CET Lunch: Nuclear renaissance in Norway?! A study of Norwegian media coverage of nuclear energy.
Welcome to our hybrid CET Lunch seminar with Silje Kristiansen, Associate Professor at the Department of Infomedia and CET.
Main content
Our speaker will attend in person. Participants can sign up and tune in via stream, or turn up at CET where lunch will be served on a first-come, first-served basis.
The public debate of energy sources twists and turns as their benefits and potential detriments get dragged in and pushed out of the limelight. Media plays an important role in this process as it is where many people receive information about current energy affairs. The way media portray the positives and the negatives with different energy sources might even in some cases influence public opinion.
Nuclear energy seems to be getting increased attention in currently nuclear-energy-free Norway. Part of the reason for this was the foundation of the company called Norsk Kjernekraft AS [norwegian nuclear energy AS], which engages actively in the public debate around nuclear energy in Norway.
In this presentation I will show the results of a qualitative and a quantitative media content analysis of Norwegian media debate of nuclear energy. Some of the preliminary key findings are that media coverage is triggered by events such as the EU Taxonomy labeled nuclear energy (and gas) as green; high energy prices; the uncertainty that the Russian attack on Ukraine meant for the energy sector; other countries investing or divesting in nuclear energy; and also the foundation of Norsk Kjernekraft AS.
At the same time representative surveys, including University of Bergen's Norwegian Citizen Panel reports that the majority of people in Norway are rather positive towards nuclear energy. Are we witnessing a revival of nuclear energy in Norway?
About the speaker
Associate Professor Silje Kristiansen is a communication scholar in the field of communication and public perception of issues related to climate change, food, energy and the natural environment. She has a PhD from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in which she looked at media coverage of nuclear energy before and after the accident in Fukushima. She did her postdoc at Northeastern University, US, and worked as Assistant Professor at the State University of New York, at the College for Environmental Science and Forestry in the US before coming to UiB in 2022.
Dr. Kristiansen is affiliated with CET, the Centre for Climate end Energy Transformations, and the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen.
Dr. Kristiansen conducts research on a wide range of topics related to public communication of environmental issues. Her research focuses on understanding the ways in which the media frames and communicates information about climate change and other environmental issues, including energy, as well as how the public perceives and responds to this information.
She holds an Associate Editorship at the journal Environmental Communication, is past Chair of the International Communication Association's Environmental Communication Division, and is currently Vice Chair of the Science and Environmental Communication Section at the European Communication Research and Education Association, ECREA.
