The Real Problem

Learn from your mistakes. We’re told this over and over our whole lives, so why shouldn’t it work for risk communication, right? It seems logical; however, it’s much more complicated than it sounds. An excerpt from Mad Cows and Mother’s Milk, by Leiss and Powell, entitled “A Diagnostic for Risk Communication Failures” addresses this very issue.

In researching the topic of flooding, I’ve attempted to come across some of these specific “failures.” Now, after reading about methods for the study of risk communication failures, I see where I went wrong. I failed to “track meticulously the media coverage of developing risk controversies.” It’s a great idea in theory - to reference newspaper and other media accounts, records of public hearings and the activities of public-interests groups. However, it seems to me that the only people who could attempt this comprehensive research are experts.

Do you have to be an expert in the field in order to be successful at fully understanding the issue? How do I, full-time employee by day and full-time student by night, attempt to overcome this challenge?

The text provides guidance in terms of questions to ask and information to gather:

What did the experts know and when did they know it?

What did members of the public know and when did they know it?

What effort, if any, did risk managers make to explain clearly to the public the
risk and benefit assessments they had conducted?

What effort, if any, did risk managers make to understand thoroughly the nature of public concerns?

What events fueled public concern?

What was the nature of media reporting of relevant events?

As the public awareness of the issue was developing, did any agency seek to take responsibility for the issue and to address the risk information gap?


These are great starting points, but the authors never dive deeper than theories. How can I realistically find the answers to these questions? This excerpt is less a “method” and more wishful thinking for researching in an ideal world where time and access are a nonissue.

Since we are on the outside looking in, it may be impossible for us to never know the answers. It's always overwhelming when we realize our own ignorance, but we can only make assumptions based upon the information we stumble across. Is that good enough?