Title: Exploring the social acceptance of biomass power

Authors: Kalle Nuortimo; Janne Härkönen; Erkki Karvonen

Addresses: Information and Communication Studies, University of Oulu, P.O. Box 4610, FI-90014, Finland ' Industrial Engineering and Management, University of Oulu, P.O. Box 4610, FI-90014, Finland ' Information and Communication Studies, University of Oulu, P.O. Box 4610, FI-90014, Finland

Abstract: Public acceptance and positive media image are among the key features in technology market deployment aside any technical, legal and economic questions. The way technologies appear in various forms of media has a tendency to shape the public acceptance. This study analyses the media image of biomass power in order to understand the recent technology developments needed to overcome global warming. The media sentiment is analysed from both editorial and social media by using M-adaptive tool for media monitoring. The analysis covers three million social media platforms, hundred thousand news outlets in over seventy languages over 236 regions covering a vast number of data points. The results indicate that the public sentiment towards biomass power is more positive in editorial publications than in the social media. It appears that the increasing role of social media for public acceptance may need to be acknowledged in technology deployment issues.

Keywords: social acceptance; biomass power; environmental review; media image; technology deployment; media monitoring tool.

DOI: 10.1504/IER.2017.084191

Interdisciplinary Environmental Review, 2017 Vol.18 No.1, pp.14 - 27

Received: 08 Nov 2016
Accepted: 01 Dec 2016
Published online: 17 May 2017 *

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