Risk Communication

A Handbook for Communicating Environmental, Safety, and Health Risks

Regina E. Lundgren, Andrea H. McMakin

• Publisher: Wiley-IEEE Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119456155
• Edition: 6
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Communication d'entreprise

THE ESSENTIAL HANDBOOK FOR EFFECTIVELY COMMUNICATING ENVIRONMENTAL, SAFETY, AND HEALTH RISKS, FULLY REVISED AND UPDATED

Now in its sixth edition, Risk Communication has proven to be a valuable resource for people who are tasked with the responsibility of understanding how to apply the most current approaches to care, consensus, and crisis communication. The sixth edition updates the text with fresh and illustrative examples, lessons learned, and recent research as well as provides advice and guidelines for communicating risk information in the United States and other countries.

The authors help readers understand the basic theories and practices of risk communication and explain how to plan an effective strategy and put it into action. The book also contains information on evaluating risk communication efforts and explores how to communicate risk during and after an emergency. Risk Communication brings together in one resource proven scientific research with practical, hands-on guidance from practitioners with over 30 years of experience in the field. This important guide:

• Provides new examples of communication plans in government and industry, use of social media, dealing with "fake news, " and new digital tools for stakeholder involvement and crisis communications
• Contains a new chapter on partnerships which covers topics such as assigning roles and expectations, ending partnerships, and more
• Presents real-world case studies with key lessons all risk communicators can apply.

Written for engineers, scientists, professors and students, land use planners, public health practitioners, communication specialists, consultants, and regulators, the revised sixth edition of Risk Communication is the must-have guide for those who communicate risks.

1
Introduction

Risk communication encompasses many types of messages and processes. It is the poster warning food workers to handle food safely to prevent the spread of Escherichia coli bacteria. It is the emergency response worker rallying a community to evacuate in the middle of the rising flood. It is the community representatives sitting down with industry to discuss the siting and operation of a hazardous waste incinerator. Risk communication involves people in all walks of life—parents, children, legislative representatives, regulators, scientists, farmers, industrialists, factory workers, and writers. It is part of the science of risk assessment and the process of risk management.

---

Risk communication involves people in all walks of life—parents, children, legislative representatives, regulators, scientists, farmers, industrialists, factory workers, and writers. It is part of the science of risk assessment and the process of risk management.

---

This book was written for those who communicate health, safety, and environmental risks, primarily the following:

• The communication professionals who prepare the messages, coach the speakers, and facilitate public involvement
• The scientists, engineers, and health care professionals who must communicate the results of risk assessments
• The organization representatives who must present a risk management decision
• Those new to the field of risk communication and anyone being asked to communicate risk for the first time

Because each of these readers may have different needs and questions concerning risk communication, we have divided the book into five parts. Each part or chapter within a part is relatively self-contained; a reader can choose to read some chapters and to skip others of less interest. Part I gives background information necessary to understand the basic theories and practices of risk communication and provides a basis for understanding information in the other parts. Part II tells how to plan a communication effort. Part III gives guidance on using various methods of communicating risk. Part IV discusses how to evaluate risk communication efforts, including how to measure success. Part V offers advice on special cases in risk communication: emergencies, public health campaigns, and international communication. A list of additional resources, a glossary, and an index are also provided. To emphasize key points, each chapter concludes with a summary section. Chapters that discuss how to apply risk communication (as opposed to those that deal with more theoretical aspects like principles and ethics) end with a checklist, which can be used to help plan and develop your risk communication efforts.

Much of our research and theory discussions, case studies, and recommendations draw from U.S. experiences, because that is our area of greatest familiarity. However, many of the risk communication principles we describe also apply to other countries. Readers will also find, sprinkled throughout the book, examples of country-specific risk communication research, successes, and pitfalls. Chapter 23, International Risk Communication, offers considerations for risk communicators outside of the United States and those who must address multi-country risks.

To Begin

Many of the terms used in this book are defined in ways that differ slightly from usage in other branches of science or communication. A glossary is provided, but as a beginning, we want to explain exactly what we mean by risk communication and how it differs from other forms of technical communication.

