Link Sarah C, Eggeling Marie, Abacioglu Ferdinand, Boehmert Christoph
Department for Social Sciences, IU International University of Applied Sciences, Erfurt, Germany.
Risk Anal. 2024 Sep 1;45(5):996-1008. doi: 10.1111/risa.17641.
To understand citizens' reactions to the 5G rollout, their affective reaction and perception of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) exposure are of interest. Although precursor studies on 2G-4G have investigated exposure perception mostly quantitatively, the present study applied a qualitative exploratory approach. A number of 35 individual interviews and 6 focus groups with the same participants were conducted in December 2022. Participants were recruited from several locations in Germany, where 5G rollout was at different stages. Interactive tasks, particularly an affective evaluation task and a ranking task, encouraged participants to consider their affect regarding mobile communications and their exposure perception. This approach allowed the participants to first engage with the topic of mobile communications/5G in an intuitive way, before talking about their specific beliefs on RF-EMF exposure. Several pictures showing a person (1) interacting with a mobile phone, (2) surrounded by other peoples' mobile phones, or (3) in the vicinity of mobile phone base stations (antennas) were used as stimulus materials. Data were analyzed using an exploratory content analysis. In the affective evaluation task participants revealed more negative associations with base stations than with mobile phones. The analysis showed that the reasons for their evaluation were very diverse, whereby exposure to RF-EMF only played a subordinate role. Further, the ranking task indicated that most participants (n = 20) felt more exposed from base stations than from mobile devices. Results are mostly in-line with the literature on 2G-4G and do not indicate a substantially different exposure perception for 5G.
为了解市民对5G网络推出的反应，他们对射频电磁场（RF-EMF）暴露的情感反应和认知备受关注。尽管之前关于2G-4G的研究大多对暴露认知进行了定量调查，但本研究采用了定性探索方法。2022年12月，对35名参与者进行了个人访谈，并组织了6个焦点小组，参与者相同。参与者从德国的几个地方招募，这些地方的5G网络推出处于不同阶段。互动任务，特别是情感评估任务和排序任务，鼓励参与者思考他们对移动通信的感受以及他们的暴露认知。这种方法让参与者在谈论他们对RF-EMF暴露的具体看法之前，首先以直观的方式接触移动通信/5G这个话题。使用了几张图片作为刺激材料，图片展示了一个人（1）与手机互动，（2）被其他人的手机包围，或（3）在手机基站（天线）附近。采用探索性内容分析法对数据进行分析。在情感评估任务中，参与者对基站表现出的负面联想比对手机更多。分析表明，他们做出评估的原因非常多样，其中RF-EMF暴露仅起次要作用。此外，排序任务表明，大多数参与者（n = 20）感觉来自基站的暴露比来自移动设备的暴露更大。研究结果大多与关于2G-4G的文献一致，并未表明对5G的暴露认知有显著不同。
