Debating Hydrofracking: The Discursive Construction of Risk

Abstract

This study examines a debate among experts sponsored by Cornell University in 2014 on whether or not to allow hydrofracking in New York State. The focus is on the question-answer portion of the debate to see how risk is discursively constructed from experts' claims and rejoinders as well as audience participation. The granular methodology of discursive analysis is used to examine how risk gets talked into being and amplified or mitigated through interaction in the question-answer portion of the debate. Risk gets constructed through participants' practices of metadiscourse-how they formulate what has been said, report the speech or actions of others, or repeat certain locutions into lists for rhetorical effect. These metadiscourse practices provide a resource for the debater to critically characterize other's words or deeds prior to presenting their preferred position.

Debating Resource-Driven Development: A Comparative Analysis of Media Coverage on the Pacific Northwest LNG Project in British Columbia

“…In contrast, news depicting fracking as an "environmental concern" tend to focus on topics such as underground water contamination and its subsequent threat to public health. Driven by the wide circulation of strong anti-fracking sentiment in the documentary Gasland (Fox, 2010), water quality has become the most publicized environmental risk of fracking in both North America and Europe (Jaspal and Nerlich, 2014;Olive and Delshad, 2017;Buttny, 2019). As noted by Matthews and Hansen (2018), media coverage on fracking tend to present its economic and environmental perspectives as a dichotomy.…”

“…Even in cases wherein anti-fracking actors' arguments prevail and eventually contribute to moratoria on fracking, this is often caused by high-profile environmental accidents, which trigger the crisis frame of news production and temporarily drive media attention toward environmental concerns. For example, in Buttny's (2019) analysis of fracking debates in New York State, an important background story on which fracking opponents constructed their narratives was the public disclosure of fracking's recurring community disruption by the aforementioned documentary Gasland. As Matthews and Hansen (2018) summarize, the "jobs versus environment" dichotomy, along which many fracking debates…”

A Bridge to Where? Tracing the Bridge Fuel Metaphor in the Canadian Media Sphere

“…The complexity of fracking debates has also been highlighted in other studies (e.g., Dodge and Lee, 2017;Metze, 2017;Olive and Delshad, 2017;Buttny, 2019). Less scholarship, however, has explicitly analyzed how media coverage engages with the bridge fuel concept.…”

“…As Canada's expanding shale gas production is exportoriented, relevant public debates are less concerned with energy security, which presents a contrast to the U.S. context (see Dodge and Lee, 2017;Buttny, 2019). In British Columbia, for instance, urban residents' overall hostile attitude toward extractivism forces shale gas advocates to reply more heavily upon the bridge fuel metaphor as the moral justification for rallying public support.…”