Technical communication is the communication of scientific or technical information. Audiences can range from children in a sixth-grade science class, to workers learning a new procedure on a piece of equipment, to scientists reviewing the work of peers. The purpose of technical communication can be to inform, educate, or even occasionally persuade.

Risk communication is a subset of technical communication. As such, it has its own characteristics. At its most basic, it is the communication of some risk. (In this book, it is used to mean the communication of health, safety, or environmental risks.) The audience can be similar to those described for technical communication, but it can also be a wide cross section of the United States and beyond. For example, information to present the risk of not wearing seatbelts could have as an audience anyone who will ever ride in a car.

Sometimes, the risk being communicated is frightening to a particular segment of the audience. Other times, the audience is unaware of or even apathetic to the risk. In still other cases, the organization communicating the risk is not credible to a portion of the audience or the audience finds the way the risk is being managed to be unacceptable. The strong emotions, or the lack thereof, audiences associate with a risk can make it difficult to communicate.

The purpose of risk communication can also differ from that of technical communication. In dangerous situations, such as floods and tornadoes, risk communication may have to motivate its audience to action. In other situations, the purpose is more appropriately to inform or to encourage the building of consensus (more on this in Chapter 5). Another difference between risk communication and technical communication is that risk communication more often involves two-way communication, that is, the organization managing the risk and the audience carry on a dialogue. In technical communication, most efforts are designed to disseminate information, not to receive information back from the audience or to include the audience in the decision-making process. An example of two-way technical communication is scientists reviewing the work of peers.

---

Risk communication comes in many forms. In this book, we generally divide risk communication along functional lines, distinguishing between care communication, crisis communication, and consensus communication.

---

Risk communication comes in many forms (see Figure 1.1). In this book, we generally divide risk communication along functional lines, distinguishing between care communication, consensus communication, and crisis communication, which are described in more detail later in this chapter. While these three forms have elements in common with other forms of technical communication, they always have circumstances that require different tactics, or ways of communicating, to effectively deliver their messages to and involve their respective audiences. For example, consensus communication involves much more audience interaction than do care or crisis communication. Risk communication can also be divided topically—for example, into environmental, safety, and health risk communication.

Figure 1.1 Examples of various types of risk communication.

Care communication is communication about risks for which the danger and the way to manage it have already been well determined through scientific research that is accepted by most of the audience. Another distinguisher is that, generally, those charged with communicating have little return on investment other than the betterment of human lives. Think of the American Heart Association and local public health agencies.

---

Care communication is communication about risks for which the danger and the way to manage it have already been well determined through scientific research that is accepted by most of the audience.

---

Two subsets of care communication are health care communication (sometimes called health education or health marketing), which seeks to inform and advise the audience about health risks such as smoking or AIDS, and industrial risk communication, which involves informing workers about potential safety and health risks in the workplace. Industrial risk communication can be further divided into ongoing communication about industrial hygiene and individual worker notification, which informs workers of the findings of retrospective mortality studies, in which the mortality rates of a set of workers have been evaluated against standards. Examples of these are the longitudinal studies to determine the effects of beryllium on energy workers (that is, whether they had a higher rate of mortality compared to standards).

Consensus communication is risk communication to inform and encourage groups to work together to reach a decision about how the risk will be managed (prevented or mitigated). An example would be a citizen advisory panel and the owner/operator of the local landfill working together to determine how best to dispose of hazardous chemicals found at the landfill. Consensus communication of risk is also a subset of stakeholder participation, which encourages all those with an interest (stake) in how the risk is managed to be involved in consensus building. Often, the agency or organization with the greatest financial stake funds this process. (Stakeholder participation is also generally called public engagement, public involvement, public participation, stakeholder involvement, public consultation, and audience interaction.) Stakeholder involvement, however, can go far beyond risk communication, into the realms of conflict resolution. These realms encompass entire disciplines in themselves and, hence, are beyond the scope of this book.

---

Consensus communication is risk communication to inform and encourage groups to work together to reach a decision about how the risk will be managed (prevented or mitigated).

---

Crisis communication is risk communication in the face of extreme, sudden danger—an accident at an industrial plant, the impending break in an earthen dam, or the outbreak of a deadly disease. This type can include communication both during and after the emergency. (Communication during planning on how to deal...