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The scientification of risks and the risks of scientification
Summary
This chapter investigates the use of 'scientification' as a discursive strategy in Swedish public debates about microplastics and artificial turf pitches, analyzing how a 2016 report attributing major microplastic emissions to tire wear and turf granules became a contested scientific authority in policy debates. The author examines how scientific uncertainty is mobilized and shaped in public and political discourse around environmental risk.
In 2016, a report commissioned by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency found that tyre wear from road traffic and granules from artificial turf pitches were the two biggest microplastic sources in Swedish aquatic environments. Although the report’s figures were surrounded by uncertainty, they became artillery in a public debate that followed about microplastics and the environmental hazards tied to artificial turf pitches. Against this backdrop, this chapter aims to understand the use of scientification, here understood as a discursive strategy that attributes scientific nature to an issue, in the news media coverage of microplastics and artificial turf pitches. This chapter discusses the role of scientification in the discursive struggle over environmental risks, a strategy that, as shown, could be used to attach either certainty or uncertainty to an issue, as well as to create fallacious argumentation. This chapter points to the need that the media guards the discursive use of science when reporting on environmental risks, in order not to relativise or water down the authority of science in public discourse.