2010 - Public Relations Society of America

While favor towards nuclear energy may be increasing in the United States, support for
nuclear plants within individual communities remains significantly lower than in other countries.
For instance, a 2007 Gallup poll found 62.59 percent of Americans do not want a nuclear energy
plant constructed within 20 miles of their home. However, a 2007 UPI international poll found
63.1 percent would support the construction of a nuclear plant in their community (Lando, 2007).
Using Gallup public opinion polls as a baseline, favorable opinion regarding the
proximity of nuclear plants to a residence has only increased 7.29 percent since 1986. Public
trust for nuclear energy as a viable solution to the United States’ energy demands has been
affected by both TMI and Chernobyl (Wahlstrom, 2005). Unlike the Chernobyl disaster in the
Ukraine, many in the United States do not realize that throughout the TMI crisis no lives were
lost, no physical injuries occurred, and radiation exposure was about one millirem, or 1/6 of the
radiation a person receives from a full set of chest x-rays (Walker, 2000). TMI media coverage
focused more on what could have happened, or the worst case scenario, instead of on the facts of
the crisis (Walker, 2000). Because of the way the media highlighted – or framed – nuclear
energy throughout the TMI incident, many sensational and incorrect attributes were transferred
from the media agenda to the public agenda. Some of the negative attributes transferred include
nuclear energy’s harm to the environment, human safety, vulnerability to terrorists’ attack, waste
problems, expensive construction, and stagnant technology (Herbst & Hopley, 2007).
The last and perhaps the only longitudinal study on nuclear energy and public opinion
appeared in 1994. Rosa and Dunlap’s (1994) Nuclear Power: Three Decades of Public Opinion,
an analysis of polling trends from 1975-1990, demonstrated declining public support for nuclear
power with increasing opposition. The most recent Gallup opinion poll found 59 percent in
favor of using nuclear energy as one of the ways to provide electricity in the United States, a 3.1
percent increase from 2006 (Gallup, 2009). In the last decade, pro-nuclear energy editorials have
appeared in the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Boston Globe, the New York Times,
the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post (NEI, 2005).
This study is significant given that the last analyses of nuclear energy frames occurred
with Gamson and Modigliani’s (1989) study, which focused on the culture of nuclear power
across mediums – television, news magazines, editorial cartoons, and syndicated opinion
columns.
Literature Review
Agenda Setting
McCombs and Shaw (1972) defined agenda setting as the transfer of salience from the
media agenda to the public agenda. Salience is the relevance given to an issue through repeated
media coverage, thereby influencing the perceived importance of the issue by the public as the
information is readily accessible (Dearing & Rogers, 1996; Funkhouser, 1973; Iyengar &
Kinder, 1987; McLeod, Kosicki, & McLeod, 2002; Petty, Priester, & Brinol, 2002).
Public information officers and public relations practitioners often fill the role of first
source for media accounts and therefore help to shape the media’s agenda setting process.
Intermediate agenda setting occurs when media outlets influence one another. National news
agencies, particularly the wire services, influence one another to the point of standardizing how
an issue is reported (Roberts, 1997).
Individual interest and regular exposure to media coverage facilitate the agenda setting
process (Schoenbach, 1982). The stronger the individual preference for the issue, the more the
message reinforces individual intent in regard to the issue. On the other hand, the weaker or more
uncertain the individual is about the issue, the stronger the effect of the media’s role.
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