk between a risk object and an object at risk, so that the risk object is considered, under certain contingent circumstances and in some causal way, to threaten the valued object at risk. This relational theory of risk is a theory about the interpretative nature of risk that answers the key theoretical and practical questions of why and how something is considered a risk. The relational theory of risk allows for the interpretation of risk situations as culturally informed, and thereby suggests new ways to approach risk communication, risk governance, and risk management by taking into account bounded rationalities of thought and action.
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| 9. |
- Boholm, Åsa, 1953, et al.
(författare)
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A relational theory of risk: lessons for risk communication
- 2014
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Ingår i: Effective risk communication. Red Joseph Arvai & Louie Rivers III. - London, New York & London : Routledge, Taylor & Francis, Earthscan. - 9781849712651 ; , s. 1-22
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)
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| 10. |
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