An “ideological fantasy”: how market discourses confuse, obscure and deflect consumers’ attention away from the science of energy conservation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Our research focuses on sustainable energy use and our aim is to establish if communication at critical social interfaces is providing information that motivates pro-environmental behaviour change. Here we focus on one key site of energy-related information exchange – the interface between energy retailer and domestic energy consumer. Our interpretive analysis involved a comparative discourse analysis of consumers’ accounts of their communication with their energy retailers and exposed a dialogic failure, perpetrated by an ‘ideological fantasy’ of consumer empowerment that appears to prevent scientific information from being translated into sustainable energy practices. We discuss what we have learnt and close by briefly considering how our learnings might help avoid perpetrating similar fantasies of empowerment when scientific texts are exchanged at the academy-societal interface. In doing so, we link our work to this ICA panel’s theme which focuses on open science.