Using data from policy analyses, media analyses and a European-wide survey about public perceptions of biotechnology conducted in 1996 and again in 1999, it is shown how a country's public develops an everyday understanding of a new technology (genetic modification) construed as potentially harmful by the media. To understand the reliance on images and related beliefs, we propose a theory of collective symbolic coping. It identifies four steps: first, the creation of awareness; second, production of divergent images; third, convergence upon a couple of dominant images in the public sphere; fourth, normalization. It is suggested that symbolic coping occurs in countries where a recent increase in policy activity and of media reporting has alerted the public; that this public show a high proportion of beliefs in menacing images; that these beliefs are relatively independent of pre-existing popular science knowledge; and that they are functionally equivalent to scientific knowledge in providing judgmental confidence and reducing self-ascribed ignorance. These propositions are shown to be true in Austria and Greece. Several implications of the theory are discussed, including social representation theory and public understanding of science.

This article contrasts forms of farmers' resistance to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Austria and France. While Austrian farmers take a back seat in public opposition to GMOs, Austria's national GMO policy is designed to protect farmers, particularly organic farmers, by banning the unwanted technology. It thus mitigates both public controversy and the potential framing of the GMO issue which might go beyond a merely defensive 'not in my back yard' (NIMBY) rationale. French farmers' protest, by contrast, is highly argumentative and is very much shaped by farmers' protests. Its leading voice is the farmers' union Confédération Paysanne and its spokesman José Bové, who employ spectacular protest strategies involving the destruction of GMO fields and acts of civil disobedience and figure prominently in the anti-globalisation movement. In discussing the reasons for these differences, the analysis examines two approaches to political opportunity structures: a general and a dynamic, policy-specific approach.

The article gives an account of the first Austrian nationwide Danish-style consensus conference, held in the summer of 2003, treating policy issues related to genetic data. Consensus conferences are currently widely discussed for their promise to democratize fields of technological decision-making which are both crucial to the fate of modern society and inaccessible to public involvement. Instead of evaluating the "democratic efficiency" of the deliberative exercise, the essay will contextualize the event in local, as well as international developments comprising discursive, institutional and political elements. Rather than offering definitive claims about the normative significance of the rapidly diffusing deliberative technique, the discussion of a local experience with it will arrive at ambivalent conclusions.

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