Risk Images: Visual Information and the Social Construction of Risk Messages. Åsa Boholm, Center for Risk Research, Stockholm School of Economics, Box 650 1, S- 113 83 Stockholm, Sweden and CEFOS, Göteborgs Universitet Pilgatan 19, S-411 22 Göteborg
In earlier times in European society when people outside the educated classes of clergy, public officials, scholars and merchants did not master reading and writing and when printed books were scarse commodities, pictures served as conventional aids of memory. Pictures in a valuable and rare illuminated manuscript helped the reader to memorize the text so that its contents could be recalled even outside the library and without access to the book itself. Pictures in churches served educational and commemorative purposes; they reminded illiterate members of the congregation of the stories of the Gospels, principles of Christian faith and religious customs (Yates 1966; Carruthers 1990).
We know from everyday life that visual representations can make it easier to remember a message. This common experience has been corroborated by media research and psychological studies of perception. If visual and textual information are combined, and given that the two modes of information are consonant with regard to messages conveyed, communication tends to be more effective. News stories which employ both verbal and visual information are perceived to be more interesting and are also better recalled afterwards (see Katz, Adoni & Pamess 1977; Graber 1996).
The visual image has indeed not lost its potential by the passing of centuries. 'Ours is a visual age', E. H. Gombrich noted already twenty-five years ago (1972: 82). Today, media as well as the innovations brought about by new information technology produce an ever increasing flow of pictures and images of various kinds-depicting 'authentic' as well as constructed 'virtual' realities-which are being made accessible to larger and larger groups of the population. As a mode of communication visual representation seems to be taking over more and more from the written word. From a holistic sociological perspective, incorporating insights from structuralism, semiotics and literary studies, the 'cultural studies' approach--although a rather heterogenous academic 'movement'--has addressed problems pertaining to the communication processes of modern forms of highly visual mass media in popular entertainment and commercial advertising (Hall et al. 1980; Fiske 1987).
In modem society threatening hazards-nuclear power, pollution of the environment, global warming, BSE, HIV-virus, crime, terrorism-feature in news reporting in media as well as in the specialized discourses of decision makers and scientific experts. In the eyes of the public, risk messages can appear to be abstract and vague and difficult to grasp. What will be suggested here is that visual images have capacity to present risks that otherwise appear to be remote from everyday experience, as subjectively relevant. Visual images can be expected to boost messages about risk thereby giving support to emotionally charged 'conative' perceptions charged with more personal concern.
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