Manuel Eisner, born on 7th May 1959, studied history, sociology and social psychology in Zurich and London. From 1996 until 2002 he was assistant professor at ETH Zurich. At present he is acting director and reader at the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University.

(mib) Pollution of the oceans, lakes and rivers, the Waldsterben, Chernobyl and genetic engineering: in the perception of western industrialised nations complex problems are reduced to a simple denominator, to the destruction of the natural state of things. "When society actually perceives the existence of problems then there are real consequences in the form of the political, mass median, legal or scientific reactions to the problems," write Manuel Eisner, Nicole Graf and Peter Moser in their recently published "Risikodiskurse". The authors are less interested in the question of whether problems really exist than investigating "the dynamics of public debate on problems of the environment and risk in Switzerland." The publication was funded by the relevant part of the Swiss National Science Foundation’s programme, "Switzerland's future", and ETH Zurich.

The basic data for the authors' study were taken from the archives of a number of daily newspapers (the Zurich region's "Tages-Anzeigers", the "Neuen Zürcher Zeitung" and the national tabloid "Blick") from 1958 to 1998. The lengths of texts of certain keywords was analysed , the allotted picture material, the number of column inches devoted to the issue and its positioning in the paper. Data thus collected was then assigned to "actors" (problem promoters, adversaries or specialists), to interpretation patterns (definition of the problem, cause and effect, value orientation, rhetoric) as well as to the pertinent processes. The results show that "problems go through several stages in a career." These stages include protest, issue in the mass media, mass media policy cycles, and they can be assigned to one of four different temporal phases – latency, escalation, culmination and normalisation phases.

"Our case studies show that the initial constellation of promoters can be extremely diverse and that actors from the political establishment play a very central role", write the authors. The debate on water pollution (1958-1972) was shaped by scientists at the Swiss Union for Water Protection (Schweizerischen Vereinigung für Gewässerschutz) and representatives from Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science and Technology ; discussion on nuclear energy commenced in the form of citizens’ initiatives (1965-1985); the Waldsterben were brought to the notice of society at large by forest officers (1983-1990); the catastrophe at Chernobyl was taken up from left-green political factions and environmental organisations (1986-1990) and the debate on genetic engineering from activists within the Swiss Working Group on Genetic Engineering (since the mid 1980s). "It is striking that a successful "putting-on-the-agenda" of problems that touch upon environment and risk are usually mobilised at local and national levels simultaneously. The local level serves to make the problem visible, whether it is the location of a trial field of genetically modified maize , the location of dying fish or the forest in one's own community, whose desolate state is made clear during a guided tour with the local forester," they explain. The national level, on the other hand, provides an interpretation framework that can be generalised with regard to the problem, as well as an identity that endures even after an unparalleled event has passed. Of "overwhelming importance" is whether scientists act as problem promoters (as in the water protection debate) or as adversaries (as in the debate on genetic engineering).

In their publication the authors conclude: "In all five case studies, the use of catastrophe rhetoric is very striking. The discourse on the environment seems to live from this rhetoric, although the resonance from the public is not always commensurate." Between 1970 and 1973, when the threat of an ecological collapse became fixed in people's minds for the first time, and again between 1984 and 1987, when the environment debate reached its zenith, "the catastrophe rhetoric was able to develop the greatest everyday plausibility that it has ever had before or since." In this phase the way the media report of the issue was decisive. Scientists tend to be more diffident in their formulation: "Each catastrophe, protest or conflict has very high media value because its dramaturgy lends itself to the principles of news communication (novelty, conflict, damage)."