Risk Communication

Risk communication is a community infrastructure, transactional, discursive communication process among individuals and organizations regarding the [Page 805]character, cause, degree, significance, uncertainty, acceptance, and control of a risk. Risk communication provides the opportunity to understand and appreciate risk bearers’ and other stakeholders’ concerns related to risks generated by organizations and nature, engage in dialogue to address differences and concerns, carry out appropriate actions that can mitigate perceived risks, and create a climate of participatory and effective discourse as a rationale for collaborative decision making for a more fully functioning society. This definition incorporates that the purpose of risk communication is not necessarily to reduce the sense of risk or risk awareness but to engage and encourage vigilant community stakeholders regarding its discussion and management. This logic suggests that infrastructures within a society are created, changed, and managed to discuss, challenge and make enlightened decisions relevant to risk tolerance, mitigation, and communication.

Following the lead of anthropologist Mary Douglas that the rationale for the industrialized and the evolving technological society is the collective management of risk, in the past three decades the concept of risk's broad application and examination has become adopted across multiple academic disciplines, including public relations. Identifying or pointing to a specific date or event that launched risk communication is challenging as it grew organically out of a variety of perspectives and initiatives, whether they are community-based activism, government response, or industry initiated. Researchers have argued that the field of risk studies and in particular risk communication matured in the 1970s and 1980s as evidenced by the appearance of distinct paradigms, models, and conceptual frameworks that provided structure and coherence through scientific investigation, case studies, and empirical findings, as well as the emergence of professional risk societies that focus on risk communication, specialized journals, and academic programs.

Concepts of risk have a common element, which is the distinction between possible and chosen action; thus, risk is inherent in being human. Risk communication can be part of and influence these choices. As risk bearers, humans learn to live in varying degrees of comfort with ambiguity, contradiction, and imperfection. The challenge when addressing risk is uncertainty; that change has no constituency. There is always a constituency for staying the same but change is a risk. So change (risk) needs a voice, an advocate in favor or disfavor, and that advocacy is often through risk communication.

Risk communication public relations campaigns typically involve large organizations, such as manufacturing facilities, whose activities can pose a risk to key members of a community. Other types of risk communication campaigns are managed among risk bearers and risk arbiters, activists and nongovernmental organizations, working to better manage the health, safety, and environmental impacts of risk-generating organizations.

Numerous multidisciplinary approaches to risk communication have been advocated over the past 30 years. Some of the significant research agendas related to risk communication include the following: (1) risk perception/expressed preference, (2) mental models, (3) precaution advocacy/outrage management, (4) infrastructural, (5) sociocultural, and (6) critical theoretical. Risk perception/expressed preference is based on years of risk analysis and perception research that has focused on the discrepancy between potential and actual risk bearers’ perceptions of environmental and technological risks, and those of the science and policy experts. This landmark research focused on concepts such as dread, unknown, involuntary, unfamiliar, uncontrollable, unfair, memorable, acute, focused in time and space, fatal, delayed, artificial, and undetectable as key psychometric variables.

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