Newspaper Coverage of Work Environmental Risks -- How
News Stories Are Communicated and Perceived. E.
J:son Lönn, Dept. of Media & Communication, Umeå University, 901 87 Umeå
and Dept. of Physiology & Technology, National Institute of Working Life,
Box 7654, 907 13 Umeå, Sweden, telephone +46 90 166386 or 169532, fax +46 90
165027, e-mail: evaJson@niwl.se
Journalists
are often accused of mistreating risk information by confusing and
overestimating facts and figures. Moreover, lay audiences are believed to rely
principally on the mass media for risk information. Therefore, scientists
caution of media creating public misunderstanding of risks.
However,
risk reporting is not a one-sided action. It is a communication process,
involving several participants. Scientists, interest groups, journalists,
editors, audiences, etc., all have some influence on the outcome of risk
reporting. They are likely to have different motives and needs for partaking in
the communication, partly because their organisational constraints and
professional practice differ, for instance, a scientist might want to be known
or to warn the public about a risk, a journalist might look for recognition from
colleagues, and lay people might seek information about risks they are exposed
to at work. Their different views of risk, science and news reporting and their
perception of the needs of the other participants involved are likely to affect
the risk communication. The question is HOW?
The
majority of studies on media coverage of risk have focused on restricted parts
of the communication process, for instance, on the interaction between
journalists and scientists (Dunwoody & Ryan, 1985), on public perception of
risk (Bell, 1994) or on the influence of journalistic practices on risk
communication (Hansen, 1994).
The
aim of this project is to look into both the construction and the reception of
work environmental risk as reported in newspapers, i.e. to follow the
communication process from scientists via journalists to newspaper readers, as a
step towards a better understanding of the complexities and ambiguities of risk
communication.
As
a first step in this project, a pilot case study concerning the coverage of
electromagnetic fields (EMFs) by Swedish newspapers, is currently being
conducted. The subject of EMFs is one of the most controversial work
environmental risk awes in Sweden, at least in the mass media. MAR are
associated with the use of electric power. Computer monitors and recently mobile
phones and electrical railroad engines are some of the EMF sources most widely
debated in the media. Even if the correlation between DAR and health problems,
such as cancer, electrosensitivity and Alzheimer's disease, has been
investigated, scientists are still not sure regarding the health risks Since the
end of the 1970s, electrosensitivity has received a lot of media attention. The
reason is that scientists disagree whether there are physical, multifactorial,
or psychosocial causes behind electrosensitivity.
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