Maverick Science and Journalism

Communication of Risk

Risk communication informs individuals about the existence, nature, severity, or acceptability of hazards. For any scientific or technological issue, exposure to mass media messages about risk, together with personal experience and interpersonal communication, may lead to individual perceptions of personal and public risk (and also to behavioral outcomes) as the result of a range of informational and influence cues. The mass media are central to this process because of their omnipresence and the high degree to which the media may influence audience members through cognitive and framing effects. An example of the media's role in risk communication is coverage of the possibility that autism in children may occur as a result of vaccination. In a content analysis of 279 newspaper articles from the British and American press, researcher Christopher Clarke found large differences between the two countries in the frames used by journalists to help readers interpret the stories. While many of the articles included an attempt by the journalists to balance viewpoints about whether or not vaccination could cause autism, many other articles include no such balancing. In this case, while the scientific studies formed a common literature across the two countries, newspaper readers could come away with very different understandings of vaccine safety depending on the country in which they lived.

Several factors complicate mass communication about issues that involve risk. The mass media sometimes distort the relevance to individuals of various risks. For their part, scientists sometimes seek publication prior to establishing the reliability of their findings. Results, when interpreted in light of other scientific findings, are often contradictory. There may be a bias by audience members against information that is based on science or technology. According to research done by Allan Mazur, increases in mass media coverage of scientific controversies are positively correlated with higher proportions of the public who think negatively about the issues. Also, the public does a poor job in distinguishing among the severity of risks, and there are a multiplying number of smaller risks that are publicized due to more sensitive detection techniques.

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