ABSTRACT
In environmental risk communication, official and unofficial discourse often compete with each other. By analyzing the social and semantic networks of discussions of the anti-waste-incineration issue from 2013 through 2017, this study reveals the evolution of competition and cooperation among participants and discourses. First, as the interaction and aggregation between early private actors gradually weakened, the visibility of official actors increased, and the connection between official and private was strengthened. Second, the initial pragmatic and democratic discourse gradually changed into a discourse of administrative rationalism. Official and private participants finally reached a limited consensus on advocating waste classification. Based on these findings, this chapter argues that social media provides an effective channel for communication and interaction among official actors, private actors, and multiple discourses, and thus plays an indispensable role in reaching good environmental governance.
