Paper long abstract:

The "RRI" label was coined by the DG Research of the European Commission in the '2000s and it is part of on-going reflection on changing relations between Research, Innovation, and the wider Society. In so-called "knowledge societies", innovation is considered as the solution to important societal challenges; at the same time legitimization of innovation is at issue since, in so-called "risk societies", there is a strong attention to its negative effects (be they direct/indirect, intentional or not). In this perspective, one of the key questions is related to the possible (medium to long term) effects of RRI. This question may be framed as an issue of institutionalization and we may want to consider how RRI, as an emergent field, comes along with new actors, discourses, competences, practices, rules, standards, etc. A first step in this research developed within the ResAGorA FP7 project consisted in studying the academic literature with a scientometric methodology. A second step, presented here, consisted in the quali-quanti analysis of the main published documents, be they academic or not, which use the 'RRI' label. A content ('RRI' definition used, stakes, conceptual references, etc.) and meta-data (type of document, authors' status, institutions, etc.) analysis allowed us to look for possible relationships between them all. Of course, such a scope is limited since RRI emerges in various spaces and not only within the published arena (e.g. also in blogs, press articles…). However, this analysis allows us to formulate a first set of hypothesis on the possible futures of RRI.