Building and dismantling the Ignalina nuclear power plant: social and technical media packages
ENIn this chapter, we aim to demonstrate how the decommissioning process emerges as disembedded from the broader socio-spatial context in which it takes place. In order to measure the extent to which the technological and social aspects of the Visaginas nuclear system are now being decoupled, we compare representations of the process of the construction of the INPP in local newspapers in Soviet times with those of the dismantling process in present day online media. Our aim is to build an understanding of differences in approaches to representing the INPP’s sociotechnical agencement, its technical and social aspects and its physical entities in the construction and dismantling narratives. Following STS scholars, we argue that media are not only channels through which particular opinions and meanings are disseminated (Hindmarsh, 214, 197), but “they also fundamentally constitute the world on which decision-makers, organizations, and communities act” (Kinsella, 2012, 251). Therefore, media representations have important implications for the ways in which controversial science and technology issues are dealt with. Thus, by employing the media analysis method, we aim to identify the gap between the representations of the technical and social elements of the Visaginas nuclear system. Our findings of how the social and technological issues relating to the INPP are tackled and represented may contribute to developing more socially sensitive representations of the post-socialist transformation not only of Visaginas, but also of other mono-industrial towns that try to rethink their former technical function. [p. 56-57].
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