From Secrecy to Public Containment: The Role of Hybrid Spaces in the Governance of Nuclear Crises in France.

This article examines why some large-scale adverse events become major public crises while others are treated as routine, focusing on the French media coverage and institutional responses to the Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011) nuclear accidents. It finds that Chernobyl was managed through secrecy, which fueled public contestation and institutional crisis, whereas Fukushima was characterized by "public containment," involving extensive but low-salience and non-controversial media narratives supported by institutional strategies that fostered "hybrid spaces"—non-public forums where government actors, safety agencies, social movement organizations, and journalists interact to coordinate information and reduce conflict. These hybrid spaces and transparency enactments helped reestablish trust in official sources and contained political crises by limiting critical public debate and alternative problem definitions, resulting in a form of opacity despite increased information availability. The study highlights how transparency demands can paradoxically produce new opacities by shaping the organization and reception of public discourse, thereby influencing whether adverse events escalate into crises for public institutions.