Abstract of Meeting Paper

The 1996 Annual Meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis-Europe

Radiation Risk: Risk Perception and Communication (RISKPERCOM). Lennart Sjöberg, Center for Risk Research, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden

A CEC project of the fourth framework, Nuclear fission safety, is presented. The project is focused on risk perception and communication with regard to ionizing radiation, in particular problems of nuclear power. Five countries participate: France, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK. The first phase of the project is devoted to a study of public risk perception and media contents during the spring of 1996, when intense media coverage of the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident is expected. Results of the first wave of data collection will be presented in some of the separate national papers of the session, which also includes a critical discussion of Cultural Theory of risk perception from the standpoint of a social anthropologist.