Society of Risk Analysis Annual Meeting Boston - 2008 Communicating Risk: Amplification, Attenuation...

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Communicating Risk:Amplification, Attenuation & Digital Media

National Science Foundation,NSF 06-595, #0809470Nanotechnology Interdisciplinary Research Team (NIRT): IntuitiveToxicology and Public Engagement

Information adapted from White Paper:

Communicating Risk in the 21st Century

David M. Berube with Brenton Faber, Dietram Scheufele and Christopher Cummings, Grant Gardner, Kelly Martin and Nicholas Temple

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Public participates in 3 acts:

consumption, productionand sharing (Shirky, 2008)

Comparable accuracy of Wikipedia to The Encyclopedia Britannica for articles on scientific subjects (Nature, Giles, 2005).

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In 2005:• 6 % of entire U.S. population had created a blog

•16 % regularly were reading blogs

• Nearly a quarter of Americans (23 percent) say they regularly or sometimes read blogs about politics or current events (PEW, 2008)

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Days after 9/11 (Lanfield, 2002)• Half of internet users experienced problems accessing traditional news sites

• Accessed: alternative news sites, international news sites, government and NGO websites (Red Cross)

• Citizens posted personal accounts, photographs, and video footage of the tragedy

• Journalists participated in internet chat rooms & online bulletin boards looking for eyewitness accounts

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Internet: information flows faster, covers more

sources and more accessible (Krimsky, 2007)

Traditional media might amplify a message, digital media provides opportunity to attenuate a message

Opportunities for risk communicators

1)False or exaggerated info, communicated to public before experts can communicate views

2)Risk communicators have same opportunity to communicate quickly and effectively to the public

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Conclusions

• Make proactive efforts to re-frame messages through various forms of media—traditional and digital

• Need to consider using untraditional venues• entertaining docudramas, social

networking sites podcasts, blogs and internet portals.

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Thank you!

Kelly Martin

[email protected]

Society of Risk Analysis Annual Meeting Boston - 2008 Communicating Risk: Amplification, Attenuation...

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