ABSTRACT
The global event World Wide Views on Global Warming (WWViews) was an innovative experiment in public engagement in science and technology, aiming to create a ‘global citizen voice’ on climate change. This analysis is based on a study of the Danish WWViews event, drawing on theoretical perspectives of deliberative democracy and of science, technology and society (STS) studies of public engagement. The focus is on how the citizen deliberations were institutionally framed as an exercise in deliberative democracy. The analysis includes reflections on how the process was designed in order to obtain legitimacy, on how different types of knowledge and expert identities were constructed and negotiated and on how the framing impinged on the outcome. The specific conditions of the Copenhagen meeting and its relationship to a high-policy global summit (COP15) are also considered in the discussion of WWViews as an innovative design for global public engagement in science and technology.
