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Short abstract:

Innovations have produced advancements but are also responsible for microplastics and PFAS in the environment. Analysing policy documents and YouTube videos as two narrative genres, we study how knowledge, concerns, and care are entangled, and what this teaches us about (ir)responsible innovation.

Long abstract:

While discussions around microplastics and PFAS ('forever chemicals') have been debated along separate lines, they are linked in multiple ways. For example, PFAS occur as microplastics or are used as coatings on synthetic textiles and plastic components that then break down into microplastics. Therefore, it seems relevant to explore the knowledge regimes that are mobilized in narratives of both substances.

Our analysis is embedded in the ERC Advanced Grant project “Innovation Residues: Modes and infrastructures of caring for our longue-durée environmental futures” (PI: Ulrike Felt, GA 1010545), which investigates how societies know, make sense of, live with, and care for innovation residues, the left-behinds of technological innovations. We specifically focus on European policy documents for microplastics and YouTube videos explaining PFAS.

Policy documents and YouTube videos are seen as two arenas where various knowledge regimes are brought to bear and shape the understanding of the issues of concern and how to address them. They speak to specific audiences and therefore it is essential to analyse the situated narrative constructions of relations between matters of facts (settled knowledge claims), matters of concern (for whom and when is it a problem), and finally matters of care (who is responsible for taking action).

We will point to how the 'epistemic things' – microplastics and PFAS – are described and how scientific knowledge regimes are positioned in these different arenas. We will also show how issues of responsible governance of innovations and related residues are imagined, performed, and addressed.