The social construction of a health controversy. The case of electricity smart meters in France

This article presents a sociological study of the public controversy over electricity smart meters in France. It asks how this controversy has emerged nationally and how, rather than waning as a result of expertise produced to dispel uncertainty, it has instead grown stronger. Drawing on an in-depth cross-analysis of the French press published over the period 2015–2016 and a heterogeneous corpus of institutional documents, the study highlights the public, multidimensional, and health-focused nature of the controversy, as well as its origin from scares imported from abroad. Above all, it reveals how this controversy extends beyond discussion of the intrinsic qualities of the technical object itself (the smart meter) to fuel reflection on the anti-democratic dimension of the rollout project.