Daniel Metlay

Citizen Knowledge and Choices on the Complex Issue of Nuclear Energy

The rise of a new set of complex and highly consequential issues has generated a heated debate about the place of the citizen in the decision-making process. This article examines how citizens choose one policy option over another on nuclear energy and whether informed citizens use a decision calculus fundamentally different from that of the uninformed. Knowledgeable citizens, we find, rely heavily on ideology, which also colors their cost-benefit calculations, while the unknowledgeable draw on their generalized outlooks toward technology and the cues provided by groups involved in the nuclear energy controversy.

Public attitudes toward present and future technologies : satisfactions and apprehensions

During the past thirty years, the United States has witnessed the emergence of massively complex organizations bent on technological accomplishments touching the lives of virtually everyone. The results have been mixed. Remarkable achievements have been won, the direct impacts of which have been astonishing; yet as the magnitude of technologys long-term effects is recognized, there grows an increasing uneasiness about the social, political, and environmental consequences of unbridled technical development. Some observers have sensed this paradox in technology as a social force, and have eloquently challenged the tendency to accept new