Discursive Arenas and Legitimacy Overflows: Emotion and Expertise in Orphan Drug Reimbursement
研究爱尔兰政府是否资助囊性纤维化新药Orkambi的争议，分析推特、报纸和议会辩论中不同话语场域如何影响合法性的构建与溢出，对理解民主辩论的演变有启示。
We respond to calls for a greater focus on discursive arenas, their rules, and how these enable or constrain discursive legitimation. Our abductive study explores the case of a new cystic fibrosis drug, Orkambi, and the legitimation contests that surround the Irish government’s decision as to whether it should be funded by the public purse. Our dataset consists of tweets, newspaper articles, and parliamentary debate transcripts. We define a discursive arena, suggesting it is a location for micro-level discursive interactions that is bounded in time and place, observed by an audience, and underpinned by a set of rules that shape discursive positions and foundations. We identify three nonexhaustive and continuum-based characteristics of discursive arenas: one structural (how open it is) and two bases of legitimacy (whether it eclipses or evokes emotion, and whether it values lay or professional expertise). We build on this to suggest a typology of discursive arenas ranging from hot (where legitimacy commonly overflows into and out of other arenas) to cold (where such overflows are rare). We theorize a relationship between bases of legitimacy and arena type. In doing so, we focus attention on the nature of the arenas in which social issues are debated and how this affects the way that social issues travel from arena to arena. We believe that such a focus is vital in current climates where the rise of social media, the decline of traditional media, and the challenge of echo chambers all change the nature of democratic debate. How arenas shape and propagate or constrain such debate is vital to the design of a sustainable democratic society.