Nuclear energy from a CDA perspective

Looking at nuclear discourse from the point of view of the analytical paradigms that constitute critical discourse analysis (CDA) as presented by Norman Fairclough (see Wagner, Chapter 1: “The Media Energy Discourse as an Object of Sociological Reflection - the Theoretical and Methodological Context”), we intend to concentrate on the relations within a triad of key notions: power - interests - knowledge. If we follow Michel Foucault (1995: 27) in assuming that “power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations,” then at the splice of this dyad we will find interests closely correlated to them, and behind these interests stand concrete - individual or collective - actors, striving to realise these interests. Interests are therefore closely related to centres of knowledge, and translate into specific, teleologically oriented strategies for management of knowledge, which we can understand by studying media discourse. Something of importance for both Foucault (Horwarth 2000) and Fairclough is the impact of social exclusion - including exclusion from participation in processes of decision making in public affairs - on discourse, and indirectly, on society. In critical discourse analysis, the asymmetries of power, exploitation, ma-nipulation and structural inequalities are essential to the analyses that are carried out. Here too this is our perspective (Bulcaen 2000: 450-451), as we examine both the active actors in the discourse and the great absentees, meaning actors whom we perceive to be legitimate participants in the discourse owing to its subject matter, yet whose role is either very limited or even imperceptible.

Discussing Fairclough's ideas, Adam Warzecha writes, “discourse is an element of social life which is dialectically interconnected with other elements, and may have constructive and transformative effects on them” (Warzecha 2014:166). Following this premise, and treating discourse as a tool for forming and transforming the material world, we therefore also accept that the social, political and economic aspects of the way in which nuclear energy functions as a field of human actions depend on the form and content of the discourse, as well as its specific characteristics, dynamic, internal diversity and thematic specialisation, and on the mosaic of actors who shape it.