Public Acceptance of a Controversial Technology: Stakeholder Perspectives on GM biofuel in News Media

Abstract

Public acceptance of genetically modified (GM) crops has some complexity due to the technological controversy and different opinions of different stakeholders. This study has examined the public acceptance of GM biofuel by analyzing the stakeholder’s roles in gm biofuel ecosystem, stakeholder’s sentiment over the time, finding out the supportive and critical aspect of GM biofuel that may impact the public acceptance. Furthermore, this study also analyzed tensions developed between stakeholders due to the conflict of interest and stakeholder’s positions on policy aspects. To do this study empirically, it has followed the qualitative review of an extensive media corpus as the foundation of the analysis. Besides, the data is collected from news publications from various international sources released between 2005 and 2025, to analyze them. The data has been sourced from LexisNexis, a global database that compiles newspaper, magazine, and online articles. Microsoft Excel has been used for data management, manual coding, thematic analysis, and visual presentation. Also, NVivo 15 software has been used to analyze the word frequency and word cloud. Moreover, there are ten different types of stakeholders that have been discussed. Moreover, supportive discourses are characterized by frames of innovation, sustainability, and energy security, whereas critical discourses highlight concerns about contamination and ethical uncertainty, food security, and corporate control. The study has also discussed the frequently mentioned tensions around GM biofuel such as food versus fuel along with other identified tensions, for example, innovation versus precaution, and trade competitiveness versus regulatory sovereignty have influenced the way people think about GM biofuel. In stakeholder’s sentiment it is found that negative sentiment is higher than positive sentiment due to the unknown risks associated with GM crops, but the difference remains relatively minimal. Conclusively, the public acceptance of GM biofuel technology cannot just be taken as a case of technological innovation but as a matter of gaining trust through integrity, policy, and communication.