Democratizing Food Safety Governance in Taiwan: A Systemic Approach to Deliberation

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Research on deliberativedemocracy pay little attention to hybrid forums, civic activism, social mediaand the interplay of multiple transmission in the deliberative system. This articleexamines the interconnection of multiple transmission mechanisms in thedeliberative system and how they interact together and complement each other toimprove the deliberative and democratizing quality of food safety goverance. Using the controversy on the Taiwanese government’s liftthe ban on food imports from Japan’s radiation-affectedFukushima region, it analyses multiple modes of transmission, including discursive narrativesby civic society groups, online communication platform and social media, institutional transmission mechanism, innovative hybridforums, andthe 2018 national referendum and public debates. It presents the constructionand mobilization of narratives and how science is mediated in the deliberativeprocesses and reveals how connecting multiple sites of communication anddeliberation could help to address disconnect between citizens and thepolicy-making processes.